[harmonygirl]

okay, I haven't read those books. can you tell me why the Goddess wouldn't be dependent on women?

[subversion]

Originally Posted by <<>> 4. I can explain nature without the need of the idea of god.

I'm going to try to disprove your proof if that's cool. Ok, I'm not saying I believe in god. If you can explain nature without the need of god then please explain to me EXACTLY how life arose from non-life on planet earth. Furthermore, I would like you to do an experiment which recreates life in the laboratory from non-life in order to prove your hypothesis, since you are a scientist. That's of course assuming you're a scientist which you have to be if you don't believe in god. So if you can explain nature without the need for god, you must explain how life started and you must recreate it in a lab.

Now I will use this to propose my proof that you cannot prove god doesn't exist. To prove god doesn't exist you must be able to explain how life started, and to prove that your explaination is correct you must recreate life in a laboratory. But by recreating life in a laboratory you are essentially proving that we could have been created by other beings in some setting or another. Therefore in trying to disprove god you'll end up proving that we could have been created by other beings, which is the notion of god if you will.

[subversion]

Originally Posted by chazzysaw These are man given names that describe things that have no real gender. Why not Father Nature and Mother Time. Nature has no gender nor does time. The Conscious Power has no gender, it powers everything and everybody.

to put it simply, it is mother nature because sexual species evolved from asexual ones, asexual species procreate by anagenesis, and anagenesis occurrs in the female body, not the male. Therefore mother nature. Do you understand that? Now the reason why it is Father time is a secret of mine, but suffice to say the secret is that a male discovers time travel. That's me, or at least I discovered how to make it work. That's because I've discovered the scientific theory of everything (although scientific, it's also religiously cool and philosophically profound). Oops, but I won't tell you the theory of everything unless you believe me. Lots of people do but I've been waiting for almost a year now for EVERYONE to believe me before I can finally tell EVERYONE and get this damn burden off my chest. But forget that, ask yourself this, why did history choose to call it mother nature and father time? Afterall, it wasn't my idea, I just figured out what was intuitive. Oh yeah, that's something that I wanted to point out, that I don't work by logic so much as by intuition and insight. That's how I discover things.

-SubVersion

[Guille]

Originally Posted by harmonygirl okay, I haven't read those books. can you tell me why the Goddess wouldn't be dependent on women?

We live in a nihilist society. Nietzsche predicted it in his philosophy, in his "god is dead", in his book "beyond good and evil", in his theory of super man: that we need no god or ethics or anything on top, as there is no truth, nor eason and no reality. Nobody cares, nobody stops to breathe, or stops at all. Time flows in humanity and no one defines the speed, everyone defines the speed! But we are re-writing history to have an illusion, the illusion that we are perfect: the fall of communism in Russia eliminated everything the cold war was, the unification of germany eliminated the main consequence of WWII, now the EU is getting nearer to become 1 united, that's eliminating the protestant, luther, calvin... And coming back to medievel ages idea of a united europe. We're re-writing history, and this means that we are re-writing all the important ideas too, for these are a fundamental part of history. And specially the idea of god is being re-written. Up to here this is Buadrillard's work, form now on it's Maffesoli's. We have become a pagan society, we have come nback to the tribes. Maybe in the US as it's all so self-centered the news didn't get ther,e but in france there have been big revolts in late 2005 from young people who are socially marginated, most from north africa. This is coming back to the tribes, they come back, they come back. We (as in society now) are anti-romanticism, against the idea of the individual, we need a 'come together' which is constant, we don't believe in our selves as virtues, for we belief our virtues are of no importance. We come back now to Baudrillard. Montesquie, Voltaire, Rousseu, etz all believe din the Human Rights as a reinvication of us as rational beings, as special, but we've changed this, we've interpret these rights as rights from our nature, not our rationality, due to the modern thought from 19th century geniuses like Wilde and Goethe. That's why now we think that dogs, birds, trees, ozone layer... Should all have rights... It's a coming back to intuition, as Kant defended it, and Einstein, and Bergson... Now we come to Deleuze's idea of a direct positivism: we don't need space, we just need time to be positive, and this is momentuous. We dedicate our life to 'carpe diem', or Fellini's film La Dolce Vita, to hic et nuc (here and now). To Foucault's reduction-to-sex based on Froid's psycology but applied to history. Many scientific investigations proof these things, some say 3/4 of what we do is to be more atractive to the other sex. Or for some to the same sex. Husserl's phenomenology is the base of 20th century science's philosophy: the manifestation of something is just my intepretation of it, not it itself.

