The trouble is, if you point at someone saying, 'you asshole', the thumb is pointing straight back at yourself!
Not being an asshole is a negative, but earnestly to be desired, virtue. Next is to aim at positive ones - love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness etc. I'm trying. 'Very trying', comments Mrs RR.
God matters to me because He/She is helping me out of my natural arseholedom ... and more fit for human company ..... slowly.
That shit just doesn't work any more. There are people supporting murder and outright fascism with a religious pall. They need calling out, and chronic toxic bothsidesism has to go.
The trouble is, if you point at someone saying, 'you asshole', the thumb is pointing straight back at yourself!
Not being an asshole is a negative, but earnestly to be desired, virtue. Next is to aim at positive ones - love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness etc. I'm trying. 'Very trying', comments Mrs RR.
God matters to me because He/She is helping me out of my natural arseholedom ... and more fit for human company ..... slowly.
That shit just doesn't work any more. There are people supporting murder and outright fascism with a religious pall. They need calling out, and chronic toxic bothsidesism has to go.
And this works, does it?
Tangent alert:
'Some men are born assholes; some men achieve asshholery; some men have assholery thrust upon them'. With some people (no names, no packdrill) it's all three.
I think there are (at least) three answers to this question.
First I think is about scale. If one imagines looking down at a community as one would at a microbial growth in a petri dish. If a thinking individual was the size of a microbial cell growing on the Petri dish, it is going to be near impossible to have any grasp of a human looking down the microscope at them.
Now consider the difference in scale of an individual the size of a planet and the microbe. Can one really imagine something that massive considering something so minute? And not just one thing, all of those individuals.
I believe that I’m correct that the difference in scale between a planet and a microbe is still a fraction of the difference between our planet and the light years to the nearest star.
If we are saying that a deity exists which is bigger than the whole universe (whatever that means) then it is not an unreasonable position that the deity has absolutely no comprehension of the affairs of humans on a medium sized planet in a backwater galaxy. Hence it is entirely possible to consistently that even if there is a god out there somewhere, it probably doesn’t make any difference to me.
Second answer is about the type of deity one believes in. Even if there is a personal deity who has the capacity to comprehend individual humans, you still need one who gives a shit. If an individual can’t be sure that the deity cares about them, then it is consistent to think that nothing I do matters (maybe the deity is inconsistent or preoccupied or a bastard) so there’s no point in wasting energy on all this god stuff.
For clarity, I'm not claiming to be perfect, but the house is burning down, and these are the arsonists. I'm not going to flagellate myself at the expense of doing something about either the fire, or the arsonists.
If we are saying that a deity exists which is bigger than the whole universe (whatever that means) then it is not an unreasonable position that the deity has absolutely no comprehension of the affairs of humans on a medium sized planet in a backwater galaxy.
When I grew up I read a book, Your God is Too Small, by J B Phillips, in which he makes the point that while this is true of a large but finite deity, an infinitely large deity can bestow infinite attention on all finite subsets of the universe even if the universe is also infinite. (And that's just as long as the God is the same size of infinity as the universe.)
(Phillips didn't use the mathematical language, but it makes the point more clearly for me at least.)
If we are saying that a deity exists which is bigger than the whole universe (whatever that means) then it is not an unreasonable position that the deity has absolutely no comprehension of the affairs of humans on a medium sized planet in a backwater galaxy.
When I grew up I read a book, Your God is Too Small, by J B Phillips, in which he makes the point that while this is true of a large but finite deity, an infinitely large deity can bestow infinite attention on all finite subsets of the universe even if the universe is also infinite. (And that's just as long as the God is the same size of infinity as the universe.)
(Phillips didn't use the mathematical language, but it makes the point more clearly for me at least.)
Well for me this is meaningless. A deity which is infinite in size is not also going to be controlling the details. Also you can’t have different sizes of infinite.
The third answer is about biology. If you look at other species and conclude that there are many reasons to conclude that humanity is of a kind with everything else and very few to conclude that we are something special, then it is consistent to conclude that there’s little to be done in life than live what is in front of you, just as other individuals in thousands of species do.
