Why did God create the universe in the first place?

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Continued:

It’s almost as if you have taken God’s immanence, His closeness to His creation, and made that an absolute, while at the same time negating His transcendent, omnipotent, omnicient, and absolute natures.

Can you elaborate on how I have done that? I’m not seeing it.

Gid is not “in us”.

I think that God is omnipresent. God is in me and all around me.

God is so far beyond our reckoning that we needed a mediator to even be able to have access to His grace and salvation; that’s why Christ came and died and rose from the dead.

I think that God and Jesus are one. I think that Jesus was God in human form, not a mediator. I think that I have total access to God.

It would be impossible for you to have any real, substantial, objective, experience of God at all if not for “the one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ.”

Bad news for Job, Abraham, Lot, Moses and many others from the cast of the Old Testament. Can I ask you a personal question without taking offense? I’d like to ask if you if you actually think about things before you write them. No offense intended, but since I have been agreeable to letting you waste my time for about 4 days, I thought it might be permissible to ask.

Are you saying that that is an objective fact or just your personal subjective experience?

Does it matter?

I’m not saying that I have “viewed the world through the lens from which you view it.”

Then perhaps you could stop trying to make me look through yours. I am fine that you have your view, so why are you so concerned about mine?

I’m saying that they way you view the world, or God, has no real correspondence or identity with Reality. Because the world does not conform to our minds but rather the opposite, we must conform our minds to the world around us that exists independent of our subjective experience.

In conjunction and cooperation with the sense organs, the mind is an agent of experience. I would offer that it is rather dichotomous to suggest that we conform our minds to something other than what it perceives. And as it turns out, much of what it perceives is subjective. I enjoy every minute of it, without every worrying about such things.

Yet again you make an absolute and objective statement that the universe is subjective, “in you/us,” rather than existing outside of us and independent of our subjective experience.

Who taught you that the universe is outside of you?

I’m sorry, but how can you not “see” how this is self-contradictory?

No.

Thanks,
Gary

 

[Amandil]

Good Evening Amandil: I don’t think you do understand what I’ve said, but as I said before, I don’t have any desire to banter with you. To your next point, it has long been my opinion that those who would make broad judgments about what is real and what is not really haven’t given things much thought.

Since that is merely your subjective opinion I really don’t need to give it any real credence because my “experience” is rather the contrary.

Again, you seem to have concerns with objective truths vs. subjectivity. Both subjective and objective observations can be at once true. For instance, if you were to dress me in shorts and a tee shirt and an Eskimo in shorts and a tee shift and gave us a thermometer on a day that is breezy and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, both the Eskimo and myself could make the objective observation that it is 50 degrees Fahrenheit. At the same time, the Eskimo can make the subjective observation that it’s hot outside and I can make the subjective observation that it’s very chilly outside. All three observations to include the objective observation that it’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the subjective observations that it’s hot outside and very chilly outside are valid observations. All are true, yet two are relative to the experiencer. None of this changes the fact that I am quite chilly.

Where your example fails is that it seems you cherry picked an example using temperature to illustrate something completely irrelevant to the issue of objective truths in religion.

What you’re saying is not that you’re “chilly” to where the eskimo is “warm”, what you’re saying is that its impossible to know what 50 degrees Fahrenheit is. That the Fahrenheit scale is an “experience” no different than your being “chilly”.

Whether I ever lived at all or lived a hundred years dull of my own experiences has no bearing on the experiences of the Apostles. Their experiences, like those of any creature are unique to them, Mine are unique to me.

Thank God that the Apostles didn’t share your “beliefs.”

As for the divinity of Christ, that is a belief.

Is that your subjective opinion or an objective statement of fact?

The Apostles have recorded their experiences of Christ. My experiences of Christ are primary to me, and God has inspired me to be immersed in those experiences rather than in the experiences of others.

But how do you know those “experiences” are “experiences of Christ” and not merely experiences with your own imagination? How do you know that you’re worshiping the Being which gave you being and not simply your own consciousness?

My life and my observations don’t diminish the lives, experiences and testimonies of others.

They add a small dimension to the glory of creation. Nothing more or less than that.

What creation would that be? The creation which exists outside of your mind, or only within?

This entry reveals the fact that I have been duped into carrying on a conversation with someone who is paying little attention. I have repeatedly spoken about the fact that I have my own experience of God, and yet you seem to have concluded that I don’t believe in or experience God.

