Proof there is a God

[Jan Ardena]

Because the word God is a metaphor for Potential.

Says who (apart from yourself)?

No, this is a Universal constant, which can be demonstrated scientifically.

Okay...

That illustrates your lack of depth in abstract thinking and limited understanding of its Implications. Universal Potential is not dependent on physical bodies either. It can exist as a unformed condition of latent mathematical abilities inherent in the fabric of spacetime.

Is it existent outside the fabric of space time, and if it is, how is it detected as being so?
Excuse the lay-manic terminology.

jan.

 

[Jan Ardena]

Why?

Because I don't think cause and effect just keeps occurring.
At some point there must be point which is not caused. That is my thinking.

jan.

 

[spidergoat]

I think so to.

 

[Write4U]

Says who (apart from yourself)?

Science.

Okay. Is it existent outside the fabric of space time, and if it is, how is it detected as being so?
Excuse the lay-manic terminology. jan.

By definition Potential must be present *before* any change (expression in reality) to be possible.[/QUOTE]

 

[spidergoat]

It doesn't seem rational to propose that something existed prior to something existing. Even (especially) if you endow it with the "magic" of defining it to be above and beyond the limitations of time and space. Especially if you define it as some sort of all powerful and transcendent form of human being (intelligence). We are almost completely certain humans were the result of a complex series of physical processes of cause and effect.

 

[Write4U]

Because I don't think cause and effect just keeps occurring.
At some point there must be point which is not caused. That is my thinking.
jan.

But Pure Potential is not caused, it is the essence of an inherent metaphysical latent
creative ability inherent in chaos, but not yet expressed in our reality.

 

[Baldeee]

Because I don't think cause and effect just keeps occurring.
At some point there must be point which is not caused. That is my thinking.

So what you mean is not "It is required" but "I think it is required because of my personal incredulity of the alternatives"?

 

[Write4U]

It doesn't seem rational to propose that something existed prior to something existing. Even (especially) if you endow it with the "magic" of defining it to be above and beyond the limitations of time and space. Especially if you define it as some sort of all powerful and transcendent form of human being (intelligence). We are almost completely certain humans were the result of a complex series of physical processes of cause and effect.

You hit the crux of the matter. The hierarchy of mathematical orders need not be Intelligent in and of itself. All that is required is that it functions mathematically.

 

[Yazata]

That doesn't matter. If that is Jan's working definition of God, we can have a discussion about it. For reference, it is this:

‘The invisible (Brahman) is the Full; the visible (the world) too is the Full. From the Full (Brahman), the Full (the visible) universe has come. The Full (Brahman) remains the same, even after the Full (the visible universe) has come out of the Full (Brahman).’

My first criticism would be, the universe as described by science also fulfills this definition.

It looks to me like ancient Greek Presocratic metaphysics. Which isn't surprising, since Jan's text comes from a Upanishad (I haven't looked it up) and the earlier Upanishads in India were roughly contemporary with the beginnings of Greek philosophy. The earliest Greek philosophers imagined all of reality once consisting of a formless something that contained everything that can possibly exist in itself in potential. The Greeks called it the 'arche' (source) and imagined various theories about what it might have been and how it might have evolved into the kind of world we presently see. Thales suggested that the original stuff was water, from the ancient Mesopotamian myths associating water with formlessness and primordial chaos. (Water has no inherent shape and takes the form of whatever container it is in.). Aniximander got more abstract and called it the apeiron ('unbounded' or perhaps more accurately 'undefined'). That idea lingered on in hylomorphism, the ancient Greek theory that every existing thing is a composite of matter (the arche or apeiron) and the particular forms that make individual things what they are. We still see that idea in modern thinking today. Max Tegmark seemingly imagines the forms as mathematical. The ancient Greeks, particularly the Pythagoreans, wouldn't have disagreed. Theoretical physicists' metaphysical speculations about what might have happened in the first second after the big-bang remind me of it.