We have abilities to reason and think and debate abstract ideas but it doesn’t therefore follow that there’s a deity who is specially interested in us.
When I grew up I read a book, Your God is Too Small, by J B Phillips, in which he makes the point that while this is true of a large but finite deity, an infinitely large deity can bestow infinite attention on all finite subsets of the universe even if the universe is also infinite. (And that's just as long as the God is the same size of infinity as the universe.)
(Phillips didn't use the mathematical language, but it makes the point more clearly for me at least.)
Well for me this is meaningless. A deity which is infinite in size is not also going to be controlling the details.
It's not meaningless for me. You may think that an infinite deity may not be controlling details, but there's no reason for anyone else to agree.
Also you can’t have different sizes of infinite.
That is demonstrably not true.
(The following has no direct relevance to theology but it's fun and interesting.(+))
Mathematicians define infinite sets as being of the same size if for every element in each set you can map it onto a unique element in the other set. If a set is the same size as the integers it's called countable, because you can put all the elements in an infinite list and then count along it. So there are the same number of prime numbers as integers (you list the primes in ascending order). There are also the same number of fractions, ie rational numbers (*). And even if you include all square roots, cube roots, etc. But if you want to include all irrational numbers like pi, you can't do it. The number of irrational numbers is larger than countable.
The proof, called Cantor's Diagonal, is fun.(**)
(*) You can make a list by adding the numerator to the denominator, put them in that order, then list in order of rising numerator: so 1, 1/2, 2, 1/3, 3, 1/4, 2/3, 3/2, 4, 1/5, 5, 1/6, 2/5, etc.
(**) Imagine you have a list of all irrational numbers between 0 and 1 in decimal notation. Now write down a number by taking the first digit of the first number and subtracting 1 (0 becomes 9), doing the same with the second digit, and so on. The number you are writing down by this method can't appear anywhere on the list. So your list couldn't have been complete: therefore the infinity of irrational numbers is larger than that of the integers.
Well for me this is meaningless. A deity which is infinite in size is not also going to be controlling the details.
One of the assumptions here is that an infinite deity can't do infinitely-distributed processing.
Also you can’t have different sizes of infinite.
It seems appropriate to respond with a quote - in this case, wikipedia:
At the end of the 19th century, Georg Cantor enlarged the mathematical study of infinity by studying infinite sets and infinite numbers, showing that they can be of various sizes. For example, if a line is viewed as the set of all of its points, their infinite number (i.e., the cardinality of the line) is larger than the number of integers. In this usage, infinity is a mathematical concept, and infinite mathematical objects can be studied, manipulated, and used just like any other mathematical object.
The mathematical concept of infinity refines and extends the old philosophical concept, in particular by introducing infinitely many different sizes of infinite sets.
Just postulating impossible things doesn’t make them believable.
In normal language you can look at the widest possible broad brush or you can concentrate on the smallest. You can’t do both.
If I look at the bacterial cells I mentioned earlier on a Petri dish, I can do things which mean that I can monitor their growth and activity. On a bigger scale I can monitor their impact in a pandemic on thousands or millions of people. But I can’t do both. I can’t monitor the activity of millions of bacterial cells in millions of people. That’s just not possible.
One can claim that one believes in a deity that creates enormous celestial bodies across the infinity of space and that also the same deity is interested in helping me to find a car space. But I say that’s bullshit.
Either the deity you believe in is personal or he is involved in the motion of galaxies. He’s not both.
Just postulating impossible things doesn’t make them believable.
In normal language you can look at the widest possible broad brush or you can concentrate on the smallest. You can’t do both.
If I look at the bacterial cells I mentioned earlier on a Petri dish, I can do things which mean that I can monitor their growth and activity. On a bigger scale I can monitor their impact in a pandemic on thousands or millions of people. But I can’t do both. I can’t monitor the activity of millions of bacterial cells in millions of people. That’s just not possible.
One can claim that one believes in a deity that creates enormous celestial bodies across the infinity of space and that also the same deity is interested in helping me to find a car space. But I say that’s bullshit.
Either the deity you believe in is personal or he is involved in the motion of galaxies. He’s not both.
