X-Ftn-To: George Hammond 

George Hammond  wrote:
>> George Hammond  wrote:
>> >        Pre scientific "definition" of God
>> >
>> >      God is defined as an invisible old man living
>> >      on a cloud in the sky who rules the World,
>> >      rewards the good and punishes the wicked, and
>> >      determines the fate and destiny of Man.
>> 
>> Actually, this type of definition isn't used in theology for several
>> thousands of years.
>
>[Hammond]
>The above is the most common perception of "God" in the Western World,
>and I daresay in most of the world.  

Actually, this is one of the most common misconceptions, and it deters
all the intelligent people from the sphere of religion, and makes them
declare themselves as deists, atheists, agnostics or similar. This
trivial, ignorant concept, invented by the theologically uneducated
rednecks, causes most hostility towards God, from people who would
otherwise fall in love with Him. 

>The American Indians for
>instance (in all of the Cowboy movies I've seen) typically referred
>to God as "The Great Sky Chief".  

If you were reading books instead of watching stupid movies, you would
understand that the native Americans had a concept of God as the
all-pervading Spirit, which gives life to all beings. They called Him
"The Great Spirit", and they noticed the spiritual aspects of the
world constantly, as signs from Him. See:
http://www.barefootsworld.net/seattle.html

The old man in the sky concept should be outgrown by anybody older
than 7; I personally use this concept to mock primitive theological
concepts, but I hardly expected to find someone who actually believes
in something like that, especially on the Net.

>We are not here talking about
>"learned" or "scholarly" or "academic" discussions of
>God, we are talking about the common picture of "God" that
>is held by billions of lay people and even by youngsters.

Why not eat shit, then? Billions of flies can't be wrong.
People have a wrong concept of God, and this ignorance is the cause of
their problems; they feel that there is "something", but it can't be
"God", because God is a primitive thing that the idiots believe in. I
am aware that there are thousands of protestant Christian churches in
America, but I'm also aware that most of them wouldn't encourage or
provide a study of theology, since they think that they already know
everything there is to know. This is why people have ignorant and
primitive concepts of God, and why I know several intelligent
Americans who wouldn't touch Christianity with a ten foot pole; they
rather declare themselves as pagans or whatever.

>> Ancient Greeks defined God as the Logos, the
>> sentient principle transcendental to causation - you can see the
>> reminiscences of this definition in the preface of John's gospel.
>> Hindus _never_ defined God as an "invisible old man"; different sects
>> have different definitions, for instance:
>> 
>> God is the omnipotent, transcendental, omniscient person, whose
>> consciousness is the fullness of existence-consciousness-bliss.
>> (dvaita according to Madhva and more-less Ramanuja)
>
>[Hammond]
>No kidding?  Well, so much for the Hindu's... they apparently
>believe the same thing as the Christians, i.e.. that
>God is a "..transcendental, omniscient person".  

:))) Yes, but since you have no education in philosophy, you are
unable to grasp the meaning of that phrase.

To be transcendental, means not to have any part of his essence within
the world, it means that God is in no part given in the world.
To be omniscient, means to have simultaneous knowledge of everything.
To be a person, means to have a sentient and self-aware nature.

So, this means that God isn't a law of the universe, or a field like
gravity or whatever, that he's not a blind force, but a conscious,
aware being, and that his essence is independent from the essence of
the world, although he is perfectly aware of the world in all its
aspects. 

Lacking knowledge, you are unable to properly read philosophical
definitions, because you use colloquial English, which is useless in
that respect. When I say "person", you create an antropomorphic image
within your mind, which is a sad mistake. 

>This, put into
>lay Christian language translates into "an invisible old man
>living in the sky who rules the world"... that's plain enough
>to me.

This seems this way to you because you are an uneducated fool without
a philosophical mental apparatus.

>  The real question I have is what the Buddhists think god is?

They aren't concerned with God at all; they say that if there is God,
we're not likely to know him the way we are now, deluded and attached
to the illusory. And when we manage to remedy that, the question will
again be meaningless, because we will realize what really is, and not
form intellectual concepts about it. Regarding the goal, Buddha says
that it is impossible for our mind to conceive; Nirvana cannot be
defined either positively or negatively, because it doesn't belong to
the sphere in which our minds function.

>snip
>
>> In all of those philosophies, human soul and God are of the same
>> quality: spiritual and transcendental.
>
>[Hammond]
>Yes.. that is confirmed by the SPOG.  The ungrown (latent) fraction
>of the brain (called the UNCS-Mind BTW) is in fact the "Soul" of
>Man, and furthermore it is "God in Heaven" also.

:)))))))))
If it is in the brain, it is material, not transcendental. It is
physical, not spiritual. Please, take some philosophical dictionary
and read, writing constant explanations to you is a bit tiresome.
Understand this: your misconceptions will immediately disqualify you
in any discussion about religion; at least if you try to talk to
religious philosophers, and not with the rednecks in some swamp. You
are a desperate guy who was in deep depression because you understood
that your life was meaningless and trivial, that everything passed you
by and that you are just a loser who didn't achieve anything worthy in
his life. And, when you stumbled upon some interesting correlations,
your ignorance and lack of wider education made you come to a mistaken
conclusion that this proves God. Now, if you were an established
personality, sure of yourself and with nothing to prove, you would
take an encyclopaedia and make a query about God. You would go to the
web and make a couple of searches, go to the library and read some
books. You would then see that it apparently has nothing to do with
God, shrug, get back to the maths of it, explore the correlation and
publish an article about it somewhere, and somebody might actually
have found it useful.
However, being insecure and with low self-esteem, you liked to think
that you discovered the proof of God. After all, nobody else
apparently managed that. Not Einstein, not Thomas Aquinus, not
Aristoteles, but Hammond did it! You are no longer a meaningless
loser, your life is no longer a failure, you have a purpose, something
you always knew to be true, you always knew you have the potential and
that you can do something of importance. Nothing will stand in your
way now, and you will bring the world to its knees before you, and you
will finally feel that you're worth something. And now, that you
understand that there really isn't anyone who could even understand
your profound thoughts, you will probably leave us to our stupidity
and spend the remaining part of your life knowing that you, of all
people, are the only one who made a proof of God's existence, that is
understandable only to him, and accepted only by him. But, the true
genius is seldom understood. :)

>> There is not a single religious
>> or philosophical system in the world, omitting Marxism, solipsism and
>> Freudian psychoanalysis, that would define God as an aspect or a
>> product of a man's functioning or existence;
>
>[Hammond]
>This confusion on your part stems from the fact that you
>think that simply saying that the "brain creates reality"

Brain creates an image of the reality. Understand that. The brain
processes the sensory inputs and creates a virtual reality within the
mind. Your analogy with the gravity is correct: the presence of mass
bends the timespace and creates the phenomenon of gravity. Also, the
increase in brain size creates the result of greater awareness and
mental capacity, the ability to understand the world. The bigger the
mass, the bigger the gravity; the bigger the brain, the bigger the
understanding. I would also guess that the graphs of the functions
might look similar, which would suggest that intelligence is subject
to the same maths as the physical laws. But this is as far as this
goes. If you want more, you'll need to join the teams that study the
bio-morpho-genic fields; they explore the learning curves in rats and
apes and they came to the astounding revelations, that could give a
whole new light to the matters of evolution. For instance, they make a
standardized labyrinth and teach the rats to go through it. When a
critical mass of rats learns the labyrinth, suddenly rats in the whole
world learn to pass this standardized labyrinth faster, with fewer
mistakes. When enough beings learn something and it proves useful,
this ability suddenly becomes the standard feature of the species.
Apparently, this is how the evolution works, and _this_ is the
bleeding edge of science. If you want to be useful, join them.

>[Hammond]
>Subjectively yes, objectively no.  Fact is, if all men died
>tomorrow, the Universe as we know it, by definition, would
>no longer exist.  

This is true. The universe, as _we_ know it, would no longer exists,
because _we_ wouldn't know it. However, the universe "as we know it"
is a product of human mind. The universe, as it really is, wouldn't be
a bit troubled after our disappearance.

>i don't know why you can't figure that
>out..... that is the nexus of the argument between Science
>and Religion.  

Yes, and it's called a logical fallacy.

>> A buddhist doesn't think that the world is an illusion that
>> exists only within a man's mind,
>
>[Hammond]
>I wouldn't be so hasty there.... I have a feeling that's
>EXACTLY what they believe... 

Yes, you have a feeling, and I've read their scriptures and understand
their philosophy, so I _know_ what they believe. Visit
http://www.buddhanet.org/

>and in fact, that's the same
>thing Christian's believe, although not many of them
>realize it.

Apparently, nobody realizes it but you. 

>> So, in buddhism, if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it,
>> it does make a sound. 
>
>[Hammond]
>Nope.  the Buddhists you must recall were the ones who brought this
>question up in the first place... 

Actually, this is a Western invention, and originates from the ancient
Greece.

>so that tells us they are
>intimating that there is some doubt about a tree making a noise when
>no one is there to hear it.  In fact, I believe that Buddhism holds
>that a falling tree in the forest DOES NOT make any "sound" if 
>there is no one there to hear it.

Actually, if you ask a Zen master, he'll tell you that even now, you
don't hear a thing because your mind is completely self-obsessed and
you see nothing of the reality. This, however, doesn't prevent the
others from being more objective, or the reality from existing.

>> However, bound by illusions, living in their
>> personal falsehood, people tend to think their personal illusion to be
>> the supreme reality
>
>[Hammond]
>No kiddin..... and it's not necessarily "falsehood".  If your
>brain is not as grown as someone else's or vice versa, you
>ARE living in two different realities.  

You mean, you are living in two different concepts of reality, or, two
different illusions, where one is thicker and the other is thinner?

>What do you think the number one human problem is?

Ignorance.

-- 
Homepage: http://www.danijel.org