Who, or what, is this "God"?

[Iriohm]

No, I mean exactly what I said. As far as who it applies to... you as well as essentially every other human to ever exist is tainted by it.

That makes me feel a bit better...though I still disagree with the postulation that these are satan-inspired thoughts.

As for the rest of what is being discussed, it seems like a vast overcomplexification.

*small smile*

That's me: "overcomplexifying" simple things, though in my defense, nothing is ever truly simple.

There is reality... physical, finite reality. Your imagination exists within reality, not the other way around. You can imagine whatever you want, but it will always remain this simple.

I say simply that you are wrong. Very, very, very wrong.

If you don't believe me I can refer you to a number of convincing albeit painful experiments.

*does the Morpheus "come hither" hand-signal*

Bring it.

 

[Iriohm]

Yes, you can use inductive reasoning to leap to that as a possibility. Inductive reasoning is analogical reasoning; it doesn't prove that your concept is correct, it just shows it to be possible/plausible.

As a writer, I've already had the same thought myself; I am capable of creating an entire world with characters that feel very real and almost seem to write themselves, but they spawn out of me as a reflection of who I am.

So I have thought about how that suggests the possibility of a being above me from whom all the things that seem to be the "real world" could spawn in turn. Just as the writer has omnisicent and omnipotent control over the contents of the story and the characters who appear, "God" could potentially do the same thing except that instead of writing us down in a book, we are projected into 3D space and 4D reality... meaning "God" would be higher up in the dimensional level. But just as my most "alive" characters seem to have a life of their own, so would we...we might be generated as a reflection of the author but we still also act under our own volition within these dimensions.

Thank you. Just...thanks.

I agree with the concept, but I do not like you referring to people as "drones" due to the negative connotation. Yes, in a practical sense, "drones" exist in a hive and might all seem to just be about accomplishing a certain practical task without needing to imagine or consider in a "higher plane"... but the entire hive would collapse without the drones' existence and efforts. EVERYONE serves a purpose that is valued and necessary. You might not have meant to suggest a negative connotation, but unfortunately in American culture, the negative connotation is nowadays the standard definition of drone.

I understand full well the importance of such people, and I meant no offense. I didn't mean "drones" in the sense that a lot of people are them, but in the sense that everyone has a little "drone" in them. Everyone is individual, yet also interconnected, and when you get right down to it (and take the body away), where one person ends and another begins becomes a very vague line. What are we, but a governing force over a collection of thoughts, memories, and ideas, many of which remain relatively similar, regardless of who they belong to. You see that chair, and I see that chair; it's the same sensation. It's what we as individuals do with that sensation that counts.

Yeah, you gotta watch this. You distastefully come across as an elitist and rather inexperienced in life. At this stage of my existence, after getting to know lots of types of people, I don't really care if someone is a janitor, a secretary, a DOT worker, a scientist, a theologian, or a dog catcher: We ALL have worlds living within us, bright unique specifics worlds full of hopes and dreams, an entire mysterious array of worlds, and your attitude comes off as dismissive and short-sighted. Dreamers are valuable... but so is everyone else.

As much as I appreciate you protecting the masses, that is not at all what I said, or meant to say. I'm not insulting people, or looking down on them, or dismissing them as inferior, or anything even remotely like that; I am simply describing how things work, from a purely objective standpoint, in an imagined reality by using my own as reference. I apologize again for giving that impression.

Free will is an assumption.
No one is completely free.
You are currently caught in webs of thinking just from the culture, time period, physical body, family, ethnic background, and economic group you have been raised in, among other things.
You might feel like you have the power of choice, but all the choices that you have have already been handed to you and you're not aware of choices outside of them.

An argument I've heard before, and one I don't believe, though I can respect that you do.

No, I missed your large leap from the prior paragraph to this one.

Yeah, I kinda put that in for dramatic effect...

*sheepish grin*

Though now that I look back on it, there isn't really a leap to make, because the connections (between the paragraphs) necessary for such a leap aren't there. I tried to explain it in the next part of the second paragraph.

On the other hand, this rather ties in to the previous bit. We, as members of this mess of creation called the world, are all a part of God's mind. However, my point is, if we're all sentient, are we all, in some way, "God", in the same sense that the more sentient characters in my paracosm (imagined world; I just learned that word) are me, recognized and named as aspects of myself?

It is difficult to explain; like the Holy Trinity, actually, but if this is true, then, and I mean this in the humblest possible sense, we decide what God thinks, and God decides what we think, and those distinctions are too close together to remain separate.