The analogy is a false one—though not surprising, since we naturally reason from the things we have experience of, which share our limitations. And “infinite” in numbers is not exactly the same as in theology, entertaining as it is to make comparisons, and sometimes useful.
Having said this, I’ll allow you to call bullshit on me by telling you that I have recent personal experience of this God, and had my remaining disbelief of this sort was well and truly shattered, apparently for good. My difficulty was similar to yours—in my gut I couldn’t truly accept that he would pay detailed attention to someone as small as I am (though my intellect could accept it, my gut wasn’t on the same page).
And then… well. If I told you, you’d not believe it, and I suspect I couldn’t convey the experience adequately anyway. But it is entirely possible for someone with endless memory and bandwidth, and no hardware limitations (to use a poor analogy) to pay attention, even to obsess if he likes, over each and every thing he has made. I’m reminded forcibly of how little I understand of him—rather like my dog as she struggles to figure out how my son’s voice can be coming from a handheld rectangle too small to hold him.
That link goes to an article that explains - more clearly and at greater length - the bit about different infinities that I was talking about. Perhaps you might want to say what bit in that article you think makes a difference to our point?
Just postulating impossible things doesn’t make them believable.
There's a difference between "I don't believe this" and "this is not believable". Clearly if some people believe something then it is believable.
Either the deity you believe in is personal or he is involved in the motion of galaxies. He’s not both.
You said that the first time. You're not going to convince anyone by just repeating yourself. It appears to me that you've responded to my point about infinity by just dismissing it out of hand without bothering to get your head around it.
Interesting points, Bullfrog. I'm not sure what "opposite" means here. For example, I feel indifferent to royalty. Is that the opposite to something? Yours, confused.
The opposite of indifferent would be "concerned." Both love and hate require concern.
I could make a diagram, I suppose, with love and hate both grappling each other on one half, and indifference sleeping on the other. Love and hate struggle in a real relationship. Indifference...just doesn't care. In that sense, concern is the mark. A positive measure of concern marks one pole, containing both love and hate. A negative measure of concern marks the other, which is indifference.
@Lamb Chopped I don't think that's possible. The differences in scale are so enormous.
@Dafyd I think you misunderstand the point of my contributions, which is to try to answer the question posed. Which was why a rational person might not care about the existence of a deity. I am not interested in getting into knots about your belief in the nature of infinity or anything else. I've met many different people with different ideas about the deity, your wild ideas are just one of many.
Interesting points, Bullfrog. I'm not sure what "opposite" means here. For example, I feel indifferent to royalty. Is that the opposite to something? Yours, confused.
The opposite of indifferent would be "concerned." Both love and hate require concern.
I could make a diagram, I suppose, with love and hate both grappling each other on one half, and indifference sleeping on the other. Love and hate struggle in a real relationship. Indifference...just doesn't care. In that sense, concern is the mark. A positive measure of concern marks one pole, containing both love and hate. A negative measure of concern marks the other, which is indifference.
That's my sense, I think. Does it help?
Yes, Bullfrog, that's a bit more subtle. I kept thinking of my dad who was indifferent to God and religion, to his dying breath. I imagine quite a lot of working class guys are similar. Of course, I flipped the other way.
I don't. When you point at someone, whether you do it with a finger or laser pointer, and whether you're calling them an asshole or a saint, you're pointing at them. The comment does not automatically redound upon the speaker.
@Lamb Chopped I don't think that's possible. The differences in scale are so enormous.
I sympathize with your reaction, since I did (and do) feel the same way. But "enormous" is an emotional term in this situation--we don't have any standard to measure all this stuff against, we're just going off our own experiences. But to a truly infinite being, someone uncreated who made everything else--what is "too big" or "too small" to him?
