INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[1robin]

Yes, of course.

It occurred @ 00000000000.00000000 secs., in region HAL666, SECTOR 59, COORDINATES 39.4 DEGREES N, 78.2 DEGREES W, PLUS OR MINUS 0.0000045, CORRECTED FOR ATMOSPHERIC DISTORTION, SPACE CURVATURE, AND THE IMPACT OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT ON TIME. DETAILED MAPS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST FROM CENTRAL AUTHORITY.

HOPE THIS HELPS.

Been there, nothing but a walmart for miles.

 

[camanintx]

I have been given a balloon metaphor for this but I did not think it accurate. I have gathered that everything is said to be flying apart from everything else. The analogy is that of dots on the surface of a balloon. However stuff is not doing this all the time. Stuff is crashing into other stuff and bouncing off other stuff and so forth. It was also suggested that the balloon would have no center. I would have to take that on faith because it si irrational to me. I think what is being described if far more similar to a spherical wave. Is that your understanding? If so, why can't the trajectories of the particles riding that wave be plotted backwards? Why does not the universe look like a shell when looked at through a telescope? It looks exactly like things began at some point and are expanding at different rates. More like a bubble full of stuff (smoke for instance) expanding. That does not make their theories wrong but it does make them counterintuitive and in need of sufficient explanation. The balloon was not it. I do not care where the center is and do not care if there is one but logic suggests there should be a point where this small singularity existed. If it no longer exists as a physical space then where do the reverse trajectories of the parts on the shell track back to?

I think your confusion lies in that you are looking at our 2D metaphors as if they were 3D objects. With the sphere and the balloon, nothing but the surface is relevant so asking where the center is would be irrational. As the balloon expands, all points on the surface move away from each other proportional to their distance apart.

Our universe is the same with all points moving away from each other in all three dimensions proportional to their distance apart. Regardless of where you are, everything would appear to be moving away from you. Plotting back to the big bang, when all of space is contained within the singularity, asking where that singularity exists is just as irrational as asking where the center of the balloon is.

 

[InvestigateTruth]

1. God exists independent of time. It has little or no effect or relevance on him. That is why the thousand years are a day and vice versa.

The problem is that if we imagine that, there was a time that God did not have a creation, it contradicts with the Name of God, which is the Creator.
How could the Creator be without creation?

Regarding Bible stating "in the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth"

I don't think this statement should be taken literally. Specially it contradicts with the big bang. There is scientific evidence that the world is expending, if you think the Heavens and the earth were created then in six days, light, water and animals/human were created.

 

[camanintx]

The problem is that if we imagine that, there was a time that God did not have a creation, it contradicts with the Name of God, which is the Creator.
How could the Creator be without creation?

Regarding Bible stating "in the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth"

I don't think this statement should be taken literally. Specially it contradicts with the big bang. There is scientific evidence that the world is expending, if you think the Heavens and the earth were created then in six days, light, water and animals/human were created.

I think the bigger problem is showing that time is something God can exist independently from. While the idea of time certainly makes it easier to formulate equations for how things change, saying it is a property of space that something can transcend is baseless. No one has ever experienced anything but the here and now.

 

[godnotgod]

I think the bigger problem is showing that time is something God can exist independently from. While the idea of time certainly makes it easier to formulate equations for how things change, saying it is a property of space that something can transcend is baseless. No one has ever experienced anything but the here and now.

I think you're on the right track here, and I would like to introduce a slightly different view on how we have come to think about God and the Big Bang.

