Philosophy Now Forum

sthitapragya wrote: Self differentiation and self limitation do not make for complete distinction. ...the infinite being does not differentiate to the point of making a distinct finite being because then the concept of infinity would be broken. Even after self limiting and self differentiating, the form thus created is still a part of the infinite being.

Whether there are absolute distinctions within the Infinite is indefinite precisely because the omnipotence is absolute.

You still do not understand the concept of infinite being, otherwise I assure you, you would not , indeed could not, be so abusive.

Here, you are assuming and presupposing a unifying Principle that transcends yet includes the subject/object dichotomy. That's God. Like it or not, you just admitted to being a "closet theist," though it is unlikely you will admit to it. What's more, I am abusive and that throws a wrench in your pantheistic ideal. How is such a thing possible? If it's all God in the sense you're talking about, how is such abuse possible? How can it be recognized as such? How are qualitative variations possible? What do they consist of? The fact is, between me and thee there is, and must be, an indefinite void, else there could be no me and thee.

Now I don't believe in God, but I still think seeing everyone as equals makes things a lot better for me.

So, are you saying that the life of a cockroach has as much value as that of a child? If no, then there's another wrench in your pantheistic paradigm because that would make us a higher order in a dynamic and hierarchical universe -- and there is presently no real way of knowing all its variations, just how far up the hierarchy goes, or what's there at the top of the ladder (assuming there is one).

Since diversity is self-evident (Infinite Being is meaningless without it), it is reasonable to think that infinite reality is existentially one only in a certain sense, a hypothetical sense. How could it be otherwise? My ability to be abusive, plus the fact that the abuse can be recognized as such, seems to suggest that total, infinite reality is existential on multiple and distinct levels. Yes, oneness is there, but so is diversity, and it's no less real.

Quantity and quality are the two faces of reality with which we all must deal with if life is to have any meaning at all. Science deals with one, religion with the other. Religion is not merely a passive feeling of "absolute oneness," “absolute dependence” and “surety of survival”; but rather a living and dynamic experience of attainment predicated on service. It acts, and there is no higher ideal than the "Personhood" of God and its corollary, the "brotherhood of man."

To deny the personality of the "First Source and Center" leaves one only the choice of two philosophic dilemmas: materialism or pantheism. (Note: Watch for the inevitable and asinine comparing of God to a "tooth fairy" or some such thing.) The former has its proponents, but their arguments are too inane to take seriously; the latter, while comforting for many, is inert and leads to stagnation and entropy.

The Inglorious One wrote:Whether there are absolute distinctions within the Infinite is indefinite precisely because the omnipotence is absolute.

How can there be absolute distinctions when the omnipotence is absolute? If the distinction is absolute, then the entity bearing the distinction would have no trace of the infinite.

Here you are assuming and presupposing a unifying Principle that transcends yet includes the subject/object dichotomy. That's God.

I am not presupposing anything. These are the assumptions and presuppositions of believers. Not mine, since I do not believe in any such thing.

What's more, I am abusive and that throws a wrench in your pantheistic ideal.

I have no pantheistic ideals. I am an atheist so these things are gobbledygook to me.

How is such a thing possible? If it's all God in the absolute sense, how is such abuse possible? How can it be recognized as such? The fact is, between me and thee there is, and must be, an indefinite void, else there could be no me and thee.

Again, this is where you disagree with other believers and you need to take it up with them. Such abuse is possible because you are under the illusion that there is an indefinite void between me and you. If you let your ego die, you would see that it is all God in the absolute sense. Again this is believers talking. Not me.

So, are you saying that the life of a cockroach has as much value as that of a child?

Of course it does. But not to me. To the cockroach. To me, the life of a cockroach has no value. It is a pest and I need to get rid of it, or suffer the consequences of its continued presence in my habitat. But I need to recognize that to the cockroach, its life is as important to it as mine is to me.