The Upanishads imagined similar ideas, but tended to do so in a more religious context, where the divinity of the hypothetical original source (Brahman) was emphasized. Hence calling it 'the Full', because everything that can possibly exist exists within it in potentia. The tendency to imagine the original source as divine seemingly led to the Indians never emphasizing form like the West did/does, often dismissing it as illusion, something to be penetrated to discover the singularity of the divine that the multiplicity of physical reality hides and obscures, trapping our souls in the fallen world of maya.

I'd call it 'proto-philosophy', philosophy that's still being practiced in a mythic mode, by people for whom abstract theorizing was difficult and unfamiliar, but religious imagination was commonplace and how they tended to imagine cosmic things.

 

[spidergoat]

Yes! The ancient Indian and Greek philosophers should certainly be respected for their depth of thought. I wonder what they would think of modern science.

 

[PhysBang]

I am sorry that I slipped up here. I was trying to present my views as my own as my post overall suggests.

See how easy it is to slip up you are now talking for others it seems.
Alex

The difference, which you really need to learn, is that I'm speaking for some people based on empirical evidence (perhaps you've seen all the books about the divine out there written by atheists?) and you were claiming everyone shares your narrow view. Your failure of imagination is not everyone's failure.

 

[Xelasnave.1947]

The difference, which you really need to learn, is that I'm speaking for some people based on empirical evidence (perhaps you've seen all the books about the divine out there written by atheists?) and you were claiming everyone shares your narrow view. Your failure of imagination is not everyone's failure.

I can not disagree with anything you say. I am not infallable.
Alex

 

[Jan Ardena]

It doesn't seem rational to propose that something existed prior to something existing.

Why?

Even (especially) if you endow it with the "magic" of defining it to be above and beyond the limitations of time and space.

Why would you invoke the entertaining art of sleight of hand and the production of deceptive illusions like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, as part of the grand gesture of the creation of the material world, as a contender for origins?

Especially if you define it as some sort of all powerful and transcendent form of human being (intelligence).

I don't think we're in danger of of defining "magic" as a transcendental human being.

We are almost completely certain humans were the result of a complex series of physical processes of cause and effect.

Good for you.

Jan.

 

[Jan Ardena]

Science.

Sciences and God is metaphor for potential? I wasn't aware science had anything to say about God.

By definition Potential must be present *before* any change (expression in reality) to be possible.

What's present before potential?

Jan.

 

[Sarkus]

So what you mean is not "It is required" but "I think it is required because of my personal incredulity of the alternatives"?

To be fair to Jan it's fairly normal for people on t'internet to use language that suggests a fact when it is merely an opinion. But you are correct that this opinion from Jan seems based on his personal incredulity rather than anything factual.

 

[Jan Ardena]

No, it is a metaphorical definition of Universal Potential.

Brahman is pure consciousness, yet you say UPO isn't. How is potential a metaphor?

Potential is "that which may become reality", meaning that while not all potential becomes expressed in reality, all reality past, present, and future was, is, and will be preceded by Potential, even the concept of your God.

That is your personal belief system which in no way whatsoever has anything to do with the definition.

Jan

 

[Daecon]

That is your personal belief system which in no way whatsoever has anything to do with the definition.

Why?

 

[Write4U]

Sciences and God is metaphor for potential? I wasn't aware science had anything to say about God.

Can you ever pose a straight quotation of what I actually wrote?

Jan Ardena said: ↑
What semantics? Do you accept that this is a definition of God, or not?
A simple yes or no will suffice.

W4U said:
No, it is a metaphorical definition of Universal Potential.

What's present before potential? Jan.

Potential is "That which may become Reality", and per definition precedes everything. But it is not *intelligent*.

But it is actually a definition of God (despite your lack of belief).

No, let me repeat, "God is a metaphor for Potential", not the other way around. You can easily understand the difference by comparing the definitions of both terms.

You don't seem to understand the definition, choosing to see it as something that suits you.

No, the meaning of the scientific concept of *potential* is well understood, falsifiable, and has practical application in reality.

I am afraid, you don't seem to understand the implications contained in the definition of the term Potential as, "That which may become reality". You really need to give this some serious thought. But don't feel badly, most people use the term without appreciating the underlying implication of the definition as being the single common denominator in the universe.

