The eternal, finite universe

[Texas_Roofer]

It doesn’t, I don’t know what your talking about and quite frankly, I suspect that you also don’t know what it is that your talking about.

maybe you can suspect some more?

Why would your acceptance be material? why would a premise be material? can a truth be false (falsifiable) ? what is the purpose of testing a truth? ( there are two outcomes affirmation, and error)

Hope that helps

 

[Detales]

MoM, re post #9 this thread:

I can’t speak for the original inspiration of the tract you quote, as it is impossible to state the ineffable in English or any language, though Music and Math might come close according to some. Fortunately, there are aspects of human experience that transcend religious affilitation, dogmas, and traditions. Such are precisely the areas where we might eventually put down differences and see what is common and at the root of our belief systems. (Has anyone seen the documentary Jesus in India*? It has some of the most profound statements from a fundamentalist regarding the inflexibility of religious thought. A fascinating read on this in addition is Faber-Kaiser’s Jesus died in Kashmir, which has interesting biblical references.)

The tract you quoted sounds to my ear to be pointing in a viable direction, but again, due to the exigencies of English usage, it is difficult to say. Many people say such things as copy cats of original revalators, though they are sincere in their belief in that way of thinking. Mostly I would agree with what it appears to be pointing at. It woud be a lot easier to have a feel of it’s sense if it would be possible to hear the tone of voice and feel the presence of the person who said that. Like Walt Whitman said: “I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, we convince by our presence.” I am positive it was so with Jesus as it has been with every Teacher of His Way since before and after. **

*jesus-in-india-the-movie.com/html/makingthemovie.html

** Please, religionists, that is a statement of manner, not of equating Mr. Whitman, as wonderful as he might be to some, with Jesus.

 

[Detales]

MoM, re post #16:

Certainly you are not asking me to repeat new age drivel, so I will respect your question. The clearest recorded statements of Identity started with Adi Shankara, though the understanding itself is timeless. You can research others, even contemporaries. Some names that easily come to mind are Ramana Maharshi, Jesus, (IMHO the historic Jesus, not the Christian mythic) Toni Robeson, KG Mills, Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Nisargadatta, Byron Katie, Ramakrishna, and many others throughout history. Each spoke to the needs of the locale in which they were capable of direct contact. Jesus was recorded as speaking self-referentially, and He was forced into that by the needs of His audience with some good reasons, as have others. Somehow, His particular case was extrapolated into the present forms of christianisms. Those present forms are to a degree prophylactic of a deepter understanding, though I’m guessing that some got through to such a realization despite their faith. My guess is that St.Thomas Aquinas is one, who got there after prodigious and exhaustive work, and St Theresa of Avila, who took the more direct road of mysticism. Again, IMHO.

Re: “*Anything which changes needs an explanation for that change.” *~MoM

If I am understanding you, perhaps you mean that anything that changes requires a cause? Perhaps not, if we remember that change is a matter of perspective by association with a very narrow band of frequency response by means of choice, awareness and attention. The human vehicle of Soul is extant inextricably in a flow of events that are all one with all of the seeming others. “Things” are discernable as discreet entities only by selective and illusive definition of a temporary state according to the momentary (name removed by moderator)ut of the senses. Again, remember your English language assumptions and see how physicists are viewing the eleven (or more) dimensions necessary for the appearance of the world. Part of all that is, that all “time” exists at once. That perspective would put time, therefore the appearance of change, reasonably into the catagory of the eternal. Remember, as a thought experiement, that the Divine ideas that appearant objects depend on are themselves reliant on awareness itself in order to be experienced. That means that manifestation is all-ways completely dependent on the invisible non-changing non-manifested eternal Presence.

It is in order for the various temperaments of individuals, eg Avila and Aquinas, that there are at least seven synonyms for God that are functional as Ways of devotion or as avenues of approach to understanding. Faith can be a springboard to something far more astonishing and infinitly wonder-ful.

So none of this is in any way a bash, it is an exposition of possibility of vision. Faith is wonderful and serves many very well. But remember, religious thought of any ilk is generally about the least capable of curiosity and self-assesment on other than its own self-referential terms. This is in part why there has been and is so much religious friction when in fact there is only one Universal Truth. Many “Bibles” tell us so.

But this is why I feel that both faith and atheism are equals in that they duel/dual with each other on adversarial, argumentative, intellectual grounds. God is not a matter of anthropomorphization, argument or proof or disproof. God can be *pointed to *by experience and scriptures to be known as the fundamental Reality. IMHO, if there are atheists *or *christianists, or whatever, it is because the religious explanations about God are not practically inclusive of some elements of human experience, or they present the indispensable tool for growth known as myth as if it were history. It is, but not of chronological events, as christianists claim, but of an inner journey of transformation in understanding.

