What if God is weak?

[Veritas Aequitas]

E.g. a schizo could claimed God ordered him to kill or do whatever, surely we cannot believe there is something more than what is from the activity of his brain/mind.

1. What is the root cause of his schizophrenia?
2. Why do you assume he has privileged access to the root cause? What if him claiming that it is God is itself a product of the root-cause?

Tumor?

There are loads of researches and evidences to support the possible causes of schizophrenia.
No psychiatrist would go further than agreeing schizophrenia is confined only to brain activities [maybe genes], but definitely not a devil that is lurking around.

Having been through a manic episode myself that I can best describe as "religious experience" or "revelation" I can tell you that while I was in that state - I really believed I am Jesus. What caused it? I don't know! Looking back on it - it is scary as hell to recognize that I have no insight into most of my mind!

Wow! that is great to hear.
Hopefully that could give you the insight that spiritual experiences of altered states of consciousness is restricted to brain activity as it had happened in your case via direct experience.

If that had happened to you 2000 years ago and you could have claimed to be a messiah who founded a religion followed by many.

Note this from Ramachandran a neuroscientist where he introduced a guy who experienced 'he is Jesus' but found to have suffered from temporal epilepsy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg

That should give us some doubts and possibility that the true Jesus as claimed could also have suffered from temporal epilepsy and not that there is a real God [father] speaking to Jesus.
There are evidence in the history of Muhammad that he could have suffered from temporal epilepsy or some thing similar that gave him flashes of altered states of consciousness.

What could have happened to you could be some temporary epileptic fit or some kind of neuronal connection. Sometimes it can happen due to lack of sleep, etc.

Such thing happened to many people, e.g. Paul on the road to Damascus.
As I had stated elsewhere, there are many sources of an altered state of consciousness, i.e. from meditation, spiritual practices, drugs, hallucinogens, mental illnesses, brain damage, electronically induced, etc.

You are counting your hits, but not your misses. What about all the theists who don't go on killing sprees for God?

Note my thesis;

• 1. DNA wise ALL humans has the potential to commit evil.
  2. 20% [very conservative] are born with an active tendency of commit evil of a range of degrees. They are vulnerable to commit evil acts when exposed to evil laden elements.
  3. The Quran contain loads of evil laden verses.
  4. 20% of all Muslim, i.e. 300 million are born with an active evil tendencies

80% of Muslims [1.2 billion] are not prone to evil acts but a potential pool of 20% i.e. 300 million is a crazy and frightening figure.
The 300 million can be discounted by babies, old people, females, etc, but if 50% or 40% remain there is still 150-120 million which is still a very frightening figure.

Thus we should not be deceived by the fact that 80% of Muslims are moderates from the terrible potential of evil from the other 20% in terms of the very large quantum of evil prone Muslims re point 2, 3 & 4 above.

The evil acts from Muslim driven directly by the ideology is not any speculation but they are supported by glaring evidences, e.g. one stats among others,

[TimeSeeker]

No psychiatrist would go further than agreeing schizophrenia is confined only to brain activities [maybe genes], but definitely not a devil that is lurking around.

Well - a tumor is a metaphorical 'devil'. Or a metaphorical 'god'. If you are delirious and happy.

They are both real...

If that had happened to you 2000 years ago and you could have claimed to be a messiah who founded a religion followed by many.

And yet I am converting you to my way of thinking

Note my thesis;

• 1. DNA wise ALL humans has the potential to commit evil.
  2. 20% [very conservative] are born with an active tendency of commit evil of a range of degrees. They are vulnerable to commit evil acts when exposed to evil laden elements.
  3. The Quran contain loads of evil laden verses.
  4. 20% of all Muslim, i.e. 300 million are born with an active evil tendencies

80% of Muslims [1.2 billion] are not prone to evil acts but a potential pool of 20% i.e. 300 million is a crazy and frightening figure.
The 300 million can be discounted by babies, old people, females, etc, but if 50% or 40% remain there is still 150-120 million which is still a very frightening figure.

