Belief... or lack thereof

[pocaracas]

Also, “shall see God” does not mean seeing Him now, but in Heaven. I’m pretty sure you should know that. After all, the commentaries I have linked include “None but the pure are capable of seeing God, nor would heaven be happiness to the impure.”, “Shall see God. Not in his courts (Psalm 24.) on Mount Moriah, but above; and in one complete vision fully grasped (ὄψονται).”. And the meaning here is pretty clear even without commentaries - if, of course, one actually wants to understand and not to misunderstand…

So, we have multiple responses to something unrelated to the actual point, some “feigned ignorance”, even some insults (of Muhammad, but still…)… Presumably, they were only meant to be funny - but they are not. They are only boring and somewhat annoying, tiring. And, since the discussion doesn’t seem to progress much, and that by now atheism ended up looking pretty bad anyway, I guess we might as well end this discussion…

Thanks for confirming everything I thought.
No way to perceive God while alive.
All I wanted was to know how can someone arrive at the information that a God is there, without any prior human (name removed by moderator)ut, any prior indoctrination, any prior misunderstanding of a psychological flaw or neuron misfiring or brain chemical imbalance. No prior advanced scientific insight into Nature… just basic plain human senses - sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch… just like it would have happened some 10k+ years ago.
PR showed that verse… and now you say it refers to “seeing God after death”… well, woopty doo… and you accuse me of answering your questions with something unrelated…
Perhaps, I’m answering them with some things that have more info into them than I let out… perhaps some have less info into them…
Perhaps I’ve exaggerated on a few small details… but the things that matter? those stand… just as I can’t prove for certain that people who claim to see God are just having some brain wave gone awry, thus far, no one has shown me that this is less likely than “God was actually there and did that”.
And what I’ve seen happen is you and PR systematically trying to discredit some details of how I present some things, while never even aiming at the elephant in the room - one which I’ve mentioned far more than once - the brain works in mysterious ways… and is likely the origin of all godly interactions ever to have graced humankind - whether by brain glitch, or purposeful manufacture—which are the same mechanisms by which imaginary friends come about… funny that, huh?

BTW, Mo is short for Mohamed, just like JC is short for Jesus Christ, just like PR is short for PRmerger and poca is short for pocaracas… insult is not meant… but you took it anyway… I won’t even try to guess why.
I have no need to pay deference to someone’s name. Muslims, every time I see them use Mo’s name, they follow it with “peace be upon him”, or they can shorten it to “pbuh”… do you think I should do the same, just so I don’t insult any muslim?
It’s just a name. I was referring to the man and you understood which man. That’s what communication is all about. And in a medium where the characters are counted, one does try to save a few here and there, while retaining the meaning.
And you decided to be insulted…

Atheism is looking bad, huh?
Atheism is the position of not accepting anything theism brings forth. If there was no theism, there would be no atheism. Just like there’s no afaerism, nor apegasusism, nor aunicornism, nor adragonism, etc, etc…
If theism was to bring forth anything worth mentioning, and you would have done so on page one, then it would have made for some more productive conversation (from your point of view) as I would have probably been swayed towards it.
As it stands… meh. “you can see God after you die”… well, talk about anti-climatic.
I thought you guys were having a moment with that metaphysics thing, but then… no way to go from “unmoved mover” to God, without assuming God… nor from space-time continuity to God, nor causality to God. Again, a failure to follow through. Many fancy words are provided by that Feser guy you linked (no insult intended, just lack of memory to provide his job or credentials)… but none manage to provide a proper bridging from those metaphysical properties to a God. The properties stand unexplained. They may be axiomatic, they may have some underlying cause which we are not aware of, they may have been caused by some conscious entity, etc. But to postulate a God as the only possible answer shows only how the flawed brain works under our society - “no human has come up with a better solution, so let’s stick with this fantastical entity”… no thought given to how can such a complex entity exist…metaphysics stops just before the pre-arranged answer gets the meta-treatment… and then that entity gets the axiomatic treatment, thus preventing any such meta-treatment… convenient, huh?

Theism…
If that makes you a better person towards your fellow humans, then so much for the better… by all means, retain that conviction - the world needs people like that.
But if you just want to please the big guy so you can get a chance at standing next to him, then… you’d be providing a sad excuse to believe… one of self-interest… not at all what Aloysium was talking about earlier.

