Is there a Creator?

[ManTimeForgot]

Can we hope to get a logical answer to the question as to whether there is a Creator? By logical answer I mean our reasoning, one step at a time, leads up to the final reasoning without any break. Or are answers to this sort of question never got logically? Some talk of intuition as the only way to get ultimate answers.

Here have a go at this. Maybe it will give you something to think about.

MTF

 

[K.Venugopal]

O men! If you have any doubt concerning Resurrection, then know that it is surely We Who created you from dust, then from a drop of sperm, then from a clot of blood, then from a little lump of flesh, some of its shapely and other shapelessly. (We are rehearsing this) that We may make the reality clear to you. We cause (the drop of sperm) that We please to remain in the wombs till an appointed time. We bring you forth as infants (and nurture you) that you may come of age. Among you is he that dies (at a young age) and he who is kept back to the most abject age so that after once having known, he reaches a stage when he knows nothing. You see that the earth has become dry and barren and then no sooner than We send down water upon it, it begins to quiver and swell and brings forth every kind of beauteous vegetation.

What a fabulous and poetical quote. I have an inclination to understand that the "We" who speaks is none other than life - that within us that enlivens us. I think life is the link between us and God which we appear to have taken for granted. We are life (and not the body inhabited by it) and hence we are God.

 

[Jeremiah]

Time is illusion, without a doubt. Everything happens now. There is nothing that has not happened now. If you built a time machine and traveled through time, still, you would only experience it as now. Time is created through mental projection.

I disagree, it is just that time is not exactly how it is typically perceived, meaning time is not linear. But time still exist, it is just hard for us to envision it properly. I made a joke about it in one thread, the post was a joke but it is my actual thoughts on time. I called it, "a causality driven ever-changing constant."

 

[K.Venugopal]

Also, I have never seen anything, ever, created in the sense of something from nothing. I have seen what is already there take on a different form but I have never seen something come from nothing. The idea of an origin for existance is a wild guess; for all we know the existance, we know, could be forever.

Here, I would tend to agree with you.

 

[K.Venugopal]

Open your eyes and gaze upto the skies, look at the marvel of the creation, the subtle ways in which all forms have been created without any flaws, ask someone if they can create a fly?

Two things here. One, do not belittle man. He may end up creating more than just a fly. Two, we look up to the skies and marvel - marvel that it is as it is. Why should a creator come into the picture? If He does, we are still left marveling that we have a creator who is as He is. But wouldn’t we also be left wondering how He came to be, just as we wonder how everything came to be? Lo! Some religions prohibit you from wondering how God came to be.

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

I disagree, it is just that time is not exactly how it is typically perceived, meaning time is not linear. But time still exist, it is just hard for us to envision it properly. I made a joke about it in one thread, the post was a joke but it is my actual thoughts on time. I called it, "a causality driven ever-changing constant."

Words...I suspect we're saying the same thing. Just because it is an illusion is not to say that the illusion does not exist. To say that time is illusion really just means that the experience of separate objects, separate selves and perpetual events is ultimately false.

 

[K.Venugopal]

And in the case of Point 4 even if we affirm that there is a Creator god we still need to describe what is meant by the term.

Regards, Cottage

We may differ in the meanings we give to the word God. I would like to think God is simply the ultimate potential of man. However, creator there could not have been because create means bringing forth that which never existed before. Since even those who mean by God a personality who created everything would not say that in the beginning anything else existed beside God, therefore, with what could God have created? We see the multifarious universe and it is tempting to conclude that it is nothing other than God Himself manifest variously.

 

[K.Venugopal]

Absolute rubbish.

Possibily.

 

[Jeremiah]

Words...just because it is an illusion is not to say that the illusion does not exist. I suspect we're saying the same thing.

"I suspect we're saying the same thing."

I don't, If I gather this right you are implying that time is subjective in nature and if that is the case then I would be in a disagreeance with you.

