| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"wbarwell" |
| Date: |
23 Feb 2006 10:05:29 AM |
| Object: |
The nature of gods |
I had a realization about the nature of gods.
I was contemplating the peculiar theological
ideas about gods of today's religions. Moslem
orthodoxy claims the Quran has always existed
along side Allah, he did not write it or create it.
Most peculiar. For example this book tells us
Mohammed is the last prophet of Allah. What
else then always co-existed with Allah not of
him, or from him?
This means Allah is not creator of all, but
what does create such things?
Likewise, theology in Christianity has always
claimed god is simple, that is does not consist
of parts, is a whole. After all if god was made
of seperate parts, each part would preceed god,
who would depend on his parts. We would have a
multiplicty of things, no true, real god.
And where do these things come from? That undermines
the entire concept of god in many ways.
Basically god is for most theologians, the claimed
creator of all, and that is god's real job. To be
the thing they point to and say "god created it".
God is the basic underlying cause of everything.
Otherwise they have to say, we don't know what
created all of this and we don't know how, and we
have no way of finding out.
As I delve into this peculiar idea god is "simple",
I see that the whole concept of god is rotten to the
core and theologians, Christian ones at least, had an
inkling of that 1800 years ago or so. As usual, the Greeks
speculated wildly and had a lot of ideas that went off into
all directions, and created controversy.
Christianity answered god did it and swept all the problems
under the rug with the claim, god is simply and does not
have parts.
Peculiarly enough, or not, theologians rarely revisit
that question. Its obscure, and esoteric, most people
never heard of it, its uncontroversial, a claim almost
unknown, even by most hard core Atheists.
But in an era with creationism and IDist and
anti-scientific, anti-intellectual christians running
amock, it again is relevant.
What is the nature of reality and where does all this
come from?
The retort is what is god and where does that come from?
And what is its nature? What do you mean simple?
What do you mean god has no parts?
Part of this theology is that god has qualities,
basic parts, well, no, no parts, remember?
So god is somehow a glob of qualities that are not
seperate. And thus not being parts, cannot be swapped
out, or changed.
God is good is the nature of god. But since we see evil,
the problem of evil shows god is not good. And can never
be good since you cannot change qualities they are not
parts seperate from god that can change.
This in fact is where theology derives the claims god
is immutable, unchanging and unchangable. God's simplicity,
god's lack of parts.
I am still thinking about it, but it is becoming clear
that god as defined 2000 years ago by neo-platonists and
christians is an incredibly vulnerable thing based
on some very shaky and vulnerable claims that hardly anybody
has even heard of.
I am barely beginning to dig into this whole theological
bull doo-doo, but it looks like essentially there are
entire levels of self contradictions and bad assertions
about god to explore here.
Just thought I'd toss this out to see how it bounces.
--
"If I saw a man beating a tied up horse, I could
not prove it was wrong, but I'd know it was wrong."
- Mark Twain
Cheerful Charlie
.
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| User: "David Canzi -- non-mailable" |
|
| Title: Re: The nature of gods |
24 Feb 2006 08:36:42 PM |
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In article <11vrn2s9k1emf9d@corp.supernews.com>,
wbarwell <wbarwell@mylinuxisp.com> wrote:
I had a realization about the nature of gods.
I was contemplating the peculiar theological
ideas about gods of today's religions. Moslem
orthodoxy claims the Quran has always existed
along side Allah, he did not write it or create it.
Most peculiar. For example this book tells us
Mohammed is the last prophet of Allah. What
else then always co-existed with Allah not of
him, or from him?
I have read some Muslim claims that the Koran can't truly be
understood unless you read it in its original language, Arabic.
Some have even said that the Koran SHOULD NOT be translated into
any other language.
If the Koran is uncreated, it would follow that its language, 7th
century Arabic, must also have existed since eternity, uncreated.
It remained unspoken and unheard as well until it evolved naturally
among people who had previously spoken only atrocious parodies
of it. If it is still spoken the same way today, as a "living"
language, they must be keeping it on artificial life support
like Hebrew.
--
David Canzi "Imminent death of dominant paradigm predicted -- film at 11."
.
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| User: "Grogs" |
|
| Title: Re: The nature of gods |
23 Feb 2006 02:18:20 PM |
|
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wbarwell <wbarwell@mylinuxisp.com> wrote in
news:11vrn2s9k1emf9d@corp.supernews.com:
I had a realization about the nature of gods.
I was contemplating the peculiar theological
ideas about gods of today's religions. Moslem
orthodoxy claims the Quran has always existed
along side Allah, he did not write it or create it.
Most peculiar.
This isn't peculiar to Muslims. In the Haggadah (IIRC) there's a tale
that the first thing God created was the Torah. Of course, that material
isn't part of the official Jewish canon, but the idea has obviously come
up before.
For example this book tells us
Mohammed is the last prophet of Allah. What
else then always co-existed with Allah not of
him, or from him?
This means Allah is not creator of all, but
what does create such things?