Is there a discernible rational answer to that? Or is it just the stuff of speculation?

How should I know?

It sounds more the realm of philosophy, religion, and creativity.

Which is why I chose Philosophy and Spirituality.

Yes, it somehow became a discussion of a particular sect of Christian doctrine.

Yes, I suppose it did.

Yeah, that was the standard Christian boilerplate there.
(How's it feel to be the spawn of Satan?)

Tiring. The way I see it, Jesus himself was a radical at the time, full to the brim with new ideas that contradicted what many people thought. I ask myself sometimes whether, if he came back now, anyone would recognize him.

 

[Iriohm]

[
Do you understand what I'm saying? We are all, in an admittedly convoluted sense, God, each of us acting independantly, yet at the same time an extention of one impossibly large sentience. Or perhaps, if one were to take the argument further, there is no impossibly large sentience, and "God" is simply a descriptive term for the sum total of every sentient lifeform in the multi-verse. "God" as an all-encompassing force, not as an all-encompassing entity. "God" as the very definition of creative thought, imagination, and life.

This is the concept of Emergence. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. As an ant hill can funtion as one entity, as the Earth can be seen as one biosphere and described as a single living entity...so can the universe (or god.) How much of it can you understand? If you can imagine that light bends around stars but cannot prove it...????

Ah, Emergence. Quite true.

 

[Lark]

I remember reading in Philip K Dick's Our Friend's On Frolix 8 that they discovered the corpse of "God" floating out in space when they first began space exploration, the amazing thing is that isnt even the theme of the book, its just an aside along the way, its really about a huge invulnerable pink gelatinous blob which is coming with its friends to earth, where it will, depending on how you look at things either save mankind or slowly digest them all.

 

[Iriohm]

Just a joke. I dunno... jump off the roof and imagine you can fly or something like that.

The Wright Brothers did that already, actually. It may have taken longer then simply willing something into existence, but the basic principle remains the same: what started as an idea was brought into being through the power of sentient ingenuity. This is not our reality, which is why such "willing" is generally impossible, but we can still change it, and affect it in accordance with our own imaginations; we just have to do it on God's terms.

On the other hand, that may have been exactly what you just said. Still, you try explaining the age old paradox of one person seeing the forest, and another seeing the trees. "Reality" is subjective.

...and you do fly. Down.

 

[Iriohm]

I posted in one of Victor's threads about God as I understand it...

I think God, or spirituality or whatever, dwells in the place of mystery within each of us, and that is what connects us. I need to think about this some more, because I don't think I'm making any sense.

You make sense...I think.

 

[Iriohm]

You are the god of your own world (your particularly introverted Fi driven mental world), as is everyone, though your world is not autonomous.

Isn't it? I don't disagree (entirely, at least), but on what do you base this?

To succeed in the act of creation in life/reality is to expand your world, impress your will upon others, and give your god true expression.

To "leave a record behind", I assume? "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, does it make a sound"? As I said (or implied, at least) before, whose to say that such a world didn't already exist, or will continue to exist even if no one is alive to remember it.

Which brings up a further point: what, exactly, happens to a world if its creator forgets it? Who cares for it? What would happen if God "forgot" this one? Why? Why? Why?

I don't imply any point beyond this; it's simply food for thought.

 

[foolish heart]

On the other hand, that may have been exactly what you just said. Still, you try explaining the age old paradox of one person seeing the forest, and another seeing the trees. "Reality" is subjective.

...and you do fly. Down.

My point was that there is a reason for everything and it has nothing to do with what we think about it. I am not trying to say we shouldn't push the limits and dream big, just that approaching the whole thing without acknowledging that we all live in the same concrete reality with finite limitations actually hurts the creative process because you're wasting time on stuff that will never come to fruition. It is our minds which must conform to the truth and not the truth to our mind. The Wright brothers did eventually fly because they engineered a method to which utilized the physics of flight, not because they wanted to fly even though it had to have started with that.

The forest/tree thing isn't a paradox. If anything, two people seeing the same thing in two different ways is another reminder that human thought is a highly subjective and flawed, and cannot be trusted unless it accurately reflects reality. There mere implication that there is more than 1 truth about reality, or that two conflicting statements about reality can both be true tells us how little we know about what is true and what isn't. And it all started with the idea that we could create truth instead of continuing to be subject to it... that we could determine for ourself what is real as if we were a god. as it stands, we aren't and it will always remain that way.

