Is God based on “Facts” or “Trust/Faith”???

Yes, and we should add that, as quantum physicists try to say, the quanta is not really a wave but a field, but it is not really a field but a wave. The problem comes from a human attempt to understand this.

Consider light, which is a quanta (for any nonphysics people out there). As a particle it is a photon and we also understand it as a light wave. But it travels at the speed of light, which is literally the speed of time. Trapped in our physical world we are at the opposite end of the time spectrum, and our momentum is relatively close to zero. Even when you add in the massive speeds at which we our planet, sun, and galaxy, are moving through space. We are relatively close to zero because we are trapped in time. We cannot move through it, we can only move with it. Time changes on its own in our world. So we experience the flash of an individual photon merging into an atom within a vision cell within our eye. (We don't actually perceive it, we perceive collectively many of them over a larger time frame, but we experience per se, each photon in each moment as it is the only way physicality manifests.)

At the speed of light where the wave is superpositioned (and not even travelling by our understanding because it is already everywhere in infinite positions). It is simultaneously a wave and a photon, it is everything all at once, because time is zero. Hence, in Einstein's thought experiment, a photon traveling past a mirror would see its reflection. From our perception of the universe, we think it would be impossible. The light from the photon would have to go to the mirror at the speed of light, and back to the photon as a reflection at the speed of light but the photon would be long gone because it is traveling past at the speed of light. But at the speed of light time is zero, so the reflection is simultaneously going to the mirror, at the mirror, reflecting back, and at the photon, and at the same time the light wave itself is simultaneously at the beginning and end of the universe/time, and all points in between.

SO yes, the wave and the particle are one and the same. and the wave exists exactly in that same space-time point as that particle. But from the human context, trapped in space-time, i.e. the physicality of the space-present, we can only understand the physical particle as it is in that single point of space-time, and we cannot even perceive the wave. If we try to perceive it, we can only do so through the particle. For example, we cannot perceive radio waves, unless they are picked up by an antenna where the electromagnetic wave is a particle---a photon---that is absorbed by an atom in the antenna that emits an electron which can be measured or sent to a speaker or whatever. Even if you have a very powerful radio antenna, like that on a radio station tower, and you short it out. The massive spark will generate plasma that actually has the sound of the radio broadcast. But that is a sound wave which again is created by particles---the movement of atoms in the air based on the frequency vibrations of the plasma. We are still not listening to the wave. It is the electrons that were to create the photons on the antenna surface that would travel as a wave, but are now leaving that antenna as a powerful plasma-creating spark. We cannot escape the fact as humans that we can only perceive the particle side of the equation. But within our minds, at a nonphysical level (because the mind is nonphysical by definition), we can try to understand the reality of the wave.

By the same token, you are right, God is the absolute truth. But we humans cannot perceive that absolute truth, only the very small part that we can attain within the physical reality we are in. Therefore the truth we are forced to deal with, which is the context of what we mean when we say truth, is truth as human construct. We cannot physically experience god any more than we can physically experience the wave, except on a nonphysical level. We can experience the physical product of god, that is the universe and everything within it. We can objectively prove that this exists. But we cannot objectively prove that God, as a nonphysical reality, exists. Quantum mechanics gets us as close to god as any science can, and we can gain an understanding of god and prove as best we can a reality that infers the existence of God. But any proof of god has to be nonphysical and therefore subjectively experienced.

My wife did not see a physical boy by the fireplace in my brother's new house. There is no way to physically prove she saw anything. But unbeknownst to her, a boy committed suicide in that spot, and she saw a nonphysical form of a boy. Only she can know what she experienced. Someone else may think she was just making it up. My story of my proof that the nonphysical realm exists is what I experienced, it left me with physical proof, a freshly cut animal tail------something that is grossly irrational and strangely random. And I can tell people all about it but it won't mean much to them, because only I know what happened, for them it was just a story. Only I know how there was no tail moments earlier, and only I know that it happened in such a way that I could keep going back to that spot to try to find another possibility of how it would have gotten there, but I could not. It mysteriously appeared, and the minute I picked it up, I knew what it meant. Only I know everything that happened that led me to that point, and why it was so significant and not just some wierd random event.

