You can comprehend things beyond human consciousness by rising into them through process of aspiration or inner growth but how are you going to describe them? The problem is that human language is inadaquate tool for that simply becouse it is mainly tool of human mind beyond which one must go to be in possition to comprehend wider and higher realities. Ones comprehension than happens in some higher layer of mind or through what we can call psychic being.
Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Free Will
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timtofly
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Do you disagree that there are things out there that have not been given a precise description? Humans have grasped all there is to know? Or do you disagree that some phenomenon can be understood by some, but not others?
My point is that humans do not have all understanding yet, but there are still things out there to be described. I hold that even faith can be described. Faith has substance and evidence, but that does not mean that every one comprehends all the faith in the world. One may disagree, but even science is a faith that people put trust in. The scientific method is just a fool proof way of testing faith because the evidence can be seen, and the substance seems real enough until the next major break through.
I do not think this is so. To use a parallelism taken from my current occupation with conic sections:
You can have all of the properties of the 2d projections of an ellipse be known. You still cannot "know" how the cone sectioned by a plane is existent in the 3d space. There still are infinite different cases for that 3d "specific" location, no matter that in the 2d shape you know everything about the ellipse.
In other words: we cannot be sure of the properties of something, if that something also exists on more dimensions than those we can account for, or present extensively as well
My objection is that your statement seemed to suggest that we need more than a description. While we may need a large preamble of terms and definitions, like a legal contract that defines every term used in it's contents, we don't need to be superhuman to comprehend it.
The problem is that you may have precise description of some phenomena but only in part. You may even experience certain phenomena with your senses or intuitive feeling but your description of it may vary depending on the consciousness one has during the experience.
timtofly
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I was thinking more on the lines of a simple thought and being able to comprehend it. Where do new ideas come from?
I agree that we may not know everything about an entity called God, but that is not the same as saying God cannot be understood or comprehended. Living on a plane does not prevent us from reasoning about cones, or being 3D, Tesseracts.I do not think this is so. To use a parallelism taken from my current occupation with conic sections:
You can have all of the properties of the 2d projections of an ellipse be known. You still cannot "know" how the cone sectioned by a plane is existent in the 3d space. There still are infinite different cases for that 3d "specific" location, no matter that in the 2d shape you know everything about the ellipse.
In other words: we cannot be sure of the properties of something, if that something also exists on more dimensions than those we can account for, or present extensively as well
Yes, exactly, we can reason about it, but if we lived on a plane (ie in a 2dimensional world/environment) then we would not see the sphrere as it is seen by us now, since we would be seing it in a way relative to how it entered our plane, for example if it sunk vertically on our plane we would be seing first of all only a point, which then would be progressively expanded to a circle, then started decreasing again in circumferance until it became a point once more, then dissappeared completely (at which moment the sphrere would entirely be below our plane).
Likewise we cannot see a 4d form now. Not directly. Only through geometrical and other calculations can we define to a degree how the 4d shape would be.
ps: in fact, in my view, we can do more than that. But we can never actually view the 4d shape as fully as if it was in 3d or less.
I’m applying logic to a conceptual framework which includes a concept of the primal void. Being a primal void, all we can really say about it is that it lacks manifest distinctive qualities; it is easier to describe it in terms of what it isn’t, rather than what it is. Mathematics does a pretty good job of approaching concepts like zero and infinity logically, so I see no reason why comparable success couldn’t be had with a similar concept such as the primal void.
The key difference between a concept like “primal void” (PV) and a concept of “omnipotence” is that the latter is illogical in and of itself because it results from extrapolating a finite human quality to infinity. Concepts like “power” and “potency” can only arise when 1) there is a distinction between self and other, and 2) the self is inherently limited / defined (which is effectively the same as 1 anyway).
The imagined is a subset of reality, and is real to a point. What we can imagine is one thing; what we can transform from imagined to physical and/or independently verifiable reality is quite another.
Where are the limits? They're all around you! The universe itself is literally nothing, *but* a big complex of limits. Limitation is the price of manifest existence. Or to put it more accurately, limitation is just another name for manifest existence. I certainly don’t think the universe is stale and unchangeable, but I do think that inasmuch as the universe can change it will change within limits. Even if the universe were to change in such a way as to transcend limitation (Heat death perhaps?) such a change would involve a meta-limit, i.e. the universe would cease to be (a manifestation event).
As I said, it is a continuum. Keep in mind that I am talking from a perspective which arises from the conditioned extreme of that continuum, so naturally I am compelled to describe the PV in conditional terms in order to describe it at all.
