God is an Iraqi
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 29, 2025 20:41
VIEWED: 12402
PAGE 10 of 12
Chris,
You're right. Clearly, Christianity has some evolutionary advantage when entering into competitions with other religions. It might be slight or obscure, like a lower rate of infectious disease, since it has taken thousands of years to reach such dominance. It may have others, it's worth studying.
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Lim,
Why have a God at all? The creator is the living creation itself.
Most human philosophy start out with a fundemental erroneous assumption that creation is an event.
Creation is an ongoing process.
Furthermore, in most multiplicity cases, the creator of the creation is the creation itself. The universe therefore is its own creation. It continues to thrive through eternity as it constantly lives on and creates more of itself.
Each cell in your body is alive, more or less independent of you, and the human race lives on, as a species, and perhaps as a jungian collective unconscious also more or less independent of you. Both interact with you, but could be made to survive without you, if need be. So...
There's really no end to it. The molecules of the cell continue to survive with or without the cell in the same manner; as for that matter does the Earth, with ot without the human race.
Therefore there's no reason to assume, as any amount of study would show, that it wouldn't go on indefinitely in either direction.
Ergo, the universe itself is alive.
But concepts of God automatically brings a parallel loaded with false assumptions, such as:
1. Such an entity is sentient in a way we would understand
2. Such an entity is like a person in some way.
3. Such an entity knows, cares, and has power to alter things on a smaller scale than its own.
We have no reason to assume any of this.
Sorry for the existentialist rant.
Anyway, the DaVinci code was dreadful. I couldn't make it through.
Wicca will find its way eventually. Actually most modern renditions don't recognize the way in which wicca relates to druidism, that they are in fact two complementary traditions within the same faith, like the church and the monestary were to medieval catholicism. Failure to understand this leads them to conclude erroneous that they are competing faiths, and to try to draw dividing line. This simply was not the case, originally.
This fascinates me because of it's prominant place in my chosen field of study, ancient western history. But current Wiccan and Druidic sects are actually recreations.
They're not "phony new agisms" as if often averred. They ARE consistant continuous faiths passed down through the ages as they claim. But the way in which they DID survive was poluted.
Both traditions were outlawed under sentence of death for a thousand years in Europe. As a result of this, they had to go underground, through cults and under cover of Christianity. Groups like the Masons, and Wiccan covens, Druidic circles, continued to practice, but always had to put on a face of Christianity, which left them open to infection by true believers in Christ, and also the inevitable raids and mass execusions meant much knowledge was lost or destroyed before it could be passed on.
So the reconstruction is generally correct, but missing many key parts. I think in time it will be easier to try to rebuild the faith in its true original form, or something close to it, but there is and may remain a scattered imperfection of pollution with older christian crossovers or newer new-age infections.
I have a cousin who has been dutifully digging up and reassembling the true original faith and culture of the ancient maya, and has become quite an expert in the subject. I might like to do the same with the ancient pagan traditions of Europe, though like her from a perspective of historical curiosity more than a religious bent.
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Quote:I can think of two basic advantages Christianity had over the pagan religions of the ancient world that are rooted in its doctrine.
Originally posted by DreamTrove:
Clearly, Christianity has some evolutionary advantage when entering into competitions with other religions. It might be slight or obscure, like a lower rate of infectious disease, since it has taken thousands of years to reach such dominance. It may have others, it's worth studying.
--It was a missionary religion. Unlike Judaism (and most of the pagan religions), the Christians were actively and vigorously recruiting new members. They didn’t just wanna be left alone or to respect other beliefs, they wanted everyone to be one of them and they were going to make it happen.
--It has a monopoly on truth. Most pagan religions were very easygoing; you could worship whatever gods you wanted, there was nothing forbidding you from doing so. And if foreigners wanted to worship other gods, that was fine too (as long as they paid tribute to your local patron god, to keep the city safe). The Christians, of course, had only the one God and the one Truth. Everything else was lies and falsehoods and had to be stamped out. Thus, if they recruit new members they’re prying worshippers from other faiths, a zero-sum game in their favor. And their belief in one God keeps people from slipping back to other faiths; it even shields them from subversion by other upstarts with one Truth.
Those are two very simple advantages Christianity had over the pagan religions of the region. Why it won out over other competing “One God, One Truth” systems I’m not sure--maybe the Christians were better at converting? Anyway, that’s my two cents on this very interesting sub-topic.
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Ah, score two points for the lurker.
Good calls both. I mena I agree. Wish I had thought of those myself.
