I don't think so. Once experienced it is part of your reality.
It sounds like you're saying this is not about more than one reality but for all of us there is more than one you. Ever consider that?
A God We Know Nothing About
- Thread starter PsychoticEpisode
- Start date
I don't think so. Once experienced it is part of your reality.
It sounds like you're saying this is not about more than one reality but for all of us there is more than one you. Ever consider that?
the point is that one experience is sufficient to contextualize another experience as a sub set.
IOW its not so much a different reality, but a broader one.
sure, just like the "you" in your dream is different than the "you" in your waking life.
The fact that the "you" in your waking life has continuity means that the "you" in your dreams is reconciled as a subset of your "reality".
Ahh! Well good riddance to extra realities at least.
Time to work on the extra 'you'.
Your emphasis seems to be on thought. In fact you place a very high standard upon the ability to think. It is this thinking that is going to open the door for each of us so that we can broaden our scope. Something like that.
In your case, who or what 'you' is doing the real thinking, that deep soul searching stuff? I think dreams are thoughts, would you agree? Do you think hallucinations also fall into the thought category? I don't see why not.
What I don't classify as original thought are any that are influenced by way of experience. Not likely to happen, in fact next to impossible, for none of us is without influence. So if I was to think deep about God then I can't do it without having some prior inclination about what to expect from such an entity. Thus any thought of knowing God is questionable as to its validity.
can we also say goodbye to "one and the same" one's as well?
Inasmuch as action follows thought
Not even thought is deserving of a uniform category. If you had the body of a dog you would be thinking about quite different things than what you are now.
There are numerous paradigms to explain the interplay between the mind, senses and intelligence (for instance you could describe dreams as the mind in action without the 5 senses and a hallucination as the act of the senses misrepresenting information to the mind). All these issues come under the banner of ego - or what we think our ultimate purpose is. In conditioned life it is characterized by independent enjoyment, or a having one's self at the centre of the universe (hence called "false ego"). Spiritual paradigms tend to be more holistic.
I'm not sure I understand this.
I think the very act of thinking about something requires that we touch on issues on how we expect it to behave or operate, based on our experience (or the experience of others whom we accept as authoritative).
Even atheists apply the same principle when thinking about god - for instance they love to argue how god is a murderer etc etc , based on the idea that a proper god should be in possession of noble qualities etc
The topic is a God we know nothing about. Now as I understand, there is quite a considerable amount of thinking required to touch base with God. Maybe it involves reaching a higher level of consciousness, self analysis, meditation and a whole series of thought disciplines that enable the individual to achieve a oneness with God.
A lot of work. Just how many of the theists in the world can admit to attaining a state of introspection and reflection that allows them to know God? I would wager very few have. Yet the world is inundated with theists who claim to know God or believe they know God. I suppose that's the main difference, faith in God means you don't know and higher thinking means you do know God.
As I said before....you can't have faith in God and know about Him at the same time. So those of you who really know God because you've reached that privileged magical connection with Him are not really theists or believers because you've basically left them in the dust. The rest of the masses are the faithful & unfaithful. So when you are arguing in favor of God's existence then you actually know beyond the shadow of a doubt about God. Then theists and atheists might as well be the same people because neither one of them know God like you do. The grand total of all that's known about God by every theist & atheist then amounts to zero.
Theist text does contain passages where God kills. Call it murder if you like, it makes no difference. The books themselves lay out God's qualities as you say, nobleness being one of them. So the bibles are not representative of God, paint a false picture and are incomplete because the real knowledge is currently unreachable or unattainable for most. People are generally uninformed and their claims of knowing God are bogus. This real knowledge that only few have has decreased the population of theists it seems. Good to know that I'm arguing against a select few since most of us have no clue. Interesting, the Bibles are placebos in every way & I see you quote scripture from time to time, why bother?
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as indicated many times previously, direct perception is but one means of knowing (qualitative vs quantitative understandings, the example of the president etc etc)
sure
much like the number of people touching base with any subject on a quantitative level are quite minuscule in comparison to those who are there on a qualitative one.
regardless of whatever claim of knowledge one is investigating, a good place to start are the normative prescriptions that govern it. For instance it may not be a lie that I know a thing or two about medicine, but if I try to pass myself off as a GP, I would hope you have a few more tools of scrutiny at your disposal aside from my hearsay
I'm not sure I follow this line of thought.