Most people who subscribe to a creator-God starting the world at the moment of the Big Bang have the idea that (linear) Time began at that very moment. But Space would also have to have come into being. (I won't say anything yet about Causation, which is a bit more difficult to come to grips with). So until the moment of the Big Bang, there was no Space-Time, and if there was no Space-Time, the universe did not come into being from some 'place' in some 'time', since, as you pointed out, God exists independently of Time, as the nature of God is Infinite and Eternal. So, in other words, the idea that Time began with the Big Bang, and here we are some billions of years later in the linear sense, with that event somewhere in the distant past, and we living in a different Time we call the Present. But Space-Time is only a concept. From the point of view of the divine nature, there is only this eternal Present Moment, and the divine nature lives in a place where there is neither. So if the universe came out of God's being, and if Space-Time did not exist at that moment, then it must have come out of Pure Consciousness, out of No-Thing-Ness, because God is not a 'thing'. It is only that we, as humans conceptualizing Time, Space, and Causation, have superimposed these three values over the natural world, causing us to see the universe the way we do, as an artifact of God's hand, 'made' in linear Time. But from the point of view of the divine nature, the Big Bang is still occurring in this eternal Present Moment; it has never stopped occurring. But it is not occurring linearly, in Space-Time; it is unfolding all at once. The problem is that we see God as creator of the universe as if it were an object apart from God, but when we remove the filters of Time, Space, and Causation, we see the universe as the Absolute itself. There are not two different things, one called 'God' and the other the 'universe'. We only see them as two because of the conceptual filters. So what this boils down to, is that there is not the non-material divine nature creating the material world: there is divine consciousness manifesting the world out of it's own consciousness, as in 'projection'. The Absolute and what it is manifesting are one and the same, but only the Absolute is what is real. The manifested world is completely illusory, but on a different level than how we think illusion to be. Quantum Mechanics is beginning to show us that the world we thought of as 'real', is not what it seems.

The compelling thing about it is that, from a Hindu point of view, God has immersed himself in his own illusion and is playing all the parts, all at once, including you and I, but he has forgotten he has done so, and so is taking it all very seriously. In other words, God forgot that his 'creation' is nothing more than divine play. He has become entranced by his own maya, and so here we are, each of us playing out the drama, pretending to be something other than the divine nature itself, taking it all seriously, and pretending we are atheists and theists trying to understand it all. It's all a complete fraud, and the only way we can know this is to find some way of penetrating the facade. This way is to awaken, to 'snap out of it', so to speak, and to remember. Gurdjieff called this process 'self-remembering'.

As for the idea that the 'material' universe is just a manifestation of Pure Consciousness, consider that Einstein said:
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”

"The universe IS the Absolute, as seen through the glass of Time, Space, and Causation"
Vivikenanda

 

[godnotgod]

Been there, nothing but a walmart for miles.

The point is that everywhere is the center of the universe, including YOU.

 

[Flat Earth Kyle]

The point is that everywhere is the center of the universe, including YOU.

agreed. That is what happens when the universe is infinite.

 

[godnotgod]

The problem is that if we imagine that, there was a time that God did not have a creation, it contradicts with the Name of God, which is the Creator.
How could the Creator be without creation?

When we look anywhere in the world and the solar system, we see cycles. That is just the nature of things. Does it not also make sense that the cyclical nature of the phenomenal world follows the same patterns of the greater universe? And if that is the case, then we would see, if we could, periods of creative activity, followed by periods of rest. The Big Bang, if we accept a cyclical theory of the universe, is the resumption of the creative process, but it is a dream and the world an illusion.

When you look at Hindu cosmology, we find this cyclical pattern expressed as the universe existing in four stages, or kalpas. In the first kalpa, that of creation, all is perfect bliss and harmony. Each kalpa lasts millions of years; in the second kalpa, a small amount of chaos is introduced, and begins to grow; in the third kalpa, chaos and harmony are about equal, until finally, in the fourth kalpa, chaos completely overtakes harmony and the worlds are destroyed. However, this is all a dream in the mind of the sleeping godhead. Upon awakening, the dream vanishes, and the godhead walks in the Radiant state of Reality for a period of 4 kalpas, after which he again sleeps and dreams a new creation.

Once, when I was a wood finisher, a couple of old Chinese carved and hand painted chairs came into the shop one day. On one of the back splats was painted a dragon, with its tail curving up over its body. On the second chair, the dragon drops his tail to reveal the Sun and Moon.

Now you see it; now you don't, the universe pulsing first on, then off, then on again forever and forever. Now, you would think that this would get boring, but no two creations are ever the same, in the manner of snowflakes, AND, since everything occurs only in the eternal Present, there is no history, no memory of past creations, so the experience is always new, always fresh, in Absolute Joy.