 

[Iriohm]

My point was that there is a reason for everything and it has nothing to do with what we think about it. I am not trying to say we shouldn't push the limits and dream big, just that approaching the whole thing without acknowledging that we all live in the same concrete reality with finite limitations actually hurts the creative process because you're wasting time on stuff that will never come to fruition. It is our minds which must conform to the truth and not the truth to our mind. The Wright brothers did eventually fly because they engineered a method to which utilized the physics of flight, not because they wanted to fly even though it had to have started with that.

True enough. What I said, actually, which is funny since I said as much what you said as you just said what I said.

The forest/tree thing isn't a paradox. If anything, two people seeing the same thing in two different ways is another reminder that human thought is a highly subjective and flawed...

Subjective yes, flawed...maybe. They may be different, but they're both true; it depends on your point of view.

...and cannot be trusted unless it accurately reflects reality.

Yes, but what is reality? If our collective viewpoint's are subjective by design, how can anyone claim "reality" exists at all, much less if it's inaccurately reflected?

There mere implication that there is more than 1 truth about reality, or that two conflicting statements about reality can both be true tells us how little we know about what is true and what isn't.

We are in agreement here.

And it all started with the idea that we could create truth instead of continuing to be subject to it... that we could determine for ourself what is real as if we were a god. as it stands, we aren't and it will always remain that way.

Will it? We're dealing with "infinity-class" variables, remember; I'm hesitant to put a limit on anything. The universal rule, I believe, is that every rule has an exception (including this one, of course).

As I said before, is the creator of our particular universe really the supreme creator? Or is he/she but one entity within a larger, higher reality created by an even more prestigious creator. And, if so, how far do those layers go? (Oddly enough, I'd be perfectly satisfied if I never found the end; the world is infinite, and there's no call to know it all.)

L'haari met, what are we even arguing about? Should we agree to disagree, or would you like to continue?

 

[Iriohm]

I remember reading in Philip K Dick's Our Friend's On Frolix 8 that they discovered the corpse of "God" floating out in space when they first began space exploration, the amazing thing is that isnt even the theme of the book, its just an aside along the way, its really about a huge invulnerable pink gelatinous blob which is coming with its friends to earth, where it will, depending on how you look at things either save mankind or slowly digest them all.

That's an odd thing to put in a book...

 

[Risen]

Isn't it? I don't disagree (entirely, at least), but on what do you base this?



To "leave a record behind", I assume? "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, does it make a sound"? As I said (or implied, at least) before, whose to say that such a world didn't already exist, or will continue to exist even if no one is alive to remember it.

Which brings up a further point: what, exactly, happens to a world if its creator forgets it? Who cares for it? What would happen if God "forgot" this one? Why? Why? Why?

I don't imply any point beyond this; it's simply food for thought.

The memory of our deeds is irrelevant. History is only an echo of past actions, of people who manifested their will upon the outer world. It is through action that you "create", that your world can begin to expand. That is the point. If the seed of the internet began as a thought within the mind of an engineer, then it grew into a ravenous vine visible to all, and whose tendrils extend into almost everyone's world. What began as one idea within one mind spread to other minds and gained real form as they began to act and spread the idea further, shaping what would become the internet. To the present, the character of this creation has been much decided by its users. It is a world born of a collective of worlds, and whose gods are both knowledge and ignorance, anonymity and omniscience, and ultimate self centerdness. In fact, I dare say that as a world born from the commingling of so many others, it is a microcosm of life itself, every nuance of it having the same character as everything that came before it, but more compact and pronounced.

*End rambling*

 

[foolish heart]

Yes, but what is reality? If our collective viewpoint's are subjective by design, how can anyone claim reality exists at all, much less if it's inaccurately reflected?

As I said before, is the creator of our particular universe really the supreme creator? Or is he/she but one entity within a larger, higher reality created by an even more prestigious creator. And, if so, how far do those layers go? (Oddly enough, I'd be perfectly satisfied if I never found the end; the world is infinite, and there's no call to know it all.)

the world is finite and only God is infinite. I don't know if there's a higher reality or whatever but if I had to guess I'd say it's only creator and creation, because there's no way to have greater qualities than a being with infinite qualities.

it's easy to confuse the difference between what we know and what we can prove. we can't prove that reality exists but if anyone wants to contest that fact then they can go jump off the roof. there is a single reality that we're all within, and although our perceptions are all different and inherently flawed that doesn't mean it just changes or disappears.

