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Thread: Is God Perfect?

  1. #61
    Maybe YesNo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ecurb View Post
    The "perfection" of the Judeo-Christian God is asserted by both believers and atheists. The atheists want to bash God for being omnipotent while allowing suffering. But is the God of the Bible perfect? In the Old Testament, at least, it seems He is not.

    Some assert God's omniscience, but God is often "surprised", as by the Israelites abandoning him for the statue of a cow. He can but rarely get the Israelites to do what He wants them to do, which seems less than all-powerful. Atheists like Dawkins and Harris bash God for failing to live up to His omniscient and omnipotent reputation -- but how is the reputation derived?

    What do we even mean when we say something is "perfect"? We know that we cannot know the mind of God, so how can we judge its perfection? Moses himself could not see the "face of God". If the greatest of prophets can only glimpse a bit of God's back, how can the rest of us claim to know He is omniscient or omnipotent?

    I mention this because I read an article in which the author says that God's famous reply when Moses asks His name ("I am what I am") is more properly translated as "I will be what I will be." This suggests that God is incomplete, or changing. This seems incompatible with perfection.

    It seems to me that descriptions of God as "perfect" represent a hope of the religious, rather than a reality supported by scripture. Sweeping, idealized descriptions of God contradict scripture, and fuel the arguments of agnostics (like me).
    Just to bring this back to the OP, I have quoted it.

    I don't know enough about Judeo-Christian scriptures to argue much from them. However, it seems that the following are true in general about religions:

    1) What people want in a God is someone "perfect-enough" to justify their worship. People are picky. They will not worship just anything. So they look for the best.

    2) What religious texts provide are cultural ways to relate to such a God. One cannot expect these scriptures to be "perfect". They are projections onto objective texts of subjective understandings. To claim they are complete projections of that subjectivity would be to make an idol out of those texts. All one can say is they, too, are "perfect-enough" to guide the religious practitioner.

    Ironically, it is not a religious person's scriptures that generate paradoxes or contradictions so much as it is the belief in concepts like block universes that are contradictory and paradoxical. A block universe violates the indeterminism of quantum physics. It leads to belief in things like time travel. It leads to belief in reductionism. It leads to dehumanization. One can call that block universe an atheist's God. Since that God is not conscious, it is not worthy of worship and would be justifiably rejected by practitioners of many religions.
    Last edited by YesNo; 04-23-2016 at 03:19 AM.

  2. #62
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    Try to be happy just in yourself for yourself. Don't hide behind that kind of walls, because they are fragile and can fall every moment. Don't think that being burried alive is a solution, neither for you, nor for everyone else. Try to trust in you and do whatever feels right for you to do.

  3. #63
    Pičce de Résistance Scheherazade's Avatar
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  4. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by August Guelfen View Post
    Well, poor boy...So stop being such a screaming idiot. It is naggering me...

    so how can you be so ignorant...Oh little working class screamer...So, saying that was before my time, is not only a sign for being stupid, lazy, blind and ignorant, it also shows your weakness to be above your socialisation slavery. So, tell me again, little worker on the cottenfield of Alabama in your so beautiful chains...
    we all went through the presence of some guy not too far back who seemed to think it was his mission not only to educate everyone as to how they were wrong, but also to be purposely insulting in the process. thankfully he was banned.

    I don't come to the forum here for that and I trust most of the rest of the people on here do not either.

    if you want to talk about your own unique/peculiar history, experiences and beliefs, have at it, but please do so without insulting others.

  5. #65
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    Dear Bounty,

    do you know, what quotations are ? Yes, they can be used to underline own analogies. But if someone did it without the complete context, law call it a crime. Because you use only singular words, perhabs one sentence out of it's meaning, that is a criminal intend to blame me, by suggesting your opinion as whole truth against me. That kind of blackmail hurts. So, please try to be a bit more adequate.

    Sincerly
    August Guelfen

  6. #66
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    context in this case doesn't matter. the meanings of your words have not changed by pulling them out and isolating them. the insults are nevertheless the insults.

    they are especially egregious because you have been received warmly, even sympathetically and haven't been provoked in any way that I can see.

    the short of it is, just please don't do it.
    Last edited by bounty; 04-23-2016 at 09:17 AM.

  7. #67
    Ecurb Ecurb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by August Guelfen View Post
    I.... was the first king of England...George Washington.... My biologic father is... the Queen
    Quit complaining about being quoted out of context, August. Whining is inappropriate for ubermensch.

  8. #68
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    Well, Ecurb, after sending a message to one of the moderators here, telling them your funny creative intend to be a racist and your post is still visible, I think I have the responsibility as a wise man, to try it again with a dialogue. First, "we, the leadership of the SS" call it Herrenmensch. Second, do you know, why this elite was so powerful ? I tell you, because off the
    impulse control. That means they could kill and execute all the day, without ever feeling guilty about that. That was possible, because they saw the right and truth in their work and so they smashed their socialisation chains on their own and
    became something Freud would have called a perfect Meta I, so they were able to continue their lifes after the war and enjoy their cup of vine each evening and playing cello suites with their family, like they did in times of war. All that kind of
    stuff is history. Besides even Hitler, Himmler and Göring said something like, 80%+ of our so called Aryans are worthless like all the others we tend to destroy. That is also history, not my personal opinion. I am not a Nazi and I don't like the Aryan Brotherhood. I am above that all, by being Christian the right gnostic way. I just like dystopian language for my form
    of art. Art is never a question of nationality or politics.