I mentioned my dog earlier. She sees me regularly do things that appear miraculous--or at least illogical--all the time. I'm certain that she doesn't understand why I wipe down dirty surfaces with disinfectant, and even if I could speak dog, she wouldn't be able to grasp the concept of invisible germs, or why things so tiny should have any impact at all on beings the size of a dog (this is rather on my mind, as her very serious illness right now may or may not be an infection). Heck, there are human beings who don't believe in germs, and if you show them micro-organisms under a microscope, they are just as likely to accuse you of trickery, or to admit they exist but deny that they can have any impact whatsoever on something as large as a man. The gut feeling is completely understandable, but it is emotionally-based--and as such, isn't proof of anything. Just like my reference up-thread to a particular experience I had--it isn't proof of anything, though it certainly (and finally!) convinced me that God could and DID concentrate that overwhelming attention on something as tiny as me. (Dear God, what a shock that was...)
So if we're going based on emotion, we'll have an interesting discussion, but we'll doubtless end the thread by still holding the same ideas we walked in with. And that's okay, it's a discussion board, and it's fun to talk.
But if we actually want to prove anything, we'll need to find a stronger logical ground for our positions than emotion. And I can't think of one at the moment (or probably ever), either in favor or against what you say.
If we were the size of a bacterial cell, we might postulate that a human (if we could perceive them) was a deity with all-powerful abilities. That's obviously far from true, but only possible to know with a different perspective.
I don't. When you point at someone, whether you do it with a finger or laser pointer, and whether you're calling them an asshole or a saint, you're pointing at them. The comment does not automatically redound upon the speaker.
The point is you need to be aware of your own shortcomings and hypocricy when ponting out the faults of others.
'Let him who is without sin ......'
@Lamb Chopped I don't think that's possible. The differences in scale are so enormous.
But you are assuming that God is somehow spatial. What if God is not spatial? What if God is truly eternal - not in any way bounded by space or time? I know, that is rather beyond human comprehension. However, I think we get ourselves tied up into knots when we argue about the "bigness" of God.
@Lamb Chopped I don't think that's possible. The differences in scale are so enormous.
But you are assuming that God is somehow spatial. What if God is not spatial? What if God is truly eternal - not in any way bounded by space or time? I know, that is rather beyond human comprehension. However, I think we get ourselves tied up into knots when we argue about the "bigness" of God.
Well in that case he's not personal.
You know other pictures of the deity exist outside of Christianity, do you?
@Lamb Chopped I don't think that's possible. The differences in scale are so enormous.
But you are assuming that God is somehow spatial. What if God is not spatial? What if God is truly eternal - not in any way bounded by space or time? I know, that is rather beyond human comprehension. However, I think we get ourselves tied up into knots when we argue about the "bigness" of God.
Well in that case he's not personal.
You know other pictures of the deity exist outside of Christianity, do you?
Yes, I am quite aware that other faith traditions have other images of the deity.
Why would eternality exclude "personal?"
When I was 24 years old, I was a member of a Buddhist sect. Buddhism was attractive to me because it didn't really focus on a God as a "personality" but more as an abstract "principle" - a State of Being that anybody could attain to with sufficient practice, discipline and self awareness.
At the same time, I was perfectly OK with there being a God, but I was pretty convinced that if He existed, He wasn't particularly interested in me because I just couldn't see any evidence of His influence in my own, or anybody's life. Prayer seemed to me to be an exercise in futility and I had never met anybody whose prayers were answered. I felt like prayer was something that was either misunderstood or mechanically faulty.
I was leaving one of our group Zazen sessions and was walking to my car and the question popped into my head "If there IS a God, and He WAS interested in me, how would He know what I needed, anyway?" I'll never forget this moment - as I was inserting the key in the car lock and turning it a voice in my head said "Because He is both immanent AND transcendent".
I stood there for a long minute as the meaning of this sunk in.
Six nights later I had a "close encounter" with Jesus Christ, and I had to put my Buddhist days behind me, because I had a cold hard experience that showed me in no uncertain terms that not only was there a God, but He was indeed intimately interested in me, and closer to me in body and soul than my next heartbeat.
Not saying this is true for everyone, and even though I believe it is I can't prove it. But I don't think it's as important a question for some as it is for others, and I don't think that it's one that needs to be urgently addressed if people don't feel like it needs to be. God has all the time and patience in the universe, He can wait.