 

[Nixbits]

As an aside (and partly to keep the discussion going, because I’m enjoying it), the disagreement between Pocacaras and PRmerger about what is meant by ‘a clean heart’ touches on an interesting point (to me, at least).

Some theists use phrases such as “I feel it in my heart” and “I have a spiritual feeling” that some others, myself included, simply don’t understand. When we make objections, such as “My heart just pumps blood, it does no ‘feeling’.” the theists can assume that we’re being deliberately pedantic or needlessly contentious. But it’s (often) actually a genuine failure to understand what the speaker means.

It doesn’t help at all if the theist just refuses to continue the discussion. What is needed is an attempt to explain what these phrases actually mean. On the occasions when this has happened to me, it sometimes becomes clear that the speaker doesn’t really know what they mean. Personally, I hate woolly thinking and it’s very annoying when people use received phrases that they’ve given no thought to. On other occasions, it transpires that the two people in the conversation have very different frames of reference. Discovering that can be the start of better understanding.

 

[You]

As an aside (and partly to keep the discussion going, because I’m enjoying it), the disagreement between Pocacaras and PRmerger about what is meant by ‘a clean heart’ touches on an interesting point (to me, at least).

Some theists use phrases such as “I feel it in my heart” and “I have a spiritual feeling” that some others, myself included, simply don’t understand. When we make objections, such as “My heart just pumps blood, it does no ‘feeling’.” the theists can assume that we’re being deliberately pedantic or needlessly contentious. But it’s (often) actually a genuine failure to understand what the speaker means.

It doesn’t help at all if the theist just refuses to continue the discussion. What is needed is an attempt to explain what these phrases actually mean. On the occasions when this has happened to me, it sometimes becomes clear that the speaker doesn’t really know what they mean. Personally, I hate woolly thinking and it’s very annoying when people use received phrases that they’ve given no thought to. On other occasions, it transpires that the two people in the conversation have very different frames of reference. Discovering that can be the start of better understanding.

your heart is your person. you love your sweety with all your heart. you will not tell her “i don’t understand what you mean, my heart just pumps blood.”
your heart is drawn to your treasure, be that your sweety, your God or your money.

 

[pocaracas]

your heart is your person. you love your sweety with all your heart. you will not tell her “i don’t understand what you mean, my heart just pumps blood.”
your heart is drawn to your treasure, be that your sweety, your God or your money.

But when someone tells you that you need a clean heart to see your sweety, suddenly, the metaphor seems to break.
Physics comes into play… which renders the “clean heart” thing to be better defined.

Clean heart… heart = person… clean person… right, not what you meant, is it?
Clean personality, perhaps?.. clean, as in no criminal record, even in that person’s memory, or desires. That applies to many of us and yet… no God in sight… ah but MPat said “after death”… well, bollocks!

 

[Aloysium]

But when someone tells you that you need a clean heart to see your sweety, suddenly, the metaphor seems to break.
Physics comes into play… which renders the “clean heart” thing to be better defined.

Clean heart… heart = person… clean person… right, not what you meant, is it?
Clean personality, perhaps?.. clean, as in no criminal record, even in that person’s memory, or desires. That applies to many of us and yet… no God in sight… ah but MPat said “after death”… well, bollocks!

Hmm . . . Although I would qualify, one of the reasons I’m not on medical marijuana is that I don’t want to end up sounding like this. Sorry, if this is the best you can do.
Well, unusual statements are deserving of unusual replies.
It may be a matter of physics, but the physics that explains how atoms such as carbon, calcium, hydrogen, oxygen and such are put together, is superseded by those of chemistry if one is attempting to understand the physical workings of the human heart. Still insufficient, one would have to go further and try to describe the formation of molecules such as water and the proteins that are involved in cellular structure and function. Biochemical understandings give way to biology as we leave the small to grasp what are larger forms in nature. With regards to myocardial cells, of interest is that they spontaneously pulsate, contracting and releasing at their particular rate. And, when they touch, they beat at the same rhythm. No wonder every culture speaks about the heart as a symbol for love - the heart chakra for example. This without knowing anything about cardiophysiology. What are feelings and thoughts biochemically? How do we know? How do we connect? Who is it that feels, thinks and loves? And, how does this all fit together as we participate in societies with their laws and customs and within the greater universe and the Ground of its being?
God is Love. It is through that love, which Is the Triune Godhead that all creation comes into being. He has entered into His creation that it might be brought into eternal communion with the Trinity. That’s how it is, the overview. Make of it what you will. If you do not love, you do not know love. He is the transcendent eternal power within all things and beyond all else that is transient, illusory and ultimately unfulfilling. He is the Source of the love that we have for one another and especially for Love itself.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Some theists use phrases such as “I feel it in my heart” and “I have a spiritual feeling” that some others, myself included, simply don’t understand. When we make objections, such as “My heart just pumps blood, it does no ‘feeling’.” the theists can assume that we’re being deliberately pedantic or needlessly contentious. But it’s (often) actually a genuine failure to understand what the speaker means.

