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Yep, you heard me right, we're all theists.

Because in the end, reality and God are by definition exactly the same, so anyone who believes in reality is technically a theist.

How can anyone contend it? Reality is omnipresent, the source of all power, the source of all consciousness, self limited and eternal. It is a pan/monotheistic God.

We also all believe in miracles. Why? because consciousness arising from non consciousness is a miracle. Anyone who claims we arise from a universe devoid of any kind of consciousness is directly defying basic math.

Elementary particles must be made of pieces/aspects of consciousness for our brain to produce consciousness, otherwise you are claiming 0 consciousness + 0 consciousness = 1 consciousness. Logically impossible.

I think of God as a person. One with very good sense.

This premise rapes semantics blind.

The title should be "We are all agnostic" because no one can have a sure knowledge that God does not exist unless that person becomes omniscient...which is an absurdity because by becoming omniscient and then knowing for a certainty that God does not exist, that person becomes God thus defeating the claim. I love it.


So any time I hear an atheist say, "I know for a fact God doesn't exist." I gasp and said, "Lord! Have mercy! I did not know! Please, I have questions!"

The dumbfounded looks...

Originally posted by BananaKing
...How can anyone contend it? Reality is omnipresent, the source of all power, the source of all consciousness, self limited and eternal. It is a pan/monotheistic God...

How is reality omnipresent? I tell you that reality is different for each person, and from time to time contradictory.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
How is reality omnipresent? I tell you that reality is different for each person, and from time to time contradictory.

Reality (and by this I mean the state of being if you're slightly mislead by the reality I'm talking about) is omnipresent in the sense that it is everywhere that exists.
It may seem like semantics, but there is a ground of reality on which things are based, otherwise the human brain would not function.

It may look different for each person, but it is there nonetheless.

Originally posted by BananaKing
Yep, you heard me right, we're all theists.

Because in the end, reality and God are by definition exactly the same,
Citation? Explanation? Your thread's premise unravels on the second line.

Originally posted by BananaKing
Reality (and by this I mean the state of being if you're slightly mislead by the reality I'm talking about) is omnipresent in the sense that it is everywhere that exists.
It may seem like semantics, but there is a ground of reality on which things are based, otherwise the human brain would not function.

It may look different for each person, but it is there nonetheless. Is reality conscious? Or is it just a big machine?

Originally posted by Shakyamunison



something that cannot be understood cannot be written down.




Try fully examining the U.S. Tax Code if you believe this to be the case.

Originally posted by bluewaterrider
Try fully examining the U.S. Tax Code if you believe this to be the case.

I realize that you are joking, but the Tax Code can be understood. Sure you will loose your mind, but it can be done.

An example of something that cannot be understood or known is the precise location and velocity of an electron. The more you know about the location, the less you know about its velocity, and visa-versa. Therefore the precise location and velocity of an electron at any moment of time cannot be known, and therefore cannot be written down.

God is the same way, the more you know about God, the less real God seems to be. Therefore, if you knew everything about God, then God would not exist.

That is way faith is so important.

I'm pretty sure this completes the circle. I'm 100% sure we have a "We're All Atheists" thread, and relatively sure there's an agnostic equivalent as well.

We're all everything, you guys. We can close down the forum now.

http://cdn.meme.li/i/jtnaw.jpg

Originally posted by Mindship
Is reality conscious? Or is it just a big machine?

Well if it is a machine it's a machine that possesses aspects of consciousness (because our consciousness can't come from nowhere) that once upon a time (before the "big bang" were condensed in form more complex than all the people on earth's brains combined.

If consciousness is created by specific particles touching each other in a complex fashion, then before the big bang the universe was more conscious than all of us.

True, consciousness is in many ways a mystery, but shouldn't be exempt from the laws of reason.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
Citation? Explanation? Your thread's premise unravels on the second line.

What kind of citation do you want? I'd try and find all the biblical references to Gods attributes but I'm not sure how long that would take.

I had explained it in the original post. Whatever the totality of existence is, is the source of everything, and defines what everything is.
It's completely self limited, because nothing else exists to limit it besides itself, which is the most robust definition of "free will" you can get.

It is everywhere, the source of all power, the source of all consciousness, eternal and self sustaining etc etc.

Originally posted by BananaKing
...If consciousness is created by specific particles touching each other in a complex fashion, then before the big bang the universe was more conscious than all of us...

Particles did not form until after the big bang.

Originally posted by BananaKing
If consciousness is created by specific particles touching each other in a complex fashion, then before the big bang the universe was more conscious than all of us.

Among other flaws, you're mistaking size with coherence. Was the universe conscious simply because more particles were present? So does the sun have consciousness? A building? Interstellar gas clouds? They all have an incalculable number of particles touching in a complex fashion.