And then there’s the two of you conbined—I’m very much interested in God’s company right now, and mostly interested in the after life as it gives me longer to enjoy him (and other people—well, some of them , going to need a lot of help on others.)
Just beautiful. I would, if I could, hope ... like really hope (is hope a gift?) to see you (and others on this forum. You know who you are, KarlB, chastMastr et al ....) there.
@Lamb Chopped I don't think that's possible. The differences in scale are so enormous.
I sympathize with your reaction, since I did (and do) feel the same way. But "enormous" is an emotional term in this situation--we don't have any standard to measure all this stuff against, we're just going off our own experiences. But to a truly infinite being, someone uncreated who made everything else--what is "too big" or "too small" to him?
I mentioned my dog earlier. She sees me regularly do things that appear miraculous--or at least illogical--all the time. I'm certain that she doesn't understand why I wipe down dirty surfaces with disinfectant, and even if I could speak dog, she wouldn't be able to grasp the concept of invisible germs, or why things so tiny should have any impact at all on beings the size of a dog (this is rather on my mind, as her very serious illness right now may or may not be an infection). Heck, there are human beings who don't believe in germs, and if you show them micro-organisms under a microscope, they are just as likely to accuse you of trickery, or to admit they exist but deny that they can have any impact whatsoever on something as large as a man. The gut feeling is completely understandable, but it is emotionally-based--and as such, isn't proof of anything. Just like my reference up-thread to a particular experience I had--it isn't proof of anything, though it certainly (and finally!) convinced me that God could and DID concentrate that overwhelming attention on something as tiny as me. (Dear God, what a shock that was...)
So if we're going based on emotion, we'll have an interesting discussion, but we'll doubtless end the thread by still holding the same ideas we walked in with. And that's okay, it's a discussion board, and it's fun to talk.
But if we actually want to prove anything, we'll need to find a stronger logical ground for our positions than emotion. And I can't think of one at the moment (or probably ever), either in favor or against what you say.
🕯 for you and doggie 🕯 And I believe God loves her too ❤️
I think there are (at least) three answers to this question.
First I think is about scale. If one imagines looking down at a community as one would at a microbial growth in a petri dish. If a thinking individual was the size of a microbial cell growing on the Petri dish, it is going to be near impossible to have any grasp of a human looking down the microscope at them.
Now consider the difference in scale of an individual the size of a planet and the microbe. Can one really imagine something that massive considering something so minute? And not just one thing, all of those individuals.
I believe that I’m correct that the difference in scale between a planet and a microbe is still a fraction of the difference between our planet and the light years to the nearest star.
If we are saying that a deity exists which is bigger than the whole universe (whatever that means) then it is not an unreasonable position that the deity has absolutely no comprehension of the affairs of humans on a medium sized planet in a backwater galaxy. Hence it is entirely possible to consistently that even if there is a god out there somewhere, it probably doesn’t make any difference to me.
Comments
That shit just doesn't work any more. There are people supporting murder and outright fascism with a religious pall. They need calling out, and chronic toxic bothsidesism has to go.
And this works, does it?
Tangent alert:
'Some men are born assholes; some men achieve asshholery; some men have assholery thrust upon them'. With some people (no names, no packdrill) it's all three.
I do see where Thunderbunk is coming from.
First I think is about scale. If one imagines looking down at a community as one would at a microbial growth in a petri dish. If a thinking individual was the size of a microbial cell growing on the Petri dish, it is going to be near impossible to have any grasp of a human looking down the microscope at them.
Now consider the difference in scale of an individual the size of a planet and the microbe. Can one really imagine something that massive considering something so minute? And not just one thing, all of those individuals.
I believe that I’m correct that the difference in scale between a planet and a microbe is still a fraction of the difference between our planet and the light years to the nearest star.
If we are saying that a deity exists which is bigger than the whole universe (whatever that means) then it is not an unreasonable position that the deity has absolutely no comprehension of the affairs of humans on a medium sized planet in a backwater galaxy. Hence it is entirely possible to consistently that even if there is a god out there somewhere, it probably doesn’t make any difference to me.
BroJames, Purgatory Host
(Phillips didn't use the mathematical language, but it makes the point more clearly for me at least.)