It’s good that you used the word “seem”, because that’s not at all what I’ve said.

All I have said is that IF all we can know about God is through our subjective “experience”, how do you know that your “experience” is with God and not your own imagination, unless God is Being independent of your subjective experience?

That is the polar opposite of what I have been telling you. My sense is that you get rather excitable when you feel someone is challenging your attachment to certain dogmas…

Not at all. I find it quite interesting when people who profess the Catholic Faith make objective statements contrary to the Catholic Faith and in opposition to their baptismal vows and the Creed we recite at every Mass.

It’s rather odd to me how people profess one thing and practice something completely opposite of what they profess to believe.

 

[Amandil]

Can you elaborate on how I have done that? I’m not seeing it.

In short, I’ll elaborate on one point: God exists absolutely.

By this I don’t mean merely that God is always there or that he does not tend to go out of existence. These are true in a sense, but I mean something more.
God is the source of being, or existence, for all things. Looking at the universe we see that in every creature that there is a difference between its essence and its existence; that there is a difference between what things are and the fact that they are. Limited things are by are by their nature existential zeros, they have a need for being which they cannot supply themselves.

If God is the answer to the question of finite being, then He cannot suffer from the same need. IOW, in God there can be no such distance between what He is and that He is. That He exists cannot be a happy accident, not due to some other being as His cause. Being must be inseparable from what He is; it must belong to Him by nature. More radically put: God must be identical with the fullness of being.

Therefore the existence of God cannot be limited to the conscious “experience” of His creatures but must be wholly independent of it. He must exist absolutely and objectively, independent of your subjective experience.

That’s not to say that God cannot make Himself present to your “experience”, but that presupposes His very real and objective Being.

I think that God is omnipresent. God is in me and all around me.

Is God omnipresent just per your experience? You is He objectively omnipresent?

I think that God and Jesus are one. I think that Jesus was God in human form, not a mediator.

Are you a modalist? Are you aware of the Church’s teaching on the Trinity?

I think that I have total access to God.

Is this subjective certitude, or a certain objective fact?

Bad news for Job, Abraham, Lot, Moses and many others from the cast of the Old Testament.

Do you even know Scripture? If you know Scripture how could you say this?

Can I ask you a personal question without taking offense? I’d like to ask if you if you actually think about things before you write them. No offense intended, but since I have been agreeable to letting you waste my time for about 4 days, I thought it might be permissible to ask.

Do you actually think about these things before you write them?

Does it matter?

Yes, it does.

Then perhaps you could stop trying to make me look through yours. I am fine that you have your view, so why are you so concerned about mine?

1. Because it makes zero sense & 2) its self-contradictory.

In conjunction and cooperation with the sense organs, the mind is an agent of experience. I would offer that it is rather dichotomous to suggest that we conform our minds to something other than what it perceives. And as it turns out, much of what it perceives is subjective. I enjoy every minute of it, without every worrying about such things.

Sorry, Gary, but I can try all I want to make my mind “perceive” that this empty plastic bottle in my hand right now is a fish. I can believe that its a fish. I can buy a fish tank, fill it with water, drop the bottle into the water and feed it like a fish. But no matter what my “experience” is or what I perceive it to be, or how seriously I try to conform that object in my hand to what I’m “experiencing” in my mind, it will never be anything but a empty plastic bottle.

What the mind perceives is one thing, whether the mind is perceiving that which actually exists is another. The thing about the human mind and sin is that self-deception is all to real occurrence. “People believe what they want to believe” has been at the root cause of the chaos of humanity, not God, not Christianity.

Who taught you that the universe is outside of you?

Nobody did. And if I was the only person who ever existed I might have cause you agree with your next point.

But the problem is when this subject(me) necessarily encounters another subject(you), as well as other objects(the universe), our “experiences” can no longer be said to be merely “in us” but outside of us.

 

[petra22]

What is your experience of the nature of Jesus? Specifically, how do you know him yourself, leaving out what you have read, what you have been told and what you have been taught to think? What is your experience of Jesus? When did you last see him? If you haven’t seen him for yourself, where have you looked? This is our task, or at least that’s what I think - to see God plainly and directly and to see God for oneself. This life of ours isn’t about someone else’s experience or someone else’s account, and your relationship with God is not someone else’s to manage, nor is it something that can be arbitrated by an institution or it’s officials. And believe it or not, that is a perfectly Catholic position.

Gary

Would you believe me if I told you I heard Him at adoration of the Blessed Sacrament?

