What Makes A God?

Excuse me, what is shown time and time again? That it's possible to conflate a meaningful experience with reality? I don't know if it is really possible. You can misrepresent what you're experiencing in your own mind, but that doesn't make the experiences you actually are having any less meaningful. If you're completely delusional, you may think you're experiencing things you aren't, but you are experiencing something, and is that something automatically meaningless just because you think it's something else?

The brain doesn't just filter reality; the brain is reality, too. It's not as though we live in a fake world that is human and a real world that is the rest of the physical environment. There's nothing unreal about us. In a sense I think we do know all of reality: we know what it's like to be us. The universe only exists in the way it does with the matter it contains. There's no reason to assume that it could exist in any other way. So what it is like to be each of us is also dependent upon the universe being what it is. We were influenced by the initial state of the universe and we continue to be influenced by it.

Let's not pretend you aren't responding to the rest of my post because you choose not to when the reason is that you can not. You are on a phone and do not have the capacity to give my thoughts their deserved attention. I understand that, and find it amusing.

It's reality we can't know the essence of. What I said wasn't that difficult to grasp. The sum total of the experience of a human being can't be dwindled down into the equivalence of a physical form. The completely subjective experience that it is stands apart from anything you can ever conceive of. I don't see why this is such a difficult concept to grasp. I'm not saying there must be a god therefore, or that there is an afterlife, but I am saying that a quality exists that is beyond physical understanding.

 

Sounds good. I may have a book in mind for you. And yes I am in general inspired by Science and ultimately want to link Science and Logic with Magick and Intuition.

All I'm saying however is that if you think of some poetry in your head and are moved to tears by it, the tears are real and so is the poetry. Is the poetry not real when you don't write it down, and real when you do write it down? I would say that it's meaningless to call a thought not real...it IS a physical manifestation in fact. And so are feelings.

In the same sense, a prayer is physically real, and any perceived response from God/The Universe/Etc. is real if it has genuine meaning for the person that it has meaning for. Or if they receive some intuition, voice, vision, etc. There's no way to argue that those phenomena aren't real. If those aren't real, then all thoughts and feelings are not real as well.

 

The content of the poetry is not necessarily real. I'll approach this one from a different position.

Lets say your best friends writes a poem for you and a part mentions that you and him are on Neptune exploring the planet and it brings you to tears because it reminds you of a childhood memory that you and him had when you were young and playing at a park. You mention how overwhelmed you are and how real the poem is then a stranger comes along and reads the poem and happens to be a savvy astronomer, gets to the bit about Neptune and mutters to herself "That's the dumbest thing I've ever read." There's a bit of confrontation then. This suggests Both of you may have a reaction to the Neptune line, which one or both of you could deem emotionally meaningful, however Objectively you were either actually on Neptune or you weren't.

 

So what, though? We know in the poem that we aren't literally on Neptune. Doesn't really change anything. Objectively, the poetry still brings out a response because of a Subjective experience, and therefore the poetry is real, even if it's just a thought. Without the Subjective (Mind) experience, there would have been no Objective (Matter) response.

 

So what? It changes things dramatically. It means the content of the poem is really not describing reality, therefore once again meaningful does not not necessarily equate to reality.

You and your friend did not visit Neptune in reality.

You are giving no clarification that examples such as this are self evident exemptions to your assertions.

 

I'll add:

Like layers of sediment in a river, the denser, heavier material settles at the bottom whilst the lighter material is carried away effortlessly by the currents.

When reading a poem, the lighter sediment is carried so far away from the original denser material(symbols in ink on compressed sawdust) that it's much harder to relate that experience directly on a consensus level since every reader will end up in a completely different place. Neither are more or less real than the other, but the denser stuff seems more real to most since Western culture has evolved out of only recognising the hard stuff and has a habit of discarding anomalies for the sake of streamlined efficiency. Highly effective method for material growth, though somewhat short sighted.. as are the tribal mystics sitting around picking their noses(to play devil's advocate), but they do way less damage, so who cares.

But I digress... imagination is not "reality", but rather the movement of the imagination is.

