hi folks
i tend to agree with morion dae and his view point about energy to add to this i would say the personality side of you exists in the mind and soul which is intangable energy conscious energy which to all intents and purposes does not exists to which we then have the image of the creator it is this image we as humans then personify into gods goddesses angels demons dragons in my case to focus and attune our self to this universal energy
In my eyes, what most consider God is simply the sum of all parts of the universe. It's just that everyone views this whole from a different perspective. Were an atom in your body self-aware, it might think the cell which contains it is the highest form of intelligence. Likewise, a cell in your brain might consider the brain as a god since it controls the body and such. At the same time, the brain cannot exist without its cells, nor the cells without their atoms. The "divine" status of the brain is further undermined by the fact it cannot live without the body which it controls.
If you take these metaphors, and apply them to, say, Abrahamic religious allegories such as omnipotence, omnipresence, and the whole created-in-his-image thing, it could be said that we are all "cells" within a divine "body." And since everything and everyone is part of the whole, like the brain is to the body, human intelligence is but an expression of intelligence inherent in the rules which govern the system. Even if the rest of the system is neither self-aware nor intelligent, the universe can be simultaneously viewed as godless and god itself. Seeing as it did "create" us in one way or another.
Being that all religions and science are observing the same universe with the same set of physical laws, the differing explanations of who and why are almost beside the point. Yes, some of them can be absolutely absurd, but in the end we're all talking about the same thing. Science just knows that "god" is gravity now, and the order is reversed.
"Science just knows that "god" is gravity now, and the order is reversed."
I just feel the need to point out that these scientists
who see god is gravity or whatever,
allot of them are becoming Christians
and thus see God as a higher divine being
beyond our current understanding and comprehension.
I don't know.
From what I read Paganism is the worship of European deities in general,
the ones before Christianity,
but if you look at it historically then(no offense to Pagans)
the religions that make up Paganism kind of contradict each other
and many can be traced back to other deities
that they were basically made from.
That is most common in the Roman religion
since the Romans adopted and adapted
nearly every religion they encountered.
Word pagan was created to describe non Christians. Muslims were considered pagans in the crusades.
Today people see the the term as another way for a witch or something and that is wrong.
Someone said to me: Christians killed pagans through history...
Pagans killed pagans too. Early Christians didn't go around killing people for their religion. They have offered them Christianity. If there were no pagans, there would be no Christians. Again I must make clear that I'm not talking about usage of magic when I speak of paganism.
Today people, especially here, forget that we're all made of flesh and bones and no religion makes you better than the person standing next to you.
Pagans, you aren't some uber cool rebel group that evil Christians see as a threat and want to destroy, you are people following certain religions. Nothing more, nothing less. Aren't we all...
Hmm, I guess you could say my logic is somewhat similar to, or perhaps a descendant of Plato's.
It might help to think of the universe as a giant computer. While a computer and its individual components are dumb objects, the programs running on the system can make decisions based on the rules which govern it. This metaphor is obviously flawed since a computer usually needs a builder and an operator, but even binary decisions are an example of "intelligence" expressed from an otherwise dumb system. On the other hand, what happens when computers begin to think for and create/replicate themselves? Are we "gods" for creating them?
Naturally, the computer example begs the question of what created the universal computer in the first place. Going back to the original question of the topic, in my opinion there can be no creation of something out of nothing, as the rules which govern something must have already been in place. Which would mean there was always something there. The problem here is that the human brain has a hard time fathoming the concept of eternity.
Part of my first point was that I feel religion is just an early attempt at explaining nature.
As for whether removing god from the beginning also removes it from the end, maybe the system works in reverse? Going back to an Abrahamic allegory mentioned in my first post, let's turn the 'God created man in his own image' thing on it's head and extract another literal meaning from it. Instead of man simply being a copy of god, maybe god (meaning the universe) created himself in the form of man, with man acting his observable, physical manifestation. Working up from the concept of the universe only being as intelligent as it's highest function, maybe the typical all-knowing, divine flavor of god is the end result rather than the beginning? As in, perhaps the universe is evolving into a higher form of super-intelligence, and we're just a step in the chain.
In Judaism and Christianity, suggest their time line isn't as straightforward as it may seem. For instance, the Book of Revelation refers to God as the Alpha and Omega. Might this mean he is the creator and creation? What about the various uses of "elohim" (plural version of God) which sometimes seems to reference man?