 

[Amandil]

FYI, in using the term “objective”, there needs to be some clarification:

1. Objective in the phrase “objective truth” does not refer to an unemotional, detached, impersonal attitude. Truth is not an attitude. Truth is not how we know but what we know.
2. Objective does not mean “known by all” or “believed by all.” Even if everyone believes a lie , it is still a lie. “You don’t find truth by counting noses.”
3. Objective does not mean “publically proved.” And objective truth could be privately known-for example the location of a hidden treasure. It can also be known without being proved; to know is one thing, to give good proofs or reasons for your knowledge is another.

What objective means in “objective truth” is “independent of the knower and his consciousness.”

“I don’t what to be unselfish” is a subjective truth; “I ought to be unselfish whether I want to be or not” is an objective truth.

I hope that clears things up.

 

[meltzerboy]

In short, I’ll elaborate on one point: God exists absolutely.

By this I don’t mean merely that God is always there or that he does not tend to go out of existence. These are true in a sense, but I mean something more.
God is the source of being, or existence, for all things. Looking at the universe we see that in every creature that there is a difference between its essence and its existence; that there is a difference between what things are and the fact that they are. Limited things are by are by their nature existential zeros, they have a need for being which they cannot supply themselves.

If God is the answer to the question of finite being, then He cannot suffer from the same need. IOW, in God there can be no such distance between what He is and that He is. That He exists cannot be a happy accident, not due to some other being as His cause. Being must be inseparable from what He is; it must belong to Him by nature. More radically put: God must be identical with the fullness of being.

Therefore the existence of God cannot be limited to the conscious “experience” of His creatures but must be wholly independent of it. He must exist absolutely and objectively, independent of your subjective experience.

That’s not to say that God cannot make Himself present to your “experience”, but that presupposes His very real and objective Being.

Is God omnipresent just per your experience? You is He objectively omnipresent?

Are you a modalist? Are you aware of the Church’s teaching on the Trinity?

Is this subjective certitude, or a certain objective fact?

Do you even know Scripture? If you know Scripture how could you say this?

Do you actually think about these things before you write them?

Yes, it does.

1. Because it makes zero sense & 2) its self-contradictory.

Sorry, Gary, but I can try all I want to make my mind “perceive” that this empty plastic bottle in my hand right now is a fish. I can believe that its a fish. I can buy a fish tank, fill it with water, drop the bottle into the water and feed it like a fish. But no matter what my “experience” is or what I perceive it to be, or how seriously I try to conform that object in my hand to what I’m “experiencing” in my mind, it will never be anything but a empty plastic bottle.

What the mind perceives is one thing, whether the mind is perceiving that which actually exists is another. The thing about the human mind and sin is that self-deception is all to real occurrence. “People believe what they want to believe” has been at the root cause of the chaos of humanity, not God, not Christianity.

Nobody did. And if I was the only person who ever existed I might have cause you agree with your next point.

But the problem is when this subject(me) necessarily encounters another subject(you), as well as other objects(the universe), our “experiences” can no longer be said to be merely “in us” but outside of us.

“Therefore the existence of G-d cannot be limited to the conscious ‘experience’ of His creatures but must be wholly independent of it.” Theoretically, I agree. It is similar to the old question concerning if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, does it make a sound? I think so, but we can only INFER this based on the fact we already KNOW either by our conscious experience, our reason, or our knowledge of the laws of physics, that trees which fall make sounds. How then can we infer the existence of G-d if not by means of our conscious experience and reason? We may have strong faith and belief, but these are not the same as knowledge. It is only our conscious experience which may (or may not) convince us of the existence of G-d even though His existence may be a fact apart from our own conscious experience, just as is the sound of the falling tree.

 

[Amandil]

“Therefore the existence of G-d cannot be limited to the conscious ‘experience’ of His creatures but must be wholly independent of it.” Theoretically, I agree. It is similar to the old question concerning if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, does it make a sound? I think so, but we can only INFER this based on the fact we already KNOW either by our conscious experience, our reason, or our knowledge of the laws of physics, that trees which fall make sounds. How then can we infer the existence of G-d if not by means of our conscious experience and reason?

We know it by authority. Sure, for many people an appeal to authority is meaningless because they take “objective” to mean only example 3. But when you look at the definition of “objective” which I provided, and which I think we can agree on, that what was known by those who authoritatively bore witness to what they witnessed doesn’t mean that what they witnessed only exists in their minds, but that it actually happened, independent of that subjective experience.