  9. #69
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    I was reading Bryan Bunch's "Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes" recently. This is an excellent book, but I remember something in there that might be relevant to the "perfect" idea mentioned in this thread. On page 160 he writes referring to the results of quantum physics, "We cannot learn some things about the world." And continuing, "...there are some things about the real world that cannot be found out...".

    It occurred to me that the way this is phrased confuses the issue. The phrase implies that there exist things that we cannot know. It is sort of like saying there are wave lengths of light that our eyes can never see. But given the lack of hidden variables, what is actually going on is that there are some things we think we should be able to know that do not even exist for us to know. That is a fundamentally different idea.

    What that means is our knowledge of a very restricted part of reality is as perfect as it can get. It is omniscient, like God's knowledge of that restricted part of reality, because there is nothing else for either us or God to know. Although I don't think many worlds is a correct interpretation of quantum physics, the proponents of many worlds at least understand the problem. If they are going to keep determinism, they have to split the universe into multiple paths so all possibilities get materialized.

    Even we can achieve perfection in our knowledge if we restrict ourselves to a small enough section of reality.
    Last edited by YesNo; 04-28-2016 at 11:30 AM.

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    Well, Yes/No, I think you know the paradigma of Heisenberg's Blurredy Relation ,don't you ? I mean one of his most famous theories on this topic, I am not used to speak about that in english, so please correct my kind of vocabulary or whatever is necessary. I thought about it and I think today, that Werner Heisenberg showed us that our linear and monotone parameters were to his time not efficient enough for that kind of determination, which would show us the whole thing at the same time, I refer myself, for example, to impulse and location in the dynamic fluctuation process, the kind of quantom fields. Even today, the parameters are too primitive to show us simultane things which not have the same vector paradigma at the same time. We could improve that with a better hard-and software for getting a better impression about
    how organic quantum physics seem to be. We must improve A.I. and should correct the system of binarity and show his
    limitations by more complexe mathematic operations, which multiple vectors, where each one of them is not even in the same surficial paradigma. I found out, just for myself, that fractal math diagrams show a lot of that idea. Even Python is
    a good example, also the google A.I. called google alpha. The MonteCarlo possibility modul is a part of it, but the minority
    in importance.
    Last edited by August Guelfen; 04-27-2016 at 11:59 AM.

  11. #71
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    Quote Originally Posted by August Guelfen View Post
    Even Python is
    a good example, also the google A.I. called google alpha.
    I did not follow most of your post, but for what it's worth I use the Python interpreter myself, along with MySQL, for number theoretic investigations. At the moment, I'm using Luke Sneeringer's "Professional Python" to try to improve the organization of my code.

    My point is that given there are no hidden variables associated with quantum physics we know everything there is to know provided we restrict ourselves to this quantum domain. That makes our knowledge perfect or omniscient like that of whatever God one might consider. Of course, as the domain expands, our knowledge becomes imperfect.

    It didn't occur to me until this morning that the metaphors "perfect" and "omniscience" could apply to our knowledge at this very restricted level, but using them might help avoid confusions. Another confusion comes with "randomness". As many world supporters realize, quantum physics is also not random. If it were they would have an easier time justifying their position.

    When Democritus proposed his "atom" I don't think he expected results like what quantum physics came up with. He was probably hoping to find a ground for determinism. Perhaps even the word "atom" is a poor metaphor for whatever reality there is at the quantum level.

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    Yes, I understand your point. I love to talk about math and quantom physics, but now, I don't want to continue, perhabs tomorrow I will post some other ideas and fractal systems. But for today, I have other much more important things to do. I have probably found a girl, who seems to feel who I am, without having studied math at university, I didn't do too. I even not finished college and I broke up school with 18, seven years ago and live a life out of sociaty. Now, the girl I met, seems to be the first person to be able to see me as a human being, not as a mindmachine. I hope she loves me, or will be able to love me soon. Anyway, I am happy, perhabs the first time in the last nine years.

  13. #73
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    I am glad you are happy and I hope things work out with you and your girlfriend.

    You are not a "mindmachine", by the way. I can only imagine what such things must be especially since I suspect they don't exist.

  14. #74
    All are at the crossroads qimissung's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by August Guelfen View Post
    Yes, I understand your point. I love to talk about math and quantom physics, but now, I don't want to continue, perhabs tomorrow I will post some other ideas and fractal systems. But for today, I have other much more important things to do. I have probably found a girl, who seems to feel who I am, without having studied math at university, I didn't do too. I even not finished college and I broke up school with 18, seven years ago and live a life out of sociaty. Now, the girl I met, seems to be the first person to be able to see me as a human being, not as a mindmachine. I hope she loves me, or will be able to love me soon. Anyway, I am happy, perhabs the first time in the last nine years.
    4

    Please remember to stay on topic. Thank you.
    "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
    "Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai
    "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka

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    No, question is wrong itself. We should ask ourselves, are we doing good ? Is it something correct from all aspects ??

    We all are a little corrupt from inside, and we don't accept that.

    We don't need a god to tell us, what's right or whats wrong, we know that most of the stuff we do everyday is wrong!!

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