What does all this have to do with god, and with what I say that if a supreme being existed it would be independent of our language, religion, sex or of humans in general?

Totally. You just have to analize my long and worthy reading paragraph. I tell you if there is a god it wouldn't have a sex, for it, as the universal of universals, should have all sexes, and no sex at the same time, and each sex at the same time. Also, if god really existed, it wouldn't be how it is in our mind, for it is an absolute, it should not be relative to each mind, each intepretation, eahc religion... Lots of modern thoughts says that god is how you see it, for example Wilde defended this, the idea of an 'inner nature to be followed' and we can see this also in Tolstoi but from the idea of happiness. But we are in a postmodern world, readers! And postmodern thought is looking at the future in terms of present problems, independent of the past (as opposed to modern thought which is looking at the present in terms of past problems). I invite you to read my many arguments agaisnt god in my thread "God". I jsut have so many thoughts on this single question I would write a book...

[harmonygirl]

Right off, your first sentence I don't agree. I don't live in a nihist society. Most of my friends and family believe in some sort of supreme being, but call it/her/him/them by different names. I think that you are right and that Nietsche did say we don't need a god, but that doesn't mean that the Goddess doesn't exist. In order to get to the state where there is no truth, no reason and no reality, one must definitely stop. I don't think we live in it, I think we choose to ignore it. Once again, doesn't mean it's not there, just that we haven't reached it yet. So I guess I don't agree with Buadrillard. It sounds like I disagree with Mafesoli's as well. I volunteer a great deal of my time working on human rights. This is not a situation of majority rule, but defining what makes society as a whole better. I think you can judge how advanced a society is by the way the most marginalized people live. In Canada, our system is premised on a belief that everyone is entitled to a minium income, housing, healthcare and food. Some of these started as private initiatives but government has endorsed them (and in some cases contributed.) For me, Rousseau's theory of 'Man in the State of Nature' is true, particularly with regard to the 2 primary insticts, self-preservation and natural compassion. I haven't read Husserl, but it sounds like I would agree. I think we are past post-modern. I agree with you that any Goddess would not be constrained by gender and exist independantly of us. What I don't understand is your assertion that the Goddess doesn't need us. Aren't we in part manifestations of the Goddess? Maybe we are how she apprehends this reality...

[baudrunner]

I know God to exist because He, or one of His people, found me and gave me peace in a time of great turmoil, when my world was falling apart around me because of my helpless state when as a young child I was incapacitated because of injury and while so helpless bearing witness to the disastrous death throes of a marriage that should never have been. He eased my suffering with a spiritual infusion and He kept me company in the spirit through those trying times.

I know God to exist because He saved me once many decades later when my doctor had given me three years to live and I experienced a miraculous event that was no dream and which saved me and left me clean and without affliction. That was almost fifteen years ago.

I believe in God as do so many others because of so many other direct experiences by far too many people precluding them to so easily shrug Him off as just an infatuation of hope. He is with people who have had Him in their families' histories. One of my grandfathers brought his community back into the church, and rekindled their faith. He started the church choir with his five sons. My other grandfather was as a young man an employee of his parish, the only lay person allowed to touch the tabernacle to polish it, to prepare the altar for mass, to collect the tithes and keep the accounts. One of his daughters became a nun, two others were missionaries during the war, doing God's work.

I am not devoutly religious because I do not need faith, nor do I have hope. I have knowledge of Him. I have knowledge of that spiritual realm when as a curious investigator into the occult I experienced the parting of my spirit from my body on several occasions. I no longer need the experience to convince me.

It is unfortunate that mysticism and literal interpretations of ancient messages have made unbelievers of so many people because they had no understanding of their true intent, and a practical perspective escaped them. The stories are just that, stories. I believe that God was once like you or I, that a billion or so years ago He and His people developed the ability to shed their corporeality using highly advanced science. Their knowledge and understanding of the fundamental nature of things was complete, and they used that knowledge to create a society, a hierarchy in that spiritual realm, which they refined and in which they dwell. They managed to expand their scope of being to encompass more then that narrow band where we find ourselves within the entire spectrum of existence. I capitalize the pronouns that refer to Him out of respect and praise. I do this because in the hierarchy of that spiritual realm He rules because He is King. That is who is God.