If someone else goes and sees a movie, and I don’t, is it reasonable when someone is explaining it for me to say something like “that movie was never made” or “it doesn’t exist” because I never saw it personally?

There are many people who have little to no religious “experience” when it comes to G-d. G-d, for whatever reason, never manifests His presence to them in any profound way. Does is follow then for them to say that there is no G-d?

The Israelites all had varying “experiences” of God at Sinai, obviously.

But was G-d’s epiphany there, or His eternal existence as a whole, dependent on their experience? Or did G-d objectively manifest Himself to His people?

Is the Torah really God’s word? Or is it merely Moses’? And if you say that it’s only Moses’ words, but Moses was the prophet of God, on what authority is that based from? Is it based from Moses’ subjective experience, or on Someone independent of Moses?

(This is not intended to be an attack on your faith, so please don’t take it as such. I have an extremely high regard for the Sacred texts, yours and mine. It’s only others have suggested that such texts are, I guess you might say, “spurious” in nature, and secondary to religion. I have a real problem with that sort of analysis because it makes divine providence null and void.)

We may have strong faith and belief, but these are not the same as knowledge. It is only our conscious experience which may (or may not) convince us of the existence of G-d even though His existence may be a fact apart from our own conscious experience, just as is the sound of the falling tree.

When Paul wrote to the Church in Romans he was rather explicit: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they(we) are without excuse…”

What He has made, like the tree in the forest, is objectively real.

He’s saying, and I think that you would agree, that the world is so full of the greatness and the glory of G-d, such as that tree in that forest, that to not acknowledge that He exists is in fact sinful. And my lack of faith or disbelief in that tree would not cause that tree to go out of existence, that tree would still be, independent of my conscious experience.

Would you agree or disagree?

If so, then G-d’s existence is at least like that tree, which is in that forest right know even though I cannot perceive it by direct experience, then His existence must be preeminently greater and more real.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Would you believe me if I told you I heard Him at adoration of the Blessed Sacrament?

Absolutely!

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

“Therefore the existence of G-d cannot be limited to the conscious ‘experience’ of His creatures but must be wholly independent of it.” Theoretically, I agree. It is similar to the old question concerning if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, does it make a sound? I think so, but we can only INFER this based on the fact we already KNOW either by our conscious experience, our reason, or our knowledge of the laws of physics, that trees which fall make sounds. How then can we infer the existence of G-d if not by means of our conscious experience and reason? We may have strong faith and belief, but these are not the same as knowledge. It is only our conscious experience which may (or may not) convince us of the existence of G-d even though His existence may be a fact apart from our own conscious experience, just as is the sound of the falling tree.

Good morning Mettzerboy - I hope all is well with you today. Actually, the sound produced by the falling tree requires both the tree and an instrument that converts vibrations in the atmosphere into sound, such as our ears or a recording device. It is the interaction between the tree and the observer that produces sound.

Moreover, I think the answer to this old philosophical question was settled on a much more complex level by Weaver’s Delayed Choice Experiment back in the 1970’s, I think it was. No potential reality actually collapses into a reality without an observer. The experiment can be found in most physics books published after 1980, or can be googled. It seems that the interplay between the observer and that which is observed produces the world around us. Moreover, nothing does anything independently of another thing, which is a rather simple concept, however, the necessity of the observer is much more profound and broad in its implications.

 

[Amandil]

Good morning Mettzerboy - I hope all is well with you today. Actually, the sound produced by the falling tree requires both the tree and an instrument that converts vibrations in the atmosphere into sound, such as our ears or a recording device. It is the interaction between the tree and the observer that produces sound.

Moreover, I think the answer to this old philosophical question was settled on a much more complex level by Weaver’s Delayed Choice Experiment back in the 1970’s, I think it was. No potential reality actually collapses into a reality without an observer. The experiment can be found in most physics books published after 1980, or can be googled. It seems that the interplay between the observer and that which is observed produces the world around us. Moreover, nothing does anything independently of another thing, which is a rather simple concept, however, the necessity of the observer is much more profound and broad in its implications.

No wonder modern philosophy is in the state it is today…

 

[Phalanx]

1. He just needed a place to put all His stuff.

Hahah! Thanks for the laugh, im gonna use that one!