Likewise, theology in Christianity has always
claimed god is simple, that is does not consist
of parts, is a whole. After all if god was made
of seperate parts, each part would preceed god,
who would depend on his parts. We would have a
multiplicty of things, no true, real god.
And where do these things come from? That undermines
the entire concept of god in many ways.
Basically god is for most theologians, the claimed
creator of all, and that is god's real job. To be
the thing they point to and say "god created it".
God is the basic underlying cause of everything.
Otherwise they have to say, we don't know what
created all of this and we don't know how, and we
have no way of finding out.
As I delve into this peculiar idea god is "simple",
I see that the whole concept of god is rotten to the
core and theologians, Christian ones at least, had an
inkling of that 1800 years ago or so. As usual, the Greeks
speculated wildly and had a lot of ideas that went off into
all directions, and created controversy.
They were diverse ideas indeed. The gnostics had a very different spin
on the events than the 'mainline' christian thinkers. They believed that
there was more than one 'god' and that the creator god who created the
Universe was, in fact, evil. It's easy to see why the mainline Christian
thinkers of the day didn't like those ideas and why very few of their
writings survive.
Christianity answered god did it and swept all the problems
under the rug with the claim, god is simply and does not
have parts.
Peculiarly enough, or not, theologians rarely revisit
that question. Its obscure, and esoteric, most people
never heard of it, its uncontroversial, a claim almost
unknown, even by most hard core Atheists.
But in an era with creationism and IDist and
anti-scientific, anti-intellectual christians running
amock, it again is relevant.
What is the nature of reality and where does all this
come from?
The retort is what is god and where does that come from?
And what is its nature? What do you mean simple?
What do you mean god has no parts?
Part of this theology is that god has qualities,
basic parts, well, no, no parts, remember?
So god is somehow a glob of qualities that are not
seperate. And thus not being parts, cannot be swapped
out, or changed.
God is good is the nature of god. But since we see evil,
the problem of evil shows god is not good. And can never
be good since you cannot change qualities they are not
parts seperate from god that can change.
This in fact is where theology derives the claims god
is immutable, unchanging and unchangable. God's simplicity,
god's lack of parts.
I am still thinking about it, but it is becoming clear
that god as defined 2000 years ago by neo-platonists and
christians is an incredibly vulnerable thing based
on some very shaky and vulnerable claims that hardly anybody
has even heard of.
I am barely beginning to dig into this whole theological
bull doo-doo, but it looks like essentially there are
entire levels of self contradictions and bad assertions
about god to explore here.
Just thought I'd toss this out to see how it bounces.
When all else fails, the apologists will retreat behind their
usassailable wall: "the nature of God is too complex to be understood by
mere humans." Luckily (for them) most adherants never think about it.
.
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| User: "wbarwell" |
|
| Title: Re: The nature of gods |
23 Feb 2006 03:43:43 PM |
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Grogs wrote:
wbarwell <wbarwell@mylinuxisp.com> wrote in
news:11vrn2s9k1emf9d@corp.supernews.com:
I had a realization about the nature of gods.
I was contemplating the peculiar theological
ideas about gods of today's religions. Moslem
orthodoxy claims the Quran has always existed
along side Allah, he did not write it or create it.
Most peculiar.
This isn't peculiar to Muslims. In the Haggadah (IIRC) there's a tale
that the first thing God created was the Torah. Of course, that
material isn't part of the official Jewish canon, but the idea has
obviously come up before.
For example this book tells us
Mohammed is the last prophet of Allah. What
else then always co-existed with Allah not of
him, or from him?
This means Allah is not creator of all, but
what does create such things?
Likewise, theology in Christianity has always
claimed god is simple, that is does not consist
of parts, is a whole. After all if god was made
of seperate parts, each part would preceed god,
who would depend on his parts. We would have a
multiplicty of things, no true, real god.
And where do these things come from? That undermines
the entire concept of god in many ways.
Basically god is for most theologians, the claimed
creator of all, and that is god's real job. To be
the thing they point to and say "god created it".
God is the basic underlying cause of everything.
Otherwise they have to say, we don't know what
created all of this and we don't know how, and we
have no way of finding out.
As I delve into this peculiar idea god is "simple",
I see that the whole concept of god is rotten to the
core and theologians, Christian ones at least, had an
inkling of that 1800 years ago or so. As usual, the Greeks
speculated wildly and had a lot of ideas that went off into
all directions, and created controversy.
They were diverse ideas indeed. The gnostics had a very different spin
on the events than the 'mainline' christian thinkers. They believed
that there was more than one 'god' and that the creator god who created
the
Universe was, in fact, evil. It's easy to see why the mainline
Christian thinkers of the day didn't like those ideas and why very few
of their writings survive.
A lot of this went back to the greeks.
Paramenides figured out something could not
come from nothings. So the Universe always existed
in some form.
The dividing point was between people like Leucippus
and Democritus, who thought that this eternal something
was atoms and the void, or those like Xenophanes that
believed in a single god that was the basic somethings.
Many gnostics of course were manicheans, they thought matter
was the creation of an evil demiurge, a truely good
and competent god wuld not make such a mess as this physical
Universe.
