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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 11, 2010 - 02:00pm PT
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Nice post, John.
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jstan
climber
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Jan 11, 2010 - 02:06pm PT
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"Science has come to the point where it recognizes everything as different vibrations of the same energy. That's not very far from reaching God, we've come a long way."
Karl, I am not clear on your meaning. For 100 years we have had good models saying mass and energy are interrelated, that our measurements of space are affected by the presence of matter, and more recently we are getting data suggesting an entirely different form of both matter and energy that seem not to interact as they do on earth. At least at present your assertion "same energy" is at odds with the data. I think the term "god", while consisting of but three letters( in English) is a highly disputed term at the center of endless debate. Until people can agree on the meaning of this bit of language I think your statement above can not be the basis of informed discussion. I would that it could.
Last week I talked briefly with a little two year old and her mother from next door. Isla McLarty is one of those pieces of data convincing one, no matter how much ill there is in the world, that there is also good. Anyway I put my hand way over my head as I explained that before all that long she would, indeed, be this tall. Her eyes widened and I could hear dozens of new neuronal connections snapping into place. I have not the slightest doubt that were quantum mechanics to be taught to two year olds, at least up through perturbation theory, many technical questions would no longer need debating. Coins always have two sides. If the golden rule instead of the power of god were to be taught to the very young I think we, without exception, would be extremely pleased with the result.
Until such happens we have to be very careful to understand the meaning of the words we use.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 11, 2010 - 02:10pm PT
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We really have no idea how mystical experience differs between ancient times and today. The average person didn't post up on their blogs back then...Still, since there is plenty of it today, and much more that people don't talk about (as evidenced in my Ju Ju thread) the notion that "miracles" and "revelations" were biblical era events is false.
Paul writes
If existence is just a dream and we are the product of that dream then how can we possibly be said to have free will? Our production would be from the subconscious of the dreamer, our actions a function of the dreamers will.
Our ideas of what "free will" is or not are limited by our material dimensions of time, space and the parameters of thinking and the mind. It might well be true that we don't have free will like we think we do. Even the Christians, who champion this "free will" idea the most, have prophets called events far into the future. How can that happen if everybody is making independent decisions all along the way. We "appear" to have free will, maybe that's what counts.
The belief that corporeal matter is just a dream ignores the ineluctable modality of the senses and therefore makes little "sense."
Paul use big words, confuse little Baba brain. Don't be too strict about the dream analogy applying to all the elements of how and why humans dream.
Peace
Karl
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 11, 2010 - 03:17pm PT
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I agree the Christian notion of free will is problematic, but how on earth can there be such a thing as karma without it. If all karma is a function of the dreamer then what is the purpose/point of the dreamed?
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MH2
climber
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Jan 12, 2010 - 04:15am PT
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Hurrah for the return of jstan.
I don't feel that I have anything to prove or disprove about most of the subject of this thread, but I do feel that I've learned a thing or two and it has given me an idea for a story, for later.
Without trying to define god or the word god, it is sometimes believed that there is a god-like entity that listens to and answers people's prayers. It is that proposal for which the evidence is so underwhelming, despite occasional perceived successes.
If there is that other type of god, a Creator God, I see no reason to attempt an understanding of Its Purpose or Method other than by study of the natural and physical world. With the admission that my brain is probably up to only a tiny fractional understanding of anything, even the bedrock of mathematics.
And always with the thought in mind that when people talk about reality as though it were a concrete thing you could bang your skull off of, that that reality includes the ongoing mental activity of around 6 billion humans and an unknown number of animal thought processes which are even less obvious to us.
Princeton joked that John von Neumann was a demi-god who had studied humans well enough to imitate them. He had abilities that astonished, even in a setting that included Einstein and Godel. Maybe we can consider him as a step in the god-like direction.
"Von Neumann's work was influential in subsequent 'philosophical' interpretations of the [quantum]theory. As Von Neumann saw it, a physical observation involved an observer, a measuring instrument, and that which is being observed. Von Neumann asserted that the distinction between the observer and the measuring instrument is arbitrary."
He spent much of the last years of his life considering how a mind might be embodied in a computer.
quotation from
Prisoner's Dilemma
William Poundstone
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 12, 2010 - 07:01am PT
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Paul writes
I agree the Christian notion of free will is problematic, but how on earth can there be such a thing as karma without it. If all karma is a function of the dreamer then what is the purpose/point of the dreamed?
Maybe Karma is just another law that reflects conservation of energy on another level, like the laws of Thermodynamics and Energy. Some people would philosophize that the dreamer explores himself by projecting into the dream.
But more likely, the rhyme and reason of it are not translatable to terms that we can grasp within the limitations of our conditioning and the environment we live in. Try an explain to the fish why humans invest in the stock market.
Peace
Karl
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Jan 12, 2010 - 08:42am PT
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God is not locked into time and space like we are, we can't relate to Him, we can't understand forever-but through history a little. Jesus, said if you have seen me you have seen the Father, also Jesus was a man like us, yet without sin because God can't sin, no one ever was like Him, yet everything was made through Him! Mind blowing!
God wants a relationship with us, not as a unwilling Owner/slave, Master/servant, General/ privet! But He is our God we willingly submit, for He is trustworthy, as a Loving father/son, and with the Church like a Husband and a bride(of Christ), married, both wanting each other out of love!
Malachi 1:6, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name.
Exodus 21:6, But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.
A General, you would follow anywhere!
John 3:35, The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
Revelation 21:9, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
Daily Readings from the Life of Christ (vol.2) By John MacArthur
http://www.gty.org/Radio/Archive
Proverbs 12:28, In the path of righteousness is life,
and in its pathway there is no death.
Psalms 12:6, The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 12, 2010 - 09:01am PT
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Karma is one of those ideas that sounds appealing and yet there is almost certainly nothing to it.
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jstan
climber
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Jan 12, 2010 - 11:56am PT
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"considering how a mind might be embodied in a computer."
MH2:
Thanks. Pleasant to be back talking about ideas.
It occurs to me Google's search methodology actually begins to employ some of the self assembly and reinforcement through use upon which the brain's adaptive capability is based. When a million people query on some topic Google's S/W moves the responses to those queries to the top of the stack presented as a result of our query. Very much like the brain's ability to strengthen frequently fired synapses.
But there is an even more interesting thing about this.
An individual termite in a termite colony goes about its business following chemical trails. When the termite mound is attacked by ants the chemical trails also incorporate pheromones indicating the agitated states of prior users of that trail. The trails act as communication link tieing together the colony as it attempts to respond to a threat. When we make a query to Google we get back a response ordered according to the interests expressed by other members of our own colony.
Here at ST, we are also doing something not so very different from this.
I think 200 years from now, if we are still here, we will understand just how big a role the internet has played.
This seems very closely related to the story line you describe.
As an aside, we have had many discussions here about "consciousness" with me bitterly complaining the whole way about our failure even to define the concept. All the while we have been using ST and the internet to strengthen quite another consciousness. The understanding by individuals of the interests and emotional states of a large number of peers.
Colony consciousness, if you will.
Indeed it is meet to discuss this on this thread because in a real sense what christ was trying to do was to create just such a colony consciousness. To strengthen the bonds between individuals across a whole population. It really is a shame that this message has been irretrievably corrupted by 100 generations of people using it to serve their self interest.
The time has come to stop going down into the ossuary, to get our great grandfather's bones so that we might play with them, over and over.
We need to hold the golden rule close, follow it, and start over again. The golden rule, after all, is what christ probably followed as a boy.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Jan 12, 2010 - 07:50pm PT
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But even the golden rule can turn into a moral dilemma, if truly applied universally. If everyone follows it, then everyone is constantly doing favors for everyone else, as in the so-called "Abilene Paradox":
On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene [53 miles north] for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time."
The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.
One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?" The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.
The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 12, 2010 - 08:08pm PT
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What must be true is that the golden rule is found in the heart of man; it abides there naturally as the product of an ancient social need.
It is that social need that produces "divine revelation." God is an invention predicated on the social requirements of a very complex being. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was a product of human creative thought. The perfection of god is a testimony to the remarkable genius of the mind of man and not the other way around. The idea of god indicates the great and unlimited potential we as human beings might achieve.
I have to agree that the great problem with this thread is its lack of specific definitions.Also there needs to be a distinction between the notion of a present deity, active in the lives of humanity, and a final term or force indifferent and unknowing.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jan 12, 2010 - 11:18pm PT
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Dr. F.-
If the average human being had no concept of a God they would go on living their lives at the level of animals, wasting their big brains and wondering why their lives were so meaningless. They would compensate if they were males by gratuitous violence and if females by making themselves attractive to the most violent males for protection, getting beaten up and raped a few times along the way. Everyone would take a lot of drugs to get through the day.
Their desire for something greater than themselves would be projected onto other human beings who would then gain political power at the expense of everyone, but if they were good looking, successful, and owned a lot of material goods, they would be excused anyway.The average human without God to inspire them and an ideal to strive to be the best possible human, trusting that there is some justice somewhere in this universe, ends up worshipping other human beings, ranging from steroid pumped athletes to mindless movie stars to dictators. Such a person would behave in other words, pretty much like the average secular bozo today.
While the educated elite of modern societies can construct a middle class existence without God or meaning other than just surviving 80 years on a planet in the middle of nowhere, avoiding of course past mistakes with secular experimentation like Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, and only taking some drugs but not too many, constructing their meaning around their careers and professional advancement, at least until they reach retirement age, the average Joe Schmoe can't do that, let alone the 70% of the people on this planet who live in Third World conditions.
And of course, there's always the possibility that there might be something else.........
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jan 12, 2010 - 11:23pm PT
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Meanwhile we are being told by one of the educated elite on this forum that he lost his faith in karma because of George Bush? Seems to me to just illustrate the idea that once you give up on imagining the best there could be, you sink to the level of the lowest common denominator.
And clearly you don't understand karma if you think that it operates only during one's present lifetime. Karma is the law of cause and effect. It operates whether you believe in it or not, and with or without a belief in God.
Blame the ignorant voters for George Bush, not God or karma, though the karmic results of his presidency will be felt for several generations for sure.
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jstan
climber
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Jan 13, 2010 - 12:10am PT
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Dr. F:
Why did we invent gods? The question has to have had eons of thought applied by truly excellent minds. Personally, I don’t know.
Whether correct or not let me posit that somehow we are genetically (xxxxxxx designedxxxxxx) evolved to expect that rationality guides events. Just a flaw in the way our brains evolved. When we see rationality not providing this guidance to events we look for an escape. An unknowable plan formed by a god? A couple of examples of irrationality.
The Civil War
Southern slave owners owned several billions of dollars of property they were not willing to lose. And they did not know how they were to continue dominating the economy and maintain their status in the absence of cheap labor. They felt threatened. A false issue, states rights, was ginned up and it was used to cause anger among the general populace sufficient to support a state of war, any thoughtful analyst could have told them was hopeless. The general populace was willing to go out and die for no benefit to themselves. When the war was over the slave owners merely created the Jim Crow economy that still gave them the cheap labor for 100 years. It was even cheaper in that they did not have to invest capital to buy the slaves. They were simply there as a self renewing resource. It turns out there was never any need for the war at all as far as the slave owners were concerned.
The Iraq War
An important portion of the US position in the world over the last 100 years issued from our access to cheap oil. The oil companies know better than anyone their present sources are nearing depletion. The oil companies went to Dick Cheney and said america as we know it needs for US oil companies to control oil and to be able to make outsized profit from its exploitation. Ergo, we need Iraq’s oil. Anyone could have told Cheney you can’t profitably pump oil in a countryside beset by guerrilla activity. Without a peacetime draft Cheney, who is no dummy, had to know going in was pointless. But we went. Would you believe Mobil Exxon just signed a 50 billion dollar contract to develop Iraqi oil? Mobil got the oil anyway. There really was no reason I can see for the war. At the worst they might have had to buy Saddam off for a hundred billion. Involve the CIA and they could even have got the taxpayers to front the 100 billion.
I have not heard it but I am sure there are at least a few out there who believe the Iraq War was god’s will. Remarkably few actually, so perhaps we might be encouraged.
To a degree I think our problem is that our genectic evolution has not kept pace with our social evolution. When facing a grizzly bear we use anger to overcome our desire to live. There’s no other way one can tackle a 600 pound bear with only a pen knife. You can see it all around us. If you can get people angry you then own them. They are yours to do with as you please.
The correction? Never get angry. Why would you hand control of yourself over to someone with whom you are in serious disagreement? I mean……I mean………. Holy shyte!
We can’t wait for evolution. That’s clear. If we ascribe so much importance to rationality, we have to assume there is rationality out there. So let’s go back to the basics, the golden rule, and apply it with judgment. Judgment gets us past cintune’s Abilene Paradox, I would hope. There was good thought during the Aramaic period. Let’s pick the best and start over. Christ thought some of that thought was good.
Are we really that ready to say Christ was a dufus?
Life is like a rock climb. You hitch up your socks
and try.
Very nice Paul.
Edit:
When I refer to the Golden Rule i am referring to the antecedent of the rule stated in modern times. Hillel's statement is in the negative.
One does NOT do those things one would NOT choose to have others do to you.
Give me a minute And I will go pull up the correct text.
Interestingly, wikipedia refers to statements that date from 2000 years before christ, during Egypt's Middle Kingdom:
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Ancient Egypt
An early example of the Golden Rule that reflects the Ancient Egyptian concept of Maat appears in the story of The Eloquent Peasant which is dated to the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040 - 1650 BCE): "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do".[5] An example from a Late Period (c. 1080 - 332 BCE) papyrus: "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another".[6] It also appears in the Book of the Dead (1580-1350 BCE): "He sought for others the good he desired for himself. Let him pass."[citation needed]
ex Wikipedia
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Hillel lived at christ's time and perhaps might have been an elder influence upon him.
The Golden Rule in its various forms evolved during the times humans were ceasing to be simple hunter gatherers.
More advanced societies were forming and this guidance for conducting those societies was apparently seen as the key very early on.
Our egos are far too large, our memories far too short.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 13, 2010 - 12:17am PT
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With all its pathetic faults, humanity does aspire to the best it can be in spite of the obstacles presented by the necessity of survival. The invention of god, like the development of the wheel, stands as a great human achievement.
A greater achievement will be humanity's separation from that invention, when we as human beings are finally able to stand alone in the unthinkable space of our existence and declare the greatness of our potential and make that potential a practical fact.
It is unfortunate, difficult and uncomfortable but "god" stands in the way of humanity's potential, its greatest triumph.
All religion describes nature and existence as cursed or sorrowful, man as fallible and sinful.
All religion places the blame for evil on the acts of man.
How incredibly strange and hard to believe!
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jan 13, 2010 - 12:39am PT
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There are so many things that stand in the way of human advancement right now, ideas of God hardly seem the problem. Human overpopulation and ecological destruction for example, would seem to be much more of a threat.
As for all religions seeing life as suffering and humans as evil, that's a western idea. Hinduism, Buddism, Confucianism, and Taoism all see humans as basically good and when they do evil, it is out of ignorance rather than sin.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jan 13, 2010 - 01:03am PT
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Meanwhile, after pondering jstan's idea that humans are somehow genetically programmed to believe in cause and effect, my immediate reaction was to say no. What is rational about society in Nepal after all? Then after more thought I had to laugh and admit he's right. Here are some examples.
Every person from a modern society who goes to Nepal is horrified at the lack of sanitation and the terrible health problems that ensue. Those of us who have worked in foreign aid there have many times despaired at how the Nepalese can spin elaborate cause and effect conspiracies theories about political events, but can not seem to get the connection between germs and illness. The mountain gods are angry,we're being attacked by a ghost, we started our trip on the wrong day of the week - that's why we have a stomach ache after all. It has nothing to do with sanitation.
I began to understand a bit of the problem the day I overheard my cook telling a Nepali visitor. "Hindus can't eat beef, Muslims can't eat pork, and Christians can only drink boiled water". Then when we all had amoebas again, I hired a boy to do nothing but haul and boil water and spy on the cook. I offered a month's bonus if he could catch the cook using unboiled water which finally he did. The cook protested loudly. "You told me to boil the water, you told me to boil the tea, you told me to boil the milk. You never told me to boil the water that I put in the powdered milk that I put in the tea".
Assuring him and others numerous times that there was invisible bad stuff in the water that instruments in my country could see, that I personally had seen, I got back the reply that "In our country we have shamans who can see the invisible spirits that cause illness. We don't have your instruments, but we have our shamans, so we believe spirits are the problem".
The Sherpas of course always operate at a higher level. "Of course they told me, if you go to the toilet near the water, the serpent spirits who live there (naga) get angry and make people sick, so we don't make dirty near the water".
"Excellent said I, good enough".
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 13, 2010 - 01:21am PT
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The Buddha said, "All life is sorrowful." His gift is the ability to escape birth into this world!
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jan 13, 2010 - 02:00am PT
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Buddha's real gift was to show the way out of suffering while in this very life and body.
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MH2
climber
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Jan 13, 2010 - 03:44am PT
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Gobee states:
God is not locked into time and space like we are
But can He affect our time and space?
Do you think He can change anything in this time and space?
If He can, is He restricted to changing the present, or possibly the future, or can He also change the past?
A Native American yesterday on the radio said that "the white man" sees time as a river down which he travels, as the landscape, the world, moves past. But in the Blackfoot culture, which I think he was talking about, it is believed that a person can walk up and down alongside the river and visit the past or the future.
This caused Thomas Acquinas a bit of trouble because he also claimed that God was not a prisoner of time, but that although God could affect the present or the future, He could not change the past. Why an all-powerful Being Who stands outside of time would be able to change the future but not the past was unclear.
A favorite example of wishful thinking is Spider Robinson's Lifehouse, in which Google really does take off and join us all into a collective consciousness powerful enough and compassionate enough to go back into the past and collect the minds of people as they die so that they don't miss out on the future.
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