If no, then there's another wrench in your pantheistic paradigm

Again, I am an atheist. You need to keep up.

because that would make us a higher order in a dynamic and hierarchical universe -- and there is presently no real way of knowing all its variations, just how far up the hierarchy goes, or what's there at the top of the ladder (assuming there is one).

If you want to survive in this world, you have to create a personal hierarchy. And that is the problem I have with the whole concept of the infinite being. If God were everything, I should not have to worry about things trying to kill me. If God is everywhere, He sure is trying hard to kill himself in a variety of ways.

If however, God is infinite but you and I are still distinct, then I don't see the point of believing in Him if it does not give me any advantage over you. So what purpose does an infinite being serve? What is his relevance? He is definitely of no use in this life.

So this is an issue you need to take up with other believers. You have a God which is sometimes infinite and sometimes not. Your pantheism brother, who you seem to hold in contempt, has a God who is absolute in his infinity. You all believe in God but have contempt for each other's Gods. Well, that is for you theists to solve. You are simply pointing out how pointless and contradictory your beliefs are. As an atheist, I have no such problems. I just reject them all.

Since diversity is self-evident (being is meaningless without it), it is reasonable to think that infinite reality is existentially one only in a certain sense, a hypothetical sense.

It makes even more sense if the infinite reality simply did not exist. Then you would not have to bother with all this dancing where sometimes the infinity is absolute and sometimes hypothetical. Do you see how weird that sounds. Your God is infinite but that infinity is hypothetical. At least the pantheist makes more sense. His infinite being is not prone to bouts of finiteness.

How could it be otherwise? My ability to be abusive, plus the fact that the abuse can be recognized as such, seems to suggest that total, infinite reality is existential on multiple and distinct levels. Yes, oneness is there, but so is diversity, and it's no less real.

Again, you seem to have a totally different take on an infinite being which can be finite and distinct and infinite at the same time according to your convenience. Since this is in variance with the other pantheistic beliefs, I suppose I will simply reject it as an infinite being that cannot make up its mind.

Quantity and quality are the two faces of reality with which we all must contend if life is to have any meaning at all. Religion is not merely a passive feeling of "absolute oneness," “absolute dependence” and “surety of survival”; but rather a living and dynamic experience of attainment predicated on service. It acts, and there is no greater motivation than the "Fatherhood" of God and its corollary, the "brotherhood of man."

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It is not supposed to be a passive feeling of absolute oneness but a recognition of the absolute oneness and then seeing the world with that perspective. I don't know what attainment you mean so I cannot comment on that.

Sthitapragya wrote:
And this is where my argument comes in. God might have 'divested himself from it' (which he has not in reality which brings in maya), but from the point of view of the believer who understands the concept of consciousness, the reality is that everything is God. The illusion is what we see, comprised of everything, dimwits and enlightened ones included. The fact is, most of you "believers" simply do no understand this which is why most believers are so quick to discriminate and abuse. They do not understand that God is everything, and everywhere.

Oh, and the Supreme Lord is not completely distinct from his creation. It is maya that creates that illusion. The Supreme Lord is, as Inglorious say, self differentiated. Not distinct.

Aham Bramhāsmi meaning I am Brahman (the Infinite Being). It is only when the ego dies that this awareness of the self can come.

Also, you always gripe about how atheists attack and abuse immediately something is written. How about commenting on the same behaviour from your theist friend? Or is that something you will, as usual, ignore?

I always like to keep in mind, and to remind us all as we move through these *performances*, that there is not nor was there ever, not really, a 'genuine desire to converse', nor even a minimal intention to build bridges between viewstructures. Let us speak just for a second of your intentions here (if I may):

With your 'rational' method, your rational tools, you have determined that you can overturn every aspect in 'religiousness' or mystical understanding of life, and the ways that people understand their experience, describe it, pass it from one to the other, etc. To come to a forum like this is to come as a moth to an attractive brightness: To get down onto the mat and scrap with dedicated theists so that you can show your stuff, and in the best of all possible worlds, defeat them. But that really means 'show them as defeated', render them as seen as defeated. It has all so much to do with posture and appearance. As long as you are locked in to the polarity you require the theist, the believer, the one with religious sentiments, and you can't get on without him. This is the 'game' that is played, and in the largest part it is a game, on this noble forum. Everyone gets in on the act. That IS the act, that IS what is being performed. My view is that since that is what it is, it should be embellished into a high art form.

