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How much of this do you believe?
- Thread starter sandy whitelinger
- Start date
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
Let me ask you a question, sandy. Do you believe that God is:
(1) Outside the universe.
(2) Inside the universe.
(3) Identical with the universe.
(4) Something else I didn't think of?
(1) Outside the universe.
(2) Inside the universe.
(3) Identical with the universe.
(4) Something else I didn't think of?
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Outside of the universe and able to move within it. He is also surely something else you didn't think of.
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
Let me get this: He's outside AND inside?
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Now, that wasn't so hard to say, was it?
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
He's like cat that can't make up it's mind. 
wa:do
wa:do
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
O.K., sandy, few problems with that:
Everything that science has discovered so far indicates that the universe is a closed system. There is no in and out. Everything in stays in; there is no exchange between in and out.
Physicists who understand this stuff tell me that words like "outside" and "the universe" don't go together. As someone said here, it's like saying He's north of the north pole, which is of course the same as saying He's nowhere, or, to put it in other words, imaginary.
If God acts within the universe, then we ought to be able to find some evidence of that action, right? What might that evidence look like? How would a universe with God acting within it look different from one without?
Everything that science has discovered so far indicates that the universe is a closed system. There is no in and out. Everything in stays in; there is no exchange between in and out.
Physicists who understand this stuff tell me that words like "outside" and "the universe" don't go together. As someone said here, it's like saying He's north of the north pole, which is of course the same as saying He's nowhere, or, to put it in other words, imaginary.
If God acts within the universe, then we ought to be able to find some evidence of that action, right? What might that evidence look like? How would a universe with God acting within it look different from one without?
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
You mean you have a few problems with that...God doesn't.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, God confounds the scientists.
Doesn't seem to bother Him.
Find a physicist who understands outside the universe then.
Imagine that.
Offhand I'd say look at the universe to understand a universe with God in it. Other than that you wouldn't exist in order to imagine a universe without God.
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
How do you know?
How do you know?
There is no such thing.
Yup.
Assume what you're trying to prove much?
so there's no way to tell a created universe from an uncreated one then?
Except, of course, if it's "uncreated" then there is no universe.
Nothing can come from nothing. Everything always was, and always will be. It's often changed forms, shrunk, expanded, torn, etc... but It's always there.
No conscious influence, but hardly no outside influence. The earth was formed, like the Sun, Moon, and other planets, from Stardust.
Nothing was spontaneous. The ingredients for life, again, came from Stardust.
That only happens if it's necessary. Evolution doesn't mean change from less complex to more complex. Just look at bacteria. They evolve all the time, but remain single-celled organisms.
Evolution is simply change. It doesn't always mean ascention.
These two, I'm purely agnostic about.
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
No, you're assuming too much. We have no way of knowing that. I think the most likely scenario is that the universe has always existed. The physicists tell me this matches with our understanding of the history of time, which is that time came into existence together with the universe. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, the universe has existed for all of time, in other words, always.Except, of course, if it's "uncreated" then there is no universe.
While I don't dispute any of that, it was just a play on words. The verb "to create" means to bring into being, so "to uncreate" would be to remove from the context of being. No 'being', no universe.
ThereIsNoSpoon
Active Member
The sentence doesnt make sense. Something which was created (passive form) needs something that created it. Even if you change the word to "caused" (which i would find more apropriate) there would be "some" causes. If you do define "outside influence" as nonconscious reasons then i have no problem imagining this however.
Again the question is what is outside influence .... No problem for me to think of an earth forming in the gravitational field of a sun.
Possible
No problem
Again the question is what is outside influence .... Anyway .. no problem for me if outside influence would be naturall factors.
[/quote] What soul ? I havent seen one. So much for the answers.
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
Your grammatical instincts are right on target. Passive sentence structure allows one to omit mention of the agent, which we all understand to be "God" here. An agent is an entity that performs an intentional action that causes something to happen. God has the same power in this case that we naively perceive a magician to have--the power of making something appear out of nothing. In principle, he can make physical things come into being through sheer willpower, although human magicians can't really do that. Humans rely on sleight of hand to trick people into thinking that they have the power. God doesn't need to trick people, because his existence is purely in the mind.
