Conclusive evidence that God does not exist

but in this instance the "bullshit" involves things like natural disasters, plagues, cancer in children, the AIDs pandemic....

is all that just god playing an elaborate game of hide and seek with his "true" followers, and screw the rest of the world?

 

Granted. However as long as your ego is the main driver of your thoughts and actions, your repertoire of behaviors is limited, inflexible, and predictable. Overcoming the ego opens you to flashes of startling insight and more effective actions.

LOL

You've listed only some of the bullshit. The vast majority of the bullshit comes from human society - that's the main milieu of our lives as humans.

Also I didn't intend to draw a line of demarcation between "God's true believers" and everyone else. Every pile of bullshit in your life and in mine is an opportunity to choose a mental response that will guide our thoughts and actions. If you let the bullshit bring you down, that's your decision. But don't blame it on the bullshit - that's merely an excuse for choosing to be pissed. You're the one who makes that decision. And that particular decision constitutes a decision to give your power to your ego - it's the knee-jerk, machine response.

 

Homo sapiens = tasting man and knowing man

Tasting man is sensory apparatus, the body a communication device.

Knowing man is abstract, combining information from far fields into leverage that can only be had through the synthesis of abstractions.

Everything exists as an idea, including god

 

indeed, i have. i am aware that most of the bullshit comes from us, but a good deal does not. this was my point. you propose a model in which faith is tested through various trials and tribulations, and that faith must be held onto in the face of unbelievers and perceived evidence to the contrary. one of the main reasons that people lose their faith is because of the pain and suffering in the world which is NOT caused by man. It follows then, that in this model, pain and suffering through natural causes is useful in that it tests the faith of the faithful, no? This is the purpose of the things that i listed. implicit in this is the creation of two "classes" of people, the faithful- who are to be tested, and others, children who die young etc, whose only purpose is to provide a test for the faith of those in the other class.

I'm not saying that these classes are necessarily defined from birth (although in a determined universe....) but in every horrific event the roles of the indivuals involved become defined. The event itself; say a death, may appear to be utterly meaningless but is invested with meaning by those who it affected. a person could for example, on hearing of the death of a loved one through random chance or natural causes, rationalise it by saying that god was testing their faith, that after the event they reached a higher spiritual level and were thus improved by the event. So, if this is the case, then the "bullshit" of the death is given meaning and purpose because it spiritually improves others, maybe a whole group of people. which in itself proposes an interesting question; is death less important than a spirituality? was the sacrifice of the one worth it for the good of the many?

I would say no. it seems to me that the god of this model is fairly callous, choosing some people to suffer so that an elite may have their faith restored or reinforced.

is the ego death of the few the reason for the suffering of the many?

i should stress that this is only what i inferred from your words, please correct me.

 

I think your point was clear. I was simply pointing out that diseases and natural disasters are only part of the challenges, and that human interactions are a more significant source of human suffering than "natural" causes - at least in our society, in these times.

One of my points is that the source of the challenges isn't of prime importance. The important thing is the existence of challenges.

The "model" isn't an original one of my own design. I've heard and read the same viewpoint in various places and times. This model is centuries old, if not older. However it's only lately that I've finally come to experience it in my own life, as opposed to merely intellectually understanding it. I remember an online conversation about two years ago when people talked to me about this "model," and at that point I understood the idea, but I couldn't see how I could possibly experience it as being true for myself at a deep level. Now it's finally starting to sink into my own being.

The creation of two "classes" of people is not a necessary implication of the model. As you said, this is what you read into my words. What I'm saying is that all humans are in the same class. All of us are being worked upon by the same forces and challenges. Everyone suffers, not just those who are outside of some "elite" class of the faithful.

The faith of the faithful grows from understanding the process, and that understanding comes about and increases because of the suffering. Certainly there is a continuum of levels of understanding and cooperation with the process. And further, as understanding increases and ego power fades, the very experience of suffering as a reaction to external events diminishes. This process is happening to everyone, whether they're aware of it or not. Everyone is being tested. Each person's reaction to their own tests is determined by their degree of understanding.