My strategy - absurd in its own way I suppose - is just to plough through with the the sort of discourse I admire and would myself wish to read: each post a free-standing essay, taking advantage of all the formatting capabilities the board offers, and hopefully with one or two pithy quotes from some long-dead authority.

I have already made fun of the tendency on these fora for factions and 'camps' to develop and the juvenile strategies to come into play. But do you really want to go in that direction? For if you will make me accountable for Inglorious and his forum-choices, you will naturally become responsible for those of Uwot and Hobbes and - Oh God in Heaven! - the Crêpe Suzette 'philosopher' with a full century as a 'man of science'. If God exists, and if God is just, I could not wish such a fate on you, Sthitapragya!

• An’ here I sit so patiently
  Waiting to find out what price
  You have to pay to get out of
  Going through all these things twice

I've decided therefor that what I am going to do, as a Theist of Grand Proportion, is simply to collapse the World just as soon as this 'conversation' here with the Denizens of PN Forum approach the nadir of absurdity. That sizeless dot of pure potential, that point so infinitesimal and yet latent, will suck everything back into itself in less than a nanosecond.

Om Tat Sat ...
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I referred to Vaishnava philosophy only to offer up a way that concepts are ordered about 'reality'. I hope that you recognise that I am of the opinion that we all have and live in a 'metaphysical dream of the world'. What this means, I think, is that we all live in the world that we envision and conceive in our imagination. There is no one who does not 'visualise' their world, since this is what we are: conceptualising creatures. We have no choice but to organise and 'believe in' an imagined order. We do not so much perceive accurately the world - and we can know so very little about the world-as-cosmos and as Existence and Manifestation, and yet we create a visualisation and live in it, out of it, in relation to it.

Now, with that in mind, flip on over to the "Ridiculous, simple-minded questions for Theists" thread started by (drum flourish with a final bang on a cymbal) our own high-octane, hyper-wise Femme-semi-fatale, LaceWing ( ::: three minute applause ::: ) and check out the funny word-blocks by Uwot and Hobbes. Instead of an imagined world that sees the Supreme Lord as a Flute Player of Supreme Beauty attracting the lost and departed souls back into Himself by an irresitable music, you have phrasings like this to reflect a strange form of 'spirituality', a weirdly dead metaphysique:

• "I don't know. The common excuse is that it helps to visualise something tangible. Actually, I think physicists have missed a trick. What with them trying to square GR with QM, they have forgotten ontology. I keep saying that the simplest explanation for all the phenomena that give the impression there is a universe made of some stuff, is some stuff the universe is made of. If the universe, fundamental particles and whatnot are in fact made of something, then the same 'substance' is responsible for the phenomena associated with both GR and QM. It's a long story, but in my book that's Big Bang stuff."

It's Big Bang stuff, Sthitapragya, don't ya know? (Shiva out of a jackfruit!)

So let me get this straight: You, as non-believer and atheist wish to debate theism and religiousness within religious terms so to prove the point that if God is everywhere His disciples abuse God because Inglorious calls you, a wee particle of God's Glory, a 'dimwit'?

I am really getting excited about this topic! Let me know how I can best serve it.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: I always like to keep in mind, and to remind us all as we move through these *performances*, that there is not nor was there ever, not really, a 'genuine desire to converse', nor even a minimal intention to build bridges between viewstructures. Let us speak just for a second of your intentions here (if I may):

I would rather that you didn't because you are not a mind reader but you are going to do it anyway so let us see what you have to say.

