Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by betty boop
THX FOR YOUR EXCELLENT POSTS AND PINGS.
I am perhaps misreading what you wrote, but if I understand you think your friend is on to something.......If I understand your earlier statement in this post it describes a pantheistic universe...."all is one".....certainly not a Christian worldview. If I misread...please clarify for me. Thank you.
kosta50, there is no modalism in my beliefs or my statement. But certainly you are free to infer what you will by my use of (or Scripture declaring) the Names of God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
The rise of autonomy (and especially syntactical autonomy) in nature is a major issue as mathematicians and physicists have joined in the investigation of biological evolution theory. There are many complex systems theories and autonomy is a challenge to every one of them.
For instance, directionless evolution would have this path by sheer happenstance: cell>function>organism>collective>biosphere.
Conversely, final cause in biological systems (Rosen's mathematical model) suggests the reverse which would look like this at a macro level: final cause>organism>function>cell.
Or, at the highest level: final cause>cosmos>biosphere>collective>organism>function>cell.
And that would be "intelligent design" because "final cause" is unspecified. The term could be replaced with "God's will" or the Eastern mystic's "collective conscience" or the panspermiast's "cosmic ancestry."
God's Name is I AM.
You have thrown me a real curve ball which I cannot reconcile.
You are very perceptive, dear Texas Songwriter! My friend is not a Christian, and he seems to be engaging what appear to be pantheistic ideas. He and I have been to-and-froing for a long time now (to our mutual enjoyment) on the problem of the origin of the universe, and ultimately such conversations take on a religious character.
What I gather is that he would prefer not to grapple with the origin problem; thus he's effectively on the "eternal universe" model, which is consistent with pantheism. Yet he doesn't regard himself as a pantheist.
Like many physicists who do not want to take on the origin problem, he finds a certain intellectual refuge in Eastern cosmology (source of the "eternal universe" model). This sort of thing goes back to Schrödinger at least.
But it seems to me that Atilla's cosmology, premised in three great fundamental principles of nature — the physical, biological, and psychological — and which stresses the lawful behavior of the universe, has no way to explain or account for "principled" or "lawful" behavior absent an explanation of origin. Only the Judeo-Christian tradition is explicit about this.
In Aristotelian language, logically there must be a first uncaused cause. Otherwise what one has is a situation of infinite regression in which there is never any basis for a principle or law to arise. When a mathematician sees that his equation is generating a situation of infinite regress, the alarm bells go off that there's something wrong with his equation! An infinite regression is ultimately unthinkable, and is "unconstructable in physics."
I suspect this is what Voltaire — whom Balint Vazsonyi identified as the man "endowed with the clearest and most incisive mind of his age" — meant by his terse observation, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create Him." [see Vazsonyi, America's 30 Years War: Who Is Winning?]
Unfortunately, I have not yet succeeded in conveying this, to me, utterly indispensable understanding to my friend. Still I believe that, in the end, all scientific reasoning is rooted in the Logos whether people recognize this fact or not.
For how can logic, or reason, or mathematics arise from a situation of infinite regress? This is the BIG PROBLEM.
But I'll keep working on my friend! In the meanwhile, I am attracted to his model, even though he does not yet acknowledge that it ultimately rests on something he does not yet have the ability to recognize. (That's the part I'm "working on." :^) )
In any case, it is very clear to me that the Creation of heaven and earth constitutes a single universal system which is spatially and temporally distinct from its Creator God. It is still "one system" for all of that — and it is lawful and orderly. That cannot be "accidental," or the result of an infinite random development.
Or so it seems to me. I don't think my belief violates what God has conveyed to us in the Book of Genesis....
I hope the foregoing makes sense, dear brother in Christ. I think this is an issue that's a tad difficult to grasp, at least the first time one hears it. I know I've struggled with it for a long time by now.
Thank you so much for writing!
THX for the interesting ping.
"All is one" is a term associated with Buddhist and Hindu thought. But to speak of a single, unified world system does not imply that "All is one" in the Hindu or Buddhist sense.
A single unified world system can easily be imagined as the outcome of Big Bang/inflationary universe theory — which clearly indicates that the universe had a Beginning (origin). That is, is not an "eternal universe." Nor do pantheist thinkers have available to them any logical tools to analyze and elucidate what they mean by "All is one" — for there is nothing in a pantheistic system that can serve as a basis for logic and logical analysis.
