The God Thing

[gullyfourmyle]

Beware lest any man should spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not Christ.

-Colossians, 2,8

“Was there ever a stronger argument put forth against spiritual growth and common sense?”

-John Newell, 18/02/03

Get over the idea that there is some bearded guy sitting on a throne in the clouds letting on that he is God. If God were up there, astronauts would have spotted him by now. Likewise, forget about heaven being on a cloud or hell being somewhere in the bowels of the earth. These are very human concepts and that should tell you, generally speaking, who originated the ideas. Not God.

If there is a God, he resides in, and is functionally, the electrical field generated by the collective consciousness and physical being of every living and inanimate thing that composes this planet. Think of him as a kind of energy envelope encompassing the planet and indeed all finite things as we know them, thin in desolate areas, denser where life and/or energy is abundant. All the physical and mental activities of living things generate electricity at the sub-cellular level. A human being or an elephant is the sum of a collection of cells working together. So is the collective consciousness of all life on the planet. You are not just you. The human body is simply a collection of separate cells, molecules and atoms working towards a common goal – keeping you alive for a predestined cycle of animate activity with greater or lesser success depending on choices made and chance. Each component cell has a transferable memory connected to but not wholly dependent upon its neighbour. The cells usually work in harmony with one another. When they don’t we are ill. Likewise when we as member living organisms that are an integral part of the earth, do not live in harmony with other life on earth and with the planet as composed of air, water, soil and the elements, the entire system can become ill.

Everything in this universe and likely all of the 140 billion or so known universes, is a repetition of something else, it is all connected and the more versatile the design, pattern or system, the more often it is repeated in form or function or both. Nature does not like to re-invent the wheel when it comes to basic processes. That said, it follows that God, “his” angels, the Devil, his hordes, the afterlife (heaven or hell) all exist within the system of life on this planet if they can be said to exist at all. They do not have an address somewhere beyond the solar system. That “beyond” has been investigated and found to be empty of even stars or planets. It turns out that all of the known universes, the 140 billion of them and counting, exist on a plane similar to a sheet of paper. Above and below this plane, nothing has been found so far including heaven or hell.

It can be said though, that heights of heaven or the depth of hell reside within and are generated by human brainpower. Without the human brain functioning on the sophisticated level it does, neither heaven nor hell can exist or has a need to exist.

The God-entity can be considered the collective consciousness and the inter-atomic energy that is the glue, the metaphysical mitochondria that holds the earth, the solar system and space with all of its expanding universes together. In that way man can be understood to have been created in God’s own image because God’s image is not humanoid with head, arms, legs, torso and so on. His image is more likely to be the ethereal consciousness shared by man and every other living thing. In this way, God is truly omnipresent.

No one knows if animals can share in the image or the concept of a God on a conscious level because so far, no one has been able to figure out how to discuss the possibility of God with another species. But we must give them the benefit of the doubt if for no other reason than we as a species have for most of our existence have denied that other species than ourselves can reason, have language, enjoy humour, music, tell stories, or have souls. In short, in the last years of the twentieth century and in the early years of the twenty first, we have found that many if not most other species share traits with us that were once thought to be the sole property of the human race to the point where we formerly considered ourselves beyond the process of evolution. Regardless, most if not all cultures allow for the presence of various animals in heaven. What kind of heaven would it be without the companionship of the animals we’ve known and loved? Their inclusion suggests an acceptance of animals within the scope of the collective id. If dogs, cats, horses and birds can be in heaven, what about their friends? We all know they have friends too. For a human heaven to exclude their pet’s friends would diminish the concept of heaven for the animal and soon the entire concept would unravel as other as multispecies heaven concepts competed for space with ours. Ultimately every living thing that has ever lived would have to be given lodging in heaven.

At that point how are the heavenly needs of dinosaurs met in a manner that doesn’t mess up our notion of paradise? What about all the terrorists running after the crowds of innocent virgins. What do the virgins think of all this? Are there cockroaches, bed bugs and deer ticks?

Heaven is supposed to be a place where only the selected few can gain entrance – the non sinners in other words. Under that definition heaven would mostly be populated by new-borns of any species without a cogent thought in their heads for the simple virtue of having died before they could commit any sins.

Hell, conversely would be overcrowded with debauchery of every sort. There would be no animal life whatsoever since we can’t ascribe sin to an animal that killed to eat and evolved to perform that service to the cycle of life. There would be no virgins present because every virgin woman or girl who ever died would be needed to fill the quota for the Muslim terrorists. In fact at some point the number of terrorists is going to surpass the available dead virgins and they will have to be rationed.