It's true, traditional paganism, much more than modern neo-paganism, was a very exclusive faith. Entering into a Druidic circle or Wiccan coven was not only not advertised, it was a right which had to be earned, often a difficult quarry to win.
Re: openmindedness. Esp. since the Pagans were not well aware of other belief systems, their initial reaction to Christianity was that it was another pagan tradition that they were not yet familiar with. The had previously experienced pagan traditions from asia and even possibly in the new world, neither one of which would have shaken that belief that such systems would be compatible with their own.
If the pagans had understood the full situation, that this was not just another deity, but another system, and one that would outlaw their own tradition, they probably would have reacted more hostily towards it.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Why have a God at all?
the creator of the creation is the creation itself.
Each cell in your body is alive, more or less independent of you
There's really no end to it.
Ergo, the universe itself is alive.
Anyway, the DaVinci code was dreadful.
the way in which wicca relates to druidism, that they are in fact two complementary traditions within the same faith, like the church and the monestary were to medieval catholicism.
They're not "phony new agisms"
the way in which they DID survive was poluted.
Both traditions were outlawed under sentence of death for a thousand years in Europe.
...also the inevitable raids and mass execusions meant much knowledge was lost or destroyed before it could be passed on.
the ancient maya
Yup, I used the letter G which was confusing I suppose, because I am on pretty much exactly the same page as all you wrote above (existential rant wise). I don't imagine there's a personality involved in the creator at all, except insofar as the whole is made up of every giggle ever uttered by every atom that has ever existed. The creator is the creation, constantly expanding in every direction. Yup, my feeling on it exactly.
The one place in your rant where I might disagree is that I believe there was an original impulse of some kind, still not personality based you understand, but some kind of movement from the null into existence. What science calls the big bang, though I don't think of it as being that dynamic, more a domino effect.
I haven't read the DaVinci Code, that's a novel anyway. Gardner's work is scholarly. I only meant that his work is easier to find as a result of the popularity of the DaVinci Code.
wicca is to druidism as the mideval church is to the monasteries...never heard that concept, thanks for that, it makes complete sense to me.
Of course it takes years of study and devotion to learn the things the mystery schools teach, and some of it is information that can be dangerous in the hands of the uninitiated, but I think no one is well served by secrecy. I understand that even if the schools weren't secretive themselves, there is a point when secrecy becomes survival, as in Europe once the Romans extended their reach far enough to suppress all earth based belief systems. It's just too bad that it takes so long to recover the original information, especially since some of that info took thousands of years to hone. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good thing that we don't get to know how to build Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, or the Egyptian pyramids while we're busy kicking the crap out of each other. I just don't personally know any wicca who aren't new-age fluffy, and most of the writing on druidism or wicca that I've managed to get my hands on has also been either pretty fluffy, or struck chords of wrong interpretation for me. Probably not looking in the right places. Ha! A featherhead like me dissing new agers, that's rich.
Hmmm, the ancient maya. There's something I wouldn't mind knowing a lot more about.
I'm also quite fond of cave paintings and the study of the information they contain, which in my opinion has recovered some ground in terms of validity of interpretation in the past decade or two, so I have hope for the rest of it as well.
Stake, good points, well stated as usual
"If the pagans had understood the full situation, that this was not just another deity, but another system, and one that would outlaw their own tradition, they probably would have reacted more hostily towards it."
Trouble is, the invaders usually had more advanced weaponry, and were never slow to introduce disease, accidentally or on purpose, and they used techniques like the extinction of food sources to gain control over indigenous populations.
Thanks to viral marketing...SERENITY: reopening soon in a theater near you.
Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!
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I studied it at length many years ago and came to the conclusion that the big bang didn't happen, from a scientific perspective.
The big bang theory has many serious flaws. It fails to explain the explanation of the distribution of matter in the universe as being both uniform and random, and in a constant state. By the theory, one would expect to see more primitive developments the further out you look, and at a much higher density. This isn't what we see. The galaxies basically show a very similar make up towards the edge of what we can see to what they show locally. This has been countered from the big bangers with a perculiary timeline fix, that the universe did most of its expanding and development very quickly, and then stalled. This just doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a physics standpoint. It reminds me of the patch theories that were uses to hold together teh geo-centric model of the solar system.
By contrast, I think the initial data may have been read incorrectly. Rather than a universal expansion, the doppler shift might be representing light losing energy over time, through the travel through space. This would not conflict with what we see in doppler shifts or with the distribution. It would also explain why the edge of the universe was a deep red, as all light was ultimately reduced to the singular quantum state, and then probably ultimately dies. This would also explain the lack of a light night sky paradox.