'All arseholes are arseholes but some are more arseholes than others?'
I don't see how admitting that I am/can be an arsehole lets other arseholes off the hook, particularly those in positions of power or influence.
But I can understand the objections to my position on this one.
Well for me this is meaningless. A deity which is infinite in size is not also going to be controlling the details. Also you can’t have different sizes of infinite.
We have abilities to reason and think and debate abstract ideas but it doesn’t therefore follow that there’s a deity who is specially interested in us.
That is demonstrably not true.
(The following has no direct relevance to theology but it's fun and interesting.(+))
Mathematicians define infinite sets as being of the same size if for every element in each set you can map it onto a unique element in the other set. If a set is the same size as the integers it's called countable, because you can put all the elements in an infinite list and then count along it. So there are the same number of prime numbers as integers (you list the primes in ascending order). There are also the same number of fractions, ie rational numbers (*). And even if you include all square roots, cube roots, etc. But if you want to include all irrational numbers like pi, you can't do it. The number of irrational numbers is larger than countable.
The proof, called Cantor's Diagonal, is fun.(**)
(*) You can make a list by adding the numerator to the denominator, put them in that order, then list in order of rising numerator: so 1, 1/2, 2, 1/3, 3, 1/4, 2/3, 3/2, 4, 1/5, 5, 1/6, 2/5, etc.
(**) Imagine you have a list of all irrational numbers between 0 and 1 in decimal notation. Now write down a number by taking the first digit of the first number and subtracting 1 (0 becomes 9), doing the same with the second digit, and so on. The number you are writing down by this method can't appear anywhere on the list. So your list couldn't have been complete: therefore the infinity of irrational numbers is larger than that of the integers.
(+) Well, it is to me.
It seems appropriate to respond with a quote - in this case, wikipedia:
Just postulating impossible things doesn’t make them believable.
In normal language you can look at the widest possible broad brush or you can concentrate on the smallest. You can’t do both.
If I look at the bacterial cells I mentioned earlier on a Petri dish, I can do things which mean that I can monitor their growth and activity. On a bigger scale I can monitor their impact in a pandemic on thousands or millions of people. But I can’t do both. I can’t monitor the activity of millions of bacterial cells in millions of people. That’s just not possible.
One can claim that one believes in a deity that creates enormous celestial bodies across the infinity of space and that also the same deity is interested in helping me to find a car space. But I say that’s bullshit.
Either the deity you believe in is personal or he is involved in the motion of galaxies. He’s not both.
But you take the point?
The analogy is a false one—though not surprising, since we naturally reason from the things we have experience of, which share our limitations. And “infinite” in numbers is not exactly the same as in theology, entertaining as it is to make comparisons, and sometimes useful.
Having said this, I’ll allow you to call bullshit on me by telling you that I have recent personal experience of this God, and had my remaining disbelief of this sort was well and truly shattered, apparently for good. My difficulty was similar to yours—in my gut I couldn’t truly accept that he would pay detailed attention to someone as small as I am (though my intellect could accept it, my gut wasn’t on the same page).
And then… well. If I told you, you’d not believe it, and I suspect I couldn’t convey the experience adequately anyway. But it is entirely possible for someone with endless memory and bandwidth, and no hardware limitations (to use a poor analogy) to pay attention, even to obsess if he likes, over each and every thing he has made. I’m reminded forcibly of how little I understand of him—rather like my dog as she struggles to figure out how my son’s voice can be coming from a handheld rectangle too small to hold him.
There's a difference between "I don't believe this" and "this is not believable". Clearly if some people believe something then it is believable.
You said that the first time. You're not going to convince anyone by just repeating yourself. It appears to me that you've responded to my point about infinity by just dismissing it out of hand without bothering to get your head around it.
The opposite of indifferent would be "concerned." Both love and hate require concern.
I could make a diagram, I suppose, with love and hate both grappling each other on one half, and indifference sleeping on the other. Love and hate struggle in a real relationship. Indifference...just doesn't care. In that sense, concern is the mark. A positive measure of concern marks one pole, containing both love and hate. A negative measure of concern marks the other, which is indifference.