Belief goes without saying. I know.

[beyond_ur_imagination]

Originally Posted by baudrunner I know God to exist because He, or one of His people, found me and gave me peace in a time of great turmoil, when my world was falling apart around me because of my helpless state when as a young child I was incapacitated because of injury and while so helpless bearing witness to the disastrous death throes of a marriage that should never have been. He eased my suffering with a spiritual infusion and He kept me company in the spirit through those trying times. I know God to exist because He saved me once many decades later when my doctor had given me three years to live and I experienced a miraculous event that was no dream and which saved me and left me clean and without affliction. That was almost fifteen years ago. I believe in God as do so many others because of so many other direct experiences by far too many people precluding them to so easily shrug Him off as just an infatuation of hope. He is with people who have had Him in their families' histories. One of my grandfathers brought his community back into the church, and rekindled their faith. He started the church choir with his five sons. My other grandfather was as a young man an employee of his parish, the only lay person allowed to touch the tabernacle to polish it, to prepare the altar for mass, to collect the tithes and keep the accounts. One of his daughters became a nun, two others were missionaries during the war, doing God's work. I am not devoutly religious because I do not need faith, nor do I have hope. I have knowledge of Him. I have knowledge of that spiritual realm when as a curious investigator into the occult I experienced the parting of my spirit from my body on several occasions. I no longer need the experience to convince me. It is unfortunate that mysticism and literal interpretations of ancient messages have made unbelievers of so many people because they had no understanding of their true intent, and a practical perspective escaped them. The stories are just that, stories. I believe that God was once like you or I, that a billion or so years ago He and His people developed the ability to shed their corporeality using highly advanced science. Their knowledge and understanding of the fundamental nature of things was complete, and they used that knowledge to create a society, a hierarchy in that spiritual realm, which they refined and in which they dwell. They managed to expand their scope of being to encompass more then that narrow band where we find ourselves within the entire spectrum of existence. I capitalize the pronouns that refer to Him out of respect and praise. I do this because in the hierarchy of that spiritual realm He rules because He is King. That is who is God. Belief goes without saying. I know.

i was really moved by the way u felt the presence of GOD really!!
but wut i feel about a miracle is that btw any two events there is a gap. e.g. btw two thoughts between movement from one space coordinate to other.if u do not work in that gap then ur thoughts wud move from one to other connected by the pattern u last defined ...same is the case with ur body. but belief is the time when u cease all ur thoughts for the time being and consiously increase the peak of one particular feel . at this time u r not working on thoughts but the gap btw them . this new feel decides the new pattern for ur thoughts to follow.
this is why a pessimist always has negative thoughts and an optimist positive one. though pessimist can always sit and believe and convert to an optimist in a minute..and this is wut miracle is ..and this is why GOD is always needed ..then u stop ""TRYING"" to feel something (a series of thoughts based on ur last designed pattern) instead u "KNOW" (belief ...a new pattern to decide a series of thoughts)!!

[baudrunner]

But He and His kind are genuine people, bui. They are genuine ethereal entities who think and communicate and act and not the product of an overstimulated imagination.

We corporeal entities sometimes make the mistake of equating religion with morality. Morality is an invention of humanity, and it has its roots in jealousy, envy, greed, hate, lust, all the seven deadly sins etc. which are manifestations of human emotions and behaviours. The spiritual domain is above that, and the state of being of those virtually immortal entities who dwell there is so high above ours that it doesn't really matter what happens here. If we were overrun with hostile aliens who engaged in war with us and destroyed all of us then so be it. If we were able to save ourselves from such a holocaust, then so be it. In proving ourselves worthy we might some day attain the status of those spiritual beings, but we really are so petty in comparison that it defies definition. That is us compared to those real, living, cognizant and miraculous entities who occasionally provide us with the inspiration to continue evolving and growing and getting better because when all is said and done, life is a precious thing after all and because of the colossal scope of this entire Universe, yet prolific, but still rare.

[harmonygirl]

You say she and her kind, baud, but if you truly believed in the Goddess there couldn't be other than her kind!

[chazzysaw]

Originally Posted by baudrunner I know God to exist because He, or one of His people, found me and gave me peace in a time of great turmoil, I believe in God as do so many others

This God that you believe in, can you describe him? That is my question. I would like to know who or what it is people believe in. Is it a man, woman, spirit, energy, nothing, what? Can this God of yours be described?