It doesn’t help at all if the theist just refuses to continue the discussion. What is needed is an attempt to explain what these phrases actually mean.

I’d agree. I’ve encountered this with other phrases; not necessarily a refusal to continue the discussion, but a refusal to explain what is mean by some word, phrase, or idiom. At times when I have gotten an explanation of what is meant I’ve found that groups of people that agreed with a certain phrase don’t necessarily agree with some interpretation of that phrase. Sometimes a person will drift from one usage/meaning/sense of a phrase to another. From what I can tell the person doesn’t always realize that they’ve done this

 

[ThinkingSapien]

And, when they touch, they beat at the same rhythm. No wonder every culture speaks about the heart as a symbol for love - the heart chakra for example. This without knowing anything about cardiophysiology.

To the best of my understanding the association between one’s literal heart and emotions is from the common experience of changes in the patterns of one’s heart beat that frequently happen with changes in emotional state without any reference to the levels of abstraction that you had mentioned. There were those that thought the heart was the seat of the mind. While this belief doesn’t largely persist today statements that had been thought to be literal still survive today cast as idioms and metaphors.

 

[You]

But when someone tells you that you need a clean heart to see your sweety, suddenly, the metaphor seems to break.
Physics comes into play… which renders the “clean heart” thing to be better defined.

Clean heart… heart = person… clean person… right, not what you meant, is it?
Clean personality, perhaps?.. clean, as in no criminal record, even in that person’s memory, or desires. That applies to many of us and yet… no God in sight… ah but MPat said “after death”… well, bollocks!

clean person or heart of a person is one whose heart is not divided. like you cannot serve God and mammon.

 

[Nixbits]

You:

your heart is your person. you love your sweety with all your heart. you will not tell her “i don’t understand what you mean, my heart just pumps blood.”
your heart is drawn to your treasure, be that your sweety, your God or your money.

This is an example of what I was talking about. I don’t know what you mean by “Your heart is your person.” To me, those things are distinct and different. My personhood is not synonymous with my heart.

I might tell my partner I love him with all my heart, but only because he would understand the meaning of the idiom. If I wasn’t sure that he’d understand then I wouldn’t say it.

As for my ‘heart being drawn to my treasure’, again I don’t really know what you mean. Do you mean that my emotions will lead me to try to attain those things that I desire?

Idioms are fine if everyone has the same understanding of them. When we’re holding detailed discussions from differing viewpoints, as we do on this forum, then idioms can often get in the way.

 

[pocaracas]

Hmm . . . Although I would qualify, one of the reasons I’m not on medical marijuana is that I don’t want to end up sounding like this. Sorry, if this is the best you can do.
Well, unusual statements are deserving of unusual replies.

Once in a while, we need to shake, not stir, the pot and produce some unusual things…