With your 'rational' method, your rational tools, you have determined that you can overturn every aspect in 'religiousness' or mystical understanding of life, and the ways that people understand their experience, describe it, pass it from one to the other, etc. To come to a forum like this is to come as a moth to an attractive brightness: To get down onto the mat and scrap with dedicated theists so that you can show your stuff, and in the best of all possible worlds, defeat them. But that really means 'show them as defeated', render them as seen as defeated.

Great. Now replace 'you' with 'me' or 'I' and 'religiousness' and 'mystical understanding of life' with 'atheism' and we have your intentions of coming here.

It has all so much to do with posture and appearance. As long as you are locked in to the polarity you require the theist, the believer, the one with religious sentiments, and you can't get on without him.

again, replace 'theist' etc with 'atheist' and 'you' with 'me' or 'I'.

My strategy - absurd in its own way I suppose - is just to plough through with the the sort of discourse I admire and would myself wish to read

Well, that is a personal opinion. When you get someone who you are debating with to say that your "discourse is admirable" then maybe you might have something going for you. So far, this post of yours is just hypocritical declarations, accusing others of the very things you yourself are guilty of.

I have already made fun of the tendency on these fora for factions and 'camps' to develop and the juvenile strategies to come into play.

Maybe for once, you are talking about your lackey who when he has no answer just abuses? Or is it again just about the monstrous atheists?

But do you really want to go in that direction?

Do you?

For if you will make me accountable for Inglorious and his forum-choices, you will naturally become responsible for those of Uwot and Hobbes

I don't want you do be accountable for anything. I just wish you would acknowledge that whatever atheists do here, theists do too. As you have done here for which I am grateful.




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I referred to Vaishnava philosophy only to offer up a way that concepts are ordered about 'reality'. I hope that you recognise that I am of the opinion that we all have and live in a 'metaphysical dream of the world'. What this means, I think, is that we all live in the world that we envision and conceive in our imagination. There is no one who does not 'visualise' their world, since this is what we are: conceptualising creatures. We have no choice but to organise and 'believe in' an imagined order. We do not so much perceive accurately the world - and we can know so very little about the world-as-cosmos and as Existence and Manifestation, and yet we create a visualisation and live in it, out of it, in relation to it.

Agreed.

Now, with that in mind, flip on over to the "Ridiculous, simple-minded questions for Theists" thread started by (drum flourish with a final bang on a cymbal) our own high-octane, hyper-wise Femme-semi-fatale, LaceWing ( ::: three minute applause ::: ) and check out the funny word-blocks by Uwot and Hobbes. Instead of an imagined world that sees the Supreme Lord as a Flute Player of Supreme Beauty attracting the lost and departed souls back into Himself by an irresitable music, you have phrasings like this to reflect a strange form of 'spirituality', a weirdly dead metaphysique:

Oh, from the previous paragraph I thought you were going somewhere. So this is disappointing. A rant.

• "I don't know. The common excuse is that it helps to visualise something tangible. Actually, I think physicists have missed a trick. What with them trying to square GR with QM, they have forgotten ontology. I keep saying that the simplest explanation for all the phenomena that give the impression there is a universe made of some stuff, is some stuff the universe is made of. If the universe, fundamental particles and whatnot are in fact made of something, then the same 'substance' is responsible for the phenomena associated with both GR and QM.

That is not really necessary. It could be that the same substance is responsible but it could also be that GR and QM be just emergent properties of this universe.

So let me get this straight: You, as non-believer and atheist wish to debate theism and religiousness within religious terms so to prove the point that if God is everywhere His disciples abuse God because Inglorious calls you, a wee particle of God's Glory, a 'dimwit'?

No, I wish to debate theism and religiousness with religious terms because I believe I have an understanding of them which is sufficient for me to reject them. And the inglorious part of it came simply because I wanted to point out that ultimately we are all part of God, if one believes. And like any other normal human being, I find that constant abuse can be trying even when it comes from someone whose opinion matters not a whit to you. Abuse is abuse and this kind of trolling is just pathetic when one is hiding in anonymity.