This is the meaning of "I am".

 

[godnotgod]

agreed. That is what happens when the universe is infinite.

Hello, God!

 

[1robin]

I think your confusion lies in that you are looking at our 2D metaphors as if they were 3D objects. With the sphere and the balloon, nothing but the surface is relevant so asking where the center is would be irrational. As the balloon expands, all points on the surface move away from each other proportional to their distance apart.

Our universe is the same with all points moving away from each other in all three dimensions proportional to their distance apart. Regardless of where you are, everything would appear to be moving away from you. Plotting back to the big bang, when all of space is contained within the singularity, asking where that singularity exists is just as irrational as asking where the center of the balloon is.

Is there a pictorial representation somewhere that you think accurately shows this model? I still do not understand why the current junk in the universe can't be back tracked along it's trajectory. I understand about horizons but could we not simply place a stick along its path and see where it points. I believe this trajectory issue is what led them to believe the Big Bang happened in the first place. Here is a picture I found. I believe this is a column cross-section of what would be a bubble and is the way I have always heard it described. This picture is intuitive and logical. Is it wrong? Why does it not look like a balloon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
Is your model based upon only the very latest second and so only shows a surface area similar to a bubble but with no interior? If so why did the interior "space" disappear? Matter may no longer exist in the center but why not space? I did not expect this question to be so dang hard to resolve.

 

[camanintx]

Is there a pictorial representation somewhere that you think accurately shows this model? I still do not understand why the current junk in the universe can't be back tracked along it's trajectory. I understand about horizons but could we not simply place a stick along its path and see where it points. I believe this trajectory issue is what led them to believe the Big Bang happened in the first place. Here is a picture I found. I believe this is a column cross-section of what would be a bubble and is the way I have always heard it described. This picture is intuitive and logical. Is it wrong? Why does it not look like a balloon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
Is your model based upon only the very latest second and so only shows a surface area similar to a bubble but with no interior? If so why did the interior "space" disappear? Matter may no longer exist in the center but why not space? I did not expect this question to be so dang hard to resolve.

It is really difficult to depict in two or three dimensions what is really happening in four dimensions where one of those dimensions represents time. The illustration above is reasonably accurate in that sense but doesn't really depict the concept of expansion which is where the balloon comes in. The difficulty lies in understanding that the interior of the balloon doesn't represent anything. Your idea of tracing trajectories back to a common origin doesn't work because the trajectories always point at the observer, regardless of where they are in space. The galaxies are not moving through space, it is space itself that is expanding, pushing them further apart.

 

[camanintx]

I think you're on the right track here, and I would like to introduce a slightly different view on how we have come to think about God and the Big Bang.

Most people who subscribe to a creator-God starting the world at the moment of the Big Bang have the idea that (linear) Time began at that very moment. But Space would also have to have come into being. (I won't say anything yet about Causation, which is a bit more difficult to come to grips with). So until the moment of the Big Bang, there was no Space-Time, and if there was no Space-Time, the universe did not come into being from some 'place' in some 'time', since, as you pointed out, God exists independently of Time, as the nature of God is Infinite and Eternal.

I subscribe to the idea that what we call "time" is nothing more than how we perceive change in the world around us. Physics treats time as a property of the universe (space/time) simply because the equations require a variable 't' to distinguish between successive moments. Since the act of creation involves change, saying that God exists "outside of time" would be logically impossible, like calling God a square circle.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

While we're at it, maybe someone can explain to me why nothing can be north of the north pole. I mean, why can't you just keep going north once you get there?

 

[Skeptisch]

While we're at it, maybe someone can explain to me why nothing can be north of the north pole. I mean, why can't you just keep going north once you get there?

You can, but wouldn’t you then go south? :super:

 

[Kilgore Trout]

You can, but wouldn’t you then go south? :super:

That's just so confusing, that it must somehow prove that god exists.