It is accepted that not everyone’s vision of heaven is the same. Aboriginal people and hunters had their version of heaven developed on TV. The “Happy Hunting Ground” has to be part of the picture (as plasticized by the media). Possibly no consideration for the animals is present in this picture. Others think heaven is a successful battle where all the infidels are annihilated over and over again like a broken record. Eternity would soon get extremely boring at that rate with no time off for anything else. Still others think heaven is all about lolling in the clouds while being fed cream cheese on a bagel. None of the visions allow for any sort of eliminatory body functions so it follows that no eliminatory functions equals no body. No body precludes the need to eat cream cheese and bagels and eliminates the need to bear arms. What arms? You don’t need arms. You don’t eat, don’t need to clean your teeth or wipe your ass. So what are you going to actually do in a heaven like that? Sounds remarkably like the fate of a person born with no arms, legs, vision or hearing. Personally, I don’t see anyone rushing to achieve that heavenly status among the living.

Before wishing to be granted an address in heaven, it might be instructive to figure out just what an eternity in heaven would entail. Eternal bliss could get pretty boring after about ten minutes or a century. Suppose after a hundred years or so, bliss wears off? What do you do for the rest of eternity? Hang around and haunt some dreary castle? Take turns maybe? Sounds like Purgatory could be the step after heaven instead of the intermediate stage we’ve thought it was up to now.

Then there is the consideration that heaven, hell and purgatory could be getting pretty crowded by now and in a few decades, another nine billion or so are going to show up looking for accommodation. Pretty soon the people who lived before the twenty first century are going to be outnumbered and overwhelmed by the twenty first century billions who will be making a mass exodus due to the coming natural disasters and likely extinction of the very last century.

What happens to heaven, hell and purgatory when there is no one left to imagine them?

Hell has always been thought to be somewhere near the earth’s core. It must be packed to bursting down there to the point that volcanic activity will soon be increasing. Sorry. For my money, hell has always been right here on the earth’s surface. Hell is in the prisons, reformatories, mental institutions, hospitals, destitute developing nations - wherever inner and outer conflict is to be found. There has never been a need for biblical scripture to point out the precise location of hell. Often enough, it comes looking for us.

As for the bible and other religious tenets including the Dead Sea Scrolls, they equate to the super hero comic books of their age. No doubt more astute thought and consideration has been put into these works than any other collection of literature in history. If those documents were lost with the spiritual collapse our civilization and another civilization grew and researched present day man, what do you suppose they’d find the most of? Probably comic books full of super heroes and fashion magazines. It would then be presumed these cartoon icons were our gods if a god concept were understood or thought to be relevant to future thought processes. Don’t assume future archeologists will be human. They might be supersized bedbugs that managed to survive human caused Chemical Winter. We have already shown that man does not have a lock on mental or physical evolution. Spiritual thoughts are likely a luxury of cooperative organization. Ants could potentially evolve the next religion.

When you zoom in slowly to resolution just lower than the naked eye can discern you see all sorts of life forms you otherwise would never dream existed. You see ticks hitchhiking on fleas, mites living on the pedipalps of much larger mites. At the molecular level, you see the single celled animals we studied in science class. Zoom in further and you are into molecular structure. DNA and mitochondria – the instructions for life and the glue that holds it together in all living things become visible. Then zooming in still further and you are into worlds within worlds at the atomic then sub-atomic level. At this level, whole universes in the form of protons, neutrons and electrons spin their magic. This construct is the universe at the other end of the scale. This is the micro universe as opposed to the macro universe we see through telescopes. What hits you is the profound similarity between the two. Nature has repeated itself to a degree we are not yet capable of fathoming. The micro universe is one dominated by electro magnetic fields in the same manner as the world we see around us because it is the world we see around us. The micro world in all its sub-visual levels is what makes the world as we know it possible in every way. It can easily be thought of as the Hand of God. But all of this is invisible from our scale and perspective. At our scale, the vast distances between neutrons, protons and electrons is represented by for instance a granite rock – a very solid substance – or the hind leg of a racehorse – a fluid substance by comparison.

So if you zoomed out from our world it is not unthinkable that our entire known collection of universes are actually nothing more than a sheet of paper in someone’s out basket. At some point viewed from a large enough perspective, our entire understood reality is a solid something somewhere. And from that, zoom out some more and the process repeats itself infinitely. So where is God in all of this when you think on a scale that large?