I wish to debate simply because I have an opinion and I want to debate with people who disagree with me, because I think that is the best way to learn. Discussing with like minded people is not going to teach me anything new. Discussing with people I disagree with is.

Sometimes, you can come across people who are really just interested in a debate. Which is why I avoid trying to get into an argument here by trying to keep my language as civil as possible. So far, I do believe the two of us have had a very civil discussion and I thank you for that. I just wish you would stop assuming I have an agenda. I don't, I just want to debate with theists because I think I am right and I would love for someone who would prove me wrong. And another thing. I am one of those rare breed who will admit in public when I am wrong. It is one of my very few admirable traits. My father used to do it and I learned from him. It is not a big deal for me. So if you get across a point that I have to concede, you have my word that I will do it in an instance.

Have more faith in humanity, my friend, after all, your God created it.

Sthitapragya wrote:Great. Now replace 'you' with 'me' or 'I' and 'religiousness' and 'mystical understanding of life' with 'atheism' and we have your intentions of coming here.

What I note here is that you agree with me. Now, you just need for me to admit that I do the same thing. But first we need to establish that if there are games played, various people play them with varying intensities. Some are generally insincere, and some are more sincere.

Oh, from the previous paragraph I thought you were going somewhere. So this is disappointing. A rant.

No, no! It is ART! Art of the highest order!

All jokes aside it is a form of artistic expression in which a malicious irony, a sadistic, medicinal but overall loving argumentation is carried out.

A Snake, a Devil, a Clown by turns ...
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Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:I referred to Vaishnava philosophy only to offer up a way that concepts are ordered about 'reality'. I hope that you recognise that I am of the opinion that we all have and live in a 'metaphysical dream of the world'. What this means, I think, is that we all live in the world that we envision and conceive in our imagination. There is no one who does not 'visualise' their world, since this is what we are: conceptualising creatures. We have no choice but to organise and 'believe in' an imagined order. We do not so much perceive accurately the world - and we can know so very little about the world-as-cosmos and as Existence and Manifestation, and yet we create a visualisation and live in it, out of it, in relation to it.

Since we have this (or something like it) to work with as an agreement, it might be best to continue to develop the ideas here. This is pretty much the core of my own general notion of things.

This following paragraph was written by Uwot and I was belittling it and also him; intentionally, cruelly, desiring to wound (being English he is quite immune):

• I don't know. The common excuse is that it helps to visualise something tangible. Actually, I think physicists have missed a trick. What with them trying to square GR with QM, they have forgotten ontology. I keep saying that the simplest explanation for all the phenomena that give the impression there is a universe made of some stuff, is some stuff the universe is made of. If the universe, fundamental particles and whatnot are in fact made of something, then the same 'substance' is responsible for the phenomena associated with both GR and QM.

What I wish to point out is that this sort of discourse is not philosophy, and philosophy cannot be constructed out of it, and that it is a bizarre (and I think self-deceiving) self-trickery which intention is to convince oneself that one is saying something meaningful, and that it can function as an alternative discourse to a real conversation which touches on *meaning*, on *value*, on *reasons*, on *existence*. I suggest that a false-knowledge has sprung up with scientism, and that a certain sort of person is attracted to it, learns to speak it like some kind of street-rap, and insists that 'it' is valuable and has value in domains in which it has none at all.

Now, that is essentially my area of discourse, and that is why I come into this space (one of the reasons), and where my philosophical interest lies. But according to you this is not philosophy, and cannot be, and Uwot's 'discourse', because it is 'rational' and deals on 'the facts' is the sort of discourse your rationality will produce.

If you deal in real philosophy, it will be because you borrow a whole terminology, a whole meaning-capital, a whole history of meaning, from philosophy of an essentially religious or religiously-derived strain.

So anyway, as we proceed, I wish for you to grasp the platform I am attempting to define (and dance upon: wonderful sparkly pirouettes, leg-kicks, twirlings on the head and various metaphysical horos-magic) and the reasons why.

sthitapragya wrote: I create doubts in your mind...

Really? How? By establishing beforehand conditions that reject a priori alternatives and prior explanations? By being so in love with the idea if an atheistic, monistic, and anti-religious ideal that you can't see its internal and experiential inconsistencies?

__________________

Gustav:
Willey is a very good writer, maybe better than you. (No offense.)

I love how he ends Chapter 1:

...we do want to be able to experience reality in all its rich multiplicity, instead of being condemned by the modern consciousness to go on

• 'Viewing all objects, unremittingly
  In disconnection dead and spiritless.'

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:...and Uwot's 'discourse', because it is 'rational' and deals on 'the facts' is the sort of discourse your rationality will produce.

So the problem with my discourse is that it is rational and factual.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:If you deal in real philosophy, it will be because you borrow a whole terminology, a whole meaning-capital, a whole history of meaning, from philosophy of an essentially religious or religiously-derived strain.

Gus, if you were a bit more up to speed, you would be familiar with the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy. With a bit more depth, you might appreciate that philosophy begins with the Milesians rejection of Homeric and Hesiodic mythology. For you, it's as if the last two and a half millennia never happened.
Be happy Gus and stick to the:

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:...wonderful sparkly pirouettes, leg-kicks, twirlings on the head and various metaphysical horos-magic) and the reasons why.

He appears to be signed out at the moment.

uwot wrote: So the problem with my discourse is that it is rational and factual.

That's it, uwot, and you should know better. Try and remember who you're talking to and you'll save yourself beaucoup aggravation. You'll just have to face it, mate. The organ grinder and his monkey simply aren't very interesting.

God is among the simplest concepts there is. It's when we try to unpack it that things get complicated. Every atheist who takes the position that God is something akin to an old man who lives in the sky and tosses thunderbolts at evil-doers and so on is a dimwit ― and that's every atheist I've seen here because every one reduces God to an idea.

Atheists in this forum are dimwits because they do not grasp the absolutely essential first step in philosophy of religion: we are never going to understand God and no language we ever use can circumscribe the Reality. They are dimwits because they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that many of the early Christian creeds and liturgies stressed that God is incomprehensible and there was a very strong sense that the language we use often tells us what God is not rather than what God is. They fail to grasp that there has always been a tension between those who want a simple anthropomorphic picture of God and those who say we cannot talk of God in terms of another thing in the world, as though he were simply a thing among things, that we've got to talk about God in terms of the ground of being, of being itself, or existence itself.

The transition from looking at the world without God and looking at the world with God is sometimes spoken of as sort of a gestalt conversion where we suddenly see the world in a new way. You're not seeing anything different, yet, somehow, it's completely different. The idea of God is not just a vague philosophical understanding and there is certainly no natural theology where we can go from what we know about the world and somehow argue ourselves into believing in the existence of God. Whatever it is that makes people like me believe in God is not ultimately a rational argument. It may be partly that, but it's something else, something which is much more deeply personal.

God is not another object in existence. God is pure perfection. God encompasses every philosophical problem from time to consciousness. God is self-limiting, vulnerable. God is not a being who acts, but is the action itself. God is value. God is variegated. God is incomprehensible. God is at once transcendent and immanent. God is all these things and infinitely more. I love digging deeply into the philosophical problems of a personal God, but not nearly as much experientially knowing God as a person, which is radically different than believing in an abstract idea God.

It seems theists cannot really decide what their God is. They need him and cannot do without him and that is for sure. So they will simply come up with new definitions of him every time there is a contradiction in the God concept. I suppose denial and psychological need can be a very powerful weapon.

God is magical and transcendental. Yet living in a physical world, they can experience him in all his transcendence. How they manage it is anyone's guess but I suppose the magic of God gets transferred to his believers. There is no logic because God is beyond logic. There is no discussion because he is beyond discussion. We can never know Him but we must search for him.

And of course, no one knows why such a perfect being needs people to believe in Him nor can they explain why believing in Him is a noble pursuit.
The philosophy of religion. I tell you there is nothing in this that is philosophical.

So-called 'materialists' cannot decide what matter is! Now, as it happens, physics has overturned every solidity that had even been defined or dreamed up by anyone, scientific or otherwise.

What scientific perspective does, then, is to come up with new definitions as the need arises, in accord with an evolving perspective.

'God is magical and transcendental' : The whole universe is utterly magical and transcendental (stretching the word) in the hands of the physicist's vision of reality than could ever have been imagined. In this sense the vision of science begins to look quite 'metaphysical'.

Just as physics has exceeded all the bounds of scientific definition that had ever been proposed, so too theology deals with a similar expansion.

On one level, yes, theology is a descriptive system that encompasses psychology, mysticism, and much that is of orders of knowing unlike the fact-collecting or phenomena-witnessing of scientism, and that is an important point: it is a very different epistemological means.

And of course, no one knows why such a perfect being needs people to believe in Him nor can they explain why believing in Him is a noble pursuit.

You could really make a similar statement about any organisation of perception of reality. Why is it required? Why do we so much depend on it? From the perspective of a believer and one who has a spiritual life, the proof is in the pudding: it is part and parcel of their experience of themselves in the world. There are unlimited sources that describe this relationship, but they are not scientific or objective studies. Modern atheism, if we use Freud as an example, makes an effort to pathologise this way of understanding. Atheism as an ideology couches itself in that dialectic: We have the New Way of seeing and it is a corrective of the Old.

You are making an historical statement. Speaking to older orders of conception. The gods who 'need' man's sacrifices, etc. Yet if God is to be defined anew, as God should be defined anew, it has as much to do with questions and answers about what man is to do with himself and his present in a new order of reality. You are very much involved in those questions or attempt to be. Why can't 'theists'?
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Edgar Brightman, philosopher of religion (writing in the 1930's), in these pages (primarily in the first paragraph) elucidates the prospect of the 'expansion of God' in a radically new world of thought. He describes subsequently other problems that arise from this expansion.

Athists in this atheist-dominated forum haven't the sense to realize that one can know all there is to know about the various theologies and still know nothing at all about religion itself. Everything to them can be reduced to an idea. Such an existence is, to me, unimaginably shallow and hardly worth living.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
You are making an historical statement. Speaking to older orders of conception.

Are you saying that the old conception is wrong and the new one is right?

The gods who 'need' man's sacrifices, etc. Yet if God is to be defined anew, as God should be defined anew,

Why do gods need to be defined anew? Were the old definitions wrong? If the old definitions were wrong, why is it not a possibility to be considered that since the old definition is wrong, then maybe there is no god at all? why do you need to define him 'anew"? What is the need?

it has as much to do with questions and answers about what man is to do with himself and his present in a new order of reality. You are very much involved in those questions or attempt to be. Why can't 'theists'?

No I am not. I am not involved in any question like " what man is to do with himself and his present" and I definitely do not think there is any "new order of reality". Reality is reality. If you think there is a new order of reality then there is your problem. Reality has always been. Maybe your perception of reality is different now. I know what a man is to do with himself. Man has to survive and thrive and procreate so that his genes get passed along. That is it. No more. No less. Whatever else I do to make my life more "meaningful" or 'purposeful" is just misplaced ideology I indulge in. I understand that.

Theists can do whatever they want, as long as they do not try to force their ideology on me or believe they are better than me. You live your way and I will live mine. They minute you insinuate that you are better than me or try to force your ideology on me, I will retaliate. That is all. I do not care for your God. It does not matter to me one whit whether he exists or not. If he does, fine. If he does not, fine. As far as I am concerned, God is as relevant to reality as Harry Potter or Santa or the abominable snowman is. But that is my opinion. I do not think your belief in God makes you a lesser man. But if you think that my lack of belief in God makes me a lesser man and you tell me to my face, I will retaliate. Otherwise, my dear, I just don't give a damn.

Of course, I do wonder sometimes that for an omnipotent being, he sure needs a lot of other people's money.