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

No wonder modern philosophy is in the state it is today…

Good Morning Amandil: There are a number of questions I have asked you that you never answered. Rather than backtrack through all of them, would you be agreeable to answering my question as to how you came to the conclusion that the universe is outside of you?

Thanks,
Gary

 

[Amandil]

Good Morning Amandil: There are a number of questions I have asked you that you never answered.

Were they “never answered” objectively speaking? Or is it that you only “think” that they weren’t aswered according to subjective “experience”(that is this is your feeling or opinion)?

Rather than backtrack through all of them, would you be agreeable to answering my question as to how you came to the conclusion that the universe is outside of you?

Thanks,
Gary

Gary, I have answered your questions. If they’re not the answers that you anticipated, well, that says more about you and the questions you asked rather than how or what my answers were.

The problem with religious subjectivism, and subjectivism as a theory of truth as a whole, is that not only is it self-contradictory in practice(because you are saying that it is objectively true that religion/morality/truth is subjective), but also because you can never know that your religious “experience”, or anything else that you experience, is right in terms of such a system.

If you’re claiming, like Kant, that we can never know there are things-in-themselves onto which the knowing self projects all knowable content. That would be knowing the unknowable, thinking both sides of thought’s limit.

Sure some knowledge is conditioned by our forms of conciousness. But even here there must be some objective content first that is received and known before it can be classified or interpreted by the knowing subject.

So, how did I come to the conclusion that the universe is outside of me?

Because basic reason demonstrates that the universe existed prior to my experience of it.

It also stands to reason, based upon other scientific discoveries, that the universe existed prior to any human being’s experience of it. This fact would remain objectively true regardless even if it was never discovered by scientific inquiry. The universe didn’t come into being by our subjective experience of it, nor will it go out of being when we die and lose that faculty by which we experience in this current state.

Just as reason can determine that due to the height and mass of a tree, its position(that is as it stands in the ground), and the fact that sound waves exist by the combination of the movement of mass and air and how they’re carried through air at a constant rate of speed, that when it falls its going to make a sound whether we are there to receive the sound it makes or not.

That we can use human reason to intuit God and certain aspects of God’s nature doesn’t mean that God is not objectively true, nor does any one statement that is made regarding His nature “limit” Him because they don’t exclude subjective experience.

Subjectivism does precisely the opposite. It excludes any objective knowable content of God outside of our subjective experience and limits Him to a subjective fantasy, an idol. No longer a Son which exudes light from above, but a mirror.

 

[Grym]

Ok I just popped some popcorn…and nothing nearly this good is on TV…

/Victor

 

[JamesCaruso]

"John Lazarus:

1. He just needed a place to put all His stuff.

Hahah! Thanks for the laugh, im gonna use that one!

Shades of George Carlin

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

From Amandil: he problem with religious subjectivism, and subjectivism as a theory of truth as a whole, is that not only is it self-contradictory in practice(because you are saying that it is objectively true that religion/morality/truth is subjective), but also because you can never know that your religious “experience”, or anything else that you experience, is right in terms of such a system.

I think it would be objective to say that your beliefs and mine are no less subjective than those of most any other belief system.

Sure some knowledge is conditioned by our forms of conciousness.

Could you elaborate on what knowledge exists outside of consciousness?

But even here there must be some objective content first that is received and known before it can be classified or interpreted by the knowing subject.

That is absolutely true, however the problem in regards to this thread is that you are trying to offer your religious beliefs as being totally objective when in fact only certain (but not all) events in the bible are historically objective or true, while beliefs in regards to what those events actually mean are intrinsically and inextricably subjective.

So, how did I come to the conclusion that the universe is outside of me?

Because basic reason demonstrates that the universe existed prior to my experience of it.

It also stands to reason, based upon other scientific discoveries, that the universe existed prior to any human being’s experience of it. This fact would remain objectively true regardless even if it was never discovered by scientific inquiry. The universe didn’t come into being by our subjective experience of it, nor will it go out of being when we die and lose that faculty by which we experience in this current state.

Everything in the universe is in a constant state of change. You are made of carbon, which comes from dead stars, which is an objective fact. All things made of matter are intertwined in nested hierarchies, meaning in (simple terms) that insofar as you are embedded in the universe, the universe is also embedded in you. There is no way to say in practical terms where you stop and everything else begins. It is all one thing. Since you brought up science, I would add that this is a scientific reality. As for the argument in regards to the age of the universe, you are made of matter that has existed in various and countless permutations since the dawn of creation. The universe is not older than you. And the universe the product of it’s constituent parts. You are “of the universe.” The universe is not “outside of you.”