The most exquisite melody can cause horrific cacophony if it's not played in time with the music. Nobody enjoys listening to a guitarist who just shreds his shit without paying attention to the rest of the band - harmony is imperative.. rhythm(hard) and tonality(soft) occupy the same spectrum of frequency, polarities if you will(however, polarity seems to even to fall away since the spectrum is indefinite), and the master musician synchronises them both. The mind can't comprehend the technicality of that in practise, however it can recognise certain patterns that can lead itself into an intuitive and synchronised flow.

 

I just disagree with this notion that somehow imagination is left out of reality. Think of all that would have never been made manifest if it weren't for imagination alone. It had to be thought up before it ever came into manifestation.

We may have not physically visited Neptune, but Mentally you can visit Neptune in both your mind and in dreams, and dreams and thoughts are physical manifestations of a lighter density.

If no one had ever thought and imagined being on the Moon, then we certainly would have never gotten there physically. If one hadn't thought up and imagined the looks and functions of a Telescope before it was invented, then it wouldn't exist. Mind before Matter, in other words.

 

There has to be a moon there to imagine going to

 

No, you actually can't mentally visit Neptune. You can only visit what your mind thinks "Neptune" is, having never actually been there yourself. You can only construct a "Mental Neptune" in your mind, the real Neptune is out there, having never been visited by you. "Experiencing God" is exactly like this; you can experience something that your mind created and has called "God", but the "God" that the holy books speak of, that ultimate super-person who created all and rules all, that reality has never been visited in the quiet of your thoughts. If you think it has, then you have to grant all mental imaginings such rights; whenever a child thinks of santa claus, that child is literally in communion with a fat danish guy in a red suit who travels at light speed . . . this is obviously a bad road to travel down logically speaking.

 

What is the matter? Matter matters not without mind.

 

But mind also makes matter where there isn't any matter that matters in the same way that matter without mind matters.

 

Was a telescope there before it was imagined and then created into existence?

 

Ok, then every other thought and feeling that you yourself experience is also in the same line as God or as Santa Clause. Your idea in your head of how it was before and after you're born, even though you have no idea what that experience or non-experience actually is. All your conclusions in your head are just as much mental as someone's experience of God.

 

no, but it was noticed that when viewing an object through a bubble of water it was magnified and that got the ball rolling.
From there it was plain old trial and error.
It wasn't "imagined" out of thin air, but extrapolated based on observation of naturally occurring phenomena.

 

And so films and albums and house designs and a multitude of inventions and creations had no help from imagination, you're actually trying to argue?

 

no, I'm just saying that your idea of "imagination" seems to carry with it some magical quality to bring things into existence.
what I'm saying is that all that crap has very simple and rudimentary beginnings, most often thought of by observing nature.

someone didn't one day just imagine a telescope and then set out to make one. It was a series of circumstances beginning with the observation that a drop of water magnifies things.

You should find an old series that ran a couple decades ago called "Connections". It follows everyday items and shows the history behind them and the seemingly impossible connections some inventions have to others.

 

Well how would we come to that conclusion without mind? The mind that makes matter where there is none is concerned about matters none the less. For example there is the matter of harm.

Does thought have mass or volume?

 

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” -Einstein

Without the imagination of what the Telescope would look like and how it would function, there would be no reason to make the rudimentary connections. Sure, observing nature leads to the mechanics behind making it, but you need the image in your head of what you're trying to make before you can set out to making it. Imagination is crucial to any creation, ever.

 

To redress what makes a god is our level of devotion.

One thing that hasn't been discussed is the idea that god is providential. Omnipotent, present, or knowing are abstractions considering that we are relatively informed. However considering the fact that we exist it can be said we are provided for.

We are devoted to our good because it seems to provide what we want. Without water there is no life as we know it. We find ourselves hoping for rain. Rain god, sun god, have deservedly venerable qualities. Yet having a full belly and a warm comfortable place to rest does not fully entertain peace of mind so there is substance beyond these things that sustains sanity and to address this, enter the abstract good.

 

Not to disrespect einstein. Imagination is crucial to perception. Perception is not knowledge but can lead to it. Knowledge is being shared or knowledge is the entire world and all there will ever be to know and understand. Images must be cultivated to manifest in time. Recognition or becoming familiar is knowing or coming to know. Education is a vital service.