God is not intelligent

BTW, regarding reincarnation, I tried past-life regression once. It was intense at times and the "memories" seemed real. I saw 5 [what seemed like] previous lives. It was a very strange experience. I didn't come away a believer but it certainly got my attention.

Here is the kicker. In the oldest life, which I saw more clearly that other imagery, I was watching a reed ship being loaded with supplies. Most striking were the colors. The sky and ocean were an intense blue that contrasted greatly with the white sand and green grass. The colors were so vibrant that even now, 30 years later, I can see them in my mind. About then the hypnotist asked why I had come back to this time. I was suddenly filled with emotion and said my wife died.

I saw us crossing a large body of water during a severe storm [on the reed ship]. Something happened and I found myself in the water. I can still remember going into the water and feeling the bubbles rising all around me as I struggled to get back to the surface. And I knew my wife didn't make it. At that point I was brought out of it. Most striking was how I was filled with emotions out of nowhere. There was no warning. There was no build up. It was like the sudden recall of a horrible memory.

Many years later, almost ten years ago now, I fell madly in love with a woman 30 years younger than me. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever met. My three years with her were the three greatest years of my life. It is now how I define my life. And she grew to love me as well. But it never made sense. From the first moment we had a strange closeness that neither one of us understood. It was like we had been friends for a very long time. And for me it was love at first sight. I didn't know I could love someone so much. I fell madly in love in about 30 seconds.

Several years after she finally moved on, she contacted me to say she went to a mystic and learned that we were married in a past life. She was still trying to make sense of what we had and that was the answer she found. I was shocked to say the least! She said our lives are intertwined.

The moment she said this, I was taken back to my hypnosis session. Every aspect of my being told me this was no coincidence. I had the overwhelming feeling that was her.

I had never told her the story. We met for coffee one day and I finally told her. And I have to say, I didn't really believe in reincarnation after the regression. It seemed real but it didn't convince me. But now, in my heart of hearts, I can't shake the feeling it was all very real. And you know what? I lost her again!

It makes me wonder if I am doomed to keep finding and losing the greatest love of my life.

I just googled reed ship to see what they show. Yep! Just like that! That is very much what I remember seeing.

 

Perhaps I should have said, the greatest love of all of my lives.

 

Still, the flaw I see is that these unintelligent things, like the dictates of science, are not, themselves, random. That they exist, as they do, has allowed all else to exist. I disagree with what I find to be your incredible belief, apparently, that the universe, life, and human consciousness, at least, all came into being due to happy, "accidents."

The most basic description for pantheism, BTW, is the belief that-- unlike monotheism, in which the divine is above, transcends, the universe-- God is immanent, that is, dwells within the Creation. This is not uncommonly simplified to the idea that all the universe is part of God. It would then seem to follow that anything that exists in that universe, therefore exists within God, as well. While I won't go so far as to say your beliefs are not pantheistic (from my limited knowledge of your personal philosophy), to consider God as something separate from, or unconnected to, the rest of the universe, they definitely seem out of the mainstream of pantheistic thought, even with the vast variations that exist within that broad category.

 

As "intelligence" refers to the capacity to learn, "God" would not be intelligent as "God" would already know all. There would be nothing to be learned. "God" might provide some kind of choice to certain creatures and then see what they do with it, but all the possibilities would be known.

 

Since String Theory, itself, is unproven, this appears not really as significant as you make it out to be. Would you care to further elaborate?

This is not really what your linked article says. Rather, it seems to say that the scientists were able to USE information, to preserve energy.

[SNIP]

By tracking the particle’s motion using a video camera and then using image-analysis software to identify when the particle had rotated against the field, the researchers were able to raise the metaphorical barrier behind it by inverting the field’s phase. In this way they could gradually raise the potential of the particle even though they had not imparted any energy to it directly.

Quantifiable breakthrough
In recent years other groups have shown that collections of particles can be rearranged so as to reduce their entropy without providing them with energy directly. The breakthrough in the latest work is to have quantified the conversion of information to energy. By measuring the particle’s degree of rotation against the field, Toyabe and colleagues found that they could convert the equivalent of one bit information to 0.28 kTln2 of energy or, in other words, that they could exploit more than a quarter of the information’s energy content...

