Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

- the above states ONLY that God created Earth, and from my experience of heaven, it is here ON Earth.

Hmmm... it seems I was correct: I'm asking too much.

Well, I shall move on, then.

[attofishpi]

It's the very first verse in the entire Bible. Genesis 1:1.

No it's not.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Me thinks you are assuming (rather a lot) - the above states ONLY that God created Earth, and from my experience of heaven, it is here ON Earth.

Hmmm... it seems I was correct: I'm asking too much.

Well, I shall move on, then.

What? But you haven't explained how the very first verse in the bible states that God created the Universe..

Since you have clearly misinterpreted the very first line, I wonder how much more assumptions and misinterpretations you have made regarding bible verses. I am only trying to help. Perhaps I should come over and teach your flock?

[Immanuel Can]

No it's not.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Me thinks you are assuming (rather a lot) - the above states ONLY that God created Earth, and from my experience of heaven, it is here ON Earth.

Hmmm... it seems I was correct: I'm asking too much.

Well, I shall move on, then.

What? But you haven't explained how the very first verse in the bible states that God created the Universe..

If you don't know that Biblically, "Heavens and Earth" are an idiomatic expression meaning "all the visible worlds," then I don't know what I can tell you. It isn't even talking about the "heaven" you refer to, i.e. a place of bliss of some kind. So no, "heaven," in this context, is not and cannot be "on Earth," as you suggest.

[attofishpi]

Hmmm... it seems I was correct: I'm asking too much.

Well, I shall move on, then.

What? But you haven't explained how the very first verse in the bible states that God created the Universe..

If you don't know that Biblically, "Heavens and Earth" are an idiomatic expression meaning "all the visible worlds," then I don't know what I can tell you.

By "biblically" you mean generally accepted (assumed) by the flock of sheep?

It isn't even talking about the "heaven" you refer to, i.e. a place of bliss of some kind. So no, "heaven," in this context, is not and cannot be "on Earth," as you suggest.

Your assumption.

Still, you have nothing regarding creation of the Universe. Indeed, that line backs me up far more than it backs up your need to go along with the flock and believe "heaven and Earth" somehow means the UNIVERSE !! A ridiculous assumption.

[Immanuel Can]

What? But you haven't explained how the very first verse in the bible states that God created the Universe..

If you don't know that Biblically, "Heavens and Earth" are an idiomatic expression meaning "all the visible worlds," then I don't know what I can tell you.

By "biblically" you mean generally accepted (assumed) by the flock of sheep?

No, I mean in keeping with the text; for you asked me for a verse, and I gave you one.

It isn't even talking about the "heaven" you refer to, i.e. a place of bliss of some kind. So no, "heaven," in this context, is not and cannot be "on Earth," as you suggest.

Your assumption.

No, a basic fact that every Biblical scholar, even just beginners, already knows.

"The heavens" (plural) and "Heaven" (singular and capital letter) do not refer to the same thing.

[attofishpi]

If you don't know that Biblically, "Heavens and Earth" are an idiomatic expression meaning "all the visible worlds," then I don't know what I can tell you.

By "biblically" you mean generally accepted (assumed) by the flock of sheep?

No, I mean in keeping with the text; for you asked me for a verse, and I gave you one.

It isn't even talking about the "heaven" you refer to, i.e. a place of bliss of some kind. So no, "heaven," in this context, is not and cannot be "on Earth," as you suggest.

Your assumption.

No, a basic fact that every Biblical scholar, even just beginners, already knows.

"The heavens" (plural) and "Heaven" (singular and capital letter) do not refer to the same thing.

You're confusing yourself, again. In the opening line it is "heaven" singular. Alas, so what anyway - it is a HUGE assumption, that just because the term "heaven" is used, that it means the entire Universe!

[Immanuel Can]

You're confusing yourself, again.

There may be confusion: but it isn't mine.

Again, sorry I troubled you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Panentheism is the newcomer. Monotheism is actually very ancient, dating back to the very start of human civilization and recorded history. And while the concept may be a little older, "Panentheism" was a word first used in 1821.

The notion of monotheism seems sound and also necessary. But panentheism is not dependent on a pantheistic concept, is it?

One could be panentheistic yet monotheistic it seems to me.

I’d have thought that Judaism and Christianity both accommodate panentheistic notions.

[Dubious]

From whence did the disparate and chaotically dispersed quantum phenomena implicit in the aftermath of an alleged Big Bang, metaphorically depicted as this...