Some call this the Soul’s journey. It is born in utter purity, discovers the exigencies of the world picture, battles it, suffers and dies ignominiously to its own personal will, and then is raised up in a new body of insight that is based on the Allness of God. You are all, theists and atheists, doing this, but just start asking deeper questions and stop fighting fruitlessly about dogmas of any kind, scientific, atheistic, political, social, economic, or religious. What is common to all in any and all of those?

 

[Daedelus76]

I’m not sure I believe Jesus was in Kashmir. I think it’s a story to make some local Msulims proud to have a prophet, but I don’t believe it.

The problem I have in the end with Buddhist/Hindu ideas is that while they are based on mystical experiences, they go against reason and scientific understanding. I think all religions have degrees of religious truth, some are truer than others, though. I’d like to see Christians develope a theory of consciousness mysticism of their own. Maybe one exists already. I was reading an Orthodox mystic’s blog/website one time that had an interest in Gurdjeff, but also had an orthodox faith, and he was describing what sounded like “no-self realization”, the feeling of the self being a coreless mystery. There’s also the Philokalia and other works I haven’t yet read.

(BTW, I had a “no-self” experience like you are describing, and I’ve still struggled with alot of things in Buddhism that flatly contradict scientific understanding, reason and philosophy, and experience- while not denying it has important insights. I’ve researched the issue fairly deeply, studying mystical experiences of many religions, near-death experiences, visions… and Buddhism and Hinduism do not have the perfect answers on these issues).

 

[Daedelus76]

I just realized I forgot Meister Eckhart . I don’t know if his works are still condemned or not. He was the one that said “The same eye I see with, is the same eye that God sees with”, or something to that effect. He also had some ideas that were similar to Buddhism, such as regarding everything as “empty of self”. I haven’t read him in great detail, though… just about him.

 

[Detales]

Hi Daedelus,

In fact the documentary on *Jesus in India *showed that the local Muslims were incensed at the idea of Jesus being buried there, and had the government shut down the site. It has also been damaged and altered over the years, according to photographic and witness evidence.

As for Buddhist/Hindu thought being against reason and scientific understanding, I have found that they are very much in line, both experientially and by means of physiological tests I had done on my person while meditating. Please note, I am neither a Hindu nor a Buddhist. Also, there is now a large body of work relating the frontiers of physics to “Eastern” thought. (“Eastern” is in quotes because many major proponents of such philosophies are from the West. I know of at least five, excluding the American transcedentalists who I believe were Deists in any case.) *

Why does it have to be a group that develops such a theory of “consciousness mysticism”? Since the existing ones, christianist, or of any faith, are empirical and surprisingly similar, why not just test them? Be your own authority by asking deeper questions. One of these might be “Why am I confusing a “no-self” experience (impossible) with a non-ego state of some kind or degree? What does it mean to be able to be awake with no ego referential content?” And “Did I misunderstand something along the way?” If you can say “no-self” expereince, you may be to some extent in the English grammar trap I keep alluding to. But I agree, Buddhist/Hindu answers are not perfect, as are any intellectual answers not perfect. That is the way of verbalization.It is the way of talking “about” something instead of having direct knowledge. I keep seeing posts on here that ask “Does group X belieive Y?” Why not ask them??? Such answers as we seek are not in the realm of products of reasoning, though they can be the* basis *of brilliant reasoning.

*( Why did Maharishi M. Yogi refuse novocaine? He wanted to transcend dental medication. )

 

[Daedelus76]

Hi Daedelus,
In fact the documentary on *Jesus in India *showed that the local Muslims were incensed at the idea of Jesus being buried there, and had the government shut down the site. It has also been damaged and altered over the years, according to photographic and witness evidence.

I could look into it. I know I was listening to somebody from the Malankara Orthodox who thought the idea was ridiculous. I will look into it though just because I want to double check what you say. I find the Shroud of Turin hard to dismiss, I’ve also looked at that and I don’t believe it is fake, though I’ve talked about why what I think its meaning is different than the traditional idea of resurrection ( I think the body collapsed into a singularity and matter was converted into energy, if it is authentic).

What really impressed upon me are atheist near-death experiences. They sometimes involve the perception of a personal being that speaks to them- even though they don’t believe in God. AJ Ayers had a near death experience where he saw a red light, which he felt was a being, that told him he was responsible for the universe. Howard Storm also had a near death experience that wasn’t empty of content. If Buddhism or Vedanta Hinduism were absolutely true, they should have seen nothing with meaningful content. Their minds had no belief in a supernatural being, that is my understanding that your beleifs/perceptions prior to death should influence what you see afterwards. Even some Buddhist NDE’s seem to contradict Buddhist “orthodoxy”; some experiencers in the middle ages in China/Japan thought Ksitigarbha (the compasisonate guardian of the dead) and Yama, the judge of the dead, were actually the same being, which is heretical. This idea was communicated to them by the beings or by intuitions during the experience So it leaves a question mark over the “why” of the experience that IMO points to some kind of theism or panentheism more than pantheism or non-theism.