Everything, past, present, and future was, is, and will be preceded by potential. Without a priori potential, work (change) cannot become explicate in reality.

This cannot be said of God, which is not falsifiable and has no practical application in reality except as a human imaginary concept of a supernatural intelligent entity.

In case it is not yet clear; God is the spiritual metaphor for Potential and science can prove the existence of potential as a latent ability to do work, whereas the metaphor God has no measurable properties or provable active or latent ability to do work.

"God works in mysterious ways" merely means , "we have no clue".

Potential does not work in mysterious ways (it is a functional or latent mathematical ability) and we use the term in all facets of life as a predictive tool, and science has defined and explained potential in many mathematical working models.

So which is the more practical? Actually you have already attempted to connect God with a mathematical value, i.e. *1*. A small step in the right direction.

As Tegmark demonstrates all things are intrinsically mathematical in value and physical expression. And in a mathematical universe the word *potential* is appropriate, whereas the word God is meaningless in that context.

 

[Xelasnave.1947]

That is your personal belief system which in no way whatsoever has anything to do with the definition.

Sorry to drop in here but your post clarified what I have been thinking about the scriptures Jan.

When an author is writting a scripture I suggest that he is recording his personal belief system an their authority can not reasonably be moved past this simple yet apparent fact.

Just because we end up with volumes of text doesnot mean they are more than a collection of recorded personal beliefs and the fact that they may have be recorded many years ago does not change the fact they are recordings of personal beliefs.

Just because these recorded personal beliefs have become the personal beliefs of others who are happy to accept the personal beliefs of another as their own, again theses writtings, scriptures as they are called, are still indeed the recorded personal beliefs of an author, a man, who formed views, made up ideas about something he could only guess about, and wrote them down.

To suggest anything past my definition of the scriptures, the recording of an authors personal belief, seems to be foolish.

Jan I hope you can now see why I place no faith in the scriptures as offering anything other than the personal belief of another who existed in the past when he did not have the benefit of the accumulated knowledge humans now possess.

If alive today and given a lap top to record his views would the ancient author hold and record his ideas as he did in the past. .. Would it not be reasonable to think he may now be sophisticated enough to argue on cosmology with happy access to real data such that he could present a more informed personal view.. His concern may be choosing between steady state and big bang cosmology for example.

I hope you can understand my point.

I am not trying to change your belief but hope you now understand why I dont see any point in holding up ancient recordings of personal opinion as a basis for forming a belief today.

Sorry to interupt go back to the discussion.

Alex

 

[Jan Ardena]

Can you ever pose a straight quotation of what I actually wrote?

Apologies. My bad.

You - Because the word God is a metaphor for Potential.
Me - Says who (apart from yourself)?
You - Science
Me - Science says God is metaphor for potential? I wasn't aware science had anything to say about God.

No, let me repeat, "God is a metaphor for Potential", not the other way around. You can easily understand the difference by comparing the definitions of both terms.

No it's not. It's you saying that God is a metaphor for potential.
God is God, and potential is potential, and both have their definitions.
You say potential is not intelligent, and the definition of God states that Intelligence is what God IS.
They are different.

I am afraid, you don't seem to understand the implications contained in the definition of the term Potential as, "That which may become reality". You really need to give this some serious thought. But don't feel badly, most people use the term without appreciating the underlying implication of the definition as being the single common denominator in the universe.

I understand, and experience perfectly well what potential is, and it has nothing to do with God in the sense that God is a metaphor for it. That is nonsensical.

This cannot be said of God, which is not falsifiable and has no practical application in reality except as a human imaginary concept of a supernatural intelligent entity.

You don't (as yet) have any comprehension of God, which is why you think God is a metaphor for potential.
As such you can talk any nonsense you like about God, in the same way my little grand-daughter can say any nonsense about taxation and the government.

"God works in mysterious ways" merely means , "we have no clue".

No it doesn't. It means He works in mysterious ways.

As Tegmark demonstrates all things are intrinsically mathematical in value and physical expression.

So what if they are. It doesn't mean that God does not exist, and it certainly doesn't mean the God is a metaphor for potential.

jan.