Today, I go to ceremonies---yuwipi ceremonies, sun dances, etc. And every time I will see things that are supernatural, magic, and miraculous. I can talk about them, there are many stories to tell, but the only way to understand them is to experience it first hand. I assist my wife when she heals people (She inherited this gift from her ancestors who were healers in the Philippines) and there is a catch-22 there because she will only heal those who she knows believe she can heal. People have come to her and she has told them that she cannot heal them because they don't sincerely believe in her. It is hard and tiring for her, and she doesn't charge money or anything for it, so it does not make sense for here to heal someone that she cannot heal. It also has to be the right time and place for her. She has to feel it, and even right before she heals, she will go outside and has to be given a sign. People don't understand this, and think she should just be able to 'turn it on' at will. But when she does heal, she heals them. But there is no way to prove how she does it. So people make up excuses about the placebo effect and so forth, or the power of psychology in healing.

 

The issue is not fields or waves, which merely describes Chromodynamics and Standard Theory, of about 80% of what we can measure. The question in a Singularity is the context and content. For example, a single particle can't be measured for both position and momentum at the same time, because it has no self-organizing context. Another example, would be the event horizon of a black hole, where time stops altogether, but a recent study indicated you can easily measure the entropy of a black hole, by assuming everything that falls into a black hole is in superposition. In other words, the issue is not how does its event horizon make sense, or whether everything is in superposition or entangled, but how efficient is it to trade the concepts of space and time, for making calculations. If we are to know the mind of God, then our own minds must become more efficient, requiring pattern matching and a sense of humor.

 

Ooo, you've triggered my inner pedant.

I think many conflicts thought to be religion-based are not actually based on religion but, instead, are based on abuse of that (whichever) religion.
Perhaps, still considered religion-based by some, but once a religion is manipulated/abused/mis-represented, it's not the religion that's involved.
It's just protagonists (ab)using the religion to justify their war.

Middle East most consistently, imv, involves abuse of religion, though I don't think we can ignore the efforts/involvement of the West, to really add another layer of complexity.
Ireland wasn't religious but is political and tribal.
South Africa's problems were tribal.
Ukraine - political
China/Taiwan (potentially brewing), political and possibly (arguably) cultural.
So, imv, they are all a mixture of one or more of abuse of religion, politics, culture, tribalism.

 

I have known a lot of people over the years who worship their God without going anywhere near a church or an established faith.
It's personal between them and their God.
In my view that's much better than 'following' some individual wacko whose collections from the congregation pay for private jets and an overly (unchristian) lifestyle.
And I also think those individuals are the new 'churches' which were also very wealthy and which may now be run as a businesses but, just, using religion as their product.

 

That could trigger someone to take this thread in a whole new direction!
Given the English dictionary reads as it does, why are so many supposedly english-speaking countries misspelling their words and using different grammar?

 

Em, wtf?
The dictionaries that we see in bookshops and libraries are single volume versions of the full dictionary.
Better to consider the full English dictionary as being much more substantial, as a kind of encyclopedia comprising many books.

 

The dictionary merely lists the popular definitions, and you can use any of them you prefer at any time. What we require is a new thesaurus, that obeys the laws of nature, and not the self-contradictory grammar of English. I'm working on it. You could say, the truth is up to 125% efficient, or can be just right and just wrong at the same time, and I'm retrodicting the actual grammar our bodies speak, by working the metaphoric logic.

The problem with modern science, is they're all liars and posers, who censor even each other, and have begun to censor anything like genuine humor, for fun and for profit. Of course, militant atheists and academics will simply deny it, then refuse to admit even our votes no longer matter, and the idiots can't even teach a child the earth revolves around the sun.

Thankfully, their own machines are starting to eat them alive, so I'm working on how to program AI, to make sure they do the job faster.