As for Buddhist/Hindu thought being against reason and scientific understanding, I have found that they are very much in line, both experientially and by means of physiological tests I had done on my person while meditating.

Keep in mind that science is based on a Western worldview that assumes a natural order that is open to analysis based on something like God that has certain attributes. Is it possible to integrate the Eastern and Western understandings? Maybe. But it has to be done in a way that respects the contexts they are taken from. The fact that Buddhism or Hinduism meshes better with science is not surprising since science tends to discount supernatural explanations, and Buddhism and Hinduism tend to assume nothing is really supernatural (though they believe in things that would be considered supernatural or pseudoscientific by materialists). Other things in Hinduism or Buddhism, like eternal universes or cyclical universes, or infinite past lives, do not fit the data or are nonsensical (the problem of infinite regression). It’s convenient to look at the consciousness mysticism aspects and ignore the fact that they rest on a worldview that is itself problematic to materialists/secularists (the basic Hindu worldview which is just as “irrational” as Christianity/Judaism/Islam is suppossedly, if not moreso).

 

[Daedelus76]

If you are interested in something that might integrate better with quantum physics, while not totally divorced from the Western worldview, I’d suggest reading about Kabbalah or Process philosophy. It is my understanding the Orthodox theology is also energetic or process based moreso. Some of the Orthodox Jewish or Kabbalah theosophy has interesting insights into the Jewish worldview, too, and different readings of the Old Testament.

Keep in mind, I think all these are models of reality. I think God is actually “infinite” and beyond full human knowledge. Anything you say about God is bound to be an approximation. OTOH, what if God somehow self-reveals himself? This only sounds ridiculous if you assume that God is wholely disinterested in doing so, some kind of Platonic God. I don’t see there’s any reason for a self-revealing God to be any less plausible than an impassible deity of Deism, or some kind of “Force”. And a Process or energetic theology suggests a “living God” to some extent.

In the end, it ll comes down to… what is a human’s place in the universe? Why does evil and suffering exist, etc… We can have mystical experiences that can change our life, but language always fails to fully capture them. We always frame them in terms of worldview. I believe some worldviews are less productive than others. I don’t see much redeeming in Voodoo, for instance. I think human suffering and alienation are the major factors of our existence. A worlrdview should try to address those. It think Buddhism and Christianity address them the most fully, so it is a tought call. Perhaps each has something unique to say. Keiji Nishitani, who was a New Testament/Patristic and Buddhist scholar, talked about this. He was actually neither Buddhist nor Christian officially. He admired the Christian concept of love and a personal God, but he also liked the creative nihilism of emptiness and didn’t like Christianity’s anthropomorphic orientation so much; he thought Christianity would result in an environmental disaster because it cuts people off from nature. Perhaps he was a panentheist, as a few other Japanese Buddhist philosophers have described themselves as that.

 

[Iamnotafraid]

wouldn’t that be because the universe is with in nature (thus the laws of physics apply) while God is outside nature and thus not bound to natural laws?

This can be proven or does one have to believe through faith?

 

[Texas_Roofer]

This can be proven or does one have to believe through faith?

What means are available to you outside of science? What means within science does not require faith?

 

[Iamnotafraid]

What means are available to you outside of science? What means within science does not require faith?

Faith is required in the absence of evidence.

I have faith that there are flying pink unicorns that can answer my prayers.

I cannot prove my premise true, but it must be true, as faith tells me it is true.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

Faith is required in the absence of evidence.

actually the truth is you live your life without proof, you have faith the car will start, the sun will shine etc., etc., No proof what so ever

I have faith that there are flying pink unicorns that can answer my prayers.

I cannot prove my premise true, but it must be true, as faith tells me it is true.

you really never prove any premise, you at some point accept in your faith that something is real, but in is not proven. often later someone proves there is more to the phenomenon than you ever imaged thus the original premise was poor at best, that is the way life works

 

[w_stewart]

The idea of a “first cause” does not rule out an eternal universe, and vice versa. Even if the universe has no beginning, its existence still requires a cause.

How could the universe without a beginning require a cause?

 

[w_stewart]

Why then do you insist that the universe requires a cause, yet your God does not?

The answer is obvious. God is eternal, universe is not.