Thus we should not be deceived by the fact that 80% of Muslims are moderates from the terrible potential of evil from the other 20% in terms of the very large quantum of evil prone Muslims re point 2, 3 & 4 above.

The evil acts from Muslim driven directly by the ideology is not any speculation but they are supported by glaring evidences, e.g. one stats among others,

+30000? Well then! Let me broaden your perspective a little.

That is South Africa's (where I live) annual murder rate! That is how many people die here every year! So Since 9/11 (that was 17 years ago). My fellow countrymen have killed 17 times more people! And they aren't Muslim! Also - our population is 50 million, not 1.2 billion. Sooooo you know. South Africans are clearly far more dangerous than Muslims! 1200/50 * 17 = 408 TIMES MORE DANGEROUS than Muslims.

Fucking statistics

The problem with your perspective is that that 'evil' is just a word and whatever meaning you attach to it - probably doesn't relate to my experiences.
Having worked as a police officer for over a decade - I have seen (and done) some shit that you may (at first) consider evil. At least from where you are standing.

"evil" is the lazy explanation. Why did he kill 25 people? Because he us evil? That's not a causal claim!!!??? What we really mean by "Why did he kill 25 people" really is "how do we prevent it from happening?"

How indeed.

[Veritas Aequitas]

No psychiatrist would go further than agreeing schizophrenia is confined only to brain activities [maybe genes], but definitely not a devil that is lurking around.

Well - a tumor is a metaphorical 'devil'. Or a metaphorical 'god'. If you are delirious and happy.

They are both real...

If that had happened to you 2000 years ago and you could have claimed to be a messiah who founded a religion followed by many.

And yet I am converting you to my way of thinking

Note my thesis;

• 1. DNA wise ALL humans has the potential to commit evil.
  2. 20% [very conservative] are born with an active tendency of commit evil of a range of degrees. They are vulnerable to commit evil acts when exposed to evil laden elements.
  3. The Quran contain loads of evil laden verses.
  4. 20% of all Muslim, i.e. 300 million are born with an active evil tendencies

80% of Muslims [1.2 billion] are not prone to evil acts but a potential pool of 20% i.e. 300 million is a crazy and frightening figure.
The 300 million can be discounted by babies, old people, females, etc, but if 50% or 40% remain there is still 150-120 million which is still a very frightening figure.

Thus we should not be deceived by the fact that 80% of Muslims are moderates from the terrible potential of evil from the other 20% in terms of the very large quantum of evil prone Muslims re point 2, 3 & 4 above.

The evil acts from Muslim driven directly by the ideology is not any speculation but they are supported by glaring evidences, e.g. one stats among others,

+30000? Well then! Let me broaden your perspective a little.

That is South Africa's (where I live) annual murder rate! That is how many people die here every year! So Since 9/11 (that was 17 years ago). My fellow countrymen have killed 17 times more people! And they aren't Muslim! Also - our population is 50 million, not 1.2 billion. Sooooo you know. South Africans are clearly far more dangerous than Muslims! 1200/50 * 17 = 408 TIMES MORE DANGEROUS than Muslims.

Fucking statistics

The problem with your perspective is that that 'evil' is just a word and whatever meaning you attach to it - probably doesn't relate to my experiences.
Having worked as a police officer for over a decade - I have seen (and done) some shit that you may (at first) consider evil. At least from where you are standing.

"evil" is the lazy explanation. Why did he kill 25 people? Because he us evil? That's not a causal claim!!!??? What we really mean by "Why did he kill 25 people" really is "how do we prevent it from happening?"

How indeed.

You missed a critical point I made somewhere.
I stated humanity must address ALL sorts of evil acts, thus include what is happening in South Africa and everywhere.
I am focusing on the evil related to Islam because that is within my ability to critique it effectively.
I am hoping some others with other competence will deal with other types of evil acts.

The problem with your perspective is that that 'evil' is just a word and whatever meaning you attach to it - probably doesn't relate to my experiences.