The PV can impact on the most manifest levels of reality, just not directly. Just as a storm cell has neither direct influence over nor vested interest in the exact location a particular raindrop hits the ground, similarly the PV has no direct influence or interest regarding how particular events play out on the more manifest levels of reality. As for humans, the apparent direct impact of human consciousness on the universal level is 1) a product of selective human perception and 2) actually made up of subtle intermediary chains of causality which often go unnoticed.
The outsourced (conditioned reality) has indeed outgrown the PV in the most literal sense, i.e. it has effectively grown out of the PV. However to say that the outsourced has a greater capacity than the PV doesn’t really make sense because: 1) the essential ‘substance’ of the outsourced is that of the PV, and the outsourced springs forth from the PV much as a flower springs forth from a tree; and 2) the outsourced has sacrificed infinite possibilities of existence in exchange for a narrow range of actuality/definition, while the PV contains infinite possibilities but actualises none of them in and of itself.
I didn’t say personality wasn’t real, I said it was an illusion. In other words it is real, but not in the way that it initially appears to be.
Your idea about cosmic personality consisting of manifesting its capacity in accordance with human consciousness sounds functionally the same as saying that anthropocentric human consciousness interprets or ‘squeezes down’ reality according to its limited capacities, thereby generating a perception of a “cosmic personality” or “God” as a means of / psychological interface for dealing with reality. The only significant difference between these two positions is that the latter is more efficient and parsimonious than the former.
O.K. Here is my simple logic: Primal void is the Source. It parents and includes everything whichever comes to existence hence PV is omnipotent. Whats is illogical about that?
That's a bit like saying "the ocean parents and includes all the marine life within it, hence the ocean is omnipotent for all oceanic marine life", or "the storm parents and includes all raindrops in it, hence the storm is omnipotent for all those raindrops". Giving rise to and containing something does not automatically equate to having unlimited capacity to wilfully manipulate that thing.
As I said before the notion of 'potency' can only apply when there is a division between self and other, and when that self has the capacity and incentive to have an agenda in relation to the other. The PV is ontologically before divisions of self and other, and the PV is the essence of all manifestation anyway. What possible need then would the PV have for potency? To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching, the PV 'gives birth and nourishes, has without possessing, acts with no expectations, and leads without trying to control.'
Of course if you really want to say that the PV is omnipotent then all you have to do is revise the meaning of 'potency' to the point of unrecognizability. However it would be more reasonable and economical to simply describe the PV as omnipresent.
timtofly
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Omnipresent is not a part of the OP though. If the PV is omnipresent, would it not also be in the here and now? Not much different than God also being in the here and now, even though we as a human allegedly cannot observe God. God is not limited, it is the human factor that is limited.
I think that the worst part of this search for a god is that we force ourselves to try to think of "what we cannot think" and this seems to create dangerous patterns. It is possible that, in the end, if one can be of the view he can think something he was not able to, what happened in general was for him to effectively cut a part of his world of thought and place it behind some sort of border to the rest of his consciousness. Again this would be false, but also very dangerous.
In my view it is not healthy to look for a god. A god may still exist. But to look for something you think already you cannot find or grasp- that is not a good end to have in mind.
Which is also why i detest any sort of mysticism. It seems to be a vicious circle, or rather a vicious circle which at some point may destroy itself along with the person running endless routes on it.
In my view it is not healthy to look for a god. A god may still exist. But to look for something you think already you cannot find or grasp- that is not a good end to have in mind.
Which is also why i detest any sort of mysticism. It seems to be a vicious circle, or rather a vicious circle which at some point may destroy itself along with the person running endless routes on it.
The PV is in the here and now. I said in an earlier post that the PV is (from our perspective) everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Or to put it another way, you could think of our universe and everything in it as occupying a "zero-th" dimension in addition to the standard three spatial dimensions.
The difference between PV vs God being here and now is that there is no implication of intentionality or omnipotence with a PV. Moreover if you look closely enough at anything the ultimate insubstantiality/voidness of it becomes undeniably apparent, but this is not the case with God. Why? Partly because 'God' often means very different -and even contradictory - things to different people. But also because 'God' implies a definite personal being with a self, and this self by the very nature of being a self must be differentiated from an other. What is that other??
I agree that the human factor is limited. But the very concept of 'God' is itself a product of that limited human factor! 'God' is a result of a limited human mind meeting the vast unknown of reality and trying to process that vast unknown into something intelligible and relatable (i.e. to the human mind). That in itself is not a problem; the problem, as I have said, is all the baggage that comes with 'God'. I feel like we're talking in circles here?