There are lots of people who attend some form of church or religious observance who don't understand this process. There are lots of people who are not religious at all who do understand it. However I would submit that it's much easier to see the underlying principles of some religions for someone who does understand the process. Personally I dislike religion per se. On the other hand, I see religion as one of the many devices that brings people to understanding - though not necessarily by adhering to the tenets of the religion. Often greater understanding comes from defying the religious tenets, ironically.

 

thanks for the explanation.


of course i wouldn't deny that we grow and change and come to understand ourselves better through trials and tribulations, that much is fairly plain, but is the process you speak of one with an end?, or at least a uniform goal; even if it appears differently to individual people. are we constantly growing and changing and continue to do so until we die? or do some eventually reach some form of ego-death/spiritual enlightenment/personal relationship with god? a plateau of understanding if you will?

AND is there a god who intervenes in our lives and is all knowing and all powerful?

these are the two criteria for the creation of the two class system, if they are both met, then its a fairly unpleasant world we live in, seems to me.

 

It's just that seeing the world as unpleasant - and even seeing the world as divided into these two classes - is part of what keeps you in what you would probably regard as the oppressed class.

Not that I haven't done the same in my own thoughts...quite recently, in fact. I kinda see your words as a sly admonishment from God to me for thinking that way.

I don't know all the answers. I've found some, but nothing you can't find for yourself, if you want to. I know people who know a helluva lot more answers than I do, and seem to have gained a helluva lot of the kind of omniscience and powers we would attribute to some divine being, but those people tend to mostly help me find my own answers. If you decide with complete certainty that you're ready to undertake a more rigorous journey than the one you've been moseying along so far, you might end up meeting one of these people yourself. It ain't no walk in the park, though. Well, at least that's my experience - your results may vary.

 

incredible understanding really is at walmart . just go there , hang out spiritually , don't get any stuff . i've had a couple experiences with it . the first was at a xmas time . i really didn't mean to make that one customer
weep in distress ... oh , in the music aisle i fractured xmas songs on the little plastic piano . i heard sobbing behind me ,
turned to see , and right then went quiet .

but , then , i'd actually been playing pianistically good as a god .

i didn't expect a sorrowfulness to intervene
all powerfully .

 

the hell?

 

thinking that cancer in children is inherently unfair, and noticing rampant inequalities in the world blinds me to higher truth? i always thought it was one of the things which made me human.

i suppose that makes sense, when one achieves transcendent knowledge, one, to a certain extent, leaves these petty observations behind.

as it happens i don't see the world as unpleasant. (although i do, obviously, believe that the world contains some unpleasantness) at worst (and best) i see the world as being inconsistent; too inconsistent, frankly, to be summed up in any single adjective. As i said, the world only becomes unpleasant if BOTH the preconditions i described are being met. i don't think either of them are, i wondered if you did.

 

Re-read a few times, lightly.

I think the two preconditions are met, in a way, and in another way, not just as you describe them. And yes, your thoughts define your reality, and help determine the state of your ego. It's just that it's pointless to talk about some of these things if you haven't experienced them for yourself. That's why I was suggesting...

 

could you elaborate on this?

 

hell , just as well befriend the desparado train kids
and when they steal the walmart whiskey have a snort
with them out of god blessed politeness .

 

You want to know the full scope of metaphysical reality before you decide whether to get involved?

 

er....well, if you fancy it, don't let me stop you lol actually all i wanted was a slightly more specific answer to the question i posted

 

So you can either argue that I must be wrong, in which case you can allow yourself to be happy with the universe, or else discover that I'm right, in which case you can have an excuse to be pissed at the universe?

Well I already mentioned that I don't have all the answers. What I can tell you is that the specificity of your questions goes beyond what I can definitively answer at this point. So therefore I'm suggesting - again - that if you truly want answers to your questions, you get your answers the way I got mine: Ask the universe for them. What I've found is that I'm becoming the person I wanted to meet years ago when I was full of questions. If you feel your questions as part of your very being, then I would say that a major purpose of your life is to live out those questions until you become the answers. If you're asking the questions as mere debate points for the purpose of intellectual sword-play, then I can't help you. I try to be aware of what I know vs what I conjecture, and the only way I could give you definite answers in this case is to stray into conjecture. You need truth, not theory.

However if you want to ask different questions I could tell you things I do know, which might provide you with clues on your journey to the other answers.

 

i wasn't after answers, just opinions, and i was interested in hearing yours, is all.

but no worries.

 

Okay then, good enough - I can provide opinions as long as it's clear that they are.

So let me start with some things I know. As I mentioned, I know that there are people in my life who apparently have profound powers of omniscience, prescience, and telepathy, plus an uncanny ability to act out any drama they choose, utterly convincingly, dropping out of character only in brief flashes as if to give me a clue that it's only drama for my benefit. From my point of view, not having such abilities myself, I consider the abilities of these people to be god-like.

I know that I've had a telepathic relationship with a few women who have demonstrated these abilities to me adequately to convince me that the telepathy I'm experiencing is genuine, and I'm not just imagining it or deluding myself.

I know that the path to these telepathic relationships began almost immediately after I told God or the universe or what have you that I had decided what I really wanted from my life was to achieve mystical union with the Divine, and to that end I wanted an enlightened person with me in my mind at all times to show me how to guide my thoughts in the direction needed to achieve that mystical union. I also wanted to have more psychic experiences and to write a book about those experiences.

Within minutes of this prayer - or personal decision or realization - a woman in my office whom I didn't know started making remarks out loud from down the hall about my unvoiced thoughts. I eventually spoke to that woman face-to-face, and she confirmed for me that she did indeed have the "powers" I thought she had. She told me out loud, "Don't try to get powers - just read the Bible and do what it says." And eventually I learned to "hear" her telepathic voice in my mind.

I know that in certain instances when I've visualized in detail something I wanted and trusted the universe to give it to me, the thing I wanted has appeared in my life almost as if conjured from nothing.

I know that as a result of my telepathic relationships with these god-like women - whom I often refer to as my "spirit guides," even though they are living humans rather than disembodied spirits, I have acquired surprising insights and abilities that I never would have thought I could before this process started.

So what would you conclude, assuming that what I'm telling you accurately reflects "objective" reality? One of my conclusions is that there are enlightened people who have profound, god-like abilities that I do not have. Another conclusion is that they are using their abilities to bring about changes in me that I want, that seem to be leading me to where they have arrived. Another conclusion is that there is "something" that seems to act a lot like I would expect an all-knowing, all-powerful God to act in my personal life, that responds to my deepest spiritual desires and even grants me some material manifestations that I ask for, and that seems to weave an amazingly complex tapestry of life in which people and events come and go in ways that fulfill needs and desires for me and for other people I know.

A difference I see between my conclusions and your questions is that you seem to picture a situation in which we are somewhat helpless waifs in a storm driven by powerful beings. What I see is that I have the ability to influence the physical universe as well. The universe responds to my thoughts and desires - not always as I consciously think it should, but over the long haul I realize that things needed to happen as they did in order for me to get to a point I wanted. My conclusion is that in some way and to some degree I'm granted power to be a co-creator with God. And I also conclude that I'm not aware enough to clearly perceive my connection to God, but that maybe I'm becoming more aware with time.

Does this help with your questions at all?

 

well, i was always gonna take what you said as opinions, given that we clearly have different belief structures, i thought that was a given.

yeh i guess that answers my questions, although i suppose that, as you say, i'll have to look elsewhere for an explanation as to why the situation you describe is not morally problematic, which is what interested me.

cheers for the response