i suppose that what Im saying is that since the deception of the first man we can never be 100% simply, objectively truthful... the best we can do is to at least acknowledge that despite this objective truth has not disappeared and do our best to recognize and conform ourselves to it. it's sort of like gravity, even if you dont know what it is or how it works, you can still know it's there and that you are subject to it's effects.

in reality, objective truth subjugates the subjective mind. the mind should humble itself before the truth as it can best be discovered (this would be successful flight engineering by the Wright brothers)

in delusional perception, the mind creates the truth. truthfully, though, the mind is still subjugated by objective truth and so the mind pays the consequence of not reflecting that (this is someone jumping off their roof and breaking their legs)

 

[promethathustra]

Great debate! Glad i found this site. I agree with Iriohm. Every invention, every religion, may we even say every god? Every rule, every word...everything is first imaginary and then may become real. What is real anyway. What if the concept of God is that of an emergent universe coming to know itself. At each level a metamorphosis of new conceptualizations. What of Epiphany? Of the "court of courts" in Philosophy or the Holy of Holies in religion?

That which is real is real only by perspective...and each personality is locked in their own. All of our disagreements in history revolve around this nugget!

 

[Iriohm]

the world is finite and only God is infinite. I don't know if there's a higher reality or whatever but if I had to guess I'd say it's only creator and creation, because there's no way to have greater qualities than a being with infinite qualities.

...unless you're a reflection of that being, though I never said our qualities were greater. It keeps coming down to everything being subjective (even infinity). We can be as infinite as God along one dimension, while still retaining our material limits.

it's easy to confuse the difference between what we know and what we can prove. we can't prove that reality exists but if anyone wants to contest that fact then they can go jump off the roof. there is a single reality that we're all within, and although our perceptions are all different and inherently flawed that doesn't mean it just changes or disappears.

True, we can't prove it. "Reality" in the most common sense is simply a widely (very widely) held belief of what constitutes the world we live in, and anyone who believes differently can go jump off a roof.

Still, perhaps death is also an illusion. The truth itself is unknowable, for the moment at least. Anything you say in response to this will be subjective, anything I say in response to that will be subjective. Let's just leave it at that.

i suppose that what Im saying is that since the deception of the first man we can never be 100% simply, objectively truthful... the best we can do is to at least acknowledge that despite this objective truth has not disappeared and do our best to recognize and conform ourselves to it. it's sort of like gravity, even if you dont know what it is or how it works, you can still know it's there and that you are subject to it's effects.

in reality, objective truth subjugates the subjective mind. the mind should humble itself before the truth as it can best be discovered (this would be successful flight engineering by the Wright brothers)

in delusional perception, the mind creates the truth. truthfully, though, the mind is still subjugated by objective truth and so the mind pays the consequence of not reflecting that (this is someone jumping off their roof and breaking their legs)

Exactly. "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." What do you think it means?

 

[promethathustra]

"You and I have much work to do,after all the creation of the universe does not lie in our past...but in our future!" Me (of God)

 

[Arthur Schopenhauer]

I've taken the time to read the thread now. I was extremely tired last night.

Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (KJV)

Indeed, if the Christian god does in fact exist then it can be said that we are at least made in his image. As for being god himself, as I stated before in this thread, we are severely limited creatures and these limitations are those of lesser beings. To be clearer, by definition, god is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent; we are none of these things. Perhaps we do have a portion of his personality, but without the rest of the being, we are simply simpletons.

 

[Iriohm]

"You and I have much work to do,after all the creation of the universe does not lie in our past...but in our future!" Me (of God)

Interesting...

 

[Sparrow]

There’s no use in trying to figure out who or what god is. We all won’t know till we die right!? And if there was a god, who was that god’s god, it could go on for infinity. It’s unexplainable. We could be microscopic germs on some other beings ass for all we know lol....

 

[Iriohm]

I've taken the time to read the thread now. I was extremely tired last night.

Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (KJV)

Indeed, if the Christian god does in fact exist then it can be said that we are at least made in his image. As for being god himself, as I stated before in this thread, we are severely limited creatures and these limitations are those of lesser beings. To be clearer, by definition, god is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent; we are none of these things. Perhaps we do have a portion of his personality, but without the rest of the being, we are simply simpletons.

Combo attempted...

*rolls dice*

Hit, hit, and hit. Battleship sunk.

Reflections: lesser, or younger. Both, probably.

 

[onemoretime]

Valentine Michael Smith agrees with you.