Author Topic: What Is God Made From?  (Read 155414 times)

Shaker

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #125 on: May 07, 2015, 08:04:07 PM »
Fixed It For You - it's when somebody alters your post to make it read what they believe and think you should have said rather than what you actually believe and actually said.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #126 on: May 07, 2015, 08:10:18 PM »
Don't you think that you ought to be able to define something before you purport to believe in that something? Otherwise what is it that you claim to believe in and how do you know?
OK, Shakes, define 'love'.
We know what love is from experience and we (should) keep it within those bounds. Though we subjectively experience it in our own way we can also find some common ground, intuitively, with our fellow human being about its nature and meaning.

With what you call God a similar process has taken place in that an emotional response has taken place which has its own particular characteristic that people experience as numinous and transcendent. The problem here is that religions have over the eons have intellectually tag on endless notions to this emotional state and so created a farce.       

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #127 on: May 07, 2015, 08:39:12 PM »

Freewill does not exist
This is a very bold statement that contradicts human perception of reality.
So you have never done something on impulse, as a reflect action, which you have regretted afterwards and felt almost surprised by your own actions - including thoughts that pop into your head?

Quote
I assume it is based on the deterministic nature of events caused by other events, and the measured brain activity which precedes the perceived conscious awareness of an act of free will.

The reality is that human conscious awareness and free will are spiritual properties which have no physical explanation.  The soul does whatever it takes to implement the chosen free will of human conscious awareness by initiating events which are not dependent on previous events, or even time itself.  We are spiritual beings made in God's image.  Just be thankful for the amazing gifts of our perception and free will.
The physical entity or otherwise of consciousness etc. is neither here nor there as its constitution is governed by patterns/laws just as anything else is. It has an initial nature and form just as all things do. Choice is based on 'information' and the history that has formed the chooser's make-up and consciousness to date, built on that initial nature. To chose means to also leave something out or 'untouched' and to do this requires some contrast between the objects so that one of them is seen as being more desirable than the others; In other words an appetition is created. Nothing acts in a void as you seem to be stipulating.
What you describe is the cold calculated logic you would find in a computerised robot, which just needs information rather than conscious awareness to make a decision.  Until you can define what conscious awareness is, you will not be able to fully define how our conscious awareness interacts with our decision making process.
Again definitions are neither here not there. It is a given that consciousness, in fact all things, has to have a nature of some sort; this would be an a priori state as it is predicated by the unconscious, our psyche.

"...our decision making process." - I assume you mean by 'our' a soul, which I would equate with this psychic state.

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #128 on: May 07, 2015, 08:46:40 PM »

Freewill does not exist
This is a very bold statement that contradicts human perception of reality.
So you have never done something on impulse, as a reflect action, which you have regretted afterwards and felt almost surprised by your own actions - including thoughts that pop into your head?

What you are describing here are examples of reflex actions rather than free will choices.
But that is one of the conditions of the freewill postulate that everything is freely chosen, nothing occurs by chance or involuntary actions. So you have just admitted that freewill does not exist - thank you.

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #129 on: May 07, 2015, 08:56:08 PM »
something by way of justification, something stronger than 'that is just how it seems'.
I think of an action, and I do it.
This is not just how it seems.
It is how it is.
Free will exists in every human being.
Thinking isn't what freewill means. You are psychologically predisposed to think in certain ways on various issues based on your history of interactions.
Our free will ability can be used to guide thoughts as well as actions.  To suggest that my thoughts are all psychologically predisposed is a gross assumtion.  You are not in a position to tell me what guides my thoughts.  I can assure you that I have full control of my own thought processes.  Do you really believe that creative writers and artists are all driven by psychologically based predisposition in their creativity?
Have you ever had a thought you were ashamed of that involuntary popped into your head?

Creativity is a function of the persons psychic make up, their nature. Things do not come out of nothing, not even thoughts; that would be absurd!!!

SweetPea

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #130 on: May 08, 2015, 01:01:00 PM »
'Things' can be made out of vibration, though..... which is said to be 'the Word of God'.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a sound mind ~ 2 Timothy 1:7

Alan Burns

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #131 on: May 08, 2015, 03:05:04 PM »
Quote
What you are describing here are examples of reflex actions rather than free will choices.
But that is one of the conditions of the freewill postulate that everything is freely chosen, nothing occurs by chance or involuntary actions. So you have just admitted that freewill does not exist - thank you.
You do not seem to be able to differentiate between an automated reflex action and a deliberate conscious decision.  Free will is used in the latter, not the former.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Alan Burns

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #132 on: May 08, 2015, 03:08:44 PM »

Have you ever had a thought you were ashamed of that involuntary popped into your head?

