Edit 5/1/10: I apologize for not realizing this sooner, but this post may be misinterpreted if you have not read this first: Religion is Art
I use a convention of capitalizing Truth to mean the universal Truth that is God. You can experience Truth, but you cannot be told Truth (except possibly through art, but art is an experience so you aren't really being told). Lowercase truth is the day to day understanding of truth. You can be told or witness truth but you cannot experience truth. truth is based upon perspective, Truth is above perspective.
You cannot use a pronoun when talking about God. A pronoun cannot apply to God. The word God doesn’t even apply to God, it is just a filler word. It means something that we cannot comprehend. But remember that this is not because God thinks God is so much better than us, this simply is the way that it is. AND now for (probably) the first time you’ve heard it HERE is the reason why:
I was petting my cat and thinking.
I know why we are all here. Our purpose. Why God put us on Earth. It is to further God. I do not mean to say that this is an act of selfishness! Selfishness cannot apply to God, for God is all. Everything is a part of God for God is the whole of existence, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is not Godly arrogance, but simple FACT.
God is the universal consciousness that guides existence. To attempt to understand God we must first understand what consciousness IS. What you ARE. You are nothing more than a network of interacting neurons. An interacting network of extremely basic, elementary parts that ( in some way we do not yet, or perhaps cannot, understand) form a whole greater than the sum of its parts namely, YOU. This isn’t symbolic, it isn’t fairy tale. We know this, we have opened up our heads and looked inside and this is what we have found: a mess of tiny little cells just sending tiny little bursts of energy.
Think now about society. What is society? Society is a very complicated network of very complicated individual parts. It works a little differently, yes but how can we say that the effect would not be similar? How can we deny that the network of billions of extremely complicated humans forms a form of consciousness, a Human consciousness that we simply cannot comprehend because it is far more complex than us?
Now think about EVERYTHING. Everything that exists in our universe. It all interacts. Our universe is an Awesomely complex network. And yes it forms a consciousness: God. This isn’t crazy talk, just think about it. Consciousness is nothing more than a complex network, the universe IS a complex network. On top of this when you apply this logic you come up with a being that would have characteristics that explain pretty much every important description of a universal consciousness from pretty much every human religion. Is this REALLY a coincidence?
We are: God furthering the possibilities of existence. Early on, the universe was much simpler because it was made up of simple parts. God grew by adding more complexities, growing God to understand more. We are the most complex aspect of God that we know of. Our PURPOSE is to further ourselves so that we further God because we are God and this is what God does.
We must recognize that we are an inseparable part of God. When we learn to heal ourselves we are able to fully connect and BE God so that we may DO God's Will. This isn't a bossy thing though. God isn’t sitting up in some clouds telling us what to do. And God isn’t a dickhead either. We have to heal ourselves (Concept of Original Sin) before we can truly connect with God but it is not because God is disgusted by our impurity as Christianity implies. It is not because we are unworthy (Otherwise God would be considering part of God unworthy. Even the Church teaches that we are all part of God and this is TRUE), but it simply is a fact that when you are so concerned with your own problems in life you simply are not capable of BEING yourself. When you do not have the courage to do what is right, you cannot do God’s Will because you don’t have the courage to do it. Not because God hates cowards. God hates NOTHING, God cannot know HATE except through us as individuals; we have the only expression of hate.
God provides Truth and some people have interpreted it into laws, but these laws are short lived! Truth does not change with time but written word DOES. This is FACT.
THIS is the Good News that Jesus was trying to explain to us 2000 years ago, but we forgot about Truth the moment we wrote it down in a book in the form of parables and laws. Jesus taught us to treat all people well and to help them to HEAL themselves because we are ALL part of the same WHOLE. No person is any better than any other person because EVERY person is God. The only problem is that we are damaged and caught up so much in our own lives that we have FORGOTTEN how to be a part of the WHOLE. Sin is not something that God is mad at us for, it is much more like a distraction. We must stop thinking in these ways of self-righteousness and begin to help others to be righteous but we CANNOT do this except through God in OURSELVES.
We MUST begin to heal ourselves before we can help others to heal. As soon as you start to connect to God and heal, God will show you the rest of the way and give you all of the hope, strength and motivation to do it (but you must know how to talk to God FIRST). As God teaches you how to heal you can share what you learn with other people. The only way to do this is through example and openness.
The Good News is that we are all actually part of God, not symbolically. You are no better than any other person, you simply have found Truth. It is not your Truth. If you treat it as your Truth it becomes truth; you will believe that you are better than others and you will not be capable of sharing God’s message because you will lose your connection with God. You must share Truth with everyone, BUT before you can do this, you MUST believe that the person you are sharing with is your total equal. Before this, you simply are not fit to do God’s Will because you do not believe God’s message. When you have truly connected with God you will have no choice but to believe God’s message because to experience God is to experience Truth for God is Truth and Truth is undeniable.
At least. . . this is what God told me today.
Later I am going to write about how I have been able to find connections with God. It is a very difficult topic to write about and mostly I will just be sharing things that I have learned and connected from various religious experiences, as well as new experiences I continue to have.
I really need community input on this! Together we can enhance our understanding of God and life. Share your experiences and always seek more. Communicate! My viewpoint is limited because I am only one person. What I write above is only my best attempt to transcribe Truth into truth in modern day English with modern Scientific understanding. I think I did a pretty good job but I am not an enlightened being, I have only captured tiny gems of Truth in my understanding. Together we can bring these gems together. Together we are able to think more as God because we become more than ourselves. This why community work and group gathering is encouraged in so many religions.