Nope. I have defined 'evil' many times, not sure in any post to you.

Anyway, I define 'evil,'
-as an essence of any human acts or thoughts that is net-negative to the well-being of the individual and therefrom to humanity.
I believe it is not difficult to agree with what is generally evil, e.g. premeditated killings, rapes, torture, slavery, child abuse, etc.
There are certain acts that could be marginal and disputed and this can be easily trashed up and qualified.

[TimeSeeker]

I stated humanity must address ALL sorts of evil acts, thus include what is happening in South Africa and everywhere.
I am focusing on the evil related to Islam because that is within my ability to critique it effectively.
I am hoping some others with other competence will deal with other types of evil acts.

Yes, but that's the point! I am using your methods for reaching to the conclusion that "Islam is bad". You looked at some per-capita numbers and you concluded "yeah - Islam is bad". By your exact methodology I showed you South Africans are 408 times worse.

Can I then go and say "Yeah. South Africans are bad". Let me critique South Africanism!

Nope. I have defined 'evil' many time, not sure in any post to you.

-as an essence of any human acts or thoughts that is net-negative to the well-being of the individual and therefrom to humanity.
I believe it is not difficult to agree with what is generally evil, e.g. premeditated killings, rapes, torture, slavery, child abuse, etc.
There are certain acts that could be marginal and disputed and this can be easily trashed up and qualified.

Your definition doesn't matter if the "solutions" which arise from your definition are useless. You have defined evil in terms of 'well-being'.
Now define 'well-being'. And you will keep chasing your tail because you will use another word you can't define. And another - an another. To the bottom of the pit!

I can no more fight "SouthAfricanism" than you can fight "Islam" It has no ontology! In your language - it isn't real! In my language the root cause is called: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem

It is the first damn lesson in statistics man, correlation is NOT causation!

You have fallen for the exact same error in reasoning as those who believe in an ontological God. You believe Islam is a real, ontological thing.
It's so ironic it is actually poetic!

[Greta]

Because this is a shitty low rent universe?

Face it, Seeds, this universe is substandard work, just hopeless!

Almost all of it just plasma which manages to be both nasty and boring all at once. The rest is either dirty water, dead rock, dusty crap or enough space to keep these pointless objects from bumping into each other too much.

Have you ever entertained the possibility that what appears to be a pointlessness to some of the objects in the universe is their point?

Nope, because they are rocks and gas clouds. They each have a fate but not control or awareness about it.

Then we have this place, the Earth, where the whole schema is for everyone to eat everyone else. So then humans emerge to perhaps break the cycle and we turn out to be bigger dickheads than any of them.

The Idiot has had almost 14 billion years to get Its shit together. Should such obvious ineptitude be rewarded with worship?

Speculatively speaking, I suggest that the skeptical attitude you are demonstrating in your post is precisely the effect that the Creator of the universe is going for.

Therefore, what you refer to as being “substandard work” is, from my perspective, absolute creative perfection.

You rationalisation reminds me school. Yes Teacher, I admit that the homework I handed in was a blank piece of paper that my dog peed on but can you not see see the subtle yet direct representation of biochemistry??


PS. Lacewing, no, I didn't have a bad day, just a bad life :)

[Reflex]

Why are people ignoring the question at hand? Are they a bunch of Democrats?

[seeds]

Well, if nothing else, a God can certainly delegate the tedious grunt-work of creation to suns, cells, and DNA.

And who does God delegate the creation of suns, cells and DNA to?

Oh no! Is that a “gotcha” winky?

Again, just speculating here, but the creation of suns, cells, and DNA would have been a prerequisite achievement by God*. It is a situation wherein sometime within the context of God’s eternal existence, God has managed to achieve a complete subduing and ordering of the fabric of its** personal and subjective dimension of mind (did I mention that I am a Berkeleyanish Idealist?).

Think of the creation of the closed workings of the universe (again, God’s mind) as being a process that is, in essence, a “mammalian-like” phenomenon wherein the highest lifeform in all of reality is able to replicate itself by mentally conceiving its offspring (us) within itself...

