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rossum
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This is an obvious contradiction. God causes life, and God is already alive. You can have one or the other, not both.
There is obviously a difference. I do not accept a categorical difference.
rossum
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rossum
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We agree that the Abrahamic God did not create Himself, and hence He cannot have created the first life – Himself. At most He can only have created the second and subsequent living things after Himself.
In Buddhism all gods are part of the universe, the Abrahamic God included. The Brahmajala sutta, Digha Nikaya 1 applies. Hinduism differs, obviously, but I am not Hindu.
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rossum
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Some in this thread are attempting something on those lines by splitting the definition of “living” into two parts: god-living and material-living, which excludes God from the material-living category.
I blame my signature on reading too much Nagarjuna.
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rossum
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If it is a fallacy, then it is in the Bible as well as in my posts. The Bible uses “living” to describe God.
Do angels and devils have “temporal physical parts”? Do they have souls? Are they alive? There are non-material living beings that are not gods in both Christianity and Buddhism.
This is irrelevant. My argument, as made in the OP, does not depend on the presence, or absence, of physical parts. Physical parts are irrelevant to the point I am making about the origin of life.
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rossum
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Consider: “The origin of life is explained by living aliens from Zargon 3”.
Is that a satisfactory explanation? Obviously not. You cannot explain the origin of life by starting with something that is already alive. You have to start with something that is not alive, and show how it starts the first living thing.
No, I am Buddhist (as it says at the top right of my posts). My scriptures have a lot more gods in them than yours.
My argument is that a living God cannot explain the origin of life precisely because He is already living. Only something that is not living can explain the origin of life; anything that is living must come after the origin, not before it.
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rossum
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hasantas
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Could you explain the origin of all things? Where from did all materials emerge?
Something which is part of universe cannot be god or divine! God is out of time and space.Otherwise there is no mean to call someting “god”. All spirituals, souls, angels, devils are in a kind form in different creations. God is the creator of everything.
God had informed Himself through scriptures and prophets. Torah, Bible or Qur’an are not merely writting of humanbeing. Those were revealed. There have been thousands of prophet who declared that the creator of universe is “one”. Prophets got those knowledges from Creator by an angel. The unity of universe point the uniqueness of Creator.
There is one point which nobody can explain and it is “where did God come from?”.
The life on the world do not come from inanimate materials.
Then the question/answer should be that “Nobody can explain the origin of God”.
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LethalMouse
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Now you know as well as I do, rejection cannot undo something
But I ask you this for philosophical purposes, hypothetically if there were a form of “life” so categorically different from anything we know or conceive could you admit it might be something along the lines of God? More so, could something so unknown to us not be origin?
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Lion_IRC
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hasantas
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Life of human and life of plants! Are both equal?
I cannot understand that “God causes life, and God is already alive. You can have one or the other, not both.” You mean as if life come from matter or energy? A man already has money so he cannot give money! Is that logical? God has life so God gives life. If God had not had life hence He would not be able to give life.
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1Lord1Faith
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How is this parable useful to you, or us for that matter, if we are discounting each others truths.
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Charlemagne_III
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So are your gods living as opposed to dead pagan gods?
How does Buddhism explain the origin of all living things if not by a living (existing) God?
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rossum
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No, I do not have enough knowledge to do so. All I need to know is what things exist here and now, and how they interact. The parable of the Man Shot with a Poisoned Arrow applies here.
Science specialises in the material. Hence, when dealing with the origin of the material I will look to science. For the origin of the material universe, that is cosmology.
That depends on how you define “universe”. God is indeed outside the space/time material universe of science. However, in philosophy, I define the universe as “All That Exists”. If any gods exist, then they are all part of the ATE universe. When dealing with the non-material parts of reality I use the ATE universe. If God exists, then He is included in the ATE universe.
So, you are saying the God is created? If God is not created, then He cannot have created Himself, obviously. At most He can have created everything except Himself. You are not the first to make this error.