...acquire the "intelligence" to organize itself into the absolute perfect setting, depicted as this...




...from which life, mind, and consciousness could then effloresce (emerge) from the very fabric of the setting itself?

What you’re depicting in the above picture is the CMB which has nothing to do with the picture below in terms of deriving the latter from the former no matter how many times you present it. For one thing, the CMB only came to be approximately 400,000 years after the Big Bang event when the universe cooled down enough for it to happen. What you see on your gif is the after-effect of a cooled down universe which has now reached near zero. In short, your first picture of the CMB is inherent in the second one showing the universe in its current state.

It is entropy, time and emergence which create the conditions of complexity which manifests itself in both micro and macro perspectives.

Easy to say, but impossible to imagine it occurring without some sort of guidance or teleological impetus.

To believe the universe requires some teleological impetus amounts to another anthropomorphism of the purest kind. We just can’t seem to escape from ourselves when it comes to describing god or the cosmos. There always has to be some human inflection in their description which both, in reality, are completely devoid of.

Your assertion is reminding me of one of my favorite cartoons...

If you prefer to give more credence to a cartoon implying some overlord intelligence to fill the gap, that’s your choice. Believing in an absurdity never yet changed the reality in spite of much remaining to understand.

[Dubious]

-------------------

Any non-abstract god entity, biblical or not has zero relationship when reflecting on a universe as the creation of an abstract intelligence. Anthropomorphism simply no-longer applies in that kind of debate and actually turns out to be a contradiction and paradox when considering it in those terms.

Thank you for the clarification. I still don't understand why anthropomorphism, when discussing the creation of the universe, is contradictory and paradoxical. I get that it's as meaningless as discussing the shape of blue, but the source of any abstract intelligence could be the shape of an old boot for all we know.

Contradictory in the sense there never was a god we didn't create, and paradoxical in thinking the gods we created were real.
Any conversation of an abstract intelligence is as good as another because talk is all it is. So you're right; it could be an old boot for all we know.

It is entropy, time and emergence which create the conditions of complexity which manifests itself in both micro and macro perspectives. It's a process which proceeds on its own on multiple levels, the Intelligence required already contained in it. Every process contains a paradigm formed by an intelligence which doesn't have to be self-aware to be active.

So are laws of nature intelligence? Are they the paradigm?

They are of functional intelligence without which we and the universe wouldn't be here. It's a slow torque kind of intelligence timed by its own internal processes striving for synthesis, which as previously mentioned, has nothing to do with the human kind. Something which exists purely as function - a process without mind, we being merely one of its random acts.

I'd be using a different term than "intelligence" if I could find one.

In both its simplicity and complexity it travels the grooves of least resistance compared to an extra-mundane intellect external to time and space and having to wonder where that derived from.

How simple does intelligence get? Are atomic bonds intelligent? Quantum leaps?

They're part of the tool kit!

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'd be using a different term than "intelligence" if I could find one.

Blind, mindless creativity? Mindless force impelled by relational laws never priorly established but somehow self-inventing. Inherent will that designs extraordinarily but without ‘designer’. Something like manifesting force but always absent mind. Willful, for some unknowable reason, but finally unknowable, indecipherable.

(It is actually hard to state what it is and not use the term intelligence).

[Dubious]

I'd be using a different term than "intelligence" if I could find one.

Blind, mindless creativity? Mindless force impelled by relational laws never priorly established but somehow self-inventing. Inherent will that designs extraordinarily but without ‘designer’. Something like manifesting force but always absent mind. Willful, for some unknowable reason, but finally unknowable, indecipherable.

(It is actually hard to state what it is and not use the term intelligence).

The problem being, intelligence is invariably considered to be overt, innate to a being consciously aware of itself. Most can't, even temporarily, separate themselves from that sensibility. The manner in which I'm using it here defaults to the intelligence of a spider engineering the most intricate and beautiful webs imaginable. But does the spider know what it's doing? The same can be claimed for a multitude of other such autonomous creations. I don't find it so unlikely that the universe itself is such a spider web, possibly within an infinite number of such webs.

Whoever said Eternal Recurrence must be confined to only one universe!

[Immanuel Can]

One could be panentheistic yet monotheistic it seems to me.

Panentheism is more closely related to Pantheism, as the name suggests. In both systems, "god" is the singular, comprehensive word for all-that-exists...the good, the evil, and everything in between. But whereas in Pantheism it is said that "all IS god," in Panentheism, the axiom is "all is IN god," meaning that there are "god" areas that are not coextensive with Creation or the physical universe. A small difference, perhaps; but Panentheists are adamant about it.