The research is described in Nature Physics, and in an accompanying article Christian Van den Broeck of the University of Hasselt in Belgium describes the result as “a direct verification of information-to-energy conversion” but points out that the conversion factor is an idealized figure. As he explains, it regards just the physics taking place on the microscopic scale and ignores the far larger amount of energy consumed by the macroscopic devices, among them the computers and human operators involved. He likens the energy gain to that obtained in an experimental fusion facility, which is dwarfed by the energy needed to run the experiment. “They are cheating a little bit,” joked Van den Broeck over the telephone. “This is not something you can put on the shelf and sell at this point.”
[End]

This aspect of Maxwell's Demon was pointed out, long ago:

[SNIP]

Among the many responses to this conundrum was that of Leó Szilárd in 1929, who argued that the demon must consume energy in the act of measuring the particle speeds and that this consumption will lead to a net increase in the system’s entropy. In fact, Szilárd formulated an equivalence between energy and information, calculating that kTln2 (or about 0.69 kT) is both the minimum amount of work needed to store one bit of binary information and the maximum that is liberated when this bit is erased, where k is Boltzmann’s constant and T is the temperature of the storage medium.
[End]

Not that I doubt that there is a relation between energy & information, or discount the possibility of information being at the root of all things; I'm only saying that the experiment, as I read this synopsis, does not really "prove" either of those things. That information can preserve energy, in fact, has long been known, from the time of man's first labor-saving invention.

What is interesting to consider, however, is the great change in our impression of the idea, if we change the word, 'information," to either "ideas," or "thought."

 

There are numerous potential problems with your argument. First, is your defining of intelligence, as meaning to have a capacity to learn, which is not truly its definition; if this nevertheless applies to all intelligence, as we know it, this would clearly be no more than a specious, semantic argument you would be making. That is, you would be demonstrating a shortcoming of our language, as any being that came to know all things, so that there was nothing it could learn, would certainly not go from being considered brilliant to being no longer deemed an intelligence, with the addition of whatever was the final piece of its knowledge. But that God would know all things, in advance, is also an assumption, on your part, with which I would disagree. If all was already known, there would be no point to existence. I believe, rather, that the universe came into being for the purpose of learning, and each thing that happens, presents a potentially new thing to learn.

 

I believe that YHWH EVOLVED in Energy from Quantum Vacuum and has something of a game of chess with eight billion variables going on with
former Covering Cherub Hillel who went off into a very dark physiological experiment ......
We learn the most from our errors.....
so Lucifer's rebellion will eventually be worthwhile when we look at it all over and over and over again.....

"Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." (Luke 7:47)

Eventually... .even the fallen angels learn a lot from their terrible errors.....



www.CarbonBias.blogspot.ca/

https://near-death.com/richard-eby-nde/

Christian Andreason was given a brilliant explanation for what is going on for the long term.....


https://near-death.com/christian-andreason-nde/

 

I is a view compatible with common sense without any emotion.

 

So is information.

 

There are no fads in science? Better think that through.

 

So he missed one. It happens to me as well.

 

Physics depends on having mathematical models. You can't just make these up. You don't have fads in real science and especially physics. Nothing happens quickly in physics. The ticks of the clock in physics come in decades.

A lot of people still think of Relativity as "modern physics" when in fact it is over 100 years old. The same is true for Quantum Mechanics.

 

I never wrote that. I wrote that there is a spiritual basis to all life, and that it is more of a force than a 'supreme being', and this spiritual force is the source of all things, but it's naturalism is always random, or rather, 'ordered chaos', this concept is not the same thing as the atheist's, 'nature happened by accident and came from nothing'. The distinction is important.

See, what I'm saying is that the ultimate truth of the universe cannot be understood in a 'finding a watch in the desert must have an intelligent designer' simplisticism.

The ultimate truth of the universe is a mystery. It's truth is beyond all simplistic explanations.