Originally posted by BananaKing
Because in the end, reality and God are by definition exactly the same, so anyone who believes in reality is technically a theist.

This is probably your central problem. You're treading over the well-worn path of equating God with the universe. That's great and all, but if everything is God, nothing is. It becomes a worthless term. It doesn't make you a theist if you believe the universe exists. It just means you've watered down the concept of God so much that it has no practical meaning.

This definition of God is also incongruent with 99% of the definitions of God used by, well, anyone. If God is the universe, and nothing else, then yes, we're all theists. But so what? That's not what anyone's religion actually is. That's not what anyone's God is. And anyone who doesn't believe in God is going to tell you they wouldn't call the universe God, they'd just call it the universe. So...how is it at all constructive to posit this?

Originally posted by BananaKing
(because our consciousness can't come from nowhere) AFAIK, consciousness is regarded as an emergent phenomenon, but emergent from what? Is it a synergistic result produced from complex organization of matter (ie, living things), or, emergent through complex matter, but ultimately from a transcendent source (ie, a source preceding and beyond the material world)?

Put another way: would you consider yourself a pantheist or a panentheist? (Kindly google for definition of terms).

There is no reason to accept your definition of reality bring equal to god.

Originally posted by Thomas p
There is no reason to accept your definition of reality bring equal to god.

Why?

Originally posted by Digi
Among other flaws, you're mistaking size with coherence. Was the universe conscious simply because more particles were present? So does the sun have consciousness? A building? Interstellar gas clouds? They all have an incalculable number of particles touching in a complex fashion.



... It becomes a worthless term. It doesn't make you a theist if you believe the universe exists. It just means you've watered down the concept of God so much that it has no practical meaning.

This definition of God is also incongruent with 99% of the definitions of God used by, well, anyone. If God is the universe, and nothing else, then yes, we're all theists. But so what? That's not what anyone's religion actually is. That's not what anyone's God is. ...

I don't know how consciousness works, I only know that you can't get something from nothing.
I'd say everything has aspects of consciousness at the very least, just not as finely tuned as us and in many ways they are seemingly more disorganised (even though they are actually more predictable than us).

The reason I said this is that we do all believe in miracles, the unexplainable. But some of us just find some miracles easier to believe than others.

Many monotheists would say they believe that God is all powerful, omnipresent, eternal and the source of all consciousness, and reality does have these qualities. According to the people I've asked the only reason they don't is because they are afraid it would make God look "impersonal".

However, they would be wrong, if God is reality he constitutes 100% of our personal lives, and it explains a lot of morality if he is everything and everyone.

Originally posted by Mindship

Put another way: would you consider yourself a pantheist or a panentheist? (Kindly google for definition of terms).

To be honest, I'm often asking myself the same question.

I think I'm somewhere between the two. Ultimately I don't know how it emerges, how can we? I just know that you can't get something from nothing, and if you can, it is arguably not nothing any more.

Originally posted by BananaKing
I don't know how consciousness works, I only know that you can't get something from nothing...

Zero point energy.

Something does come from nothing. As a matter of fact, empty space, as close to nothing as one can get, is filled with virtual partials coming in and out of existence.

Originally posted by BananaKing
I don't know how consciousness works...

Yet you're saying so much about it. This should really be your first red flag. Even a cursory reading into literature on consciousness renders many of your ideas incoherent.

Anyway, my rebuttals remain in force. Your definition is too watered down to be useful in any sense, and is at odds with the vast majority of definitions used in religion. If God is the universe, yes, we're all theists. But all you've done is successfully dumbed down "God" so that it ignores all the differences in belief that do exist.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Zero point energy.

Something does come from nothing. As a matter of fact, empty space, as close to nothing as one can get, is filled with virtual partials coming in and out of existence.

If we call that nothing then yes, something can come from nothing.

But when something comes from nothing it means nothing has a quality (the quality of potential for things to come from it) and thus is arguably not really nothing.

The minute you give nothing qualities it becomes something.

Believing things can come from nothing at all is like the atheistic equivalent of non-pantheistic monotheism, it's believing that a universe can be made entirely from something without being made of it.

Originally posted by BananaKing
If we call that nothing then yes, something can come from nothing.

But when something comes from nothing it means nothing has a quality (the quality of potential for things to come from it) and thus is arguably not really nothing.

The minute you give nothing qualities it becomes something.

Believing things can come from nothing at all is like the atheistic equivalent of non-pantheistic monotheism, it's believing that a universe can be made entirely from something without being made of it.

Nothingness cannot exist. Therefore, nothingness is very unstable, and will always become something.

I like the theory Cosmological Natural Selection. That means the Big Bang was the result of a supernova that formed a black hole in a parent universe.