The infinite, unchanging universe is so old and and so large, it's hard to tell where it began. I would suspect the presence of all matter is the forgone conclusion of random vibration, and random vibration is the forgone conclusion of the existance of other strands, and the existance of energy strands is the forgone conclusion of uncertainty. This universe would most likely exhibit a curve, slightly, as it would probably fall into a perpetual cycle of black holes. Each black hole would become a new universe, and so the universe would resemble an endles number of plains of shifting sands, many levels deep, perhaps infinite.
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Woops! Physics, a zona incognita. Science in general I comprehend intuitively (however that works), but do not understand from a 3D perspective. I never bought the big bang theory, at all, and I'm always glad to hear that some scientists are moving thought in other directions. Zero point is my favorite brain twister, with string theory a pretty close second.
Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I studied it at length many years ago and came to the conclusion that the big bang didn't happen, from a scientific perspective.
The big bang theory has many serious flaws. It fails to explain the explanation of the distribution of matter in the universe as being both uniform and random, and in a constant state. By the theory, one would expect to see more primitive developments the further out you look, and at a much higher density. This isn't what we see. The galaxies basically show a very similar make up towards the edge of what we can see to what they show locally. This has been countered from the big bangers with a perculiary timeline fix, that the universe did most of its expanding and development very quickly, and then stalled. This just doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a physics standpoint. It reminds me of the patch theories that were uses to hold together teh geo-centric model of the solar system.
By contrast, I think the initial data may have been read incorrectly. Rather than a universal expansion, the doppler shift might be representing light losing energy over time, through the travel through space. This would not conflict with what we see in doppler shifts or with the distribution. It would also explain why the edge of the universe was a deep red, as all light was ultimately reduced to the singular quantum state, and then probably ultimately dies. This would also explain the lack of a light night sky paradox.
I would suspect the presence of all matter is the forgone conclusion of random vibration, and random vibration is the forgone conclusion of the existance of other strands, and the existance of energy strands is the forgone conclusion of uncertainty. This universe would most likely exhibit a curve, slightly, as it would probably fall into a perpetual cycle of black holes. Each black hole would become a new universe, and so the universe would resemble an endles number of plains of shifting sands, many levels deep, perhaps infinite.
In your redshift idea, explain "the lack of a light night sky paradox"
please, if you feel like it.
*setting out traps to attract other scientific types to the discussion*
Random and chaos are my favorite words to go all heretical on, but -Not- an attempt to spike anyone's blood pressure.
I think random and chaos are just names we use for patterns we don't understand. I don't believe there is such a thing as purposeless effort 'without a governing design'. I think we just don't have a long enough view (or a big enough telescope maybe) for things that seem chaotic or random to resolve into the patterns I believe they represent. I remember the first time I happened upon fractals, and thought yes! This is so beautiful, and so right. Chaos theory, I don't know anyone well enough who understands it, but someday I will meet one of these people. Or, maybe I'll find a symposium from someone who can talk about it to the unscientific rightbrainer.
Black holes I also like quite a lot. That to me, would be one way the universe manifests infinity in a way we can almost observe from our living rooms. I mean infinity comes in all sizes, right? So there should be some access points in every size; ways the universe chooses a vector shift that you can see with the naked eye, as well as the point where particle becomes wave, and star nurseries.
I hope to RTL that I'm not being too thick here.
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The lack of light night sky paradox says that if the universe is infinite in size, if you looked in every direction, eventually you would hit a lightsource, and thus a photon, and the skiy would be infinitely bright. The idea that light dies would void this. I hope this explanation was totally straightforward.
You're on the edge of understanding, not totally thick.
I know chaos theory pretty well. I actually think you're in a forum here where at least half the people do. Chaos is as profound as evolution in its implications, and you can just pick up a book on it, or google it.
Random is something else. One has to accept random as being all things with an unpredictable probility. The other thing which is key is statistics.
I don't believe there's a plan. There's no planner either, and there wasn't a design.
In a very abstruse way, black holes are gateways to other universes, this is probably more true than that they are simply "collapsed stars." But it isn't how people would imagine it to be. It's less like a door, and more like the map on a computer RPG game like Ultima. If you go to a town, and it zooms in to a new map, that would be like the same sort of thing.
Wormholes are undoubtedly not big enough to fly a spaceship through. They are most likely no more than a few centimeters across, and possibly a great deal smaller. You could surf them on the outside, possibly. The Gravitational crush of passing through a worm hole would probably annihilate matter anyway.