...(a kind of cosmic version (and reversal) of the old Hermetic axiom “As Above, So Below”).

Rinse repeat until you ask: and who does God delegate the creation of quarks and leptons to?

You are simply using arbitrarily contrived human jargon (quarks, leptons, gluons, electrons, etc.) to refer to the infinitely malleable substance of God’s personal mind – which is simply a more advanced and ordered version of our own mental substance (did you even bother to check out the Panentheism thread I linked you to earlier?).

* **(Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have a non-cringy word that denotes genderlessness. We also need something other than the baggage-laden word “God” to use in these discussions. I’m open to good suggestions.)
_______

[seeds]

Have you ever entertained the possibility that what appears to be a pointlessness to some of the objects in the universe is their point?

Nope, because they are rocks and gas clouds. They each have a fate but not control or awareness about it.

You are fixating on the features of the façade while failing to look deeply into the nature of the substance that the façade is made of.

1. From the perspective of what physicists refer to as “local reality” the substance presents itself as rocks and gas clouds (and suns and planets).

2. From the perspective of what physicists refer to as “non-local reality” the substance presents itself as an informationally-based essence existing in a superpositioned state of interpenetrating oneness.

3. However, from an extreme metaphysical perspective, the substance appears to be a “mind-like” essence that is capable of becoming absolutely anything “imaginable” – just like the substance that forms our thoughts and dreams.

The point is, stop focusing on point #1 and pay more attention to the implications of point #3.
_______

[TimeSeeker]

Again, just speculating here, but the creation of suns, cells, and DNA would have been a prerequisite achievement by God*. It is a situation wherein sometime within the context of God’s eternal existence, God has managed to achieve a complete subduing and ordering of the fabric of its** personal and subjective dimension of mind (did I mention that I am a Berkeleyanish Idealist?).

Think of the creation of the closed workings of the universe (again, God’s mind) as being a process that is, in essence, a “mammalian-like” phenomenon wherein the highest lifeform in all of reality is able to replicate itself by mentally conceiving its offspring (us) within itself...

...(a kind of cosmic version (and reversal) of the old Hermetic axiom “As Above, So Below”).

I see similarities in your thought-patterns to mine, but our languages to describe it seem very very different.
Rather than re-invent the wheel (and give a description of my own mental state) and produce yet another wordsoup that neither of us knows how to reconcile. I'll just point you to "Constructivist epistemology": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct ... istemology

Broadly, but not precisely - It is how I think about knowledge.

You are simply using arbitrarily contrived human jargon (quarks, leptons, gluons, electrons, etc.) to refer to the infinitely malleable substance of God’s personal mind – which is simply a more advanced and ordered version of our own mental substance (did you even bother to check out the Panentheism thread I linked you to earlier?).

And you are using arbitrarily contrived human TOOL to refer to the "infinitely malleable substance of God’s personal mind".
The tool is language. Language is part of the epistemology we have constructed.

* **(Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have a non-cringy word that denotes genderlessness. We also need something other than the baggage-laden word “God” to use in these discussions. I’m open to good suggestions.)

Invent them as we need them! Spoken Language is a tool for COMMUNICATION It contains less way less 'truth' than other languages

[Lacewing]

Having been through a manic episode myself that I can best describe as "religious experience" or "revelation" I can tell you that while I was in that state - I really believed I am Jesus.

This is interesting because a few men have told me that they felt they had been Jesus. That's not the kind of thing one would expect to hear from multiple people... so what might this be pointing to?

The Jesus archetype may represent a longing in mankind, to be wise and good and favored and divine. So mankind finds itself fantasizing about being the very symbol it created. In other words, man writes a story and then imagines being the key character of that story?

[TimeSeeker]

Having been through a manic episode myself that I can best describe as "religious experience" or "revelation" I can tell you that while I was in that state - I really believed I am Jesus.

This is interesting because a few men have told me that they felt they had been Jesus. That's not the kind of thing one would expect to hear from multiple people... so what might this be pointing to?