 

I think you missed the substance of my prev post.
The full dictionary is massive and comprises many volumes, just like encyclopedias do.
The ones we see in shops and libraries are cut-down versions, with, as you say, a narrower set of definitions but that doesn't change the reality that the dictionary is huge.
Also, you seem to criticise the dictionary but your solution is to create a new Thesaurus.

I can understand that if it related to my bike being broken, so I'll get a car.
However, you must also be aware that a Thesaurus is a totally different construct from that of a dictionary?

 

Its Information theory. The problem with the dictionary is that our thesaurus is being censored, according to 10,000 year old dualistic causal logic, while the world around us actually violates causality in subtle ways, involving information, because information is more fundamental than energy. In the case of the dictionary, it means the information it contains is more fundamental than the words themselves and, using the appropriate default geometry, its actually possible to make our words more self-organizing. Language and communications are all about the truth itself being self-organizing, and laughing at the best laid plans of mice and men.

 

Even most Chinese don't memorize that kind of vocabulary, and certainly don't need it. The dictionary merely contains popular definitions, but they're worthless if almost nobody uses them. I suppose you could program an AI to spout every word in the dictionary, but only lexicographers would give a crap.

 

I think you may be correct.

 

There are 20 free dictionaries available online, since everything is censored by the Tea Party already, and they're all pretty much the same that's all you need. So far, they've censored even fairy tales and the Bible, and the dictionary is next. Oxford keeps trying to censor the dictionary, and Wikipedia the encyclopedia, and Fundamentalists demand their turn.

How can you eat your pudding if you don't eat your meat!

I'm waiting for the official Militant Atheist-Fundamentalist dictionary and complete encyclopedia. So, I know which words to avoid using, at the risk of death.

 

There is no factual evidence to support the notion of the existence of god(s). While some think that the existence of god(s) can be logically inferred a priori based upon observance of the natural world, mathematics, or analysis of history, that's really no more than sophistic apophenia driven not by logic or empiricism, but infantile wishful thinking.

 

apophenia: Had to look that one up. Looks like lotsa'folks are subject to it these days. Sometimes a symptom of schizophrenia.

 

Apophenia, also known as "patternicity", is the tendency to perceive patterns in unrelated things--e.g., faces and scenes in clouds, rocks, the moon, etc. In mild form, it is adaptive for humans--the key to scientific discoveries. In pathological form, it can be manifested in schizophrenia, especially paranoia. Cognitive psychologists think "patternicity" is one of the cognitive tendencies that may be responsible for religion, another being agenticity: the belief that nature is controlled by intelligent agents.
Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World | Scientific American
Agenticity » Michael Shermer
This also had its adaptive advantages. Most human encountering an ambiguous entity that could be a log or an alligator, would be advised to assume "alligator". The skeptical, analytical agnostic types who would suspend judgment pending further information, would soon be eliminated from the gene pool, leaving a race of possibly gullible but living believers.
Psychology: How we form beliefs | Nature

 

Apophenia is seemingly artificially induced into a gullible population at present, due to the continual, recent turn of events precipitated by the emergence of the actions of one Donald J. Trump and those without true discernment abilities relative to right or wrong. Trump is not an ambiguous entity. His legislative "followers " obviously see adaptive advantages in sycophancy.

 

So I ask this question. Why has the existence of Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Incan, Aztec, Norse, and many other Gods been refuted as non existent but the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic God accepted to exist? There is no factual proof that any of these gods ever existed. Just stories written in obscure languages or displays carved or inked on walls. What makes Jehovah, Allah, or Jesus viable while Ares, Odin, or Ra are not?

 

Thanks for the image. I remember seeing it years ago, and it pretty much captures my view of the god-human relationship. I think a lot of misunderstandings in the area of religion stem from the anthropomorphic "Dude in the Sky" concept of deity held by many believers and non-believers.