Originally posted by BananaKing
Believing things can come from nothing at all is like the atheistic equivalent of non-pantheistic monotheism, it's believing that a universe can be made entirely from something without being made of it. It's paradoxical logic like that that is likely the closest to the "true nature" of existence. The simplicity of our deities is a quaint, anthropocentric thing. We're likely far too small and localized/isolated to ever be able to comprehend the totality of existence. The Flatland allegory is probably the closest we've come to conceptualizing that limit.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
It's paradoxical logic like that that is likely the closest to the "true nature" of existence. The simplicity of our deities is a quaint, anthropocentric thing. We're likely far too small and localized/isolated to ever be able to comprehend the totality of existence. The Flatland allegory is probably the closest we've come to conceptualizing that limit.

I'm not sure how you concluded that to be the probable case, the most observed phenomenon is raw mathematics, it forms the entirety of science, both complex and simple.

I think treating spawning from nothing like it was true would be like acting as though the entire history of the world all appeared from nowhere only yesterday from nothing. Because we would have to abandon the predicting reliability of science if we abandon the predicting reliability of math. I wouldn't bet my life on it, and not my afterlife either.

In the end, without some kind of omnipresent, all powerful and eternal law of nature or potentiality, nothing can't do anything.

Originally posted by BananaKing
I'm not sure how you concluded that to be the probable case, the most observed phenomenon is raw mathematics, it forms the entirety of science, both complex and simple.

I think treating spawning from nothing like it was true would be like acting as though the entire history of the world all appeared from nowhere only yesterday from nothing. Because we would have to abandon the predicting reliability of science if we abandon the predicting reliability of math. I wouldn't bet my life on it, and not my afterlife either.

In the end, without some kind of omnipresent, all powerful and eternal law of nature or potentiality, nothing can't do anything.

Well, if a god created the universe just 6,000 years ago, we would not be able to see billions of light-years into space. Unless this god created the universe to look old. So, if that was the case, how do you know the universe was not created 2 hours ago with all history in tact?

Your argument defeats itself.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Well, if a god created the universe just 6,000 years ago, we would not be able to see billions of light-years into space. Unless this god created the universe to look old. So, if that was the case, how do you know the universe was not created 2 hours ago with all history in tact?

Your argument defeats itself.

I'm not entirely sure you got my argument, because I was actually saying that in support of an older earth, not against it.

I was saying that something coming from nothing in the beginning really isn't different to something from nothing today. Both of them imply great complexity and laws arising from literally 0 causation.

Originally posted by BananaKing
I'm not entirely sure you got my argument, because I was actually saying that in support of an older earth, not against it.

I was saying that something coming from nothing in the beginning really isn't different to something from nothing today. Both of them imply great complexity and laws arising from literally 0 causation.

Nothingness cannot exist, therefore the universe did not come from nothingness. That being said, there is no proof in that statement for a god.

Originally posted by BananaKing
To be honest, I'm often asking myself the same question.
I think I'm somewhere between the two. Panentheism subsumes pantheism. One can say that God = the physical universe (pantheism), or, God = the physical universe plus (panentheism). "God", as generally understood in mystical literature, is panentheistic. God = {Dream/Dreamer}.

Do you think there is a Dreamer?

Originally posted by Mindship
Panentheism subsumes pantheism. One can say that God = the physical universe (pantheism), or, God = the physical universe plus (panentheism). "God", as generally understood in mystical literature, is panentheistic. God = {Dream/Dreamer}.

Do you think there is a Dreamer?

I am the dreamer!

I couldn't decide...
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
I am the dreamer! Beats being the walrus.
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
I am the dreamer! Indeed.

Originally posted by Mindship
I couldn't decide...
Beats being the walrus.
Indeed.

Isn't that the point? We are the dream of the dreamer while also being the dreamer?

Its like in Kung Fu Panda, there is no secret noddle recipe.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Its like in Kung Fu Panda, there is no secret noddle recipe. You've just intrigued me to watch the flick.

Originally posted by Mindship
You've just intrigued me to watch the flick.

OMG, you haven't seen it? Sorry for the spoiler.

I rented it not knowing if it was any good, just to be surprised. They snuck wisdom in the movie.

I like chocolate milk

Fatass

I think we're done here!

Originally posted by BananaKing
In the end, without some kind of omnipresent, all powerful and eternal law of nature or potentiality, nothing can't do anything. In this universe, perhaps. In this small corner of all existence, perhaps. In this tiny speck of infinity, perhaps. But regarding absolutely everything--perhaps not.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
In this universe, perhaps. In this small corner of all existence, perhaps. In this tiny speck of infinity, perhaps. But regarding absolutely everything--perhaps not.

I think he make a good case for the multiverse.