The truly mind-boggling aspect of these religious arguments is that the religious proponents seem to think that they have explained away the paradox of infinite causal chains. Skeptics point out that God merely becomes part of the causal chain, but that seldom deters the true believer from a kind of "turtles all the way down" logic. God is declared to be "timeless" in some obscure sense of the word, and so he provides a self-satisfying way for believers to ground their imaginary causal regression and somehow step outside of the paradox.
OmarKhayyam
Well-Known Member
"God is declared to be "timeless" in some obscure sense of the word, and so he provides a self-satisfying way for believers to ground their imaginary causal regression and somehow step outside of the paradox."
Yet another example of the willingness to believe what we'd rather. The human mind's ability to deceive itself is amazing.
Yet another example of the willingness to believe what we'd rather. The human mind's ability to deceive itself is amazing.
ThereIsNoSpoon
Active Member
Indeed one of the funniest aspects of such debates.
I was already tempted to ask an analogous question to the thread creator:
"Do you believe in an even more complex being than the universe is, having come into existence out of nowhere or just existing without any higher purpose ?"
And of course a theist would logically have to say "yes" althought he wouldnt really admit it.
Well I suppose that we should begin with the undeniable fact that this universe does indeed exist, and that the only solar system in this universal body that we really know anything about, is teaming with a diversity of life forms, among which is mankind, the most recent and the Most High of the earthly species, who has gained dominion over all the life forms that preceded him, and can rightly be seen as the Lord of creatures.
I believe that this universal body, began as an infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitesimally small primordial Atom, which, owing to the laws of physics, gravity etc, has become all that exists, which includes all life forms known and unknown, intelligent and non-intelligent.
I believe, that which has become all that exists within this universal body is eternal, and that this cycle of universal activity is but one of an uncountable number of the eternal life’s active and rest periods in the aeons of eternity, and that one day, this universal body will roll up as a scroll with a great hissing noise and the universal elements will burn up and fall as massive columns of fire beyond all measure in height and depth, into the Great Abyss from which it originated, where all Space and time that exists in every Atom will be cancelled out, and all that is, will be condensed into an infinitely dense and infinitely hot, infinitesimally small primordial Atom that will one day burst forth from Its apparent bottomless pit, to be seen as the resurrection of this universal body, in which there had developed a supreme personality of Godhead, (The Light of Man) who will continue on, in the eternal process of growth, or evolution.
Can living organisms develop from nonliving matter? My body is comprised of nothing but atoms, and I am sure that you will deny that an atom is a living entity, but you cannot deny that this conglomeration of atoms which is the body in which ‘I,’ the intellect have developed, is a living organism.
I suppose pain would be one of the outside influences that make a dumb beast a little smarter, it steps into a smouldering fire, it remembers the pain and it soon becomes intelligent enough not to do it again.
The meaning and the reason for life, is life itself. Life was, Life is, and life always will be, for the life of the universe is the soul, or the Logos, which is the divine animating principle which pervades all that exists, the soul from which all things were formed, by which all things were formed and for which all things exist, and as we all share the animated elements of the universe from which our bodies are created, so too, we also share the soul which activates these bodies in which we the spirits develop, which spirits are imprinted upon the eternal Soul, and after our bodies, skin, flesh, nerves, brain matter and every Atom of our being is returned to the universal elements from which it was formed, a facsimile of the ‘I” which had developed in those bodies, is imprinted on the eternal soul, and 'I' will live again in the resurrection; That is of course, unless my body, like the universal body itself, is not changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from a body of corruptible matter, into a body of glorious and brilliant light in the eternal growth or evolution of the Life that was , is, and always will be.
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BucephalusBB
ABACABB
I am open in this one. I don't see any value in asuming either a spontanious universe or an infinite (in time) one. Neither of them I can explain at this point.
Same as universe. earth is just a rock in the whole..
I view life as an automatic process. Life is just as "easy" as the movement of a rock. I think the start was a combination of other processes.
EDIT: Forgot to read the rest.
I do think that once a life is in the middle of processes, adding externalprocesses can alter or add to the life.
I have great troubles in calling that less or more complicated. Just different.
comes in the package of automatic processes. Following the need for survival, the rest is easy, but as I do not know where the need for survival came from, I rather stay in the open..
I don't know what a soul is. tried to ask it so many times on this forum, never got a satisfying answer
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