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chance?

Scuba Pete

Scuba Pete

Le plongeur avec attitude...
Jay said:
It is not an accident that the Bible is replete with anthropomorphic nonsense.
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No, it's not an accident, and that's OK in the long and short run. After all, man is trying to describe something that he has few words for. Imagine a Neanderthal trying to describe an automobile. He would be hard pressed to simply understand the stylish interior much less the twin overhead cam engine. Can you imagine the petroglyph?

So man tries to make sense out of God. Sometimes extrapolating and quite often interpolating his observations all the while trying to make some sense of them. It's inevitable that a certain amount of anthropomorphism would occur in doing this. Does that invalidate his perception/conclusion that some super natural being exists? Not at all.
 
gnomon

gnomon

Well-Known Member
There's a great Isaac Asimov short story related here.

A universe in which mortal, sentient beings which consume energy in order to "live" reach such a state that their collective conscious is collated into energy itself and when the universe grows devoud of matter...the collective conscious says..."Let there be light".

No more implausible than every religious concept of God which exists in human theology. Well, at least for this universe.

edit: this is a very simplistic condensation of an Asimov short story.
 
HopefulNikki

HopefulNikki

Active Member
wanderer085 said:
I submit that if a supernatural entity created our universe, this entity is completely beyond conceptualization or definition.
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By saying that the supernatural entity created the universe, you are implicitly defining that being as Creator, so I'm not sure what you mean when you say it is unable to be defined.
 
Jayhawker Soule

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
Scuba Pete said:
No, it's not an accident, and that's OK in the long and short run. After all, man is trying to describe something that he has few words for.
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But it is more than not having the words. It is not having even the possibility of a conceptual frame of reference. Hence the value of apophatic theology. Maimonides, for example, argues that in the Sh'ma ...
Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.​

... echad implies far more than monotheism: it asserts a qualitative and absolute uniqueness. There can be no conceptualization without comparison, and there can be no comparison with the incomparable. For the Ramban, that existence was the result of God was self-evident, but that God created existence was anthropomorphic projection.

Scuba Pete said:
So man tries to make sense out of God. Sometimes extrapolating and quite often interpolating his observations all the while trying to make some sense of them. It's inevitable that a certain amount of anthropomorphism would occur in doing this. Does that invalidate his perception/conclusion that some super natural being exists? Not at all.
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I agree - not at all.
 
Scuba Pete

Scuba Pete

Le plongeur avec attitude...
Jay said:
But it is more than not having the words. It is not having even the possibility of a conceptual frame of reference. Hence the value of apophatic theology. Maimonides, for example, argues that in the Sh'ma ...
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Hmnnn... It IS more than not having words. However, once exposed to fire, early man had the STARTING of the concept of fire. He probably didn't have a word or even a use. The more he was exposed to fire, the greater and fuller the concept became. He really had nothing to compare fire to, except the absence of fire. However, that didn't stop him from developing the tools, both conceptually as well as verbally, to describe fire.

In reality, utilizing the Via Negativa to describe God has limited, if any, usefulness. If God exists, then his intrusions into our life/world should lend themselves to descriptions and even some comparisons, albeit wild ones. This of course presupposes that God exists and does indeed at least allow his "fingerprints" to be observed.
 
rojse

rojse

RF Addict
How come, in most arguments about God creating the Universe, why does the statement "God created the Universe" become "My God created the Universe?" Who says it was the God you worship? Why can't it be a different sort of God - there are plenty of others that claim to have created the universe.
 
Jayhawker Soule

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
HopefulNikki said:
One who creates is a creator, which is in itself a label with a definition.
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... and a wholly anthropomorphic one at that, which is precisely why it so fully occupied the conflicting considerations of people like Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, and, later, Ibn Rushd and Maimonides.
 
Scuba Pete

Scuba Pete

Le plongeur avec attitude...
I often refer to these evidences as "God's Fingerprints". It is best to determine that we indeed have an intruder before we try to describe them. In fact, the acts of an intruder will define their intent and character.

The problem herein lies with differentiating between God's actions and actions that are merely man's that they ascribe to God. Such are many battles of the Old Testament and even the current conflict in Iraq. The surest way to suppress any and all criticism is to attribute your jihad to God. The resulting seeming miss match of a God that seems to instigate murder and genocide in one breath and then preach that Love is the answer in the next is confusing at best.
 
Bronze

Bronze

Bronze
The complexity of the universe proves there was a creator, yet this creator is infinitely more complex than the universe, but was not created......
 
HopefulNikki

HopefulNikki

Active Member
Jay said:
... and a wholly anthropomorphic one at that, which is precisely why it so fully occupied the conflicting considerations of people like Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, and, later, Ibn Rushd and Maimonides.
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Whether you consider it anthropomorphic or not, that is irrelevant to the point I was making...it is illogical to say that God creates things (thus defining God as a creator of some sort) and then say that God is undefinable.
 
HopefulNikki

HopefulNikki

Active Member
Jay said:
No, it is fallacious to suggest that by saying that God "creates" things you have defined God.
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You have defined God, as a creator. That's implicit in stating that God creates things. I don't see where you're making the distinction.
 
painted wolf

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle
God can also be a guy living on a mountan that throws lightning bolts that his buddy makes him.
God can also be the one who ends the world not the one who makes it.
God can be a personification of natual forces.

God does not always equal a creator.

wa:do
 
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