When you think on such a grand scale, it doesn’t take long before you arrive at the conclusion that the traditional notion of God is a very superficial way to contemplate the magnitude of what God could actually be and how incomprehensible it is to think that God is in any way responsible for directing our truly infinitesimal lives.

As if that weren’t enough, you then have to consider where “God” came from. Did he suddenly pop into existence? Did a gas cloud coalesce into the spiritual being to end all spiritual beings? Did he have roller skates when he was a kid?

As warm and fuzzy as a traditional God might be to most people, the thought process that supports it just can’t do the notion justice unless you are prepared to think on a much larger scale than people do now.

[White Doors]

140 billion or so known universes

whaaa??

Picked that out with a 5 second scan of your new age post. We can start here.

[Rue]

whaaa??

Picked that out with a 5 second scan of your new age post. We can start here.

Also I need to work on the fact that "he" (God) has no beard.

Of course he does. He looks just like Farley Mowatt.

[M.Dancer]

Of course he does. He looks just like Farley Mowatt.

Dumbledore/Gandalf

[gullyfourmyle]

Thanks. I knew I had a typo in there somewhere. I couldn't remember what it was. Million, not billion.

[White Doors]

Thanks. I knew I had a typo in there somewhere. I couldn't remember what it was. Million, not billion.

Whaaa??

140 Million universes?

Do you know what a universe is or are you trying to say Galaxy?

If so and that is an apt demonstration as to your knowledge of the reality around you, why do you think your pronunciations of what IS are anymore relevant than anyone else's, especially those with much more knowledge and understanding than you?

If you did not mean Galaxies and DO mean Universes, I would be most interested in your theory on that one.

Thanks

Edited September 5, 2008 by White Doors

[gullyfourmyle]

Whaaa??

140 Million universes?

Do you know what a universe is or are you trying to say Galaxy?

If so and that is an apt demonstration as to your knowledge of the reality around you, why do you think your pronunciations of what IS are anymore relevant than anyone else's, especially those with much more knowledge and understanding than you?

If you did not mean Galaxies and DO mean Universes, I would be most interested in your theory on that one.

Thanks

What makes you think that I think what I think is any more relevant than what you think or anyone else thinks?

Yes Galaxies was the right word. Thanks.

You're free to write what you think and answer my post. Why bother with something as trivial as a number that is referring to something that is part of the infinite?

Let's here what you think - beyond the trivial I mean.

I was kind of hoping someone would either add to what I said or find a way to prove it wrong or offer up an interesting alternative. Forget the nit picking and offer up some content.

[charter.rights]

What makes you think that I think what I think is any more relevant than what you think or anyone else thinks?

Yes Galaxies was the right word. Thanks.

You're free to write what you think and answer my post. Why bother with something as trivial as a number that is referring to something that is part of the infinite?

Let's here what you think - beyond the trivial I mean.

I was kind of hoping someone would either add to what I said or find a way to prove it wrong or offer up an interesting alternative. Forget the nit picking and offer up some content.

It all still begs the question:

Are we The Dreamer or are we being dreamed?

[jefferiah]

When you zoom in slowly to resolution just lower than the naked eye can discern you see all sorts of life forms you otherwise would never dream existed. You see ticks hitchhiking on fleas, mites living on the pedipalps of much larger mites. At the molecular level, you see the single celled animals we studied in science class. Zoom in further and you are into molecular structure. DNA and mitochondria – the instructions for life and the glue that holds it together in all living things become visible. Then zooming in still further and you are into worlds within worlds at the atomic then sub-atomic level. At this level, whole universes in the form of protons, neutrons and electrons spin their magic. This construct is the universe at the other end of the scale. This is the micro universe as opposed to the macro universe we see through telescopes. What hits you is the profound similarity between the two. Nature has repeated itself to a degree we are not yet capable of fathoming. The micro universe is one dominated by electro magnetic fields in the same manner as the world we see around us because it is the world we see around us. The micro world in all its sub-visual levels is what makes the world as we know it possible in every way. It can easily be thought of as the Hand of God. But all of this is invisible from our scale and perspective. At our scale, the vast distances between neutrons, protons and electrons is represented by for instance a granite rock – a very solid substance – or the hind leg of a racehorse – a fluid substance by comparison.

Is there a press 1 for English option with this post?

