[nutronjon]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

Does that mean that you are unwilling or does it mean that you are unable to address the criticisms of your ideas?

It means I thought moontanman knew me better. I wasn't ridiculing him, but expressing dilight and wonder. Each step of evolution, was the beginning of the impossible becoming possible. Recently we have made some really awesome discoveries about how the impossible became possible.

If I understand things correctly, it all began with electrons and protrons, and somehow these atomic particles continued to increase, than we get hydrogen, and the numbers of elements continue to increase, we get planets and at least one with plant and animal life. All that life began as simple celled plants and animals and became more complex. Finally there is man, who takes over the creative force, and with technology, makes the preivously impossble possible. That is pretty awesome in my book. And I don't think the best answer is that this happens because it can. It happens in steps and following laws of organization.

And no InfiniteNow, I can not explain why this evolution happened. It was something I wanted to explore with people who know a whole lot more than I do. But I thinking I do not belong here. I come from a completely different space. I still have the wonder and delight of a child, and this is resulting in many problems. This time it resulted in someone I have counted on, to think I was ridiculing him, and I can't leap over that gulf in understanding. I fell in the void of dispair.

[nutronjon]

Originally Posted by modest

Consider the crowd you're playing to. There is an argument you could make which would go something like this:

The believers of an autocratic, Abrahamic God would do better thinking of God as nature or reason. Like the ancient Greeks, this would allow them to find accord with science. It would advance society.

That would be a fine argument to make but you must consider who you're making that argument towards. We are not many theists here. The idea of 'nature as God' may be an improvement for someone who is extremely dogmatic in some tradition-religion, but not for the agnostic. Not for the scientist.

You've often said you wish people could first accept that there is a God then further debate this issue with you. Once again, wrong crowd. There are forums full of people to whom I believe your argument could be and would be nicely made. Have you considered that?

Oh yes, but they are lacking in science and therefore can not build that bridge. Here are well informed intelligent people who can build that bridge and possibly bring the world to peace- but there is an attitude thing, as bad as the church rejecting science, that prevents the bridge being built.

The first step to building that bridge, is stop the fight against the possibility of a God. Why fight the idea? If I were pushing the bible as literal truth, I centainly could see points to argue against. A God does everything on a whim, is not such a good idea. However, the Stoic idea that God has substance, and quantum physics is about the substance, and that by studying nature we can learn of this God, intrigues me. The concept of it all beginning with monad, spliting into a dyad, and with the triad all things become possible- speaks of mathematic/geometric reality to me.

Now why agnostics can not work with this, but say things do not happen for a reason, but "because they can" is beyond me. That the reason is, this leads to that, and it can not happen until this happens- is totally unthinkable. This is a theology forum, and that doesn't mean using science to understand God. It means turning everything said in theology, into an argument that God doesn't exist. Okay- I give up. Nothing happens for a reason. Everything happens because it can, and there is no organizing force, only chaos.

[Thunderbird]

You’re just having a bout with existential angst. It will only get worse looking for confirmation on your intuitional insights on this forum. I say trust your intuition that there is an order to things. As you can see it in beauty, symmetry and form. This is the artistic eye.
Here’s a new book for us.

The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the RenaissanceFrom Publishers Weekly
Capra, author of the classic The Tao of Physics, makes the case in this fascinating intellectual biography for the great artist Leonardo being the unsung father of modern science. Drawing on approximately 6,000 pages and 100,000 drawings surviving from Leonardo's scattered notebooks, Capra explores the groundbreaking research of this quintessential Renaissance man. Illegitimate, born in a Tuscan village in 1452, Leonardo did not receive a classical education, a fact that, Capra notes, later freed him from the intellectual conventions of his time and allowed him to develop his own holistic, empirical approach to science. Apprenticed with Verrocchio in Florence around the age of 15, Leonardo became an independent artist when he was 25, but his intellectual appetites demanded more. He taught himself Latin and began the famous notebooks, a record of his artistic and scientific explorations. The recurring patterns he saw in nature led him to create what Capra calls a science of wholeness, of movement and transformation. Capra expresses his own intellectual kinship with Leonardo's multidisciplinary perspective on science, one that recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all natural phenomena—a view he sees as particularly relevant today

The idea of God can only be an idea, since one cannot fully comprehend that in which is vastly more complex than oneself. These ideas can be good or bad depending on your spiritual maturity. This forum is not about that, it doesn't deal with it, not directly anyway.

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by nutronjon
Forget it. Everything I try to do here seems to go sour. There is not an once of fun, here.

Knowing Fish
One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river.
"Look at the fish swimming about," said Chuang Tzu, "They are really enjoying themselves."
"You are not a fish," replied the friend, "So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves."
"You are not me," said Chuang Tzu. "So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?"

[REASON]

Tell us, nutron. Why is understanding the true nature of God important to you?