Creativity is a function of the persons psychic make up, their nature. Things do not come out of nothing, not even thoughts; that would be absurd!!!
Are you saying that you have no control of your thoughts?
If you do have control, that is because you have free will.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Alan Burns

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #133 on: May 08, 2015, 03:21:45 PM »
Creativity is a function of the persons psychic make up, their nature. Things do not come out of nothing, not even thoughts; that would be absurd!!!
A person's background and built in personality can certainly play a part in what they choose to do, but on top of this is the element of conscious control, effectively giving human beings an element of manual override on what their predicted behaviour should be.   Human behaviour is not merely complex - it is demonstrably unpredictable in many situations.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Sebastian Toe

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #134 on: May 08, 2015, 06:41:08 PM »
Creativity is a function of the persons psychic make up, their nature. Things do not come out of nothing, not even thoughts; that would be absurd!!!
A person's background and built in personality can certainly play a part in what they choose to do, but on top of this is the element of conscious control, effectively giving human beings an element of manual override on what their predicted behaviour should be.   Human behaviour is not merely complex - it is demonstrably unpredictable in many situations.
What is a 'built in personality' and how do you distinguish it from non-'built in personality'?
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends.'
Albert Einstein

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #135 on: May 08, 2015, 06:58:31 PM »
God is spirit, though how you define that exactly, I don't know.

Don't you think that you ought to be able to define something before you purport to believe in that something? Otherwise what is it that you claim to believe in and how do you know?
Should I need to be able to define "what constitutes the form of God"? If so, why? God is not flesh and blood, atoms and molecules like us, but I don't have to be able to describe his "form". It would be great to be able to do so, but there is the fact that if I, of finite human mind, were able to fully describe him, he would not be truly God.
So your belief in God is based on a book and your 'infallible' logic?
No.
The 'no' answer requires a clarification of why you do believe. Pretty please  :)
That's getting rather off topic, but here you go.
Why should I believe in God?

It is often assumed, by Christians as well as non-Christians, that there are no concrete reasons for believing that God exists. Christianity has suffered from a reliance on feelings or “just having faith” for about a century. However, there are good reasons to believe in God’s existence.
Notes:
1)   Believing in God is more than just believing he exists; it is trusting him, though to do that you need to believe he exists. Do you believe in Ed Milliband? Nick Clegg? David Cameron?
2)   Such believing in God requires more than an intellectual assent, something more than just accepting evidence. Whether we put our trust in him is very much bound up with our response to him telling us we are sinners. Do we respond to that by accepting it or rejecting it?
3)   None of the items below are an argument against biological evolution.

Six Reasons to Believe in God (for a Christian) and Five Reasons to Believe in God (for an atheist):
1)   Argument from contingency (Leibnitz’s argument).
2)   Kalam cosmological argument.
3)   Argument from design.
4)   Argument from objective morals.
5)   The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
6)   The internal witness of the Holy Spirit (Christians only).
These arguments are based on those put forward by Dr. William Lane Craig who has a really good website at www.reasonablefaith.org.


Please note that some of this may well be over your head. If so, please stick with it. Even if it does not all sink it, it may show you that there are some carefully thought out arguments that exist which some people understand and which they believe to give good reasons to believe God exists.

Stuff in grey boxes is heavy stuff

 


1)   Argument from contingency (Leibnitz’s argument)
This is the most complicated argument we will be looking ........and everything else that followed
Alan the Alien

Thank you for that but I expected something more personal to your life and circumstances but not necessarily intrinsically over revealing.

The problem with the philosophical stuff, which I understand, is that it only points to "Something" and not to God, let alone to your Christian God. This "Something" is just some nebulous unknown, no characteristics or predicates can be assigned to it. It is a total unknown. So all these argument are of no use to you for your specific situation as a Christian.