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rossum
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If there is such a very different form of life, then it will only cause confusion if we continue to call it “life”. Better to use a different word, say: ‘tilisay’.
If we agree that tilisay causes ordinary life, then the questions in my OP becomes: “What is the origin of tilisay?” and “Can the Abrahamic God explain the origin of tilisay?”
Changing the word used might eliminate some confusion, but it does not answer the questions.
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rossum
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Can the living Zargonians be the cause of life? Of course not, because they are already alive.
Can the living God be the cause of life? Of course not, because He is already alive.
They are the cause of more life, not of the origin of life. See the thread title.
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rossum
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They have some similarities and some differences. Humans do not phosynthesise for instance.
Sorry for not being clearer. I am talking about the originof life. Since God is already alive, He cannot be the origin of life. It is impossible for Him to create the first living thing because He Himself is already alive. At best He can create the second living thing, not the first.
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rossum
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It tells us not to get too hung up about details of things that we cannot know. Something like discussing how many angels will fit on the head of a pin.
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LethalMouse
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This aspect of never ending begining applies to everything. Even in cyclical universe theories, even if you go back to the begining of material creation in anyform you can always ask what created that. Until there is “proof” of any origin we will never be able to “know”.
So here are the options:
We die and discover God (tilisay) who presents us with the clear picture of His being origin
We die in Buddhist fashion aquire nirvana and know the origins in energy material etc…
We die and atheists are right and we just die never knowing… though here continuing evolution could lead to discoveries and our descendants may someday find the material origins.
Otherwise it is all essentially for the purposes of this line of thread conjecture… except those who have experienced something supernatural. At which point they may “know” the amswer, though “we” may not believe them
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rossum
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Any real god is alive, obviously. However, Buddhism does not assign a great importance ot gods. Their main function in scripture is to applaud in the right places when the Buddha is speaking.
The Cula-Malunkyovada sutta gives the parable of the Man Shot with a Poisoned Arrow:
[The Buddha said:] 'It is as if, Malunkyaputta, a man is shot with an arrow thickly smeared with poison, … and the wounded man were to say “I will not have the arrow taken out until I know the caste of the man who shot it, … his tribe … his clan … his village … his height etc.” [many questions omitted here] That man would die Malunkyaputta, before he learned all that he wanted to know.
'In exactly the same way, Malunkyaputta, any one who says “I will not lead the religious life under the Blessed One until the Blessed One explains to me whether the universe is eternal, whether the universe is not eternal, whether the universe is finite, whether the universe is infinite etc.” [many questions omitted here] That person would die Malunkyaputta, before I had ever explained all this to that person.
‘The religious life, Malunkyaputta, does not depend on the dogma that the universe is eternal, nor does it depend on the dogma that the universe is not eternal etc. [many dogmas omitted here] Whatever dogma obtains there is still birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief and despair, of which I declare the extinction in the present life.’
– Cula-Malunkyovada sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 63
Living things exist, here and now. That is reality. While it is an interesting question as to how life originated, it is not an important question. It is a distraction from the spiritual life, which does not depend on the details of the origin of life.
Having said that, Buddhism tends to agree with Christianity in saying that life has always existed. However, since all gods are mortal, there is no single eternal living entity – though some gods are very long lived. There is an infinite succession of non-eternal living entities being born again and again and again…
The task of the Buddhist is to avoid being born again, and hence dying again. All that is born dies. If you don’t want to die then don’t get born in the first place.
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Wesrock
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There is a categorical difference between the contingent and the necessary. All contingent, or caused, beings must have a cause. God is not contingent. He is not caused. Therefore no cause is necessary to explain him. He is metaphysically simple. He is not a being, but Being itself. He is no-thing in the sense that he doesn’t fall into any categories like everything else. He’s not just “a god,” even if we were to say he is the only one in his class. He completely transcends such things. He is the Ultimate Reality, the eternal unchanging principle of being which is not simply a part of the world or alongside it, but transcending it altogether, the wellspring of all being.
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