[jefferiah]

It all still begs the question:

Are we The Dreamer or are we being dreamed?

You have hardly begun to scratch the surface here. The real question is:

If I bend over slightly, reach down with my arms, and grab onto my feet, can I lift my feet up off the ground and thereby hang suspended in mid-air? That's the real question.

Edited September 9, 2008 by jefferiah

[charter.rights]

Is there a press 1 for English option with this post?

It IS English. Must be too complicated for YOU to understand.

[charter.rights]

You have hardly begun to scratch the surface here. The real question is:

If I bend over slightly, reach down with my arms, and grab onto my feet, can I lift my feet up off the ground and thereby hang suspended in mid-air? That's the real question.

Criss Mindfreak can.......

Perhaps if you really knew what reality was you wouldn't be so flippant.

[AngusThermopyle]

Perhaps if you really knew what reality was you wouldn't be so flippant.

And once again our intrepid poster is unaware of the irony just dripping from this statement.

[WIP]

What makes you think that I think what I think is any more relevant than what you think or anyone else thinks?

Yes Galaxies was the right word. Thanks.

You're free to write what you think and answer my post. Why bother with something as trivial as a number that is referring to something that is part of the infinite?

Big difference between galaxies and universes, since we have no way of interacting with anything outside of our universe, or knowing what existed before the Big Bang started our universe. I don't know if your 140 billion figure is accurate or not, but it doesn't matter since many cosmologists estimate that there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

But what's your point, besides an argument from incredulity -- whether there are 140 billion or only one galaxy, it doesn't prove that it is a repetition of something else (eternal return?) And these galaxies don't "exist on a plane similar to a sheet of paper." A spiral galaxy like our Milky Way is somewhat flat, elliptical disc, but that is no description of the shape of the Universe -- which is incomprehensible to us anyway, since the Universe is not a three dimensional object, but exists in 4 dimensional space-time. There is no center, and there is no edge either! The Universe expands, not by matter flying apart, but by an increase of space-time that is occuring everywhere. There is no boundary of our Universe, so it doesn't have a shape that we can comprehend. And that expansion is accelerating thanks to Dark Energy -- a force that is only understood by its effect of causing the Universe to fly apart, and eventually disintegrate. What comes after that is a big ? and depends on which speculative model of multi-universe theories are offered up.

Somehow, all of this is supposed to lead people away from traditional beliefs in transcendent gods. I am not sure whether you're advocating a pantheistic god or no gods at all. I'm not sure what special significance electromagnetism is supposed to have; there are other forces -- gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces are all essential for making stars, planets, organic molecules......why is electromagnetism so much more important?

As if that weren’t enough, you then have to consider where “God” came from. Did he suddenly pop into existence? Did a gas cloud coalesce into the spiritual being to end all spiritual beings?

Since God and everything that is categorized as supernatural, have no tangible features that we can examine, why use any conception of God, traditional or otherwise, as the jumping off point to try to understand the Universe? Does the origin of the Universe require a designer? The natural order of things in our daily life work by rules of cause and effect -- rules that don't apply in the realm of subatomic particles, where Virtual Particles can pop into existence out of the space-time fabric and just as quickly, annihilate each other when they re-combine and return to where they came from. Until a quantum theory of gravity is developed, physicists cannot work out what the physical conditions were during the Big Bang singularity and invoking God to explain it, doesn't provide any more understanding about where the universe came from. It's a beginning that starts with an unproven assumption, and the conclusions that follow afterward may have nothing to do with how the Universe began and what happens after it disintegrates. The real story may not be as simple and satisfying as many people would like, but it will be far more interesting than mythical explanations that have been made up over the ages, to provide answers when there was no real understanding of the forces of nature.

[charter.rights]

And once again our intrepid poster is unaware of the irony just dripping from this statement.

And once again AnusThermopyles shows why he has troll status.

[margrace]

The bottom line I hear from the discussions on here is that if we accept what Charter Rights is saying then we have to admit that we are all responisble for our actions. Not some so called invented persona called the Devil.

We are all part of God and that begs the question, what about people we term as evil. Where do they fit into this idea?

That is where the big question comes from. If God is in all of us how can he be in a killer? That question is too frightening for most of us I guess.

The problem seems to be that we want to blame others for the ills of the world instead of accepting the truth that there is good and evil in all of us and we need to find a way to see this and work with it.

I believe that basically heaven is here and so is hell, we create them both for ourselves and others.