Pantheist systems make God coextensive with phenomenal reality and embed Him IN IT. The Judeo-Christian tradition does NOT conflate the Creator and the Creation in this way. The divine Logos is not "IN" the world system, although the world system expresses it. Just as Michelangelo is not "IN" his magnificent sculpture of "David," nor in any of its composing materials. But there would not be any "David" without Michelangelo!!!
Indeed, it seems to me pantheistic systems represent flights from reason and logic into the dissolution of human thinking and ultimately of personality in the "desired" state of Nirvana — a condition of utter, forgetful nothingness whose goal is to relieve us of the pain and suffering of human existence by relieving us of our personal identity and individuality.
No wonder science did not arise in the East, but only in the West....
Anyhoot, I am not a "Gaia" fan. That was Lovelock. Interesting; but finally unpersuasive. Lovelock's work was "earthbound." In that sense, he was not looking for ultimate principles....
And certainly I am not a New Ager! What a pail of useless bilgewater!!! Trust me on this one; I know this from personal experience.... :^)
That was a very, very quick summary..it may be incomplete but that was the thrust of what I read. What I translated in my mind was the finding of it being fascinating was to 'espouse' it as a possible view of the universe. It was not in keeping with the hundreds of posts I have read which you authored....therefore, I had to assume I am missing something. As you know, Einstein saw the universe as god....not the God of the Hebrew or Christian. It might be interesting as a science fiction, but it is nowhere found in the Bible. There is no physical evidence of the universe as a whole is a biolological entity. It is the stuff of science fiction. Anywat, sorry to take up your time...just wanted to clear it up in my mind.
If you say, as betty boop quotes, that God the Father revealed Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ and in the Person of the Holy Spirit" that is Modalism in its classic form.
I especially appreciated Kosta's statement:
The idea of an immortal soul, a whole being that "feels" and "sees" and exists transcendentally on another conscious plane, is intriguing. To me, it's like dark matter—a convenient postulate that could answer a lot of questions, but no one knows what it is or how to detect it and recognize it.
I can tell him how to achieve this state but he will not be willing to achieve it. Paul provides the methodology and does Jesus. Paul says we must die to the Old Man and be reborn as a New Man. Jesus says that we must die to the flesh to be reborn to the spirit.
It is really quite simple. Just give up your incessant harrowing and let everything you think you know become refuse on the trash heap of your life. Then ask, no, beg the Lord to forgive your miserable self and take you on as a special case (I made up that part).
He is ready to give you a new mind and a new body. All you need do is ask with every fibre of your being and allow for no escape hatches.
All or nothing. God's Way or the highway. Life or death. Choose today.
And, no, Texas Songwriter, I do not embrace Gaia or any of the other non-Christian beliefs such as panspermia (space aliens.)
I was simply trying to tie the autonomy issue back to the Intelligent Design hypothesis which simply says that "certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection."
The ID movement attempts to separate itself from any theology by not stipulating who or what the intelligent cause "is" and instead focuses on the math and/or science which strongly suggests there was an intelligent cause for "certain features."
One of those features would be autonomy since there is not yet a viable explanation for the rise (bottom up) of autonomy (particularly syntactical autonomy) in the universe.
Well here's a reply: To impose modalist categories on God is completely irrelevant to Who He IS. This would be an instance of a man who is trying to make God of a size that his mind can grasp, according to his own terms. Which is an exercise in futility from the get-go.
For the mind of man cannot even begin to conceive the Immensitas which is God — NOT bound to human categories of nature (space and time) or of thought (to the limit of human reason).
To think otherwise — that man can be the measure of God — leads to untruth, ultimately to the falsification of divine reality, of the spiritual and natural creation.
Well my two cents worth FWIW.
Man is not the measure!
God's Name is I AM.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED, AS USUAL.
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Another "bb Gem" to "hang on the wall!!
Thank you, Dear Sister in Christ, for sharing these marvelous insights!
post #790 is about you and should have been directed to you. I apologize for treating you in the third person.
Sorry. Mispost. Mod please remove.
No problem. I appreciate your advice. Been there, done that.
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