Ok i started a post on what religion i belong to, it became self evident i dont belong to any particular religion, however i do have spirituality and self awareness, im willing to overlook all the fallacy's of religion to see what is meant behind the metaphors and such but i dont believe in any particular being as god, this brings me to my conundrum, imagination, what is it?, where did it come from?, is it the force that made us evolve or is it just the force that helps us prosper once were alive? after all these questions are answered i think every believer in god needs to ask himself or herself a single question to fully overstand the existence of their personal god, WOULD GOD EXIST IF YOU COULDN'T IMAGINE IT? we all have biases of what we imagine god to be, for example i quite enjoy imaging god as all the laws we must abide, the laws of physics, laws of nature and laws we created ourself via politics, all these laws are very real and we live our lives by them (or most of us, those who aren't in prison) this is what i IMAGINE god to be, someone else however, perhaps a Christian may idealise god in his/her imagination as a HUGE white bearded male in which our universe makes up a small particle of HIS beard (or lungs or guts or bum hole) all that being said you are still only imagining god and if imagining god makes god real then what does that make our imagination? any idea's on the matter would be greatly appreciated as im trying to come to terms with the human imagination (or life on the whole) thanks for reading guys...
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Imagination?
- Thread starter coolkeg
- Start date
Runlikethewind
Monk in Training
God is not any particular being, God is not a being, God is being. God does not exist God is existence.
The real answer to your question rests on how one defines God. The Abrihamic religions would claim that yes God would exist independent of the imagination. But it all depends on your concept of God.
Tiapan
Grumpy Old Man
As mammals developed, especially in carnivores and omnivorous primates, hunting ability was promoted, as sophisticated pattern recognition evolved, much work must be done by the brain to pull objects of interest into focus from a forest of mostly irrelevant stimuli.
So I believe imagination is a side benefit of the awesome parallel computing power of the brain where patterns and planning of the different strategy senerios are played out, that could be applied to the particular situation eg catching a rabbit, do I chase it, do I try to corner it, can I hit it with a stick.....What if I went left instead of right etc.
Cheers
So I believe imagination is a side benefit of the awesome parallel computing power of the brain where patterns and planning of the different strategy senerios are played out, that could be applied to the particular situation eg catching a rabbit, do I chase it, do I try to corner it, can I hit it with a stick.....What if I went left instead of right etc.
Cheers
Runlikethewind
Monk in Training
Agreed
"The real answer to your question rests on how one defines God. The Abrihamic religions would claim that yes God would exist independent of the imagination. But it all depends on your concept of God." - how would you know this, if the specific subject of the abrahamic faith had no imagination, how could he ever imagine something better than himself? I.E GOD
K.Venugopal
Immobile Wanderer
I love these statements. Aren't they typical thoughts of the non-dual school? Is this also RC teaching?
Runlikethewind
Monk in Training
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? To my understanding that is the sort of question being asked in the OP. Just because I can't hear the tree I can still recognize that it will make a sound. If I could not imagine something better than myself that doesn't mean that something better does not exist.
Yes, very non-dualistic. Such thoughts are compatible with Church teaching but I don't think the Church would call this its official teaching on the matter. In fact I don't think the Church has an "official" position on the matter.
tumbleweed41
Resident Liberal Hippie
Look, this may not be the answer that you are looking for, but consciousness and imagination are the results of neurons firing around in our very human brains.
This falls completely in line with a God of Natural Laws.
No miracles. No reveled revelations. No mystical experience.
When I want to experience God, I look at the wonders and natural events that resulted in this ever expanding universe.
This falls completely in line with a God of Natural Laws.
No miracles. No reveled revelations. No mystical experience.
When I want to experience God, I look at the wonders and natural events that resulted in this ever expanding universe.
Eliot Wild
Irreverent Agnostic Jerk
Yeah, if you're looking for different voices to weigh-in on the subject, I gotta go with tumbleweed41 on this one.
However, I did want to add with all certainity that the universe is NOT God's bumhole. God's bumhole is somewhere just outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the good ole U.S. of A.
zenzero
Its only a Label
Friend coolkeg,
Whatever you have written are all your mind's imagination even the god you do not believe in is it's imagination.
Though you feel you are having a hand in what you have written but reality is that it is your mind's work and all that the mind knows and does are all imagination as it is never in the present it is in the past or the future and to be a BEING one needs to be present and there the MIND remains still.
Love & rgds
Whatever you have written are all your mind's imagination even the god you do not believe in is it's imagination.
Though you feel you are having a hand in what you have written but reality is that it is your mind's work and all that the mind knows and does are all imagination as it is never in the present it is in the past or the future and to be a BEING one needs to be present and there the MIND remains still.
Love & rgds
@Eliot Wild lol at where gods bum hole may be situated
@zenzero i can relate to what your saying to some extents, that everything only exists because your mind renders the existence of it, i.e. that plant may exist in the physical world, but im say colour blind, my mind might not render the image of the plant hence in my perception it would cease to exist, however what im particularly interested in is perhaps a fuller knowledge of the science that gives us an imagination and consciousness, the only problem is, im not sure it will ever be able too.
@zenzero i can relate to what your saying to some extents, that everything only exists because your mind renders the existence of it, i.e. that plant may exist in the physical world, but im say colour blind, my mind might not render the image of the plant hence in my perception it would cease to exist, however what im particularly interested in is perhaps a fuller knowledge of the science that gives us an imagination and consciousness, the only problem is, im not sure it will ever be able too.
yes your right, it was that sort of question and your right just because we cant imagine something better than us doesnt mean it doesnt exist, however, there wouldnt be billions of people running around saying there god is the only god etc etc because if they couldnt imagine anything, im fairly sure they would presume they are god, which is closer to truth than what the imagination creates, because as we know,what exists within the imagination isnt actually reality, it may become reality but not until we extend ourselves to the physical world, and if you dont use your imagination to extend to the real world then it stays as non-existent
in other words, your god and my god and his god and her god are all figments of our imagination, the greatest figment of our imagination...
Perfect Circle
Just Browsing
The combined consciousness hasn't had it's coffee yet...
Runlikethewind
Monk in Training
You presume much. I'm not sure what people would think if they had no imagination. Indeed, without the imagination I wonder what would become of memory since that seems to be a similar cognitive function. What about memory?
I really can't follow your line of reasoning, I really can't see how what you have said in anyway supports this conclusion. Could you clarify? How does having an imagination lead to the conclusion that anything we imagine is simply not real? I can imagine a big cheeseburger. My mental image is not, in fact, a real cheeseburger and it may be an imperfect representation of a cheeseburger. But none the less, cheeseburgers do exists.
I will be the first to admit that I am not capable of creating an accurate mental representation of God, no human is. That does not mean that there isn't a God out there independent of our ability to form an accurate mental image of God.
ok, firstly i presume to much to say that we would presume ourselves god without imagination, this point is irrelivant, weather we think were god or not is irrelivant to my orignal statement regarding the real fact that god is a pigment of our imagination and this is because it is the best thing we can comprehend within our imagination (I.E visualize) what each and every single one of us overstand god to be, only ever exists within our own imaginations, also the thing about the burgers, yes burgers exist, but what exists in your brain (imagination) doesnt exist, YES theres a very REAL line, what im also trying to say is, i know just because what i imagine to be god is different to what you do and that what im imagining god to be(not existent) doesnt mean it doesnt exist, it just means that whatever you(WE) imagine god to be is WRONG, and for now, imagination itself is god (with a few fundamental laws in there somewhere)