It may be a matter of physics, but the physics that explains how atoms such as carbon, calcium, hydrogen, oxygen and such are put together, is superseded by those of chemistry if one is attempting to understand the physical workings of the human heart. Still insufficient, one would have to go further and try to describe the formation of molecules such as water and the proteins that are involved in cellular structure and function. Biochemical understandings give way to biology as we leave the small to grasp what are larger forms in nature. With regards to myocardial cells, of interest is that they spontaneously pulsate, contracting and releasing at their particular rate. And, when they touch, they beat at the same rhythm. No wonder every culture speaks about the heart as a symbol for love - the heart chakra for example. This without knowing anything about cardiophysiology. What are feelings and thoughts biochemically? How do we know? How do we connect? Who is it that feels, thinks and loves? And, how does this all fit together as we participate in societies with their laws and customs and within the greater universe and the Ground of its being?
God is Love. It is through that love, which Is the Triune Godhead that all creation comes into being. He has entered into His creation that it might be brought into eternal communion with the Trinity. That’s how it is, the overview. Make of it what you will. If you do not love, you do not know love. He is the transcendent eternal power within all things and beyond all else that is transient, illusory and ultimately unfulfilling. He is the Source of the love that we have for one another and especially for Love itself.

So, God is love… Love, the emotion, is God… What is an emotion like love? Some biochemical, neurological condition? So God is a neurological condition? I agree!

It is through that love, that emotion, that all creation comes into being?! But the emotion requires the human brain substrate (perhaps not confined to humans)… and the human brain came well after everything else was around… so… how can the cause of everything be something that comes about after everything has been caused?

What are feelings and thoughts biochemically? How do we know? How do we connect? Who is it that feels, thinks and loves? And, how does this all fit together as we participate in societies with their laws and customs and within the greater universe and the Ground of its being?

These here are some great questions.
Very broad in scope and impossible to accurately answer, given that, even among scientists of the respective fields, they are still open, unanswered.
That doesn’t mean that they are unanswerable… just tricky to arrive at an answer without killing someone… and when you kill the subject being studied, you lose verifiability…

It is known that certain broad patterns of electro-biochemical events in the brain can be cataloged as particular emotions or thoughts, or memory recall. But it’s tricky to probe every single neuron and every single signal that they all send out and receive… and even if that was possible, we’d still need to decode how those signals represent anything… much like we’d have to do, if we knew nothing of computer programming, but wanted to figure out how a computer works in order to present us with the Windows Operating System, running a firefox window, playing a youtube video of cats fighting like ninjas, from the basic measurements of electron flows in those tiny tiny transistors inside present day (16um) microprocessors.

“Who is it that feels, thinks and loves?” the individual, I’d say… the individual being with his/her body, of which the brain is a part. That is the “who”. Now the “What” comes from the answers to the previous questions.

Societies have been built up by individuals who have developed a shared sense of how to behave in such a way that the society survives… for it is acknowledged, by most, that life in society is far easier, healthier, and more productive, than life as a solitary being. Laws and customs would have been imposed by society itself, by the collection of individuals, as a protection against those individuals who do not share the same common goal of having that society survive, or that would exploit the society for their sole benefit.

The Greater Universe is huge… the Grounds of its being are unknown… It is. Space-time is. If there is some underlying structure sustaining space-time, we cannot tell. Should we make one up, just to be content? Should we assume that there is one, just to pacify the philosophers? Could it be that there’s nothing there and space-time is the most underlying thing there is?

 

[pocaracas]

clean person or heart of a person is one whose heart is not divided. like you cannot serve God and mammon.

But you can serve your family, like most people do, right? Like I do.
It’s not divided. And yet… I see nothing of any God.

 

[You]

This is an example of what I was talking about. I don’t know what you mean by “Your heart is your person.” To me, those things are distinct and different. My personhood is not synonymous with my heart.

I might tell my partner I love him with all my heart, but only because he would understand the meaning of the idiom. If I wasn’t sure that he’d understand then I wouldn’t say it.

As for my ‘heart being drawn to my treasure’, again I don’t really know what you mean. Do you mean that my emotions will lead me to try to attain those things that I desire?

Idioms are fine if everyone has the same understanding of them. When we’re holding detailed discussions from differing viewpoints, as we do on this forum, then idioms can often get in the way.

its not an idiom. that was why i explained it. your heart is drawn to your treasure. even i can understand that.

 

[You]

But you can serve your family, like most people do, right? Like I do.
It’s not divided. And yet… I see nothing of any God.

serve your family and your mistress and then ask her for her response to that. you cannot serve two masters, your heart is with your treasure. or it is divided and you will be cast out/aside by your [former] sweety.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . So, God is love… Love, the emotion, is God… What is an emotion like love? Some biochemical, neurological condition? So God is a neurological condition? I agree! . . . the human brain came well after everything else was around… so… how can the cause of everything be something that comes about after everything has been caused? . . . Could it be that there’s nothing there and space-time is the most underlying thing there is?