Just as reason can determine that due to the height and mass of a tree, its position(that is as it stands in the ground), and the fact that sound waves exist by the combination of the movement of mass and air and how they’re carried through air at a constant rate of speed, that when it falls its going to make a sound whether we are there to receive the sound it makes or not.

Again, back to science, because you did bring science into the thread. Sound is the product of the ability of the sense organs of sentient creatures to convert vibrations into the neurological experience of sound. A falling tree makes no sound without an instrument to receive it. A falling tree simply makes vibrations in the air. The experience of the sound of a falling tree is an interactive process between yourself, the tree, the ground it comes in contact with and the vibrations in the atmosphere that allow your ears to create the sound. Without you or some other thing with a sound producing instrument such as ears and a nervous system, there is In fact no sound. You create that aspect of the event.

That we can use human reason to intuit God and certain aspects of God’s nature doesn’t mean that God is not objectively true, nor does any one statement that is made regarding His nature “limit” Him because they don’t exclude subjective experience.

We can also use human imagination to ascribe imagined meanings to observed events. It doesn’t make those meanings true.

Subjectivism does precisely the opposite. It excludes any objective knowable content of God outside of our subjective experience and limits Him to a subjective fantasy, an idol. No longer a Son which exudes light from above, but a mirror.

The question is who is being subjective. I think it’s you actually. Let me explain why. There are 6 billion people on this planet, and many of them come from traditions with their own experience of God and attending traditions. There is no reason to believe that one is primary over the others or that “God is limited” (as you are fond of saying) to the particular experience that you and I have of God. If God is truly omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, it is far more likely that he (or she) is expressed and fully accessible via each. The view that the Abrahamic experience of God is the only experience of God is simply the myopic view of some who follow the Abrahamic tradition.

 

[Amandil]

I think it would be objective to say that your beliefs and mine are no less subjective than those of most any other belief system.

Other belief systems are ultimately, and objectively, false. Any truth that they do contain derives not from their subjective expressions but from the Natural Law which God has placed upon the heart.

And in terms of what you think subjectively, that may be “true” for you, but not for me, nor for Jesus Christ, for God, or for the whole for the creation which He created.

That’s what is ultimately self-contradictory about such a belief system as yours. You have no real certainty, only certitude(a feeling of certainty).

Jesus didn’t come and say “I am the certitude of truth.” He said, “I am…the truth.”(objectively)

If He is the Truth, then everything He said as recorded by the Apostles must be the truth, not merely their “experience”.

The other purpose for which the Word of God became man was to atone for the objective fact of man’s sinfulness. He came to be a Savior(objectively), not merely an “experience”.

Could you elaborate on what knowledge exists outside of consciousness?

A better question is does a tree, much less the universe, cease to be because someone becomes blind, deaf, and loses the sense of touch?

That is absolutely true, however the problem in regards to this thread is that you are trying to offer your religious beliefs as being totally objective when in fact only certain (but not all) events in the bible are historically objective or true, while beliefs in regards to what those events actually mean are intrinsically and inextricably subjective.

Don’t be ridiculous. And its a typical tact of a subjectivist to accuse an objectivist of absolutism.

Secondly you are trying to (objectively) impose your (subjective) definition of the term “objective” onto my comments.

You simply can’t make the “objective” statement that, “when in fact only certain (but not all) events in the bible are historically objective or true, while beliefs in regards to what those events actually mean are intrinsically and inextricably subjective,” and be logically consistent.

Not only are you making another self-contradictory statement but you are in direct violation of Catholic Doctrine and dogma.(CCC 105-107).

Everything in the universe is in a constant state of change. You are made of carbon, which comes from dead stars, which is an objective fact. All things made of matter are intertwined in nested hierarchies, meaning in (simple terms) that insofar as you are embedded in the universe, the universe is also embedded in you. There is no way to say in practical terms where you stop and everything else begins.

So then are you saying that since apparently I am the “universe”, and since you assert that the universe doesn’t exist outside of us but “in us”(i.e. subjective), and that since all knowledge and experience of God is also “in us”(i.e. subjective), and since you have seemed also to asserted that God is temporal in response to my comment that “God is Being itself”(post #115), **please explain how this is NOT an admission that human beings are by their nature “gods”.

As well as explain your assertion, since we apparently are “gods”, that since the universe is “in us” how exactly is this not pantheism, which you previously denied?** Especially after having posted the following statement:

It is all one thing.