So your formal logical statement about God and the existence of the universe needs a clarification and definition of your use of the word God. And just to point the flaw in it the claim that science says there's no explanation for the universe isn't true, scientists says they don't know. And they wouldn't link any statement to this with the concept or word God.

The Jesus stuff I have argued against before. Something so flimsy i.e. not being a personal eye witness to this makes it invalid. There could thousands of reason why this came to be written down, reason we can not even imagine - unknown unknowns and so forth.

6. is about emotions. I don't mean this to be derogatory or dismissive as emotions provide use with value-judgements for us to live by and so on. But all this is about our psychology and being social animals.

I known about the fine tuning of the universe, you last bit about numbers. Two points on this. 1) We are here and know no other state so though it looks amazing and all that if it was possible then it could happen. It's like those "what if?" scenarios which are fairly meaningless in these circumstances. 2) It could be that these things are self righting and balances out so if one value changes then all the others change to create a stable state, but not one like our universe if the values are different. The fact is we just don't known.

Many thanks, Jack.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2015, 07:15:11 PM by Jack Knave »

Alien

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #136 on: May 08, 2015, 07:25:45 PM »
God is spirit, though how you define that exactly, I don't know.

Don't you think that you ought to be able to define something before you purport to believe in that something? Otherwise what is it that you claim to believe in and how do you know?
Should I need to be able to define "what constitutes the form of God"? If so, why? God is not flesh and blood, atoms and molecules like us, but I don't have to be able to describe his "form". It would be great to be able to do so, but there is the fact that if I, of finite human mind, were able to fully describe him, he would not be truly God.
So your belief in God is based on a book and your 'infallible' logic?
No.
The 'no' answer requires a clarification of why you do believe. Pretty please  :)
That's getting rather off topic, but here you go.
Why should I believe in God?

It is often assumed, by Christians as well as non-Christians, that there are no concrete reasons for believing that God exists. Christianity has suffered from a reliance on feelings or “just having faith” for about a century. However, there are good reasons to believe in God’s existence.
Notes:
1)   Believing in God is more than just believing he exists; it is trusting him, though to do that you need to believe he exists. Do you believe in Ed Milliband? Nick Clegg? David Cameron?
2)   Such believing in God requires more than an intellectual assent, something more than just accepting evidence. Whether we put our trust in him is very much bound up with our response to him telling us we are sinners. Do we respond to that by accepting it or rejecting it?
3)   None of the items below are an argument against biological evolution.

Six Reasons to Believe in God (for a Christian) and Five Reasons to Believe in God (for an atheist):
1)   Argument from contingency (Leibnitz’s argument).
2)   Kalam cosmological argument.
3)   Argument from design.
4)   Argument from objective morals.
5)   The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
6)   The internal witness of the Holy Spirit (Christians only).
These arguments are based on those put forward by Dr. William Lane Craig who has a really good website at www.reasonablefaith.org.


Please note that some of this may well be over your head. If so, please stick with it. Even if it does not all sink it, it may show you that there are some carefully thought out arguments that exist which some people understand and which they believe to give good reasons to believe God exists.

Stuff in grey boxes is heavy stuff

 


1)   Argument from contingency (Leibnitz’s argument)
This is the most complicated argument we will be looking ........and everything else that followed
Alan the Alien

Thank you for that but I expected something more personal to your life and circumstances but not necessarily intrinsically over revealing.
What, something different from Christians being aware through the Holy Spirit that they are sons and daughters of God? See #6. If you are wondering more about how I came to be a Christian then, very, very briefly it came about through a discussion group at university (Trinity College, Cambridge) where another non-Christian and I met up with a couple of Christians for a number of Wednesday(?) evenings for several weeks. I got to the point where it too more "faith" to believe the Christian God didn't exist than it did to believe he did exist. I got to the point where I had to do something about it even though I was not 100% certain about it all. As I've looked at stuff over the 37 years or so since then I have become ever more convinced intellectually. There is also the personal experience side.
Quote

The problem with the philosophical stuff, which I understand, is that it only points to "Something" and not to God, let alone to your Christian God. This "Something" is just some nebulous unknown, no characteristics or predicates can be assigned to it. It is a total unknown. So all these argument are of no use to you for your specific situation as a Christian.
Apart from #5 which is about Jesus Christ? If he was raised from the dead then it points clearly to his claims about himself being true.
Quote