[gullyfourmyle]

The point of the excercise wasn't to convert anyone. It was merely to make people think along different lines and maybe get some off the wall input.

It worked. margrace and WIP introduced some different aspects that could be developed into a thesis complicated enough to bore nearly everyone to death - which is why we ended up with the bible. That was the limit intellects at the time could be stretched to encompass. It's still a challenge for most people.

The thing is, if people like me don't stir things up a bit, others can never get beyond the bible.

It doesn't matter whether or not people agree with me or not as long as they think and question.

[AngusThermopyle]

I believe that basically heaven is here and so is hell, we create them both for ourselves and others.

Now thats an argument I can get behind, basically what I've always believed.

Yes, self responsibility is key to all we that do, although when I've mentioned this specifically in relation to other groups the negative response has been swift and unmistakable.

[charter.rights]

The bottom line I hear from the discussions on here is that if we accept what Charter Rights is saying then we have to admit that we are all responisble for our actions. Not some so called invented persona called the Devil.

We are all part of God and that begs the question, what about people we term as evil. Where do they fit into this idea?

That is where the big question comes from. If God is in all of us how can he be in a killer? That question is too frightening for most of us I guess.

The problem seems to be that we want to blame others for the ills of the world instead of accepting the truth that there is good and evil in all of us and we need to find a way to see this and work with it.

I believe that basically heaven is here and so is hell, we create them both for ourselves and others.

The premise behind our taking responsibility for our actions comes from this:

The ego is in control of our reality.

The ego is insane and cannot understand its own insanity.

Not being able to know who we are, we have forgotten our connection to the Is and instead replaced our belief with mortality and fantasy.

In a dream we can do everything we want. Our separation is a dream in which we believe that we have the power of God exclusive from anyone else.

In God, or the Is we are those we think we hold power over.

When we find out Who we really are, there is no need to seek power, or material possession. Our every need is taken care of.

[margrace]

Yes and one of the hardest lessons to learn is not to judge others. I am making every effort to look at the world with different eyes and not one of judgement. Even that is hard. If one wants to bring in the Bible into the discussion that there is the little story of the mot in our brothers eye and the bigger one in our own. Something to think about.

[White Doors]

The ego is insane and cannot understand its own insanity.

Someone has been reading too many new age books.

[charter.rights]

Someone has been reading too many new age books.

Nope. I don't read new age. I observe people like you......

[AngusThermopyle]

I observe people like you......

So just exactly what kind of person is White Doors?

C'mon, just exercise your usual infallible psychic abilities. After all, you are the resident expert on "people like you", you know more than they do themselves about other people, so just go ahead and tell us.

Or you could just keep your unfounded opinions about others to yourself, thats the better option actually.

[gullyfourmyle]

So here we were talking or about to talk about a God entity and the entire thread disintegrated into drivel.

What happened to the moderator who is supposed to keep threads on topic?

I published The God Thing a couple of times before (I forgot about that before I posted it). It was against this forum's rules so they sent me a heads up on it.

The first time I published it was on a site in the UK. That site is just for ordinary everyday people with no special legislative skills or religious bent. There were some pretty good discussions as a result.

I published it again on my own website after the UK one was hacked. My site was hacked too so nothing of any consequence happened there and I had no idea how to attract an audience that could speak intelligently about what I'd written. Most just read it and moved on. It wasn't thought provoking enough or maybe people just didn't know how to answer it.

On this site, I thought there would be sufficient mental ammunition to generate some colourful dialogue. Instead the reverse is true. The babble so far is juvenile.

There are lots of holes to be picked in The God Thing and lots of different view points to explore.

Are you people saying this is the best you can do?

Can't you keep from taking potshots at each other and stay on course?

How can any of you purport to be able to contribute anything meaningful to political or any other form of debate when you can't even post a simple response without going out of your way to insult someone?

The degeneration of this thread is a micro analogy of how small differences of opinion grow into disputes and disputes escalate to fights, civil strife and wars.

If you disagree with someone, fine. Make your point. You don't have to get personal. And when you do, you might take into consideration that at some point you might meet that person face to face and have to eat mutual crow.

If someone makes a wrong statement or you have information that's contradictory you don't have to rub the other person's nose in it. You might need their help some day. Stranger things have happened.

[AngusThermopyle]

So here we were talking or about to talk about a God entity and the entire thread disintegrated into drivel.

That seems appropriate when you consider the entire premise the thread is based upon is nothing more than "drivel".