Well, if a god is, in the end, a starting point with no starting point itself, then ultimately to try to examine such a notion is not a good research to carry on (it seems to potentially lead to erosion of the very ability to think logically).
We all know that something exists, ie that we exist- everyone knows that for his own self anyway. Since i know i exist, it it obvious that something does exist. Why does anything exist? And since it exists, at what point did it begin to?
Maybe there was no point of first existence. The danger, in my view, is when humans try to think that if there was such a point, it has to be related to them because they can ask such questions. I doubt it was. We can ask questions and create very complicated patterns, and we are a very complicated being anyway no matter if we ask those questions or not. But we are humans, and therefore in the end think in a human way. So our god is also, in the end, a notion in our human mind. It probably is a very important notion. It still does not follow that it has to do with the universe or how things started.
We all know that something exists, ie that we exist- everyone knows that for his own self anyway. Since i know i exist, it it obvious that something does exist. Why does anything exist? And since it exists, at what point did it begin to?
Maybe there was no point of first existence. The danger, in my view, is when humans try to think that if there was such a point, it has to be related to them because they can ask such questions. I doubt it was. We can ask questions and create very complicated patterns, and we are a very complicated being anyway no matter if we ask those questions or not. But we are humans, and therefore in the end think in a human way. So our god is also, in the end, a notion in our human mind. It probably is a very important notion. It still does not follow that it has to do with the universe or how things started.
Borachio
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This makes some sense.
But perhaps there are other ways of thinking about this.
Perhaps by thinking furiously about the possible existence of god, the nature of any god, and where you might look for one, is a useful exercise.
Perhaps after thinking furiously (one really has to want to know, otherwise one wouldn't bother), there might come a point when the brain simply gives up and reaches some stage of... I don't know what... quietude, perhaps?
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Yes, exactly, we can reason about it, but if we lived on a plane (ie in a 2dimensional world/environment) then we would not see the sphrere as it is seen by us now, since we would be seing it in a way relative to how it entered our plane, for example if it sunk vertically on our plane we would be seing first of all only a point, which then would be progressively expanded to a circle, then started decreasing again in circumferance until it became a point once more, then dissappeared completely (at which moment the sphrere would entirely be below our plane).
Likewise we cannot see a 4d form now. Not directly. Only through geometrical and other calculations can we define to a degree how the 4d shape would be.
ps: in fact, in my view, we can do more than that. But we can never actually view the 4d shape as fully as if it was in 3d or less.
Viewing it does not preclude us from studying it and understanding it fully. There are many things in mathematics that cannot be seen.
I do not think i agree with that sentence, although there is a lot of room for interpreting it in some other way.
Do you mean that in your view we can know what a 4d object is, without being able to actually have a (proven) idea of what it is? Because from the (little) research i did on 4d shapes, they appear to have at least two issues which hinder us from knowing much about them:
1) The 4d shapes are highlighted only in relation to particular properties they have when linked to other shapes. This effectively is like trying to know what a cube is like by having it compared to a discus (filled circle). You can always make calculations, provided you have some sense of the cube, in dependence to the discus. You still would not end up being able to calculate how it would form in a 3d world, because in the 2d world you and the rest of us would be living in the notion of 3d would be abstract.
2) It seems (i may be wrong here) that virtually all 4d shapes studied to a degree are very centrally connected to the 3d form of a sphere. A sphere is ok, but it has a very notable problem: we do not even know exactly how much its volume is, like we do not know exactly how much the surface are of a circle is, like we do not know exactly what the circumferance of a circle is. Pi may be working fine when it is self-cancelled in the calculation (as in having an angle of 180/pi radians, effectively making the bow formed from that angle on the periphery of the circle equal exactly the ratius of that circle) but not anywhere else.
Of course i am not a mathematician, but i think those two problems do exist. The second part of the second problem obviously exists in relation to the spheres.
The first problem, again, seems to exist.
PS: not that all the above have to have anything at all to do with being able to know of a god, if a god exists. In fact i doubt they have. A god is not a 4d object, if it was then obviously we would be seeing a partial presentation of it, which would render it part of our own world in one way or another. A sphere is not the god of a plane, no matter that the sphere will never be presented fully regardless of which way it moves through a plane. If we can be, in this metaphor, the plane, then a 3d, or even a 4d, object, won't be our god, and will only affect us if we are part of that object, which would cancel our part as a seperate plane, but still not leave us being in any way part of an actual god more than we can now be said to be part of the earth.