So your formal logical statement about God and the existence of the universe needs a clarification and definition of your use of the word God.
Just go with "God" as people generally use that term here in the UK. If you want finer detail, go with what Jesus claimed and what the NT says.
Quote
And just to point the flaw in it the claim that science says there's no explanation for the universe isn't true,
Where did I claim "that science says there's no explanation for the universe"? I've looked back through my post and can't find it there.
Quote
scientists says they don't know. And they wouldn't link any statement to this with the concept or word God.
That would be because, if they are standing in the role of scientists, then I agree they wouldn't say that. Science is methodologically naturalistic. It is not equipped to make statements about God.
Quote

The Jesus stuff I have argued against before. Something so flimsy i.e. not being a personal eye witness to this makes it invalid.
Would you please explain that claim a bit further. Ta.
Quote
There could thousands of reason why this came to be written down,
So what. If one reason has, say a 12.5% chance of being correct, and another a 6.25% chance and another a 3.125% chance and so on, you can have an infinite number of reasons and still 75% confident that the accounts are true.
Quote
reason we can not even imagine - unknown unknowns and so forth.
That applies to absolutely everything. You might not be real, but instead an emanation from the plant Org. Possibilities come cheap. What we need is probabilities.
Quote

6. is about emotions. I don't mean this to be derogatory or dismissive as emotions provide use with value-judgements for us to live by and so on. But all this is about our psychology and being social animals.
Thanks. I accept it as meant the way you say. However, why do you think it is about emotions? I've not mentioned emotions and didn't intend to imply anything emotional, so would you explain why you think it is an emotional thing. Ta.
Quote

I'll look at the numbers thing, at the end, later.

Many thanks, Jack.
That's fine. I'd better look at them again myself!
Apparently 99.9975% atheist because I believe in one out of 4000 believed in (an atheist on Facebook). Yes, check the maths as well.

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #137 on: May 08, 2015, 07:35:36 PM »

Conscious mind does have some part to play in certain kinds of decision making, the illusion we are all under is that our conscious mind is in control .....

Just returning to the question of whether free will events occur in real time.  I was a fan of the group Cream, with Ginger Baker on drums, Eric Clapton on guitar and Jack Bruce on bass.  I have several of their live recordings, in which they would improvise on their instruments for as long as 30 minutes on some tracks.  To improvise, they would need to be able to interact with their fellow musicians in real time using their power of free will to play what their conscious awareness inspires them to do.  This will also be true for all improvised Jazz.  There is no doubt in my mind that our conscious awareness can do whatever is needed to induce free will actions in real time.  We (our soul) control our actions of free will - not deterministic chemical reactions.
Alan, this bit about jazz improvisation is total bollocks. This is something I can do and one of the things that consciousness does in this act is to take a back stand in the proceeding. In fact my best playing comes when I'm pretty much on the 'outside' of what I'm doing and find myself in the position of a listener. I.e. trance like. In fact the more consciously I interfere with what is going on the worse it gets.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2015, 07:38:27 PM by Jack Knave »

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #138 on: May 08, 2015, 07:44:40 PM »
Quote
What you are describing here are examples of reflex actions rather than free will choices.
But that is one of the conditions of the freewill postulate that everything is freely chosen, nothing occurs by chance or involuntary actions. So you have just admitted that freewill does not exist - thank you.
You do not seem to be able to differentiate between an automated reflex action and a deliberate conscious decision.  Free will is used in the latter, not the former.
You don't seem to know what the implications of the nature of freewill mean, and that your consciousness and you have a specific character and disposition which makes you think in specific ways, which has been tempered by your history.

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #139 on: May 08, 2015, 07:49:48 PM »

Have you ever had a thought you were ashamed of that involuntary popped into your head?

Creativity is a function of the persons psychic make up, their nature. Things do not come out of nothing, not even thoughts; that would be absurd!!!
Are you saying that you have no control of your thoughts?
If you do have control, that is because you have free will.
You don't understand the implications of what the term freewill means.

Control of new thoughts or control of those I already have in my head?

