Can the Religious Be Trusted?

[seeds]

Earthly mothers are bodyminds to whom we can relate. God is not a bodymind but is existence itself.

God, at least from the Panentheistic perspective, can indeed be imagined as being a "bodymind."

And although I'm sure that Spinoza would be very pleased to hear you say that God "...is existence itself...", unfortunately, it offers nothing that might help answer the question I posed to you in my prior post:

Are we thus supposed to presume the alternative then, that the blind and mindless processes of chance created all of this remarkableness?

I don't object to your theory or to you yourself. I think that simply your theory is not much help for understanding the world.

In contrast then, do you honestly believe that "...God is existence itself..." is a better theory for helping us understand the world?

And just to ease my curiosity as to whether or not you even understand my theory, would you mind taking a brief moment to give me a short synopsis of what you think my theory entails?
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Seeds, as I understand it, your theory entails that God can and does choose from moment to moment what happens in the way a person chooses,i.e. with an end in view, only much more freely than a human person or any other animal chooses.

Belinda, thank you for responding to my query.

However, just as I had suspected, you are not even close, indeed, you are not even in the ballpark of where my theory resides.

From my perspective, it is ludicrous to think that the Creator of more than a hundred-billion galaxies of suns and planets has nothing better to do than to spend her time constantly micromanaging human affairs.

So, before you proclaim that someone's theory,...

"...is not much help for understanding the world..."

...don't you think that, for the sake of being fair, you should at least have a minimal understanding of what the theory actually entails?

And, once again, you've ignored my other question regarding how God "...being existence itself..." somehow explains how the "remarkableness" of the universe was achieved?

And if you suggest another one of Spinoza's take's on the issue, such as his famous "natura naturans" (nature naturing),...

...then I'll simply remind you that we've been over this before in that the word "nature" is nothing more than the word "chance" dressed up in a mother's apron.

In other words, the process of "natura naturans" (nature naturing) this remarkably ordered universe into existence is the same as saying that it was the process of "chance chancing" that did it.

Both of which are utterly preposterous to anyone who has invested the tiniest amount of critical thinking into the issue.
_______

[Belinda]

God, at least from the Panentheistic perspective, can indeed be imagined as being a "bodymind."

And although I'm sure that Spinoza would be very pleased to hear you say that God "...is existence itself...", unfortunately, it offers nothing that might help answer the question I posed to you in my prior post:



In contrast then, do you honestly believe that "...God is existence itself..." is a better theory for helping us understand the world?

And just to ease my curiosity as to whether or not you even understand my theory, would you mind taking a brief moment to give me a short synopsis of what you think my theory entails?
_______

Seeds, as I understand it, your theory entails that God can and does choose from moment to moment what happens in the way a person chooses,i.e. with an end in view, only much more freely than a human person or any other animal chooses.

Belinda, thank you for responding to my query.

However, just as I had suspected, you are not even close, indeed, you are not even in the ballpark of where my theory resides.

From my perspective, it is ludicrous to think that the Creator of more than a hundred-billion galaxies of suns and planets has nothing better to do than to spend her time constantly micromanaging human affairs.

So, before you proclaim that someone's theory,...

"...is not much help for understanding the world..."

...don't you think that, for the sake of being fair, you should at least have a minimal understanding of what the theory actually entails?

And, once again, you've ignored my other question regarding how God "...being existence itself..." somehow explains how the "remarkableness" of the universe was achieved?

And if you suggest another one of Spinoza's take's on the issue, such as his famous "natura naturans" (nature naturing),...

...then I'll simply remind you that we've been over this before in that the word "nature" is nothing more than the word "chance" dressed up in a mother's apron.

In other words, the process of "natura naturans" (nature naturing) this remarkably ordered universe into existence is the same as saying that it was the process of "chance chancing" that did it.

Both of which are utterly preposterous to anyone who has invested the tiniest amount of critical thinking into the issue.
_______

Thanks for once more explaining your theory.

Your objection to Natura Naturans (nature naturing itself) is explained, not merely described , by your theory that God Did It. I agree that your theory explains existence itself. However I think that your theory rests on the axiom that we actually can understand why God did it. Like yourself I have faith that Natura Naturans is a system as opposed to chaos. Unlike yourself I don't hope to know why nature did it, I cannot ever know because nature -or- God can exist as infinitely many Cosmoi.


I enjoy a lot of hymns. Many hymns concern the theme of God's being, so the theme is familiar enough.One of my favourite hymns, perhaps you know it , is The Spacious Firmament on High
. Obviously the scientific worldview in the hymn is that of an out -dated scientific paradigm, as I expect you will agree. My pleasure in the hymn is it's simply worded expression of the awe I feel when I look at the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets-------especially the night sky when clear of clouds maybe on a frosty evening.
I persist in my belief that why the Cosmos exists is a question that can be answered only by faith. Chance does not apply to deep agnosticism, because chance is an explanation of a sort.