I'm not a full on pantheist, I've stated my belief is probably closer to pantheism than theism or deism, in the sense that 'god' is a force that is the source of all things, it's process does not conflict with our current knowledge of physics and the universe, but it is not an 'intelligence' nor a 'supreme being' nor something separate from life. Life is the manifestation of God, the divine force, It is not an individual, it is not personal, it is the invisible force behind, the source of, matter/energy and space/time and all things are the manifestation of all things, and god permeates all things. For example, God would never write a single book. The more pantheistic view would be, if God wrote a book, well god cannot write only one books, if God wrote a book, it can only be that all books are a manifestation of God. All creativity is a manifestation of god, and God is creativity, the two are the same, God is not a 'creator' in the sense of 'designer'. God is more of spring from which life wells up from, and it is welling up, everywhere in an ordered randomity.

In my view, to conceive of God as a supreme being, personal God, is due to the human mind's tendency for simplistic thinking,

The truth, the ultimate truth, is, and will forever be, a mystery.

And to quote a famous mystic, who was paraphrasing a famous philosopher:

"Life is not a problem to be solved, it is a mystery to be lived"

 

Please explain, either your sentence has a typo or it requires explanation.

 

Any theory that hasn't been proved is a fad and scientists go after it like wolves after a reindeer. The scientific method is all about observing nature, developing ways to explain what they observe and seeking proof. It is an endless argument as it should be. Fads in science can be in favor for long periods of time indeed.

 

I was making fun of your accusing me of harboring mysticism.

 

Can you quote me? not sure what you're referring to.

 

I do not mean this to offend you, but what I have quoted, above, honestly seems like contradictory double-talk, to me. The "spiritual force," that you describe as being "God," is either utterly random, or it is, to at least some degree, DIRECTED. If it is the latter, then my argument is that this element of guidance, or focus, should be considered as an "intelligence." You are trying to have it both ways, IMO, to consider the Divine Source to be "ORDERED Chaos," but not to consider its ordering, to be an intelligence. At most, you are only pushing off the determination, one step further removed; that is, either:
1) the order within this chaos, from which proceeded all else, is a completely RANDOM phenomena, in which case it is only a semantic argument, that Creation did not occur by sheer Chance-- the ordering of God's Chaos, which enabled all Creation, would be the thing that "naturally," came together in such an amazingly fortuitous manner; or
2) if the order was not determined by God, Itself, but was not accidental, then it was designed by whatever Force made God.


I have no disagreement with the part of your argument that posits this God not fitting our traditional notion of a "being."

 

I fail to see how your notion of what you call "God," fundamentally differs from just the physical laws of the universe. Again, this is only a convenient way of separating yourself from choosing one or the other side, in the question as to whether all existence occurred by mere coincidence, or if there was ANY type of intelligence, directing things. This, IMO, is a taking of the simplistic route, to just accept all the laws of physics, and the existence of all matter, to just "be," without considering how they came to be or what their existence might mean. I would, therefore, say that your beliefs are closer to Atheism, than you categorize them as being. With all your talk (in other quotes) about the "Mystery," of existence, I would think your spiritual philosophy should most properly be called a variant of Agnosticism, not of pantheism; however, because both of these dispositions have more gray areas than most, the two belief paradigms can overlap. So what you are presenting, I could think of as a hybrid, a pantheist- flavored agnosticism, or an AgnostiPantheism.

This is not meant as in insult; in fact, my own Pantheism has become more Agnostic, in the last few years; perhaps you earlier had a more purely agnostic view, that has become more pantheistic, over time?


At any rate, let me reiterate that, in the main, to a pantheist, God is, or includes, all things. Anything that exists in the universe must, therefore, also be an attribute of a Pantheist God, or a connected collection of gods/aspects of God. But to believe that "intelligence," exists outside of, or apart from, God, would make yours a very strange mutation of pantheist belief.

 

"As "intelligence" refers to the capacity to learn, "God" would not be intelligent as "God" would already know all. There would be nothing to be learned. "God" might provide some kind of choice to certain creatures and then see what they do with it, but all the possibilities would be known."
The first sentence obviously was an attempt to avoid another debate about that very word. Going to the essence assessing learning capabilities is what tests of intelligence provide data for. That is not a grammatical shortcoming.
Anthropomorphizing "God" is a highly dubious activity. Projecting onto "God", while a generally common error, only works against the projector. We would be presumptuous to think "God" would have anything like human needs, such as a "point of existing".

 

Sorry, too lazy. Look it up for yourself.