The Jesus archetype may represent a longing in mankind, to be wise and good and favored and divine. So mankind finds itself fantasizing about being the very symbol it created. In other words, man writes a story and then imagines being the key character of that story?

A better way to explain my experience was Tabula Rasa. Looking without judging. Seeing and perceiving and understanding. From the tiniest quark to the whole place we call Universe and how we, humans have experienced it through time. Without the need to call it true, false, real, illusionary or insane. Just recognise it for what it is - human experience recorded in language.

Language is Power!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct ... istemology
https://biblehub.com/john/1-1.htm

Creation/self-deification This is a recurring theme in what I believe. We are God.

Which is why I have no problem calling myself an atheist/muslim/christian or whatever else meaningless English adjective you expect to hear from me to make you think I am part of your in-group. I can speak in your language.

We are all human first and foremost. Every one of our archetypes is in me. Muhammad - the warrior. Jesus - the uniter. Buddha's eternal fight against dualism. And my more feminine influences - of which there are only two. My mother and my wife. Of which the latter is more important to me. For she is the one who taught me emotional intelligence. Which was the missing piece in all this 'logic, reason and mathematics' that I have learned all by myself.

And I know how to surface and embody every one of them. While never letting go of reason even for a second!

Nietzche's Übermensch. Humbled by his own ignorance and impotence in the face of the Universe.

[Lacewing]

.
Holy crap, YES!

From your links:

According to constructivists there is no single valid methodology in science, but rather a diversity of useful methods

According to constructivists, the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction. Constructivism opposes the philosophy of objectivism, embracing the belief that a human can come to know the truth about the natural world not mediated by scientific approximations with different degrees of validity and accuracy.

the "associationist" postulate of empiricism, "by which the mind is conceived as a passive system that gathers its contents from its environment and, through the act of knowing, produces a copy of the order of reality." In contrast, "constructivism is an epistemological premise grounded on the assertion that, in the act of knowing, it is the human mind that actively gives meaning and order to that reality to which it is responding".

One version of social constructivism contends that categories of knowledge and reality are actively created by social relationships and interactions. These interactions also alter the way in which scientific episteme is organized... /... changes in scientists' views of reality not only contain subjective elements, but result from group dynamics

Cultural constructivism asserts that knowledge and reality are a product of their cultural context, meaning that two independent cultures will likely form different observational methodologies.

Second link:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Yes... the WORD is "God".

Language is Power!

Yes! We make it up with our language.

A better way to explain my experience was Tabula Rasa. Looking without judging. Perceiving and understanding - without the need to call it true or false. Just recognise it for what it is - Human experience recorded in language.

That describes my peak experiences too. It is a wonderful and freeing perspective.

Creation/self-deification This is a recurring theme in what I believe. We are God.

We belong. We create. We divide.

Which is why I have no problem calling myself an atheist/muslim/christian or whatever else meaningless English adjective you expect to hear from me to make you think I am part of your in-group. We are all human first and foremost. Every one of our archetypes is in me. And I know how to surface and embody every one of them. While never letting go of reason even for a second!

Agreed!! Brilliant... beautiful... divine!!

[TimeSeeker]

Yes... the WORD is "God".

And that is why I write software. I create meaningful words.

Christianity is Systems Theory

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Vanity, jealousy and being vengeful are considered weaknesses, so the literary character called 'God' is definitely not a pleasant or admirable one.

[TimeSeeker]

Vanity, jealousy and being vengeful are considered weaknesses so the literary character called 'God' is definitely not a pleasant or admirable one.

Which is why the Old and New testament stand in contrast. The evolution of the Old God (human nature) into the New God (we are still busy figuring out what that ideal looks like)

I was a vengeful, insecure, condescending, mean, egotistical asshole who put himself first and put everybody down in pursuit of "truth". I thought I am smarter than everyone.

Now I stand here as I am.

I really wish women wrote a Bible too. So I could better understand their God-character-evolution is like!