I’d have thought that Judaism and Christianity both accommodate panentheistic notions.

No, because both Judaism and Christianity believe that God is not His Creation, nor is His Creation "in" Him in the Panentheistic sense. Rather, both posit a God who is transcendent and prior to Creation, a timeline that is linear, and that matter is contingent not necessary, among other differences. The Jewish and Christian God is personal, too: He has intellect, intentions, purposes, actions of His own, preferences, and so on; and because He has a righteous nature, He has no affinity with or responsibility for sin and evil. For in Jewish and Christian thought, the latter are negations or rejections of the nature of God, not extensions of that nature.

That will do as a nutshell summary, I suppose: they give enough that one can see that these are rather incompatible claims about God.

[iambiguous]

The way of the world; the way the world really is; what the world is when it has layers of impositions stripped from it; ourselves when we 'come down to earth'; ourselves when we have 'woken up' (I take authenticity to depend on this); the realization of the task before us: that we have to confront and overcome poisonous nihilism -- these are some of what I take the word to indicate and perhaps to admonish us to undertake.

I agree that moral nihilism is "poisonous" in the sense that, among other things, it can result in a "fractured and fragmented" sense of self. Ever and always "drawn and quartered" with respect to good and bad, right and wrong behaviors.

But that doesn't make any less reasonable in my view...given the arguments I make above and on other threads.

Also, moral nihilism can be liberating. After all, the thing about moral objectivism -- God or No God -- is that while it provides you with comfort and consolation it restricts your options. Once you've accepted one or another God or ideology or deontology or assessment of nature you are bound by it. When confronted with that fork in the road you always have to ask yourself "what is the one and the only right thing to do?"

Whereas a moral nihilist can chuck the fork altogether and do whatever he or she wants to merely in order to sustain their own self-gratification.

[Alexis Jacobi]

No, because both Judaism and Christianity believe that God is not His Creation, nor is His Creation "in" Him in the Panentheistic sense.

Once again -- it will always come up -- I differ with what you propose here in a practical, real-world sense. I regard Christianity (and I will also include Judaism) not as abstract, idealistic theological creations, but as things that can only be studied in context.

And the way to find out what Christianity is is not to study what someone says that it is (though that cannot be nor should be avoided), but to study what it was, and how it became what it was/is. And as you know I regard the study of the Medieval period (including The Great Chain of Being) as perhaps the sole area to gather a sense of what Christianity is and what Christians actually believed.

(I know that you view is that this is not Christianity but psuedo-Christianity or Christendom in a Kierkegaardian sense).

And from this perspective I can assert, with justifiable certainly, that in fact Christianity of that period and time did have a panentheistic understanding of divinity's penetration of the manifest world. I do not mean to take a contrary position to yours in an aggressive sense, and I know that you define a true Christianity from a false Christianity (and I do respect your views and orientation). But I am forced to make what I see are necessary corrections to some of the ideas you assert. And I think it must be made clear that you are the sole person on this forum that explains and defends an extremely traditional Christianity. Yours is an idealistic Christianity as well since, as I have understood, you can present no one that actually practices the Christianity you define. (But I think you will say that I am exaggerating).

The idea 'as above so below' is where that panentheistic understanding can be examined. What is above is relational to what is below. What is seen below can express or embody, in limited degrees, what is above.

Now from a comparative religious perspective I often think of a Vaishnava idea (a religious and metaphysical school of the Indian subcontinent that orients itself around the notion of Vishnu as Supreme Being). It is a curious idea. That idea is that the world we live in, the reality we experience, is 'Vishnu's external energy'. This idea corresponds to what you say here: "both Judaism and Christianity believe that God is not His Creation, nor is His Creation "in" Him in the Panentheistic sense". The Vaishnavas would say something similar.

There is no *energy* (ie energy or matter or anything) that does not have its origin in the Supreme Being. But there is an 'external energy' and there is an 'internal energy'. We exist according to this view in a liminal area but largely within God's external energy. It carries on according to its specific rules and regulations blindly and mechanically. This view is similar, in a way, to how our materialists and physicists see and explain reality.

But since an 'internal energy' is proposed -- and understood to *exist* and to be real and discoverable -- the object of man is to seek the internal energy and to move away from capture in the external energy. That external energy is defined as 'the material entanglement'. And this implies getting untangled. How that is done is, of course, the topic of most Indian ethics and metaphysics.