String theory is basically correct, and can be accepted more or less as gospel. The interaction between energy strands creates 3 dimensional space and matter/energy. All things develop up through a form of scalar evolution. Understanding and applying evolution by natural selection to physics is pretty much essential to understanding the nature of the universe, and chaos is the branch of mathematics that ties it all together. Chaos theory, also, is pretty much gospel.
Yesterday's maybe is today's locked solid truth, and sort of has to be for anything to move forward. The greatest remaining unknown I think lies in information theory and the nature of consciousness.
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Quote:FINALLY!!! I found a kindred spirit!
The big bang theory has many serious flaws. It fails to explain the explanation of the distribution of matter in the universe as being both uniform and random, and in a constant state. By the theory, one would expect to see more primitive developments the further out you look, and at a much higher density. This isn't what we see. The galaxies basically show a very similar make up towards the edge of what we can see to what they show locally. This has been countered from the big bangers with a perculiary timeline fix, that the universe did most of its expanding and development very quickly, and then stalled. This just doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a physics standpoint. It reminds me of the patch theories that were uses to hold together teh geo-centric model of the solar system.
By contrast, I think the initial data may have been read incorrectly. Rather than a universal expansion, the doppler shift might be representing light losing energy over time, through the travel through space. This would not conflict with what we see in doppler shifts or with the distribution. It would also explain why the edge of the universe was a deep red, as all light was ultimately reduced to the singular quantum state, and then probably ultimately dies. This would also explain the lack of a light night sky paradox.
---------------------------------
Please don't think they give a shit.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The lack of light night sky paradox says that if the universe is infinite in size, if you looked in every direction, eventually you would hit a lightsource, and thus a photon, and the skiy would be infinitely bright. The idea that light dies would void this. I hope this explanation was totally straightforward.
I know chaos theory pretty well. I actually think you're in a forum here where at least half the people do. Chaos is as profound as evolution in its implications, and you can just pick up a book on it, or google it.
Random is something else. One has to accept random as being all things with an unpredictable probility. The other thing which is key is statistics.
I don't believe there's a plan. There's no planner either, and there wasn't a design.
In a very abstruse way, black holes are gateways to other universes, this is probably more true than that they are simply "collapsed stars."
The Gravitational crush of passing through a worm hole would probably annihilate matter anyway.
String theory is basically correct, and can be accepted more or less as gospel. Chaos theory, also, is pretty much gospel.
The greatest remaining unknown I think lies in information theory and the nature of consciousness.
Yeah, that was a good explanation, and considerate of my lack of foundation in the basic material. Very interesting.
Some of what I have studied (consciousness related) talks about how the configuration of the human eye is related to our level of spiritual development, and limits us in what we are allowed to see, and that from other perspectives (with more advanced eye structure) it is possible to see the night sky as not at all dark, but rather as bright as a daytime sky, and the light is less sun-source specific. But that's a different perspective than science, and I promise not to -try- to annoy others with it .
Would you recommend something to read in chaos theory that I might apprehend? If it's too technical or too far down the road of mathmatical equations it will go right on by me you understand, and what would be the point in that? I am really fascinated by physics. Capra taught a course one semester on the Tao of Physics when I was in school, and I crave that kind of understanding, but I don't get it the way most scientists present it.
Random being 'unpredictable probability', sure, I'll buy those words, but unpredictable by our current ability to understand. I think one element of random may be choice. The experiments recording the photon's 'choice' of which slit in the wall to go through was another aha! moment for me, like fractals. You know the experiments I'm referring to?
No plan. Plan and design would speak directly about control, and that's exactly the point where my thinking diverges from Christianity. A plan removes choice from the equation, and I think it's all about choice. Plan requires planner, so yeah, no planner either, except a conspiracy of particles: the worms planning the party in my rotting brain, the tulip planning to push through the soil in a few months. Oh, is that a way? Better than a plan? Bwah ha ha, movie moment. When I come to the thread parties that are more about the real world, I remember the one thing that connects all of us, and sometimes I am truely amazed that there is so much diversity in the fanbase.
Evolution I have no problem with whatsoever, I find it fascinating and exquisite in its complexity and flexibility. In fact I think if you look at evolution theory as explaining something that used to be considered unfathomable, you'll have an idea of what I mean about random being patterns we don't see. When I wrote that bit above about random being pattern, I did not mean to imply that pattern is plan. Hmmm, was that clear enough.
Black holes. Hmm, I wonder if you'd even want to hear what I think about black holes. Maybe later, as that would be serious heresy, and I don't want to push the envelope of acceptance that far yet.
Wormholes would crush you -like a black hole? Th
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