In the middle ages the church was still stamping out
Manichaeans
A large part of te problems here are the nature of god.
We are contingent beings, our existance is contingent
on underlying parts, molecules, atoms, under that particles
such as electrons, and protons, under that quarks and so on.
But if god likewise has parts, he must be contingent like us.
and cannot be the primal stuff of creation, the underlying
reality of all. How about such aspects of god, goodness,
omnipotence, creatorship?
One can imagine a god that is missing the part good,
or creator of all if god has parts. This was a problem
neo-platonists like Plotinus and Philo thought about.
And this was also taken up by Arab and Jewish philosophers too.
Which means the Christians had to deal with it.
The peculiar part is, it is still dangerous.
Christianity answered god did it and swept all the problems
under the rug with the claim, god is simply and does not
have parts.
Peculiarly enough, or not, theologians rarely revisit
that question. Its obscure, and esoteric, most people
never heard of it, its uncontroversial, a claim almost
unknown, even by most hard core Atheists.
But in an era with creationism and IDist and
anti-scientific, anti-intellectual christians running
amock, it again is relevant.
What is the nature of reality and where does all this
come from?
The retort is what is god and where does that come from?
And what is its nature? What do you mean simple?
What do you mean god has no parts?
Part of this theology is that god has qualities,
basic parts, well, no, no parts, remember?
So god is somehow a glob of qualities that are not
seperate. And thus not being parts, cannot be swapped
out, or changed.
God is good is the nature of god. But since we see evil,
the problem of evil shows god is not good. And can never
be good since you cannot change qualities they are not
parts seperate from god that can change.
This in fact is where theology derives the claims god
is immutable, unchanging and unchangable. God's simplicity,
god's lack of parts.
I am still thinking about it, but it is becoming clear
that god as defined 2000 years ago by neo-platonists and
christians is an incredibly vulnerable thing based
on some very shaky and vulnerable claims that hardly anybody
has even heard of.
I am barely beginning to dig into this whole theological
bull doo-doo, but it looks like essentially there are
entire levels of self contradictions and bad assertions
about god to explore here.
Just thought I'd toss this out to see how it bounces.
When all else fails, the apologists will retreat behind their
usassailable wall: "the nature of God is too complex to be understood
by
mere humans." Luckily (for them) most adherants never think about it.
Yes, we cannot understand. But I am beginning to see in
this, they did understand and tried dealing with the problems.
Which stubbornly refuse to go away unless you just ignore it
and hope nobody notices.
Islam stamped out the philosophers so all would forget
and stop asking questions. The Christians tried to but failed.
There is stil a gap between Paramenide's something and god.
One can imagine a god without parts as per physical entities,
but parts of metaphysical entities is something else.
This means you wrap up all the good parts into one part
and call it perfection, but how does goodness get wrapped
up this way but not evil?
Back then to Plato's Erythro problem.
You get the "god is immutable" claims from all of that.
If it was parts, you could have change.
Then why did god create the world?
That implies change which implies lack of perfection.
I now see far more clearly what St. Augustine was
saying and why. And why he wrote some odd things that are not
so odd when you consider the fancy stepping he was doing here
theologically.
--
"If I saw a man beating a tied up horse, I could
not prove it was wrong, but I'd know it was wrong."
- Mark Twain
Cheerful Charlie
.
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| User: "Enkidu" |
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| Title: Re: The nature of gods |
23 Feb 2006 02:09:17 PM |
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wbarwell <wbarwell@mylinuxisp.com> wrote in
news:11vrn2s9k1emf9d@corp.supernews.com:
Likewise, theology in Christianity has always
claimed god is simple, that is does not consist
of parts, is a whole.
"Nothing" is simple. "Nothing" does not consist of parts. So God and
"nothing" seem to look alike.
--
Enkidu AA#2165
http://www.thoughts.leaddogs.org/
EAC Chaplain and ordained minister,
ULC, Modesto, CA
PGP ID: 0xC4CE8CF0
"We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than
malnutrition."
* Dr. Alex Comfort
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| User: "J Forbes" |
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| Title: Re: The nature of gods |
23 Feb 2006 10:37:31 AM |
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wbarwell wrote:
I am barely beginning to dig into this whole theological
bull doo-doo, but it looks like essentially there are
entire levels of self contradictions and bad assertions
about god to explore here.
It's not surprising that the RC church worked so hard to keep the bible
under wraps, eh? and keep the study of religious matters firmly in the
hands of the guild
Jim
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| User: "wildbluskies" |
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| Title: Re: The nature of gods |
23 Feb 2006 02:25:29 PM |
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wbarwell wrote:
I had a realization about the nature of gods.
and what god would that be? the athiest god of sucking ***** you queer
***** licking pervert.
.
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| User: "Steve O" |
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| Title: Re: The nature of gods |
23 Feb 2006 04:23:37 PM |
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"wildbluskies" <wildbluskies@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140726329.452254.316790@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
wbarwell wrote:
I had a realization about the nature of gods.
and what god would that be? the athiest god of sucking ***** you queer
***** licking pervert.
How long have you had Tourette's Syndrome?
.
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