That's my sense, I think. Does it help?
@Dafyd I think you misunderstand the point of my contributions, which is to try to answer the question posed. Which was why a rational person might not care about the existence of a deity. I am not interested in getting into knots about your belief in the nature of infinity or anything else. I've met many different people with different ideas about the deity, your wild ideas are just one of many.
Yes, Bullfrog, that's a bit more subtle. I kept thinking of my dad who was indifferent to God and religion, to his dying breath. I imagine quite a lot of working class guys are similar. Of course, I flipped the other way.
I don't. When you point at someone, whether you do it with a finger or laser pointer, and whether you're calling them an asshole or a saint, you're pointing at them. The comment does not automatically redound upon the speaker.
I sympathize with your reaction, since I did (and do) feel the same way. But "enormous" is an emotional term in this situation--we don't have any standard to measure all this stuff against, we're just going off our own experiences. But to a truly infinite being, someone uncreated who made everything else--what is "too big" or "too small" to him?
I mentioned my dog earlier. She sees me regularly do things that appear miraculous--or at least illogical--all the time. I'm certain that she doesn't understand why I wipe down dirty surfaces with disinfectant, and even if I could speak dog, she wouldn't be able to grasp the concept of invisible germs, or why things so tiny should have any impact at all on beings the size of a dog (this is rather on my mind, as her very serious illness right now may or may not be an infection). Heck, there are human beings who don't believe in germs, and if you show them micro-organisms under a microscope, they are just as likely to accuse you of trickery, or to admit they exist but deny that they can have any impact whatsoever on something as large as a man. The gut feeling is completely understandable, but it is emotionally-based--and as such, isn't proof of anything. Just like my reference up-thread to a particular experience I had--it isn't proof of anything, though it certainly (and finally!) convinced me that God could and DID concentrate that overwhelming attention on something as tiny as me. (Dear God, what a shock that was...)
So if we're going based on emotion, we'll have an interesting discussion, but we'll doubtless end the thread by still holding the same ideas we walked in with. And that's okay, it's a discussion board, and it's fun to talk.
But if we actually want to prove anything, we'll need to find a stronger logical ground for our positions than emotion. And I can't think of one at the moment (or probably ever), either in favor or against what you say.
The point is you need to be aware of your own shortcomings and hypocricy when ponting out the faults of others.
'Let him who is without sin ......'
Why do you think people on this thread need to be told this?
Well in that case he's not personal.
You know other pictures of the deity exist outside of Christianity, do you?
Yes, I am quite aware that other faith traditions have other images of the deity.
Why would eternality exclude "personal?"
At the same time, I was perfectly OK with there being a God, but I was pretty convinced that if He existed, He wasn't particularly interested in me because I just couldn't see any evidence of His influence in my own, or anybody's life. Prayer seemed to me to be an exercise in futility and I had never met anybody whose prayers were answered. I felt like prayer was something that was either misunderstood or mechanically faulty.
I was leaving one of our group Zazen sessions and was walking to my car and the question popped into my head "If there IS a God, and He WAS interested in me, how would He know what I needed, anyway?" I'll never forget this moment - as I was inserting the key in the car lock and turning it a voice in my head said "Because He is both immanent AND transcendent".
I stood there for a long minute as the meaning of this sunk in.
Six nights later I had a "close encounter" with Jesus Christ, and I had to put my Buddhist days behind me, because I had a cold hard experience that showed me in no uncertain terms that not only was there a God, but He was indeed intimately interested in me, and closer to me in body and soul than my next heartbeat.
Not saying this is true for everyone, and even though I believe it is I can't prove it. But I don't think it's as important a question for some as it is for others, and I don't think that it's one that needs to be urgently addressed if people don't feel like it needs to be. God has all the time and patience in the universe, He can wait.
AFF
I trust that we will. ❤️❤️❤️
🕯 for you and doggie 🕯 And I believe God loves her too ❤️
Sorry! I went into 'Pastor Preachy Mode'!
No offence meant!
By the way, welcome to the Ship! ❤️
And I was more aggressive than this situation warranted - my apologies as well.