 

[Detales]

In the end, it all comes down to… what is a human’s place in the universe? Why does evil and suffering exist, etc… We can have mystical experiences that can change our life, but language always fails to fully capture them. We always frame them in terms of worldview. I believe some worldviews are less productive than others. I don’t see much redeeming in Voodoo, for instance. I think human suffering and alienation are the major factors of our existence. A worlrdview should try to address those. It think Buddhism and Christianity address them the most fully, so it is a tought call. Perhaps each has something unique to say. Keiji Nishitani, who was a New Testament/Patristic and Buddhist scholar, talked about this. He was actually neither Buddhist nor Christian officially. He admired the Christian concept of love and a personal God, but he also liked the creative nihilism of emptiness and didn’t like Christianity’s anthropomorphic orientation so much; he thought Christianity would result in an environmental disaster because it cuts people off from nature. Perhaps he was a panentheist, as a few other Japanese Buddhist philosophers have described themselves as that.

I very much like this paragraph, Daedelus. I agree that that is the BIG world question, and that language fails in treating mysitcal experiences pertinent to that. That is why I mentioned Music and Math, as those lift our considerations to the Invisible, as does art. It is why I feel called to be an artist. Thanks for the reference to Keiji Nishitani. I will look him up, though in my form of understanding I see no nihilistic component in the exigesis I adhere to.

I too am impressed with NDE’s of atheists. That is why I put stock in Danion Brinkley’s exposition of his experience. His conclusions match mine pretty closley, though I had no shadow of his type of encounters and marathon experience. I also believe that there is a matter of kind and degree of insight, these being pertinent to manifestation on the one hand, and Being on the other. F. Merrell-Wolff talks about the relationship of these very clearly, in both his diary and his work on the philosophy of Consciousness w/out an object.

As for a reconciliation of East and West, or any dispairate ideologies, they are, as you say, models of reality. We have to remember that they are, in any case, models extracted from One Reality.* But my sense is that they are limited insofar as they are based on esoteric or exoteric premises, and by what orders of perception and consideration they are expressed into a “system.” That is one point that attracts me to exponents of non-dualism: They are extemporaneous and Self referential in their statements, thus adapting their answers to the needs of the particular listener, avoiding the dangers of canonical interpretation. But then, when they pass, so does that form of link to the Invisible. The students are left to develop whatever form and degree of insight they could glean while in the Presence. That is as about as close as many come to a direct revealation.

One of the most important and rarest insights (congratulations!) is the one you mention about the possibility of environmental disaster stemming from the christianist alienation from Nature. In my experience christianists view themselves as beneficiaries of a gift which is theirs to do with as they like, even, in practical terms, at the expense of non-christianists. We see this in the exploitation and destruction of “heathen” aboriginal cultures even to this day, and extending thereby in attitude to the majority of the Earth population. This lack of understanding of intrinsic Unity has allowed the christianist explorers, missionaries, and business people of all ceturies to rationalize the pillaging of the Earth and its cultures. This has been done with the apparent blessing of scriptural interpretations that make Man not a part of Nature and responsible for stewardship, but a user and despoiler of resources according to his clearly unfeeling and ignorant conscienceless discretion. Truely that is a wonderful gift of gratitude to a Loving God.

*Korzybski's "structural differential" is a great tool for visualizing how this and other abstractions happen.

 

[Iamnotafraid]

The answer is obvious. God is eternal, universe is not.

Yeah, that’s just made up in order to justify God not needing a cause. You can’t prove God exists, let alone that She is eternal and without cause.

 

[w_stewart]

Yeah, that’s just made up in order to justify God not needing a cause.

Atheistic arguments are just made up to deny the existence of God. What’s the difference?

You can’t prove God exists, let alone that She is eternal and without cause.

Atheists cannot prove either that God is just a myth.

 

[1holycatholic]

How could the universe without a beginning require a cause?

From the Summa:
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
This comes up frequently. Infinite or not, there has to be a first cause.

Additionally, causality does not depend on the passage of time. Cause and effect can be simultaneous.

The logical impossibility of infinite past time is a separate issue.

 

[cpayne]

How could the universe without a beginning require a cause?

1holycatholic already answered, but I’ll chip in too. Anything that is changing or contingent or could be otherwise than what it actually is, requires some kind of cause to explain why it is what it is. All of these apply to the universe.

Therefore, even if the universe has existed eternally (as Aristotle thought it did) it still requires a Cause of its existence (as Aristotle also thought, borrowed by Aquinas).

 

[Texas_Roofer]

From the Summa:
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
This comes up frequently. Infinite or not, there has to be a first cause.

Additionally, causality does not depend on the passage of time. Cause and effect can be simultaneous.

The logical impossibility of infinite past time is a separate issue.

Would that not require a random pattern to all movement?