No word can indicate God

It would be interesting if such a culture actually existed - but really most cultures have some idea of, lets say, 'the divine' whether they call it God, Buddha Nature, Tao or whatever.
It appears to me that you think most people turn to some idea of God because they are seeking some explanation of the universe. This is certainly so in many cases, but not in all.
Buddhism which believes in a 'non-ego' reality, gives no answer regarding the origin of the universe.
In the vast scriptures of India are examples of some who started with no belief, but began meditating for some other reason, only to end up 'believers' (I even dislike the terminology of western religion these days).

There's more to say on this general subject I'm sure, but can't think what without going way off topic.

 

i think we're already way off topic, on account of how we're not just talking about how totally undescribable God is. Personally, I think God is as good a word as any, and that to imagine that it should do more than "indicate" God is to imagine words as something more than they are. At this point, "God" is the word for whatever God is, right?

 

Seems so.:cheers2:

 

Actually, what am I saying? param started this thread, therefore IT HAS NO TOPIC.

 

'Param' means supreme in sanskrit. 'Parabrahman' means the supreme reality. 'Paramatman' supreme self.

 

param in Hipforumspeak means "supreme copypasta bullimic"

 

OK. Since we're way off topic, I thought this might add something from a different perspective.

"He who adores the name as Brahman - so far as the name extends itself, that far, over that extent he will be entitled to move about according to his liking, that is why he adores the name as Brahman."

"Is there O venerable sir, anything gtreater than the name?"

"Well there is one greater than the name"

Chhandogya Upanishad. Ch7. Pt.1.

 

Ah, but God is a word we have given to represent an omnicient, indescribable force in the universe. A god can be called different names, but no such word or name is as universal in description as simply calling it a god. By saying god, everyone immiediatly recognizes it as something that is there, but not there; describable and yet impossible to comprehend.

Only when we have no language or communication, do we not have a word for god, because with no language the word god does not exist.

 

Thanks for making my point a lot more concisely than i did

 

No problem.

And I doubt Sarah Palin's committment to Sparkle Motion.

 

I love Donnie Darko.

 

A second is a 60th of a 60th of a 60th of a 24th of a day. All of our measurements of time have something to do with the days and seasons, our measurements of time relate to something very real and critical to our survival.

 

OK, but why divide them into 60ths of 60ths of 24ths (not 60ths of 60ths of 60ths of 24ths, sorry ), rather than, say, 10ths of 10ths of 10ths of 10ths of 10ths, or 60ths of 60ths of 60ths?

And the point remains, since if the same were true of pretty much any other planet, even the same proportions of a daily cycle would yield totally different time periods.

It was just an example, and I'm guessing that the real reason for these measures is more to do with convenience than anything. Somewhere, there will be a standard second, just as there is a standard kilo, and at some point I can imagine that a second was a fraction of an inch on a water clock of a certain size.

There's still that chicken and egg thing there, I think, of whether our units of time measurement are the length they are because we wanted them to be, or because they were the most useful available option.

It's a digression, but perhaps not a serious one: it is similar to ask (for a structuralist, anyway; a religious person would probably not entertain the question) whether "God" describes something we've created/imagined and then built our world around, or something which we've made up to occupy an empty space in a world already built. Is a second what it is because we needed a unit of time roughly that long, or is it just the way we divided up time? I'd say the former, because I can't imagine that, say, a 63rd of a minute would be anywhere near so useful. But it's interesting to think about.

 

Don't feel bad, we all make mistakes... even me so it is ok (for some reason i didnt count the /24 as the hours no biggie)

My point still remains, All measures of time are relative to something useful and real. Although i do agree that the particular measures used mostly are arbitary... but not all of them degrees celsius for example is relative to the freezing and boiling of water, as humans this seems very relative to me.

P.S.

Were you waiting for a serious error before you qouted me? i bet you were

 

Well, i wonder with a second whether it's supposed to be, like, a standing heart rate, or something. Doesn't quite fit, but would probably have been close enough for the olden days.

Most stuff does seem to relate to the body. We use decimal because we have 10 fingers and toes, for example; there's no particular reason we should use a decimal system otherwise. In fact, it's quite ineffective, compared to 60s, on account of how you can't divide it up so easily.

Yeah, but initially it was Fahrenheit, which is relative to the freezing point of salt water and... well, I'm not even sure what the other end of it is. Kelvin is semi-sensible by starting from the lowest possible temperature, but then you still have to describe what the next "point" is and how to divide up the space between.

 

Yeah don't get me started on 1/3 in percentage form...

 

Took this from some site I just found.

This all dates back to the Ancient Babylonians who liked to count in base 60. Ratios of 6, 12, 60, and 360 were seen by them as being 'round' numbers in the same way that we use base 10 and see 5, 10, 100 etc as useful numbers to divide things up into.

See: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/ HistTopics/Babylonian_and_Egyptian.html

The Babylonians divided the sky into the 12 signs of the Zodiac, and a circle into 360 degrees. They divided the day and night each into 12 hours (although in many time systems the lengths of these varied between summer and winter! Babylon was rather nearer the equator than Liverpool, so they didn't get too confused with this). The hour was split into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds.

All these numbers have survived for 4000 years, despite the fact that we have changed our numbering system to base 10! In England, when I was young, we still measured with feet, each divided into 12 inches. The Americans still do! [By the way, do you know where the mile comes from? It's Roman, not Babylonian!]

The year is nearly 360 days long and the Babylonians split it into 12 months. Other civilizations based their calendar on the moon and had 13 months. We still have problems with this today because Easter is based on the lunar calendar and migrates around the Julian calendar in a complex way. Chinese new year is still based on the Lunar calendar.