Apparently, many scientists suffer from acute “sophistic apophenia driven by infantile wishful thinking.” A 2009 Pew survey, which is the most recent I've seen, shows that scientists are about half as likely than the general population in the U.S. to believe in God; but just over half (i.e, a majority) believed in some kind of Higher Power--one-third in a personal deity and 18% in some sort of "Higher Power" or universal spirit. Some, however, like geneticist Dr. Francis Collins, are Bible-believing Christians who believe in miracles. For a small sampling of some of their views, see Frankenberry, The Faith of Scientists. The Faith of Scientists The notion that a Creator or Designer must be explained by a showing of how they were created or designed raises the dilemma of infinite regress. That can only be solved by a coin toss. Which seems more likely: infinite regress or finite creation and design? Both are mindboggling, but finite seems less so than infinite.

Why is this? I can think of three possible explanations: (1) those scientists are humans, sharing the same cognitive limitations, existential anxieties, and needs for meaning as the rest of us. They may have been brought up in religious homes, or have religious spouses or neighbors, or think that religion by and large is a good thing. (2) those scientists are talking about something different than most folks are when they talk about God; and/or (3) those scientists think that God is a useful concept in understanding reality--“inferred a priori based on upon observance of the natural world, mathematics or history.”

For Francis Collins (mentioned above), the “fine tuning” of the universe is compelling: the fact that if any of the six or more constants that make life on our planet varied even slightly we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Einstein distinguished between the naïve anthropomorphic concept of God, but declared his belief in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and doings of mankind.” For mathematical physicist and ordained Anglican priest John Polinghorne: Science raises questions of intelligibility and anthropic fine tuning that go beyond its won self-limited power to answer. Theism provides a coherent response, as well as furnishing a foundation for the human encounter with value.” Frankenberry, p. 341. The late Freeman Dyson, theoretical physicist and mathematician, concluded “from the ‘lucky’ accidents of physics and astronomy that the universe is an unexpectably hospitable place for living creatures to make their homes…I claim only that the architecture of the universe is consistent with the hypothesis that mind plays an essential role in its functioning.” (Ibid., p. 373). Then there is Paul Davies, theoretical physicist, cosmologist and expert on quantum field theory in curved spacetime, who sees the universe as “ self-organizing and self-complexifying, governed by natural laws that encourage matter to evolve toward life and consciousness.” Frankenberry, p. 414. In his book The Accidental Universe, he addresses all the apparent “accidents” and” coincidences” that seem to be necessary for the complex structures of our universe to exist, and agrees with astronomer Fred Hoyle that it seems like a “put up job”. Hoyle thought it was comparable to a tornado sweeping thru a junkyard to assemble a Boeng 747.

Evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins argues, to the contrary, that such structures can be adequately explained by the gradual, piecemeal process of natural selection, and that theists must explain how something as magnificent as God came about. Not necessarily. Dawkins is talking about “proof –enough to convince any reasonable person. That is impossible for both theists and atheists. Absent scientific proof, we must settle for substantial evidence—enough to convince a reasonable person even though other reasonable persons might be unconvinced—or enough to place an educated bet on. Whatever we might think of scienists, most of them seem like reasonable persons. When we get more dogmatic than that, we run into trouble.

 

I have proof that the goddess Astarte existed. it is roughly a 6" inch figurine that came from a dig in the Middle East. It is from about 2500 BC or maybe 2750 BC, I'll have to look at the certificate of authenticity.

It doesn't do anything. I doubt it has any supernatural powers. In fact if it did have powers, it would help me find the key to the dang steamer chest I put it in with a bunch of other valuable collectibles, before my wife and I went travelling one year (not with the steamer chest, it was just for safe keeping), I don't even think it bears a curse, so it doesn't prove any of that stuff. But it does have a hole in the back of it so it appears to have been worn as a necklace. So when I do hold it in my hands, I like to imagine that it last rested between two very sexy breasts, bared naked to the world, of some priestess or harlot or even a queen as she underwent ritual sex to be impregnated with the God-king by her annual lover.