 

[Amandil]

concl…

Since you brought up science, I would add that this is a scientific reality. As for the argument in regards to the age of the universe, you are made of matter that has existed in various and countless permutations since the dawn of creation. The universe is not older than you. And the universe the product of it’s constituent parts. You are “of the universe.” The universe is not “outside of you.”

False dichotomy. And only partially true. While the parts of my body may be found in the universe, it doesn’t follow that my finger is identical to a meteor. There are objective distinctions between my makeup and the makeup of that meteor. And that meteor doesn’t, nor can it, contain a soul because it was not designed to. But we were designed to. It know this because that meteor cannot objectify its “body” as I can objectify my body.

Your use of the term “universe” is trying to fudge the distinctions that objectively exist between things that are things-in-themselves.

Again, back to science, because you did bring science into the thread. Sound is the product of the ability of the sense organs of sentient creatures to convert vibrations into the neurological experience of sound.

No. I don’t buy that definition. Its not a scientific definition but a philosophical one which presupposes subjectivism.

You’re limiting the objective fact of sound purely to the human perception of sound which is absurd. My dogs hear sounds which I cannot hear at all; you would say then that those sounds don’t exist simply because the limited range of my human hearing couldn’t perceive it. This is absurd.

We can also use human imagination to ascribe imagined meanings to observed events. It doesn’t make those meanings true.

The same the must be said for your “experiences” with God.

You “see” how you just contradicted yourself there?

If religious truth, or truth in general, is subjective, there is no possible way that you could know that anything is true without violating that philosophy.

Which is what I’ve been saying all along.

The question is who is being subjective. I think it’s you actually.
Let me explain why. There are 6 billion people on this planet, and many of them come from traditions with their own experience of God and attending traditions.

Which has no bearing on the objective fact of God. The truth of God is not based upon democratic consensus of “religious experience”. You just got done saying yourself:

We can also use human imagination to ascribe imagined meanings to observed events. It doesn’t make those meanings true.

So there is no way, according to your own words, that you could say or know that their “experiences” have any validity at all, much less the traditions which followed them.

There is no reason to believe that one is primary over the others…

Are you saying this “subjectively”, or “objectively”?

…or that “God is limited” (as you are fond of saying) to the particular experience that you and I have of God.

Strawman. I never said that my subjective experience of God is limited because I don’t limit God to my subjective “experience”. I in fact said that God is a Being who is completely independent of my subjective religious experience of Him.

If God is truly omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, it is far more likely that he (or she) is expressed and fully accessible via each. The view that the Abrahamic experience of God is the only experience of God is simply the myopic view of some who follow the Abrahamic tradition.

So it finally comes out. This says all I need to know about where you stand in relation to the truth of the Catholic Faith. It has been noted that I also asked several questions which you also avoided answering as well. At this point I take no offense because at this point I know all that I really need to know, so you have no obligation to address them.

I won’t say that this conversation hasn’t been profitable. Quite the contrary, the experience has been rather interesting and enlightening.

But don’t be concerned, from here on out I won’t “waste” any more of your time.

I will keep you in my prayers.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

From Amandil: Other belief systems are ultimately, and objectively, false. Any truth that they do contain derives not from their subjective expressions but from the Natural Law which God has placed upon the heart.

Good morning Amandil: Again, I am having trouble following the logic in your train of thought. You haven’t given any hard facts that prove any other belief system wrong. Instead you have offered that any truths these other faiths my have are derived from natural laws placed upon the heart by God. The problems that statement as I see it are:

1. It supposes that God is a fact rather than a belief. You haven’t established God as a fact by any other means than repeatedly using the word objective. Customarily, the use of that word is followed with some objective facts. Otherwise you should stop using the word.
2. If the truths held by these religions are placed there from natural laws that are placed by God, then they must in fact be true, because they are supported by natural law and the hand of God.
3. The heart is an organ. Did you mean embedded into our consciousness by God?

And in terms of what you think subjectively, that may be “true” for you, but not for me, nor for Jesus Christ, for God, or for the whole for the creation which He created.

I believe in Jesus Christ as do you. The difference is that I am being forthcoming about the subjectivity of my beliefs, and I am allowing that in God’s immenseness and unlimited nature, He is present in all things, and thereby accessible in any religion through His unlimited capability to establish relationships with all beings based on the cultural and personal experiences of each, (which He created) and their capacity to reach for Him. If He is not, then He is simply the demigod of the Jewish people. I would rather like to think of God as being greater than that.