4 comments:
It is neat that you think of society or even the entire universe as being conscious because these hypotheses relate to very deep philosophical problems such as mind body problem, and the Chinese room argument. I don't think I know enough about consciousness to even comment on any of these issues. I will say that we naturally intuitively judge consciousness, we assume that things that display behavior similar to our own (intelligence) are likely to feel the same way we do. Essentially we ignore the problem of other minds because we don't naturally judge what is conscious by our logic, but by our intuition.
But putting that aside, if consciousness is just a complex material interaction then there is no logical reason to say that other entities don't have similar or analogous experiences to our consciousness. Has a radioactive rock had a thought at some point during its life? during its half-life?
So you run into a problem when thinking logically about it, because how do we really say that humans are more important than radioactive rocks? Or even better, a fusion reaction in star, because that has by far faster interactions. So ethics kind of break down if you go too far with these arguments, and in my mind that is a problem.
"On top of this when you apply this logic you come up with a being that would have characteristics that explain pretty much every important description of a universal consciousness from pretty much every human religion. Is this REALLY a coincidence?"
Some human religions think of God as separate from the universe and others think of God as part of the universe. If we are talking about a universal consciousness then some are right and some are wrong, which doesn't seem unlikely to be coincidental. If you are just saying that it is unlikely to be a coincidence that both you and many religions postulate a very large consciousness that cares about us, then that is slightly better, but still doesn't seem unlikely at all because just being a large consciousness is too vague.
"But putting that aside, if consciousness is just a complex material interaction then there is no logical reason to say that other entities don't have similar or analogous experiences to our consciousness. Has a radioactive rock had a thought at some point during its life? during its half-life?"
But we can understand the interactions that occur in a radioactive rock because they are relatively simple. We can compare what we know about the way that the atoms in a rock influence one another and see that it is not similar to the way that our neurons interact with one another. (Unless I am missing something in my understanding of radioactive rocks) The connections between atoms in a rock don't become stronger or weaker as the rock is exposed to different stimuli, the connections between the neurons in our brains DO do this. However, when looking at society, humans interacting behave much more like the neurons in our mind. Our connections with other humans become stronger an weaker. To us as individuals we feel that we understand why we communicate with one person more than another. But I think that these connections between individuals ARE affected by global events and that they are analogous to the connections between neurons in our minds.
The next step is more of a stretch, at least as far as logical or scientific proof goes. I mainly use it because it provides a model that both satisfies my philosophical understanding of God and my Scientific understanding of the Universe. Some of the idea for it is inspired by something that I read which I cannot trace back, making it more of a stretch. I simply do not remember the name of the theory which contained this, or where I read it. It was talking about scientists doing research on atoms that were somehow interacting with one another instantaneously and through no apparent physical connection. The implications of this inspired quite a bit of thought in me.
"Some human religions think of God as separate from the universe and others think of God as part of the universe. If we are talking about a universal consciousness then some are right and some are wrong, which doesn't seem unlikely to be coincidental. If you are just saying that it is unlikely to be a coincidence that both you and many religions postulate a very large consciousness that cares about us, then that is slightly better, but still doesn't seem unlikely at all because just being a large consciousness is too vague."
What I meant by what I said was that when I think of myself as part of this network understanding of what God is it provides me with explanations for WHY many teachings in several different religions are the way they are as well as an explanation for how we arrived where we are today in harmony with what we know from science about our consciousnesses and evolution.
"But we can understand the interactions that occur in a radioactive rock because they are relatively simple."
By what basis are you calling this simple? A large radioactive rock probably has more interactions between atoms than a human brain does with neurons. Are you saying it's entropy is higher? then may I point out that entropy and what we interpret as complexity are quite different (although some low entropy is required for life to survive). Also we understand the way that neurons send impulses just like we understand that when atoms in the rock decay they create radiation and that radiation hits other atoms. We don't understand HOW it all adds up to consciousness, and therefore we can't say whether it does without experiencing it ourselves.
"We can compare what we know about the way that the atoms in a rock influence one another and see that it is not similar to the way that our neurons interact with one another."
It is similar in the fact that they do interact. It is not similar in that the rock has radiation in place of electrical impulses from neurons and probably how far away a signal can reach without being forwarded. I am saying that there is no logical or scientific connection (that I know) between the way our neurons interact and the way I feel conscious. Because we don't know how our brain produces consciousness, consciousness may be produced by a property of the neuronal interactions that is also present in the radioactive interactions of a rock.
"The connections between atoms in a rock don't become stronger or weaker as the rock is exposed to different stimuli, the connections between the neurons in our brains DO do this."
You have to define stronger and weaker. If a rock is exposed to more radiation the atoms will decay faster causing more interactions via radiation between the atoms. Also consciousness can exist regardless to whether it responds to external stimuli. When I dream I don't usually dream about my bed or my pillow exclusively, I dream about things that I remember. Who knows what a rock remembers or is dreaming about?
This is all quite absurd intuitively. That is why I say we must have an intuitive definition of consciousness that is not dependent on our logic or science, because we can't describe how it works, we just aren't there yet. I just have a very strong feeling that radioactive rocks aren't conscious.
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