You are agreeing with something I did not mean.

We are 100% physical beings, existing as participants in a material world.
While we are like billiard balls, physically reacting to what is around us, we primarily exist in relation to things.
We are individual persons relating to the rest. We communicate, give and take.

Outside of everything, is what is true, beautiful, compassionately knowing, the Source of all creation.
Everything comes into being by means of a supreme eternal Act giving rise to each and every moment, each and every person, each and every space and time.
Being is given to all that exists by Being itself.
That Being is transcendent, beyond us - three Divine Persons in an eternal act of love.

When we love, we feel good, and therefore, as a physical-spiritual unity, there are all sorts of endorphins, and other neaurotransmitters: serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc moving between nerve cells reflecting those feelings.
Neither the physical chemical reaction or the emotion are God, they are related to our thoughts and feelings about God.

God brings the entire universe into being in this and every moment from outside of the time He creates.
Space-time may be thought of as the container for matter, matter which affects its various manifestations in interactions that involve billions of years and light-years, making this specific moment (I mean right now.) real only insofar as there exists a soul to perceive it as such.
Of course we are not bringing ourselves into existence, so we should include He who is doing so.
Were we to detach ourselves as observers of the universe, and conceive of what it might be in itself, we might consider that underneath(?), outside(?) (I’m not sure what the word would be), space-time and everything it envelops, there are the constants, the laws, the principles related to the multitude of phenomena that we experience.
Maybe they are primary, giving rise to all that is; maybe they are simply inherent in what is, defining its nature, maybe both.
Ultimately, it all comes into being, here, now and everywhere, eternally. Behind it all, Guess Who?

 

[pocaracas]

serve your family and your mistress and then ask her for her response to that. you cannot serve two masters, your heart is with your treasure. or it is divided and you will be cast out/aside by your [former] sweety.

There is no mistress, only family.

 

[You]

There is no mistress, only family.

so there you are, your heart is not divided.

 

[pocaracas]

You are agreeing with something I did not mean.

We are 100% physical beings, existing as participants in a material world.
While we are like billiard balls, physically reacting to what is around us, we primarily exist in relation to things.
We are individual persons relating to the rest. We communicate, give and take.

Outside of everything, is what is true, beautiful, compassionately knowing, the Source of all creation.
Everything comes into being by means of a supreme eternal Act giving rise to each and every moment, each and every person, each and every space and time.
Being is given to all that exists by Being itself.
That Being is transcendent, beyond us - three Divine Persons in an eternal act of love.

When we love, we feel good, and therefore, as a physical-spiritual unity, there are all sorts of endorphins, and other neaurotransmitters: serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc moving between nerve cells reflecting those feelings.
Neither the physical chemical reaction or the emotion are God, they are related to our thoughts and feelings about God.

God brings the entire universe into being in this and every moment from outside of the time He creates.
Space-time may be thought of as the container for matter, matter which affects its various manifestations in interactions that involve billions of years and light-years, making this specific moment (I mean right now.) real only insofar as there exists a soul to perceive it as such.
Of course we are not bringing ourselves into existence, so we should include He who is doing so.
Were we to detach ourselves as observers of the universe, and conceive of what it might be in itself, we might consider that underneath(?), outside(?) (I’m not sure what the word would be), space-time and everything it envelops, there are the constants, the laws, the principles related to the multitude of phenomena that we experience.
Maybe they are primary, giving rise to all that is; maybe they are simply inherent in what is, defining its nature, maybe both.
Ultimately, it all comes into being, here, now and everywhere, eternally. Behind it all, Guess Who?

If God does all that, then… God is not Love. God is something else…

 

[pocaracas]

so there you are, your heart is not divided.

Then where is God for me to see, as promised in the rule-book?

 

[pocaracas]

You are aware that that gets us nowhere, right?
I am that I am, too.
You are that you are.
We all are that we are!
A rock is that it is.

 

[You]

Then where is God for me to see, as promised in the rule-book?

don’t think this is complicated, it is meant for children to understand. if you want to see just want to see with all your heart and you will.