 

[1robin]

It is really difficult to depict in two or three dimensions what is really happening in four dimensions where one of those dimensions represents time. The illustration above is reasonably accurate in that sense but doesn't really depict the concept of expansion which is where the balloon comes in. The difficulty lies in understanding that the interior of the balloon doesn't represent anything. Your idea of tracing trajectories back to a common origin doesn't work because the trajectories always point at the observer, regardless of where they are in space. The galaxies are not moving through space, it is space itself that is expanding, pushing them further apart.

This issue is giving me a headache. I guess it is claimed that whatever the universe is just can't be represented in a real model. Though I wonder why we just can't draw the universe as it exists. Anyway, as usual science frustrates. Me, give up.

 

[Looncall]

You can, but wouldn’t you then go south? :super:

This reminds me of a puzzle I heard in Scouts.

Someone travels one mile south and sees a bear,
.He runs a mile west then a mile north to where he started.
What colour was the bear?

 

[Skeptisch]

This reminds me of a puzzle I heard in Scouts.

Someone travels one mile south and sees a bear,
.He runs a mile west then a mile north to where he started.
What colour was the bear?

It needs a Canadian to tell that one…olarbaby:

 

[1robin]

It is really difficult to depict in two or three dimensions what is really happening in four dimensions where one of those dimensions represents time. The illustration above is reasonably accurate in that sense but doesn't really depict the concept of expansion which is where the balloon comes in. The difficulty lies in understanding that the interior of the balloon doesn't represent anything. Your idea of tracing trajectories back to a common origin doesn't work because the trajectories always point at the observer, regardless of where they are in space. The galaxies are not moving through space, it is space itself that is expanding, pushing them further apart.

Despite this giving me a headache, I can't not stand not knowing something that should have an answer so I have been looking everywhere for models of the Big Bang. Here are a few among many that do not resemble and balloons, surface only spheres, or things that do not make any sense:

[youtube]YJJK9x1Ffhw[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJJK9x1Ffhw
[youtube]PV0ACIykxQI[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV0ACIykxQI
[youtube]9LecNb3CfzA[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LecNb3CfzA

They are not counter intuitive, matched what I had been taught in college, and are just two of countess models that demand no fantasy to understand. That does not make them right but it does make the idea that the Big Bang looks like an explosion "type" event a very common one. They did not give the center of course4 so I am still unsatisfied but they make a center a logical concept.

 

[SkepticThinker]

This observation has developed into a current theory called emergence in which the embodied mind is considered an emergent capacity of the brain as a self-organizing complex system.

Emergence - Properties of a complex physical system are emergent just in case they are neither (i) properties had by any parts of the system taken in isolation nor (ii) resultant of a mere summation of properties of parts of the system.
The Department of Philosophy | Washington University in St. Louis​

It implies that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The 'mind' emerges at some point of critical mass activity of the brain, so to speak. The brain, therefore, 'creates' consciousness and the mind. This idea is important in that it implies that (individual) consciousness is local, so that when the body and brain die, so does 'mind'. Nothing survives.

This is in contrast to the view of Eastern wisdom, which says that (universal) consciousness is non-local, meaning it was present prior to birth and remains after death, 'mind' being a self-created principle, and thus, an illusion. This illusory state of an imagined individual 'self' is termed 'Identification'.

"...we can dismiss all claims that consciousness, mind and awareness are emergent properties of matter or brains, because we need the presence of a mind for emergent properties and phenomena to appear in the first place. The subjective activity of the mind of the observer, together with the 'objective' procedures and the structures upon which they operate, is an irreducible component of emergent phenomena."

The rest of this article can be accessed here:

Consciousness and mind as emergent phenomena or emergent properties of the brain

Footnote: We have documented scientific evidence that, contrary to the idea that the brain creates consciousness, the exact opposite is true: consciousness creates the brain. The cerebral cortexes of long-term meditators has been shown to be thicker than those found in normal people.
Sources provided upon request.

This is all fascinating stuff. I think it's safe to say that minds and brains work together (our brains consist of chemical interactions that produce a mind with which we use to interpret our interactions with the world) and that without brains there are no minds and that we have no examples of minds existing without brains.