 

[K.Venugopal]

I don't believe there is a creator God. Everything that exists is just energy in different forms which can neither be created, nor destroyed. However if one defines God as being this energy or this animating principal of existence, then in that case God exists, but God is still not a creator. God is more like the "animator".

What a concurrence of thoughts. Could we recognize this "animator" as none other than the life within us that enlivens us?

 

[K.Venugopal]

That matter and energy has always existed in infinite forms (because matter, energy, space, and time are infinite) is as plausible a theory for existence as any. There could be big bangs going on right now but are too far away for us to notice. Perhaps big bangs happen because black holes gobble up to much and then...boom! Who knows?

Pardon me if I sound stupid, but I have a feeling that the "big bang" theory will be discredited in due course because it might be more the case of the ultimate reducing itself to the minutest and then going on the return path of discovering itself. Hence, evolution may only be part of the story. There first happened an involution.

 

[K.Venugopal]

JS, I find most of your comments on this board to be extremely callous, critical and sometimes just mean. Please, stop judging others so much and make an effort to communicate with and understand your fellow living human beings who are just as much a part of this confusing world as you are.

JS is simply a no-nonsense guy. He is an intellectual cop - he keeps us on the honest path.

 

[K.Venugopal]

What you have stated is correct, howver just like to add that, There is nothing as TIME. Its all in the mind ...

Your comments always have a ring of authority about it.

 

[K.Venugopal]

Zenzero,
Have you experienced a moment of timelessness? Have you been able to experience moments in what most of us call the past?

Can we experience the past but in the present?

 

[K.Venugopal]

Time is illusion, without a doubt. Everything happens now. There is nothing that has not happened now. If you built a time machine and traveled through time, still, you would only experience it as now. Time is created through mental projection.

..Yes.

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

"I suspect we're saying the same thing."

I don't, If I gather this right you are implying that time is subjective in nature and if that is the case then I would be in a disagreeance with you.

Time has to be subjective because the experience of time cannot be measured and is ultimately relative to objects that we perceive in our consciousness. Consciousness itself is objective yes, but time and the objects within consciousness are not.

 

[K.Venugopal]

Point 3 lacks any verifiability. We have no knowledge of the extent of reality (not the universe mind you) and as such we have no way gathering evidence whether reality is eternal or had a beginning.

The best we can do is argue a point of logic (something I have done on other threads hardly putting the topic to rest) But ultimately this boils down to two (in my opinion) highly competitive cosmologies (unlimited and eternal cosmos & cosmos has a starting point limited or unlimited hardly matters) and one (again in my opinion) not so competitive cosmology (eternal but limited cosmos).

I think an error of some sort occurs when we posit God as being outside of creation. I must say here, risking the charge of being Islamophobic, that Islam alone make the separation between Creator and Created absolute. Christianity, with Jesus' "I and my Father are one" closes the gap. Hinduism, it alone has unabashedly talked about non-duality.

 

[K.Venugopal]

And my question is: What exactly necessitates a "god"? Why not just a "full stop" on existance?

Indeed.

 

[K.Venugopal]

The intelligence of the creation is not the marvel; the intelligence that sees it is.

And maybe the intelligence that sees it is the intelligence which created it?

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

JS is simply a no-nonsense guy. He is an intellectual cop - he keeps us on the honest path.

I barely recognize the authority of the voice in my head, let alone a cop of any kind, perhaps especially an "intellectual" cop. I do believe that JS believes he is a no-nonsense guy and occasionally acts like an intellectual cop, though not necessarily to keep people honest, but to maintain an image of self or to unconsciously invalidate a world that he perceives to be non-sensical. Anyway...I don't want to gossip about people here.

And maybe the intelligence that sees it is the intelligence which created it?

Yes, indeed...and if the creation itself was never created, as we discussed earlier, then the seer and the seen are ultimately one and the same. There is only One. And this One perceives itself in utter subjectivity, so we cannot know the truth, but we can be it.

I think we can close this thread.