 

This seems no more than a reiteration of your original argument, to which I had replied. The sole definition of "an intelligence," is not "something that has the capacity to learn." A better definition would stress the ability of an intelligence to perceive things about its environment, and then react to them "intelligently."

Secondly, may I ask what is your own religious persuasion, that allows you to believe that you understand just how much God knows? It is, once again, not a given certainty, that God must know everything; this is nothing more than your unsupportable assumption. I can cite you one of the truly great intelligences of all history, Psychologist Carl Gustave Jung, as someone who believed that "God," was omnipotent, but NOT omniscient!

This idea, therefore, is both speculatively debatable, and unknowable. Hence, it cannot be used as part of a convincing "proof." Believing one can gauge God's level of understanding, any more accurately than, "more than myself," is even more of a reach than you pin on me:

And why would you include that non sequitur point? Are you under the impression, for some inexplicable reason, that I depicted God, in human form? Once again, it suggests hubris of the highest order, to assume that any God with intelligence, would necessarily have to resemble us.

 

Having a purpose, is not simply a "human need." ALL LIFE, in fact, is created with an intrinsic drive to survive, and every species with the cognate imperative to project itself into the future, through its posterity. Therefore, if we are to allow ourselves any speculations about God whatsoever, I would contend that the expectation that It has some reason, some desire, motivating Its actions, is one of the most defendable likelihoods (though predicting the nature of that priority, is another matter). The argument for this guess, certainly far outstrips the validity of the presumption that God must know all-- including everything that has yet to occur! This is so, even of those who include all, in their image of God: by way of analogy, our possessing of a body does not give us an automatic understanding of every aspect of our own biology.

 

If by 'directed' you are implying 'intelligently directed', you would be wrong. To wit:

A simple exercise in magnetism can disprove it. Put iron filings on a thin sheet of plastic, and a magnet below it, and the fillings will follow the directional magnetic force of the magnets, which is to say, the filings are directed by the magnetic force of the magnet, but sans intelligence.

So, without qualifying your statement, it's both yes and no.

1. Yes, it's directed.
2. No, it's not intelligently directed.

As for the degree of randomity, there seems to be orderly functionality in the chaos of the sea of life, but it's driven by 100% randomity. Note, intelligence is not required for the phenomenon.

Nature's various forces, to some or greater degrees, guides it. There is no logical basis to presume intelligence behind the force of nature.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the process.

Ordered chaos is still 100% randomity, it's just that it is under the influence of forces. The influence of forces is unavoidable, because you can't have a universe without forces, and, naturally, they will influence the movement of randomity in seemingly orderly outcomes.

Take galaxies, for example. They (or some) appear at a distance to be beautiful spirals. But, fly into them and you are in a sea of randomity.

Looking at the surface of the moon tells us it was formed in randomity, formed in chaos, but the final outcome was it's orbiting the earth, the size of it's mass resulted in a circular globe, both of which appears to be orderly outcomes and functions. Ultimately, it was 100% randomity that resulted in the orderly function.

You're twisting this concept to conflate 'ordered chaos' with 'intelligent direction', but there is no factual basis for that presumption, given that natural phenomena is explainable without intelligence directing it.

For example, the moon orbits the the Earth and the Earth orbits the sun because their distances and mass with respect to the sun achieves an equilibrium. Both Earth and moon were formed in randomity, but their equilibriums, moon orbiting earth, earth orbiting the sun, were achieved randomly, though the achieved equilibrium is orderly. The point is, the orderly appearance of the equilibrium was achieved via 100% randomity.

The point is, the orderly aspects of various objects and fluids, gases, etc., in space are achieved in 100% randomity.

No need for 'intelligence' to direct it, none at all.

When you are communicating to me on a subject like this, your grammar has to be razor sharp.

This clause is sloppy, because 'from which proceeded all else', I mean, what are you saying, precisely? Are you saying all else is proceeding from 'the order' or 'the chaos'?

But, neither is really quite right. In my view, the better articulation of this concept is:

Life has a spiritual basis, and that spiritual basis is not a 'being' nor an 'identity' nor a 'supreme identity', 'intelligent designer' or 'personal god, it is a force, but it's essence is not physical, it's spiritual.

the term 'random phenomena' isn't a perfect articulation of the concept, because it implies 'accidental'.