That’s what is ultimately self-contradictory about such a belief system as yours. You have no real certainty, only certitude(a feeling of certainty).

You really haven’t established that anything I have said is self-contradictory.

Jesus didn’t come and say “I am the certitude of truth.” He said, “I am…the truth.”(objectively)

As are all living things.

Therefore, when you don’t see Him in me, you don’t know Him. When you don’t feed the hungry, you don’t feed Him. When you don’t clothe the naked, you don’t clothe Him. Get a grip - we are one in the same. The difference between your Catholic Faith and mine is that you are worshiping Jesus as a man who lived two thousand years ago. I am worshiping Him in every face I see, and am therefore not failing to know Him. These are the only means by which He is known, not in books, dogmas and far off machinations of the mind. He is right here, right now, and accessible for you to love and interact with. I am not seeking the certitude or facts, or the primacy of one religion over another. I am seeking love, happiness and peace, all of which are available to be through direct experience and not available in books, dogma and theology.

If He is the Truth, then everything He said as recorded by the Apostles must be the truth, not merely their “experience”.

The truth is manifest in your own life, as is Jesus. I have never challenged anything the Apostles have said. What I have said is that my own life and my own encounters are my primary basis of faith. If you prefer someone else’s, I have not suggested that you do otherwise.

The other purpose for which the Word of God became man was to atone for the objective fact of man’s sinfulness. He came to be a Savior(objectively), not merely an “experience”.

Isn’t being saved an experience for the one being saved?

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

From Amandil: A better question is does a tree, much less the universe, cease to be because someone becomes blind, deaf, and loses the sense of touch?

I see you didn’t read Weaver’s Delayed Choice experiment. You said you had an appetition for science and objective observation. Weaver’s Delayed Choice experiment has been peer reviewed, vetted, published and replicated many times since. It is now mainstream physics. It answers your question.

Don’t be ridiculous. And its a typical tact of a subjectivist to accuse an objectivist of absolutism.

When an objectivist shows up on this thread, I will be sure to be mindful of that and will be vigilant to avoid that tactic.

Secondly you are trying to (objectively) impose your (subjective) definition of the term “objective” onto my comments.

It’s not what you look like when you’re doing what you’re doing, it’s what you’re doing when you’re doing what you look like you’re doing.

You simply can’t make the “objective” statement that, “when in fact only certain (but not all) events in the bible are historically objective or true, while beliefs in regards to what those events actually mean are intrinsically and inextricably subjective,” and be logically consistent.

I’m not sure what you are saying here, are you?

Not only are you making another self-contradictory statement but you are in direct violation of Catholic Doctrine and dogma.(CCC 105-107).

What to do with me then?

So then are you saying that since apparently I am the “universe”, and since you assert that the universe doesn’t exist outside of us but “in us”(i.e. subjective), and that since all knowledge and experience of God is also “in us”(i.e. subjective), and since you have seemed also to asserted that God is temporal in response to my comment that “God is Being itself”(post #115), please explain how this is NOT an admission that human beings are by their nature “gods”.

The nature of my being as it relates to the nature of God is demonstrated very simply an completely in fractal geometry. The source is apparent in every permutation or outcome. Every permutation or outcome is seen in and anticipated the source. For a completely mathematical and visual explanation of my existential relationship to God, you may refer to what is called the Mandelbrot Set:

youtube.com/watch?v=0jGaio87u3A

Trees bifurcate in his way, atoms build in this way, planets behave in this way, solar systems behave in this way, galaxies behave in this way. From the smallest to the greatest, the source is seen in the outcome and the outcome is seen in the source. The alpha is seen in the omega. God is the alpha and the omega. The alpha and omega are co-dependent with one another as they are with all things between. We are positioned somewhere therein, are we not?

As well as explain your assertion, since we apparently are “gods”, that since the universe is “in us” how exactly is this not pantheism, which you previously denied

In order to say that we are gods, we would have to first establish what things are not god. However, I do not think that I am separate from the world around me. I think that God is manifest in the world around me, and inasmuch, I am part of the world around me, and we are all part of one another. If we are to suppose that God s absent from all of this, we are left with conclusion that He is confined to a throne that floats in the clouds attended by fat little winged Baroque cherubim, and we are confined to the bestial floor of the cosmic stable.