I am an Atheist and always have been.

VaughanJB said:
I guess it's over my head too, because I don't understand in the context of your earlier post. Don't worry, it's probably me. :D
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I had to work to find the beginning of our discussion of dimensions.

you said
Actually, I believe the consensus is currently four dimensions, with the fourth dimension currently referred to as "space-time." I can sense that myself in that our dimensional reality could not exist with out space-time as it could not exist without any one of the other three. I'm not sure if there is a difference between "time" and "space-time," but theorists seem to want to label it that way.
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The mistake was mine. In rereading what you said, I get a different meaning. I guess we can drop this discussion of dimensions, since it is way off-topic anyway, but I had a lot of fun playing with it, so thank you. But- time is an abstract concept, not a thing.

Modern physics and philosophy suggest that time might not exist at a fundamental level, acting instead as a "stubborn illusion" or a construct of consciousness. While our experience of time is real, theoretical work implies it is an emergent feature, not a basic component of reality. [1, 2, 3]
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:ROFLMAO: My bad. At least that explanation is about consciousness, and that seems to fit in this thread. We can say "God" is like time. Both can appear to be real and useful but the world does not have agreement about that. And that plays into thoughts about words, and then we go back to Jesus being logos/the word and consciousness. How did we become aware of a god or "God" in the first place?
 
VaughanJB said:
Could be? COULD be? It's totally an error to think communication can't happen without human language.

Hell, step into many countries in Europe, and your language might well not be very useful. :D
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Ah, but on a boat in San Francisco Bay, there were tourists from around the world, and without sharing the same language, we still could communicate simple things. I love thinking about the Silk Road that carried ideas from one place to another and mixed people from to there. The spirit of those who traveled the road to trade one thing for another must have been a wonderful spirit of adventure and love of people. This is like the importance of many gods to developing our knowledge.

We need to exchange thoughts and information to stimulate the growth of knowledge, and that can't happen very well when people think they know God and believe that one book tells them all they need to know, and anyone who disagrees with this belief is evil. 😖 That just isn't the spirit of the Silk Road and all the exciting new things and different people.
 
Vida May said:
I don't know if we are making opposing arguments or if we are just react emotionally in different ways.
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For me, there is no argument. I just understand the process of plant "communication" as explained by science. I understand why people like to think of it magically. I understand why you can read a lab report, and then read the version the media uses to make it more interesting. Yes some trees communicate. What?? You mean like talk to each other??? OK lets go with that. The headline for the article will be "Trees Talk to Each Other". Then people will think of words and the consciousness involved in it, and it's a lovely idea to imagine. We will get rich selling a book about it.

Now that I write this, I remember a crazy episode of Northern Exposure, where this loner in the woods (Adam, I believe) with wild ideas is hired by the owner of the local paper to come up with stories that will increase readership. He milks the concept of trees talking, and residents in the town are found aimlessly milling around woods at night waiting for the trees to say something.

Vida May said:
For me the universe is an awesome consciousness, but there is no story, until we get to humans. Chardin said, God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man. Humans with language are the story tellers, and we can argue until we have a consensus on the best reasoning.
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That's a clever way to describe what a presumed god was doing before man showed up... Sleeping. He didn't wake up until some primate evolved higher conscious to get his attention. It's fun. But even avid followers of the Bible wouldn't accept that.
 
I have an issue with the universe having consciousness, let alone a coherent communication. The universe has not thought, no feelings, and no preference. It's a process. It's a thing. But it's not sentient in any meaningful way. The universe runs by a set of rules and interactions, but they're not aware of being in any way, they just are.
 
Modern physics and philosophy suggest that time might not exist at a fundamental level, acting instead as a "stubborn illusion" or a construct of consciousness. While our experience of time is real, theoretical work implies it is an emergent feature, not a basic component of reality. [1, 2, 3]
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It's hard to imagine time not existing, because it's such a big part of our lives. Well it seems to be. I've heard and thought about this time issue before. It's a hard one to wrap my mind around, as some physics concepts are. I'm still waiting for information that would do more than just make the statement time is just an illusion. If it's true. I want to know why and how anyone could know that.

It's one of those things we can't see or feel, but we still have a strong sense of it, real or illusion. That's an interesting problem, but I resist jumping to a conclusion, because I've wondered enough about it to know that I don't understand it very well, like what physically causes it?
 
VaughanJB said:
I have an issue with the universe having consciousness, let alone a coherent communication. The universe has not thought, no feelings, and no preference. It's a process. It's a thing. But it's not sentient in any meaningful way. The universe runs by a set of rules and interactions, but they're not aware of being in any way, they just are.
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If one worships the universe as a god, most people would probably say that to qualify as a god, something would have to be sentient. But that's only because most people expect it.
 

From Search Assist​

Sentience and Divine Nature​

  • Non-Sentient God: Some theological perspectives argue that God does not need to be sentient in a human sense. Instead, God may be seen as a force or principle that governs the universe without possessing consciousness.
  • Sentient God: Other views, particularly in certain religious traditions, may depict God as a sentient being who interacts with creation and experiences emotions like love and compassion.
 
We have a saying in my congregation as the service ends. It is "We go in God, and God in us".

It reminds us that God is not some distant deity separate from ourselves but a spirit, a force, that exists everywhere in the universe. We need no priests to have access God.

This is not a new concept. The immanence and eminence of God is hinted at in several Bible passages including Ps 139: 7-10.
 
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