The reason I don't like it because on the point of accidental, it assumes the finite, and we simply do not know if the universe
is finite or infinite, and we'd have to know that before we could presume 'accidental' or not.

We can describe the universe as an ocean, and like an ocean, it's a sea of randomity.

But, whether the whole universe, itself, occurred by chance, or by predictable forces, no one knows.

The only thing I feel it is safe to presume is that it did not occur by a 'intelligent designer'.

I think that is probably okay, another way of putting it, however, I don't like your phrase 'God's chaos' because putting 'God' in the possessive case, implies 'being', which it isn't. This goes back to my statement before; be more disciplined in your grammar, think it through.

If you can.

Again, my philosophy is closer to pantheism, where it wouldn't go as 'a force made god' because, god and the force are the same, and all that exists, arising from the source, in it's entirety, is God. The whole shebang is God. It's all one thing, which jives completely with eastern philosophical concepts.

Moreover, Your assumption that the ultimate truth of the universe is a binary syllogistic proposition is simplistic.

Your syllogism goes like this: if it was not this, but was this, then it must be that.

No, because you are talking about the ultimate truth of the universe, the 'cause', and The ultimate truth of the universe cannot be reduced to a syllogism.

Why?

Because it's life is a mystery. All you are doing is attempting to chip away at the mystery (more than it can be done, successfully).

I might have chipped away at it, but only slightly, with my proposition that life has a spiritual basis,and that is, indeed, just scratching the surface of nature's secrets. But, that much, I think we can do.

Since I'm not attempting to presume the cause of the universe, for the most part, I've surrendered to the mystery, for the simple reason it's fool's errand to attempt to reduce the ultimate truth of the universe to a syllogism, then it would also be a fool's errand to presume that a force made god. See? I'm not concerned with the ultimate cause of the universe, I only describe the universe as god. We could do just as well to leave god out of it altogether. It's just that calling the universe god, adds more poetry to the concept, adds some majesty to it ( and I think we should) and put's a nice ribbon on the box of life.

On the other hand, if I had to reduce the ultimate truth to a simple equation, but only to the extent that the mystery is not solved,

I might posit it thus:

Given infinity....

all that is possible.....

is inevitable.


But, that presumes infinity. If infinity is true, then it works, otherwise, life is a mystery, still. Even with it, it's still a mystery.

See, if infinity is true, then all numbers, no matter how astronomical, are infinitesimal, which diffuses the argument that goes:

"The astronomical number of things that have to be in place for life to occur are so great, it cannot be 'chance' ".

If infinity is true, then there is no such thing as an astronomical number.

See, that life exists, overall, may, or may not be chance, we don't know the answer to that one, but that life occurred in our neighborhood, was by chance.

See, I've heard the claim that, given infinity, if you put 100 monkey with typewriters in a room, they will produce Hamlet, or something similar.

No, because that's not possible. Not everything is possible. Remember, my statement is:

Given infinity, all that is possible is inevitable.

Only that which is possible. WE know life is possible, right? Add the ingredient of infinity, then life is inevitable.

ANd the nice thing about it, it does not conflict with my philosophy, stated above.

But, what the **** do I know? I'm just some dude with a computer trying to cope with and make sense of, life, just like everyone else.

 

I don't. I belief that life has a spiritual basis, and that basis is a force, but spiritual. To me, 'God' is the sum total of everything, and the process, having a spiritual basis, is enough for the presumption that the whole shebang is God, but it's not intelligent. It's not a personal god, or supreme being, or something separate from life.

Agnosticism is just the idea that one doesn't have a clue.

It's a higher proposition than to assume one has the answer to existence

Simply because it's honest, and no one really knows.

I'm somewhere in the middle. and the only reason I do is because I sense it.

I sense that there is a spiritual basis to life, which is why I won't jive with Socrates's "THe only thing I do know is that I don't"

That's honest, but it's also honest that if you have an inkling of something, it's honest to say it, as well.

But, what I won't do is assert that my philosophy is 'fact'. I do not confuse 'belief' with 'fact.

Socrates would nail me if I did, and we don't want to piss off Socrates.