Knowledge and faith being mutually exclusive?
Direct connection with god placing one in a situation where one is equally alienable from theists(faithful) and atheists (faithless) alike?
I mean suppose we were talking about being a doctor capable of directly verifying the ins and outs of medicine.
How would my knowledge nullify my faith in medicine?
How does a patient's degree/lack of faith in medicine make them much of a muchness in my eyes (or make me much of a muchness in theirs)?
Or alternatively, the real knowledge is already laid out there in scripture but due to a misinterpretation of it (like for instance applying moral imperatives - like murder for example - relevant to persons who do not have sway over issues of birth and death - like us - to entities that do - like god) its easy to run with the wrong idea.
(IOW its characteristic of a rookie in a field of knowledge to see contradictions when there are none ..... and for that matter, its characteristic of a (good) teacher to iron out those contradictions in the eyes of a student ..... and finally its characteristic of a (good) student to be submissive (in the sense of not coming in with a chip on their shoulder) to their teacher)
On the contrary, people (atheists included) are informed about god through scripture and saintly people. The degree that it is bogus or not is dependent on these two issues.
And this "real" knowledge, as you put it, would be dependent on what?
(hint - Practice/application)
Suppose we were discussing chemistry, do you think it would be irregular to quote from a chemistry book?
Or would that somehow bring the knowledge of chemistry down to an artificial and useless level?
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This is a pretty standard Christian line, actually. Psychotic Episode gave it a bit of his own twist. But yes, part of the way some Christians try to convince others that faith in God is necessary is to point out how faith and knowledge are mutually exclusive - and the Bible does emphasize faith, not knowledge.
aka fideism
kind of like putting a big "no trespassing" sign to all philosophical inquiries
:shrug:
I think it would be irregular to quote a chemistry book 3000 years old. Old books of medicine are good too.....you know this migraine of mine is nothing a little bloodletting can't cure.....something I read in that 500 year old papyra scroll. My headache went away but feeling a little tired and weak.
The ancients knew as much about chemistry & medicine as they knew about God, yet all the God stuff is true. Isn't that amazing!!!
only because its rare to encounter a consensus on chemistry knowledge older than 30 years
3000 years ago people were still under the thumb of death, old age and disease plus insatiable desire.
Its not clear how recent years have upped the ante.
:shrug:
Given that chemistry and medicine still place death, old age and disease plus insatiable desire on the table, its not really so amazing.The ancients knew as much about chemistry & medicine as they knew about God, yet all the God stuff is true. Isn't that amazing!!!
Almost the entire world knows their God from an ancient parchment. I have less faith in our forefathers' literary manuscripts than I do in God. The fact that the world's people are the equivalent to an amoeba's lunch when compared to God, that it truly does make knowing Him amazing.
dont' forget plus persons who follow the guidelines of such parchment
god is known in different circumstances.
For instance the military commander may view the president in a certain way (the director of the military effort) quite different from the president's wife (the man who doesn't like polyester socks, or whatever).
IOW the view of god being the amoeba lunch eating entity is not always held as the most valid, complete or attractive (details there in the gita, where arjuna backs down from the universal - aka amoeba lunch eating - form of god)
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can you contradict that it is impossible to speculate on your existence or non-existence??
the problem with atheists and why do societies tend to hush them is because they ask questions which are either asked in a wrong manner or tend to lead to the wrong answer, hence eluding the avarage people plus themselves.. so instead of giving the extremely detailed and complicated explanation to the atheist's questions and spread them and be sure every common man knows them..just hush the source of the disturbance instead of letting it spread and curing it(which might turn impossible afterwards..)
The problem with theists is they ask questions which are either asked in a wrong manner or tend to lead to the wrong answer.
:shrug: I have to exist in order to speculate. How does someone non-existent speculate?
not true..it seems you've never been to a law court before..
1-doesn't a computer speculate??
2-he can be just that..a speculator that makes up or is within a made up world ..something like the movie Matrix
when you're dreaming you believe that what you experience is true..still you "awaken" and find out it wasn't..
what stops you from "awkening" from the world you are in now?
beside..atheists are smarter than normal people in certain methods..but when confronted in debates or with people their size..they always lose.. again because their concept and way of thought is not wrong..but incomplete..letting them go around giving raw coockies to avarage people is poisonous..