Jack Knave

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #140 on: May 08, 2015, 07:54:15 PM »
Creativity is a function of the persons psychic make up, their nature. Things do not come out of nothing, not even thoughts; that would be absurd!!!
A person's background and built in personality can certainly play a part in what they choose to do, but on top of this is the element of conscious control, effectively giving human beings an element of manual override on what their predicted behaviour should be.   Human behaviour is not merely complex - it is demonstrably unpredictable in many situations.
You can only control what is in your 'tool box'. You seem to be implying you can do anything with you consciousness even think of things that you have never come across in your lifetime. The things in your 'tool box' are graded to those you like and those you don't. You will naturally gravity to those you like and be bias towards them. This negates your so called freewill.

torridon

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #141 on: May 08, 2015, 08:08:19 PM »

Have you ever had a thought you were ashamed of that involuntary popped into your head?

Creativity is a function of the persons psychic make up, their nature. Things do not come out of nothing, not even thoughts; that would be absurd!!!
Are you saying that you have no control of your thoughts?
If you do have control, that is because you have free will.

Noone can choose which thought to think next.  In order to choose which thought to think next, you would have had to have already considered it, ie already thought about it, in order to be able to consciously choose whether to think it or not   That is circular, it doesn't work like that.  At inception, thoughts come to us out of deeper recesses of mind.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2015, 08:12:10 PM by torridon »

Alan Burns

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #142 on: May 09, 2015, 03:20:32 PM »


No one can choose which thought to think next.  In order to choose which thought to think next, you would have had to have already considered it, ie already thought about it, in order to be able to consciously choose whether to think it or not   That is circular, it doesn't work like that.  At inception, thoughts come to us out of deeper recesses of mind.
You seem to be making several assertions in order to prove to yourself that you do not make conscious decisions.  There is no scientific definition of what a human thought is comprised of.  All we can confirm is that some chemical activity can be detected in certain brain cells which might be related to the thought processes.   It is still a big mystery how this brain cell activity can become percieved as conscious thought.  And in another thread, Dryghton's Toe has quoted a reference which gives mathematical proof using quantum theory that conscious awareness can't be generated by atomic particles.  If this is true, science may have come to a dead end in trying to define the spiritual properties of self awareness and free will.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Shaker

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #143 on: May 09, 2015, 03:24:43 PM »
You seem to be making several assertions ...

Right, that's it, that's enough.

No ironyometer in the world can cope with that.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

torridon

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #144 on: May 09, 2015, 03:58:51 PM »


No one can choose which thought to think next.  In order to choose which thought to think next, you would have had to have already considered it, ie already thought about it, in order to be able to consciously choose whether to think it or not   That is circular, it doesn't work like that.  At inception, thoughts come to us out of deeper recesses of mind.
You seem to be making several assertions in order to prove to yourself that you do not make conscious decisions.  There is no scientific definition of what a human thought is comprised of.  All we can confirm is that some chemical activity can be detected in certain brain cells which might be related to the thought processes.   It is still a big mystery how this brain cell activity can become percieved as conscious thought.  And in another thread, Dryghton's Toe has quoted a reference which gives mathematical proof using quantum theory that conscious awareness can't be generated by atomic particles.  If this is true, science may have come to a dead end in trying to define the spiritual properties of self awareness and free will.

You don't need science to engage with this particular insight; all you need is a little honest self-reflection. We do not consciously choose our thoughts, that would imply that we think about a thought before we think it. You don't need an fMRI scanner to reveal that - it is impossible on pure logic grounds.

Anyway, what's your favourite colour ?

Alan Burns

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #145 on: May 09, 2015, 04:06:27 PM »
Anyway, what's your favourite colour ?
purple
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Leonard James

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #146 on: May 09, 2015, 04:37:30 PM »
Anyway, what's your favourite colour ?
purple

Mine's pink. No surprise there, eh?  ;D

floo

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #147 on: May 09, 2015, 04:38:50 PM »
I have always liked blue.

Leonard James

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #148 on: May 09, 2015, 04:40:46 PM »
I have always liked blue.

Me too! He's my secret love. Where is he , btw?

Alan Burns

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Re: What Is God Made From?
« Reply #149 on: May 09, 2015, 04:45:49 PM »

You don't need science to engage with this particular insight; all you need is a little honest self-reflection. We do not consciously choose our thoughts, that would imply that we think about a thought before we think it. You don't need an MRI scanner to reveal that - it is impossible on pure logic grounds.

It may be impossible using the logic associated with a deterministic universe, but my concept of the reality of my existence goes well beyond the perceived limitations of our universe.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton