Perhaps, the simplest form of this argument may be that “God cannot know that He is God, because He cannot distinguish Himself from a being deceived by a devil (or by his own mind) into believing He is God”. (And there exist, indeed, persons believing that they are God.)

The mind in cause may think that God’s attribute is omniscience, expressed by the condition

(1)...

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Perhaps, the simplest form of this argument may be that “God cannot know that He is God, because He cannot distinguish Himself from a being deceived by a devil (or by his own mind) into believing He is God”. (And there exist, indeed, persons believing that they are God.)

The mind in cause may think that God’s attribute is omniscience, expressed by the condition

(1) “contains all possible true statements in propositional form”.

Even in this case, as it is explained in the article above, the mind can falsely believe that it has this attribute. I agree that, indeed, believing in your own omniscience does not imply you are God.

* * *

But I will try to provide a slightly improved tool for checking the godness.

The condition (1) should refer to a world, a universe, in which the statements can be true or false. In that world, there may be an Altoona, there may be something called sky, which can have something named color, etc., or it may be not. If the world is a model (in the sense of Model Theory), then it should be a model for the theory consisting in the collection of statements from (1).

I would replace (1) by:

(1a) There is a model W (real or created/induced by an E.D.).

(1b) The mind M should contain all possible true statements about the world W in propositional form.

(1c) The mind M should be able to know in finite time (or better, instantaneously) all the consequences of the statements from (1b), including the consistency and completeness. Its knowledge should be found to be consistent and complete. It should know all future and past developments.

(1d) The mind M should be able to verify in finite or instantaneous time the experimental validity of its knowledge.

I assume, of course, that M masters perfectly the critical thinking :-)

The world W may be created by an E.D. or not, but this is irrelevant. If M can check the validity, consistency and completeness of its knowledge about W, then M will know that it is the God of the world W (being this world real or illusory).

Let us now assume that W is embedded in a larger world W2.

(Q) Does the existence of a God2 for W2 diminish the “godness” of the God of W?

(A) I would say that the answer to (Q) is “no”, except of course if we allow the God2 of W2 to change W or M “during the game”, preventing thus M from satisfying the conditions above. If God2 stops interacting with W, and if M satisfies the conditions above, then M is a God of W. There may be more gods for W (including God2), because there may be more minds knowing the same thing. They may be distinguished only if they have other attributes, or if they have knowledge about other stuff besides W.

Let us assume now that at some time, God2 changes the rules of the game. If M already checked its omniscience about W (for example if it can do this instantaneously), then it contains all the past and future of W. Changing the rules simply creates another W’ and another M’. But inside M there was already an identical copy of W, with its own time, with all the future and past consistent, and M is its God. Illusory or not, this world existed, and having its own timeline, it is too late to be changed. It gained eternity.

In conclusion, I think that M may content itself with the idea of being the God of the world W. There may always be the possibility that W is only part of a larger world, but this is irrelevant, W being logically closed.

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Brian Beverly,

You said:

"History has shown time and again that what we consider to be gods or god is merely the personification of our ignorance. Does god know that it is god? I prefer to ask the question; do the ignorant know that they are ignorant?"

My words:

I too appreciate science and scientists. I enjoy the benefits that science has led us to. Yet there is...

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Brian Beverly,

You said:

"History has shown time and again that what we consider to be gods or god is merely the personification of our ignorance. Does god know that it is god? I prefer to ask the question; do the ignorant know that they are ignorant?"

My words:

I too appreciate science and scientists. I enjoy the benefits that science has led us to. Yet there is something very limited about our science. I have no religion. I do not know the cause of our existence. However, I am certain that science is only discovering what has been provided for us by something else other than us. I do not know what that original source was. However, I think that intelligence cannot arise from dumbness. It can be imagined that dumbness can lead to intelligence; but, no one can show the means by which that is possible. I think the reason for this failure is because dumbness can never rise above dumbness.

We may wish to be free of obligation to some source other than ourselves. If we could convince ourselves and others that the credit for our progress belongs to us; then, we would be the most important things of which we know. The feeling of greatness that we would achieve would last only as long as it takes for us to realize that the source of all intelligence can only be equal or greater intelligence.

I do not know the origin of our intelligence. However, I am certain that we are learning that which we are encoded to learn. We receive all of our information via photons. The photons arrive from all directions. They originate from a plethora of sources. They are mixed to the degree that their information should seem to be a random storm with no meaning beyond causing changes of velocity. Yet we pick patterns out of the storm of photons. How do we know about patterns? How do we know any meaning for those patterns? Yet, from that storm of photons we learn about ourselves and the universe.

It seems strange that photons, as described by science, carry only information about changes of distance for periods of time. It seems very strange that information about distance and time can be deciphered by us to tell us about love. I think that we have a great deal more to learn about photons and the properties of the universe. We need to learn about: What it is that is given to us that allows us to understand anything. I say given because we did not give it to ourselves. It came from the particles of matter that the earth surrendered to be assembled into our individual selves.

Those particles of matter cazme, much earlier, from sources other than the earth. Way back in the very beginning of the universe, those properties necessary for the potential development of human intelligence must have been in existence. Those properties allowed for the development of individual portions of intelligence, read this as human beings, that are capable of comprehending its source. The universe gave birth to parts of itself capable of comprehending itself. No scientific theory that we yet have rises to this level.

Our scientific understanding still languishes at a very low level. We interpret the universe as being mechanical. I use this term in a broad sense not limiting it to macroscopic examples of machinery type operations. The mechanical concept I use is one of inanimate, unthinking actions supposedly resulting from one or more of the theoretical fundamental forces of nature. It is the material universe as defined by theoretical physics. It is dead and yet is full of useful action. It does not include properties of awareness and intelligent purpose. It is a universe described as being the opposite of intelligent life. It is what causes us to feel isolated, alone and insignificant. Yet it purports to describe the nature of a universe that gave birth to us.

James

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James,

You have a great deal of insight into concepts that most would like to ignore. The usual answer to questions about such concepts is that intelligence is just a chance happening and is just the result of an extremely great number of individual chance happenings that taken together created intelligence. This ignores the established fact that all intelligent beings are extremely...

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James,

You have a great deal of insight into concepts that most would like to ignore. The usual answer to questions about such concepts is that intelligence is just a chance happening and is just the result of an extremely great number of individual chance happenings that taken together created intelligence. This ignores the established fact that all intelligent beings are extremely complex and highly ordered high potential energy structures that contain hierarchical ordered substructures that fulfill purposes that are abstract from the overall purpose of the whole structure and that exist in a world that is made in such a way that it actively works to destroy such structures by creating disorder and dissipating the energy to the surrounding environment (entropy). We spend most of our lives fighting against entropy and in the end it wins. As relatively intelligent beings we make ordered high potential energy structures, but find that overall we still add to entropy by dissipating more energy to the surrounding environment than we are able to extract and concentrate to make them. As soon as we finish constructing such objects they start to deteriorate. Even the simplest viable self-sustaining living creature contains a structure composed of a large number of complex subassemblies. It would not be reasonable to believe that all of those subassemblies would be produced by a base structure (that tends to destroy such things) by chance at the same time in the same place and would all exist long enough without being destroyed by entropy to some how come together to make a living creature that would then live long enough to reproduce and create a sustainable population. One thing that is often ignored about probabilities is that if, as an example, the probability was such that it took 6 billion years (it would be much longer in practice) to create the first living creature by probability and if an evolutionary change occurred with the same probability (it would likely be a much shorter time because it would be less complex than the original whole creature) with about 6 billion people in the world now we should see an evolutionary change on the average of at least one per year in man alone. We should be seeing a much larger number in other simpler creatures (such as single celled creatures) because of their much greater number. The frequency of evolutionary changes should be increasing exponentially along with the population. An example of this concept in the real world is the fact that even though the half-life of some isotopes is on the order of billions of years, we can still observe the decay of a large number of atoms of such an isotope if the sample contains a large enough number of atoms.

We not only are limited in our ability to learn by our built in structure and coding, but are also limited by the nature of the external world that we exist in. If all things in the world really did occur strictly by chance with no variability of probability science would not help us to understand the world at all. As an example if the world was made such that when any two objects collided they would sometimes pass through each other, sometimes bounce off each other at random angles, and sometimes break into small pieces that would then fly off in random directions, and there was be no way to determine which would happen in any given case, science would be of little help to us in any practical way to understand that phenomena. It is only because the world contains repeatable rules of behavior that entities in the world adhere to in their interactions with each other that enables us to gain anything by the use of science. Another factor in the way that the world is made that gives us to be able to understand parts of the world that we can not see or sense directly is the fact that forms and actions that we can see are repeated in similar forms in those things that we can’t see. As an example, we can see water waves, but we cannot see directly the wave behavior of light photons, but because it behaves in a similar way causing refraction under some circumstances, etc., we can understand much about light by observing the behavior of water waves. All we are really doing with science is learning what the built in rules are and how to use them to fulfill purposes that we desire to accomplish. The way that the world works in these and other ways suggest that it was designed to allow us to be able to learn about how it works. This and the complex structure of life forms suggest an intelligent creator. The world just does not look or act like a world created and governed by random chance events.

To All,

As to the Question: Does God Know He is God? In Isaiah 46:9 God says, (Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:). From this statement it is clear that God is saying that he does know that he is God and that there is no one else like him (no other Gods). This may not seem logical to us, but you must remember that we are limited to just part of this creation while God exists outside of it. We do not know anything about his world outside of the creation so its nature may make it possible for him to determine that he is the only God. He is also much greater than us so he may be able to search out and understand things that we cannot because of our limited intelligence. He is also saying that he is in complete control of the creation to make what ever he says come to pass and that he can and will do all that pleases him. This is not surprising since he created the world that we live in and therefore would know everything about it and how it works. In order for him to make it in the first place he would pretty much have to have absolute knowledge of it and the absolute ability to control it.

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Georgina,

I did not mean to imply that God is only external to the creation. I was only pointing out that according to the scriptures, God existed before he created the world and he says that there are no others like him. He therefore can exist in the place that he was in before he created the world and the implication is that he exists there alone without others like himself. When he...

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Georgina,

I did not mean to imply that God is only external to the creation. I was only pointing out that according to the scriptures, God existed before he created the world and he says that there are no others like him. He therefore can exist in the place that he was in before he created the world and the implication is that he exists there alone without others like himself. When he created the eight dimensional world, he divided it up so that the lower four make up the three that we live and move in and a hidden one that is used to make our energy work the way that it does by giving it the variable mass, frequency, and wavelength effects that we now have some understanding of. These first four dimensions are called the earth. We are primarily trapped in the earth although our matter also uses the fifth dimension to generate the curvature that causes an energy photon to take a curved path that closes back upon itself to create a matter particle. The fifth dimension is called the first heaven or outer court and is ruled by creatures called the powers that control much of what goes on in the earth for God. Man will be given power over this level near the end of this world. The sixth dimension is the second heaven and is controlled by creatures called the principalities. The principalities are the mediators between the angels and the powers. Our matter does not have access to this level, so it is and always will be beyond our reach while we are in this world. The seventh dimension is the third heaven and is ruled by the angels. The paradise of God is in the middle of the third heaven around God’s throne. It is the place that those who are saved go when they die until Jesus returns to the earth for his thousand-year reign on this earth. They return with him and are resurrected to live in his kingdom with him for the thousand years (advanced training). The eighth dimension is reserved for God the Father and his only begotten son Jesus Christ. God has not told us about what the world beyond his eight dimensional creation is like, but he is the only one that has access to it. All we know is that it must exist because he had to have some place to exist in before he created this world. Of course it could be that his being itself is that place. In that case he would just have to have removed some of his motion from the part of him that would become the place for the creation. Of course he would have used some motion to make the basic dimensional system of the creation and then later more of his motion to make the energy and matter etc. that was later introduced into the dimensional system. Each type of God’s creatures mentioned above can have some access to lower levels, but does not have access to higher levels. As an example, angels have been sent down to the earth at times to do things here for God. God, of course, has complete access to the whole creation and is omnipotent over it. He would not necessarily need to be present in all places at all times to have complete control over it. He could get information about the state of all places at all times through sensors, as an example. Remember the speed of light limitation may not apply to him. I am not saying that he is not present at all places at all times, as that would work also. Since he says that he created the world, God could not be the creation because he would then have to preexist himself to create himself. For the most part body parts both send and receive signals from other body parts, so they likely have some level of knowledge of their existence as a part of a larger entity. Though this may not be conscious knowledge at the same level as exists for the body as a whole. Remember that each cell has all the recorded information in it necessary to generate the whole body, so in that sense each cell contains all the information about its oneness/connection to the whole body. It is unlikely that the individual cells can consciously process all that information. It is just made that way as an image of how it will be to be members of God’s body in the world to come, in that we will then know the whole body even including God (the head of the body). The idea that the world created itself is not very practical when it is examined very closely. First it does not exist as the kind of chaotic world that would come about from pure chance motions and actions, but is built up upon specific logical rules that allow for the production of the energy and matter structures that can be used to build complex ordered hierarchical physical and logical high potential energy structures such as ourselves. Second the world is not increasing in overall energy concentration and order, but is continually dissipating energy over larger areas and breaking down overall order (entropy). It is not creating itself. It is slowly destroying itself. Even living creatures that try to reverse entropy actually add to entropy overall. If the world became self aware and intelligent at some point, it must have some kind of suicide complex or something because the way that it is going it will destroy itself. I suppose that it could be aware of what is going on, but just be helpless to stop it. It would not be much of a God though if it can’t preserve its own existence let alone the existence of its followers. The world outside of living creatures does not evolve it devolves or slowly falls apart. You can read my comment to James to get some idea of some of the problems with the concept that life evolved starting from a very simple first life form and then advanced in complexity over time by mutations. As you can see the biggest problem would be how to get the production of all of the necessary subassemblies in one place at one time for a long enough time without them being destroyed by entropy in a world that is programmed to destroy such things, so that you could have any chance that the first life form could be formed. The time frame for each of the subassemblies to form by chance would be very long, but the timeframe for all of them to be formed by chance in the same place at the same time would be too long to have ever happened. Another problem is that the time from when all of the subassemblies were in existence together until they combined to form the living creature would have to be very short, so that none of the subassemblies would be destroyed by entropy before the living creature could be assembled. The problem is that with all of the at least millions of pounds of subassemblies lying around from all of the living creatures that die every year, we ought to see many new living creatures formed. Instead they just all turn to dust (deteriorate). One could argue that there has been some change in the world so that it doesn’t happen now because they are destroyed faster etc., but it would seem that a simple experiment could test that assumption. You could take a large sample of very simple one celled creatures and kill them in such a way that the subassemblies remain intact and then place them in a container that contained the environment that you believed would promote the production of life and see if it works. If anyone has tried it I haven’t heard of any success. I used to be more on the side of evolution, but the more that I looked at it the less sense it made.

John,

I need to go to bed now and get some sleep, so I will try to answer your comment tomorrow. I’m not trying to ignore you. I’m just trying to get some sleep so I can have some chance of giving you an intelligent answer. Wow what a concept, sleep, chance, and intelligence. Maybe the universe just needs a good night’s sleep and it will awaken the next day with enough intelligence to fix all its problems instantly. Then again if we are that intelligence, maybe we just need to get everybody together for a good simultaneous sleep-in and we will be able to solve all the world’s problems instantly the next day when we all awake together. A good night’s sleep will likely also decrease my silliness quotient.

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It seems to me that the puzzle of God not being able to be sure to be God is a subtle variation of Gödels undecidability theorems.

If we consider the infinite mind to be a deduction/induction system - be it really infinite or merely finite - then, at least one thing must remain unexplainable: namely the explanation system itself (call it IM, GOD, TOE or whatsoever). That's a direct...

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It seems to me that the puzzle of God not being able to be sure to be God is a subtle variation of Gödels undecidability theorems.

If we consider the infinite mind to be a deduction/induction system - be it really infinite or merely finite - then, at least one thing must remain unexplainable: namely the explanation system itself (call it IM, GOD, TOE or whatsoever). That's a direct consequence of Gödel's findings (call this findings the ED or whatever).

"an infinite collection may fail to be exhaustive"

That's the first crucial thing of the whole line of reasoning that led to the assumption that God isn't able to know for sure he is God.

Cantor thought about infinity a lot and as we know he broke down under it. Why? Because "infinity" is only another word for "no borders". So it is a contradiction in itself to attach to the very concept of infinity any kind of a border (like "not exhaustive").

From Gödel's and Russell's findings we know, that, whatever references to a totality (the idea of infinity, hence "no borders") cannot at the same time be a part of this totality (in our case the idea of "not exhaustive - hence, "borders"), without falling back into the paradoxes of self-referential undecidability.

Remember Gödel's findings: The statement "this statement is not provable" seems to be true and indicates that the system is not complete. That is well-known. Maybe one can attach this conclusion also to every *infinite* system. But in that case we have the above mentioned contradiction in terms. The only alternative would be, to consider the whole system of which this statement arose, as inconsistent. The latter is also unsatisfying because one would run into an infinite regression of proving statements to be valued either true or false. What to do? Gödel's own response to that was

"[...] consistency with existence manifestly presupposes the axiom that every mathematical problem is solvable. Or, more precisely, it presupposes that we cannot prove the unsolvability of any problem.”.

GÖDEL, Kurt: On formally undecidable proposition of Principia mathematica and related systems I. (1931). In: Collected Works, Vol. I, pp. 145-195.

That would mean, by adding some more axioms into a system, one can solve some more questions. But even this would never come to an exhaustive end. Therefore the problem remains also in the case of a finite mind.

The real problem is the question if a conscious mind really could be *no more* than a aggregation of true statements in propositional form. For me it seems there is something missing. A formal system like the one which contains some - finite or infinite - true statements in propositional form isn't able to know forever that it at least cannot know one thing: there exists a true statement that cannot be proven inside this system.

It further seems to me that a couscious mind, be it infinite or finite, must be also able to grasp this (Gödel's!) truth as we humans are able to do it. No (Turing-)machine could do that!! So it seems to me that the IM knows why it cannot know for sure that it is complete without running into a self-referential loop. This IM/FM - for being not only a simple Turing-machine - should be aware of the conclusion that it deals only with abstract, Boolean-like knowledge of true and false values which affirm to each other again and again their existence and their "right to exist" as mutually exclusive and exhaustive (for example the polarities between infinite and finite). No machine could grasp this truth, as Rudy Rucker has illustrated very pretty in his book RUCKER, Rudy: Die Ufer der Unendlichkeit. Frankfurt a. M. (Krüger) 1989, pp. 211 f. So every system that can grasp the truth of Gödel's findings must be conscious as well as able to decide between truth (deduction) and merely assumption (induction).

The assumption (induction) made in the whole argument of IM's/FM's undermined by an ED is that a GOD who knows that he's GOD can consist only out of a mere Boolean system of logic. If he indeed would so, not only the IM/GOD/FM could be undermined by an ED, but also the ED and so on in an infinite regression could be undermined by other ED's and last but not least the whole argument *could* be inconsistent and therefore not valid - due to Gödel's findings. So what is your choice? Inconsistence or incompleteness? Due to Boolean logic it seems to me that such a choice has to be made - but this is only an *assumption*, the same assumption as the one considering a conscious being (be it GOD, IM or FM) to consist of nothing more than Boolean logics. The latter is only an assumption that had to be *proven*. Has anyone out there a proof for that (i don't think so...)? My *assumption* is that i cannot know everything and therefore many options remain possible, well in the sense of Gödel's statement above. Furthermore my assumption is that every abstract knowledge like Boolean inductions/deductions cannot distinguish between definite truth and assumption. But i can. Therefore i must be more that just a system of Boolean mutually exclusive values. This also holds true for the case that an ED baffled me to mistake my latter assumptions as truths instead of mere assumptions. Because if these assumptions would in turn be only assumptions, nothing is lost: The probability that i could be wrong remains and therefore the possibility that i could be right. And therefore the ED is just another word for my limited knowledge about the concret border between those things that could be thinkable in general and those things that could be unthinkable in general. But that's again a game of polarities. It seems to me that a world transcending these polarities doesn't need answers anymore, because there aren't anymore questions to ask. But this doesn't necessarily mean that in such realms there couldn't be awareness/consciousness anymore.

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What terrific responses, across the board. The first thing I want to say is that FQXi Community readers are among the most interesting and original thinkers on the net, and refreshingly sincere in tackling deep questions. It’s a pleasure to read.

I should underline, by the way, the use of such phrases as “for the purposes of argument” in my original post. That is, I’m not proposing...

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image: jared

What terrific responses, across the board. The first thing I want to say is that FQXi Community readers are among the most interesting and original thinkers on the net, and refreshingly sincere in tackling deep questions. It’s a pleasure to read.

I should underline, by the way, the use of such phrases as “for the purposes of argument” in my original post. That is, I’m not proposing that any God actually exists or has certain characteristics; this is just a thought experiment to get at the idea of Absolute Knowledge—which, as several have argued here, seems to be an *a priori* impossibility. (We could have the same discussion about an infinite computer that retains all true propositions in some way, though it’s harder to work that scenario, even in the imagination.) I only mention this because FQXi isn’t a space for theological debate *per se*, but for scientific discussion – albeit a type of science that comes awfully close, at times, to metaphysics.

But to the issue at hand.

Cristi Stoica said:

(Q) Does the existence of a God2 for W2 diminish the “godness” of the God of W?

(A) I would say that the answer to (Q) is “no”, except of course if we allow the God2 of W2 to change W or M “during the game”, preventing thus M from satisfying the conditions above. If God2 stops interacting with W, and if M satisfies the conditions above, then M is a God of W. There may be more gods for W (including God2), because there may be more minds knowing the same thing. They may be distinguished only if they have other attributes, or if they have knowledge about other stuff besides W.

This is exactly the point. Even an Infinite Mind (computer, what have you) containing all possible truths, and thus exhaustive in its knowledge, could not be sure that it *was*, in fact, exhaustive in its knowledge. It could only be certain that it knew everything about the cosmos—however we want to define the term--in which it found itself (in Cristi’s terms, it would be a “God of W”). Even if that cosmos were spatially infinite, as ours seems to be, and in that respect representable by an infinite number of true propositions, the I.M. might still only be in possession of a kind of localized infinity.

The application to T.O.E. is right there. If a T.O.E. is ever found—and here I mean not just a G.U.T. with gravity jury-rigged in, but a complete, maximally comprehensive T.O.E.—it may look very much like an exhaustive account of reality. (For the moment I’m going to assume Philosophical Materialism, or the claim that “reality” is equivalent to “physical reality.”)

Ideally, such a T.O.E. would explain any phenomena encountered, indeed any phenomena that could be encountered. This would be an accomplishment of the first water, worthy of serious reflection. A certain side of physics would be complete. Humanity would at last know How Things Work.

But even so grand a construction as this, if it ever comes to pass, is only ever going to be equivalent to the I.M. believing itself to have exhaustive knowledge. We, the future possessors of the T.O.E., might *still* be surprised at a later date to find that what we have been pleased to call Everything is only another subset—that our reality is, say, riding on a deeper reality, which is perhaps riding on a deeper one still.

Indeed, if the past four centuries have taught us anything, it’s that nature is almost relentlessly larger and more complex than we formerly imagined. Ptolemy must have thought he had a T.O.E., in a certain way. He wasn’t even close. I recognize the weaknesses of the analogy, but there remains a profound and principled problem with any claim to exhaustive knowledge.

Why is that a big deal? Only because when philosophically minded cosmologists and laypersons speak of T.O.E., they don’t mean “Theory of Everything Around Here,” or “Theory of Everything We Know So Far.” They mean Theory of *Everything.* A T.O.E. is a different kind of animal than any other kind of theory. Yet I have grave suspicions as to whether we could ever know that such a theory was complete.

We may simply never know that we know everything . . . even if, in fact, we do.

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John,

Intelligence is both a state and a dynamic system. It is a state because it is composed of a structure that is built up over time to allow us to manipulate and interpret knowledge in an appropriate way for the current circumstance and to generate the appropriate response(s). It begins as a state with structure that is built into us when we are formed. This structure is supplemented...

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John,

Intelligence is both a state and a dynamic system. It is a state because it is composed of a structure that is built up over time to allow us to manipulate and interpret knowledge in an appropriate way for the current circumstance and to generate the appropriate response(s). It begins as a state with structure that is built into us when we are formed. This structure is supplemented by the addition of new path structures to successful responses to the most commonly encountered input circumstances that we experience. These circumstances along with the best responses to them that we have experienced are stored as information in our knowledge base. If we experience the same set of circumstances enough times, path flow structures are constructed that connect the input circumstance recognition circuitry directly to the proper output generation circuitry so that the response becomes automatic. The knowledge base also starts out with a built in knowledge base state that is given to us when we are formed. It too is dynamically changed as we gain new knowledge. As an example, the first time you see a car it might be a blue car. At that time you have no reason to believe that cars come in any other color, so you store that a car is blue. When you later see a red car, you now know that color is a variable property and you update your knowledge about cars to include this fact. If someone were to ask you what color cars are after you had seen the first car, but before you had seen the second car, your answer might be that cars are blue. Your answer to the same question after you had seen the second car might be that cars come in more than one color, at least blue and red. In this case your answers are mainly an output of the stored color knowledge that is stored in your knowledge base so very little intelligence is necessary to give the answer. The differences in the two answers represent more the dynamic change that has occurred in the knowledge base. That is why you will not likely see such questions on an intelligence test. Instead you will more likely see lines or dots or various shapes that possess some commonality or pattern with the intent of seeing if you can recognize it. The problem with such tests is that there is generally an assumption that intelligence is something that you either have or don’t have and that it can’t be developed. In reality that type of intelligence can be gained through the proper application of pattern recognition and processing training. In fact true intelligence is much more complex than such tests can evaluate and deals with many more types of patterns than are included in the tests. It is also inextricably joined to the knowledge database to allow for the recognition of common patterns, etc. Knowledge can be acquired through the use of intelligence, but it can also be acquired without it. In the example above, the knowledge that cars are blue is gained by simply recording the color information from the visual input. No true intelligence is required to gain that knowledge. After seeing the second car, you might use your intelligence to recognize the pattern that if cars come in two colors they may also come in more than two colors. If you had previously observed the pattern that people in this world will generally consider less of you if you tell them that you don’t know the answers to their questions and that they will think even less of you if you give an answer that is false, you might use your intelligence to generates an answer that shows the knowledge that you do have about their question, but hides any lack of knowledge that you have. So instead of saying that cars come in red and blue, which would be interpreted by them to be that you believe that they only come in red and blue (you noticed that pattern in their behavior earlier also), you might say that cars come in colors, such as red and blue, which leaves open the possibility of other colors also without you having to admit that you don’t really know if they do or not. This is a much more advanced type of pattern recognition and beating of one pattern against another or joining them together, etc. than can be tested for by using standard intelligence tests that concentrate primarily on mechanical patterns and forms. It is also a part of pattern recognition that utilizes a great deal of processing of stored information from the knowledge database to accomplish. To sum it up, both intelligence and knowledge begin with the fixed state that is built into us when we are formed and both change dynamically due to the information inputs that we experience during our lives. They both work together dynamically to allow us to gain more knowledge and intellectual abilities.

You are right that our present understanding is greatly based on our past experiences and those of others before us, but that is not really bad because contrary to the belief of some, we don’t really live in a world of chaos chance happenings, but in a world that is based on set rules of structure and operation. As we learn more and more about those rules through our experiences, we become more able to understand the present structures and motion conditions and more able to use them wisely for our benefit and for the benefit of those who come after us. We live in a world that is composed of a continuum of motions. The storage in our knowledge base of previous motion conditions (experiences) allows us to see the patterns that would not be able to be seen if we only had our present motion conditions to go on. By seeing which motions continue the same and which ones change we can understand such things as that we live on a planet that is rotating on its axis so that we get light from the son for awhile and then we get darkness for awhile in a continuing repetitive cycle. If we lived only in the present without access to the state of motions before the present, we would look out on the world and see the sun light and know that the sun produced light that benefits us, but as soon as the sun went down we would lose all recognition that it ever existed and believe that we live in a world of darkness until it came up again the next day. The stored records of past occurrences that we have in our knowledge base give us the ability to recognize changes in motions and the ability to see and understand repetitive motion structures. They also allow us to extrapolate those motions out to get an idea of what the future will be like. The world is as it is. The future is no more chaos than the present or past. It is just a continuance of the motions that moved from where they were in the past to where they now are in the present and will continue to move in their paths to new locations in the future in the continuum of motion that has existed from the beginning of the world when God introduced it into the dimensional system that he made to contain it. It only looks like the past is more ordered than the future because we have already seen and processed the past motion conditions and can directly see and process the present conditions, but the future motion conditions are still beyond our present ability to see and process so they seem to be less sure and more chaotic, but when they come and are processed we see that they were the same as those conditions that came before them. Let me assure you that as long as you live in this world you will remain in the present and not fall back into the past. We don’t create structure from chaos. The structure is already there present in the world. All we can do is learn to recognize, come to understand, and use the structure that already exists. That is what physics and all sciences are about.

You are right that Jesus was a Jew, but as the Christ (the only begotten son of God) he brought the New Testament (covenant or agreement between God and man) to the world. He wasn’t just trying to start the Old Testament over again. The Old Testament was based on physical actions. You were commanded not to kill another and if you did you would be judged for it, but in the New Testament not only would you be judged for murder, but also if you hated someone without cause. It changes from exterior actions of the body to interior actions of the spirit and soul, as an example. It is also based on better promises than the Old Testament. You are right that those in control were not willing to accept the changes that God made. This was likely in part because under the Old Testament the sons of Aaron had the office of the priesthood with one chosen each year to be the High Priest and the rest of the Levites had the office of service of the tabernacle, but in the New Testament Jesus is the High Priest and all that are in Christ are made priests and kings and are made parts of the temple or tabernacle, which is God’s body. This means that the Old Testament priest and Levite positions were no longer necessary and since the Levites received a tenth of the tithe given to God by the people and the priests received a tenth of the tithe given by the Levites to God they would have lost their respected positions and the money that came with them. This same Structure exists in many areas of life today even in the science establishment, so those who have the top positions often feel threatened by new ideas especially if they perceive them to be contrary to positions that they built their careers on or that they have publicly backed. In Christ, however, God has made us all equal under Christ, so there is no room for boasting of our accomplishments to put ourselves above others and neither is there a need to feel bad about yourself if you have not done anything that others would think to be special. You are right that he did not come to start a new religion, but just to introduce the next step of advancement in the one that he had already begun with the Old Testament in which he prophesied that he would do so several hundred years before he did it when he said in Jeremiah 31: 31-33, Behold, the days come, saith the LORD that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them saith the LORD: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. When Jesus came, he merely carried out the next step of providing the new and better covenant that had already been promised by God as part of the old covenant.

Before God made the creation there was no group. In the future after this world is ended and the new world has replaced it we who are saved will be God’s body and Christ will be the head of the body and God will be the head of Christ in much the same way that our bodies are subject to our souls and our souls are subject to our spirits. God (the spiritual absolute) has made us and is bringing us up by his word that over time prepares us and makes us worthy to become parts of him when we are joined to him as members of his body. The fullness of which occurs in the world to come. It will be a much better world than this one is and we will be in it in a much better and closer relationship with God. Two of the reasons that God gave us the absolute conditions of perfection and then allowed us to fall from that perfection was so we would learn that we need him to attain and maintain that level of perfection and also so that we would see that none of us is better than another because we can only have and do what God gives us and he considers not on the basis of what we have, but on the basis of what we do with what he gives us. In the end if we do what he gives us to do with what he gives us to do it with, we are all considered the same. Whether you are given to be a dishwasher, a trash man, or a physicist; if you do the work that he gives you to do for him, you are all equal. Not that there will necessarily be need for all of the above mentioned jobs in the world to come. As I said before, a planetary organism would not be a very good god because it would only take a large meteor, or an expansion of the sun, or such an occurrence to destroy it. Not a very powerful god. Any god that has to live in this world, but can’t control everything in this world cannot guarantee its own survival let alone the survival of its followers.

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"We may simply never know that we know everything"

Interesting point made by William Orem. The line of reasoning above results from the well-known incompleteness calculus of Gödel, especially the formulation of it by Chaitin's findings of necessarily but never sufficient axioms of a system to answer every question for sure that could follow out of this system.

The problem with every...

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"We may simply never know that we know everything"

Interesting point made by William Orem. The line of reasoning above results from the well-known incompleteness calculus of Gödel, especially the formulation of it by Chaitin's findings of necessarily but never sufficient axioms of a system to answer every question for sure that could follow out of this system.

The problem with every knowledge is, that it in general divides (decides) one thing to the expense of making another question undecidable. Remember the complementary of which-way-information and interference. Gaining which-way-information in quantum mechanics makes it impossible to gain an interference pattern at the same time (for the purpose of deducing that there is a "wave" at the same time as a "particle" in the experimental setup). The same occurs in our mind: Every act of "knowledge" must be an act of distinguishing and therefore drawing a border between two sides, between two alternatives. The one side is the "objective reality", the other side are our "subjective axioms about that reality" (proven or unproven) that enable this concrete distinction. Without the act of distinguishing there could be no knowledge. And building axioms is indeed such a distinction itself.

How can one overcome Gödel's incompleteness for the purpose of being not restricted to Chaitin's results? If one takes the above identification from knowledge with distiction for a fundamental fact of all existent knowledge, one has to conclude that the *complete* set of all knowledge is congruent with all that exists. For the purpose of knowing all that exists, all that exists has to be *undividable* from a consciousness that would be God's view of himself and hence congruent with himself. If all-that-exists has this property of undividable consciousness, there wouldn't remain a thing that would be *unconscious* in the sense of unknown.

What we have made with our above line of reasoning was to eliminate the border between object and subject. What we have gained with that is the assumption that *maybe* nature could be in all its parts gradually conscious and all that conscious stuff could be interconnected by the property of consciousness. The most coherent conscious view of all-that-is-conscious would be God's view, including the "higher truth" that all truths *except* the one that follows depend on where one draws the borders inside all-that-is. This would imply that this coherent consciousness was prior to the act of knowledge, hence the act of drawing a border, not the other way round. It would further imply that the idea of God to fabricate an act of division in the sense of Boolean logics/dualities can be "undone" by "eliminating" one side of the fundamental border of that inital distinction/duality. In concrete, one has to assume that all the polarities we must deal with in this world and therefore also all propositions, true/false-values, light/dark-values, good/bad-values are only observer dependent for an observer which has *not* the coherent consciousness of all-that-exists (God). Letting besides one value of our two-valued world could reveal that there must be more than just antagonisms from which all-that-exists is fundamentally "build" of. That seems paradoxical, because "letting besides" something should in the human mind not denote that something can be *increased* (namely *awareness* and the feeling of being *true*), hence can be more than it was before. One would conclude that letting besides one side of the border must either result in light (God) or result in darkness (E.D.). But nonetheless, it seems that only paradoxical thinking can bind togheter one's world of thoughts, ones world of ideas to a oneness. Therefore only "illogical" thouhgts could bind togheter a TOE to be complete and consistent. It is clear, that for the aim of my lines of reasoning, no TOE that is exclusively built on math and Boolean logics could achieve to be fundamentally complete, because math and Boolean logics are tools of decision, hence distinction, not tools of unification.

So the question whether we can ever know that we know everything denpends on the possibility/impossibility of connecting our own consciousness to the consciousness of all-that-exists (call it God or whatsoever).

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Paul,

Intelligence is a state, but not an absolute state. As Stefan points out, distinction and unification are contradictory. Therefore knowledge is inherently subjective and finite, since it entail distinctions.

The theological problem is that if you have an absolute state of unity, than all opposites and distinctions blend out into a neutral medium. That's why the absolute would...

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Paul,

Intelligence is a state, but not an absolute state. As Stefan points out, distinction and unification are contradictory. Therefore knowledge is inherently subjective and finite, since it entail distinctions.

The theological problem is that if you have an absolute state of unity, than all opposites and distinctions blend out into a neutral medium. That's why the absolute would be the essence from which distinctions arise, not an ideal of distinctions from which our subjective reality is simply an imperfect model.

It's not that we create order out of pure chaos, but that our function of knowledge is inherently subjective, while the reality in which we exist is not, so there is no such thing as an objective perspective to perceive all potential input into any particular situation. Again, as Stefan pointed out, the process of making distinctions limits the totality of available knowledge. Reality isn't deterministic because of this fact that limits the field of knowledge from any one perspective. Even if the laws governing the actions are deterministic. Determinism depends on knowledge of all input being available. The idea of a monotheistic God is that it is this both complete and infinite store of information, yet they are contradictory. So we do create our subjective order out of the subjective chaos of input we receive.

The relationship of this dichotomy plays out throughout religion. The Christian Trinity is a good example. God the Father is the old Testament God of order and knowledge, the past. God the Holy Ghost is the God of Mystery and the unknown, the future. God the Son is the flesh and blood intersection of the present.

With Christianity, Jesus is the emotional core, but it was Constantine adopting Christianity as the official religion and using the cross as a war totem which gave it the predatory linear focus that made it a top down political entity and not just a bottom up social movement. In Islam, Mohammand combined these two functions.

Yes, God as a planetary organism would be potentially mortal, but that's what makes it really matter. If ones beingness is immortal, all sense of desire, feeling, emotion, etc. are cost free and meaningless. There is no distinction in total unity.

You say that as long as I live, I'll never fall into the past, but that's the point. When I die, I will. Just as those who stop learning quickly become isolated from what is going on around them.

Stefan,

Paradox gives reality the multidimensional character to keep it from being monochromatic. Between black and white are not just shades of grey, but all the colors of the spectrum, broken apart and constantly re-assembled. Good and bad are not an overarching moral code, but the basic binary code of biological calculation. Even amoebae distinguish between beneficial and detrimental. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken, yet there is no clear line where the chicken ends and the fox begins. Nature creates and consumes. It is only our subjectivity which gives it meaning, because meaning is what is left when what is meaningless is distilled away. Which often has meaning from some other perspective. We create order out of the chaos.

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John,

It is true that our intelligence is not an absolute state because changes to our ability to recognize patterns, etc. must be made to accommodate changes in input information because we have not experienced all possible input data patterns and their combinations. We could expect that God on the other hand would have knowledge of all possible patterns and their combinations so his...

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John,

It is true that our intelligence is not an absolute state because changes to our ability to recognize patterns, etc. must be made to accommodate changes in input information because we have not experienced all possible input data patterns and their combinations. We could expect that God on the other hand would have knowledge of all possible patterns and their combinations so his intelligence could be at the absolute state.

It is true that knowledge is based on distinctions, but our reality, which is the object of our knowledge, is also based on distinctions because it came from the knowledge of God. In reality meaningful unification for us is the understanding of the fullness and joining together of the totality of the distinctions that God made when he created the world. Otherwise to know and completely understand all the distinctions that God made and how they are all interconnected and joined together to generate what exists in the creation. Lets start from the idea that God is the true unity in that he knows all things and knows all the possible choices or distinctions that can be made and all of the resultant interactions that any set of those choices would yield. We don’t know if that set of complete knowledge is finite or infinite. The first question is do we have direct access to God so we could possibly get that level of unity from him and secondly if we could do so, are we able to contain it in ourselves or are we inadequate to do so? When we look around in the world we don’t see complete unity. Instead we see distinctions. When we look at the sky we don’t see that all of the colors are joined together in unity in its appearance. If they were the sky would be white, but a distinction has been made somewhere that causes it to be blue (in general not counting clouds, etc.). We can trace that back and see that it is because of the gas that was chosen (a distinction) to make it up. We could trace it back further to see why that gas mixture was chosen or why that gas mixture makes the sky blue, etc., but at each step we would see that a choice or distinction was made to follow one possible direction and to not follow others that could have been taken instead. The world is the result of an innumerable number of such decisions or distinctions that were made by God in making it. The problem is that all we have to go on to try to understand God is the creation that he has made and given to us to live in. This means that we cannot get more information about God than he has in some way put into the creation. The answer to our first question is that we can’t approach directly to God to get the fullness of his unity directly because he has chosen (made a distinction) to not allow us to do that, at least at this time. Because we have not yet been able to even fully understand the limited set of distinctions that God made when he made the creation it is probably a safe bet that we are not at this time prepared to understand all of the possible choices that could be made and all of their interactions for all sets of choices. To say it another way, we are not currently ready or able to understand God’s unity completely. One problem with what Stefan said is that it is based on the assumption that God would make a decision and that after he made it he would no longer have access to all of the decisions that would then be excluded. Sort of like the idea that if you are in the middle of a city and make a choice to travel in one direction, you have excluded all of the paths that are behind you. It is true that our minds tend to work that way in general so that when we make a decision it tends to block us from seeing other ways and making decisions in other directions, but it is not that easy. We all know people who spend much of their life traveling down a path to a certain belief only to later make an abrupt change in the opposite direction to a belief that is mutually exclusive of their first belief. It is therefore possible to reverse decisions that were made and travel in the opposite direction to gain an understanding of that opposite path also. Because God’s mind is much greater than ours, it would not be too much to expect that he could follow down all possible paths and determine all possible outcomes from all possible sets of decisions so that he would truly possess the unity of all possible thought in himself. Once he had that unity he could choose the best limited set of decisions that he could use to fulfill any purpose that he desired to accomplish. This world that he has made is the result of such a choice. It does not contain the fullness of that unity because his purpose in creating it did not require it. It is true that the models of reality that we currently have are imperfect, but if over time we are given to be able to determine all of the decisions that were made by God to make this world and all of their interactions so that we can completely understand what God’s purposes were in making the creation and how the world will fulfill those purposes so that our mind is the same as God’s mind in that limited set of decisions, we will then be able to say that our model will be perfect and the objective and subjective sets will be equal in meaning and we will then be the same as God in that limited area of knowledge and the intelligence that made the generation of this world possible. Of course, that would still likely be only a small subset of all possible knowledge and intelligence.

You are right that to have true unity in the sense that you knew all possible decisions and all of their possible interactions in all possible sets of decisions, you would then be in the best place to make the proper decisions (the best decisions would naturally arise in your mind) that would fulfill all your purposes. We are definitely not in that position, but there is no reason to believe that God is not in that position, so I don’t see any theological problem there.

It is true that we are limited by only having a local perspective, so that things do not appear the same to us as to someone in another local perspective. God on the other hand has the true global perspective with complete access to all motions in the universe from the beginning of the creation when he introduced them through the end of the world. For God all of the motions that he introduced into the world at the beginning of the world work continually from the beginning of the world to its end to fulfill his purposes in making the creation. He says that he knew the end from the beginning. This implies that he figured out everything that was going to happen in the world before he made it. I don’t know about you, but for me the world does not appear as chaos when I look at it through my subjective senses. I see ordered structures that change very little (the earth always holds me to it and the sky is always up above) and even many changes that occur are repetitive (the day and season cycles always repeat). To me chaotic would be waking up on the ceiling because gravity decided to be repulsive for a random period and when I would go to the kitchen and put a cup of water in it to make coffee it would come out as ice because microwaves decided today to remove heat instead of adding it, etc., and things just decide to randomly appear and disappear and change shape around me. That would be chaotic. We live in a relatively stable and ordered world even according to our subjective senses. I don’t remember God mentioning whether knowledge (store of information) is infinite or not.

I suppose that you could look at it that way, but in fact God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost all have existed together from the beginning of the creation and will continue to exist that way through the end of this world.

Since it came from God who is the top, Christianity was a top down entity from the beginning, though men may not have always perceived it that way from lack of knowledge.

To me it means more that my relationship with God can continue and continue to grow in love, knowledge, feeling, emotion, and desire, etc. without end because you know that all of the labor and time that is put into the relationship will not just be a waste of time in the end and that the relationship can keep growing stronger eternally. When I was working I had to work long hours to get the resources to be able to enjoy a smaller amount of free time. Now that I am retired, and have adequate resources to enjoy life, I find all aspects of life more meaningful and pleasurable even though it now does not cost me in terms of my time as it did before. I can now pursue doing things that I could not have done when I had to pay for every minute of free time with a lot of work, so I see eternity as a positive benefit and an enhancement to my relationship with God rather than a detriment.

Of course, for those who are saved death just means continuing life in a different better place, falling into the past still does not happen to such. You are right about learning. That is why I continue to apply myself to gaining more understanding of how the world really works, etc. The only negative thing is that after you go so far you find that you have fewer to share the discoveries with because most have in essence all dropped off into the past in comparison. I still do enjoy discovering more though even if it is just for me to know. It just goes to show that isolation can occur at either end of the spectrum. I still prefer to be on the leading edge though.

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Dear John,

i would like to "differenciate" my line of reasoning for the purpose of better understanding. Many of the things you wrote i can subscribe; indeed, i had many own lines of reasoning that are identical with yours.

The distinction-process i mentioned is to some limit "scaleable". Imagine an infinite void that is a oneness. Draw the first distinction. The result would be the...

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Dear John,

i would like to "differenciate" my line of reasoning for the purpose of better understanding. Many of the things you wrote i can subscribe; indeed, i had many own lines of reasoning that are identical with yours.

The distinction-process i mentioned is to some limit "scaleable". Imagine an infinite void that is a oneness. Draw the first distinction. The result would be the distinction between a oneness and a distinction. I don't want to say that God couldn't be more than such a mysterious "void". If he would, it is hard to imagine that this void can draw at some point of its existence a distinction. So either God is more than the void or the void is simply more than we can imagine (both possibilities could well be one and the same). For the purpose of our discussion i label the void here with God. So, the first distinction is drawn, there exists now a left side and a right side. That's pretty equal to mathematical reasoning in some sense. Both sides are equal in an equation (not always, that's the crucial point as we see later).

The left side is still the oneness, but what about the right side? It seems at first glance that the right side is the result of a distinction, therefore one could label it with the word "distinction". But what we divided is still the "same" at both sides of the border. Only a perspective was for this reason established. For God, surely the Fox and the Chicken are equally valued. The chicken eats worms, the Fox eats Chicken. But from a subjective perspective of one of the living beings it looks not so symmetric. If God is all-that-exists in his own right, how can he create living beings that don't contradict hiself being already all-that-exists? He has to divide himself and camouflage himself in the perspective of us, hence making a distinction inside himself. What could be the purpose of this tricky manipulation?

Creating some finished and equal beings with the same properties as God would mean that God can create more than "all-that-exists", means he is the sovereign not only of all-that-exists but also of all-that-not-or-not-yet-exists. This could be also a possibility, indeed. Maybe only from our perspective the both possibilities are mutually exclusive. Maybe existence is not the right word for the realms of God. Maybe we are here to continously come into real existence, not knowing yet what it really means to exist. So why coming continously into existence and not as an abrupt pop-up event?

If God is the "mother/father" of all distinction-processes, even at the right side as well as at the left side of the original distinction there is some essense of God in it. In this sense, if we are somewhat "fractals" of God's properties, discovering God would mean discovering oneself more and more. I don't mean this in a self-inflationary way. Because i think that the most important properties of God haven't much to do with knowledge, but more with delight, harmony and creativity and wisdom. These things can only be gained by a continous developement of oneself, not by a single pop-up event. Because if the latter would be the case, the emotions of one's identity would be not the emotions of that self, but the emotions that are created and put in by God by the pop-up-event. I assume that if God exists, he don't want us to be perfect clones of himself, wants us to have some free will, a own personality and so on. It's the same as for our own children. Personally i wouldn't like to get a child that i determined in every emotion, thought and desire.

In this sense i don't believe that God made a fixed set of distinctions, be it finite or infinite. If it nonetheless would be so, then all mathematics could surely also exist already in a platonic realm with all it's distinctions and equalities already made. I rather assume that we are totally inside of God, but God isn't already totally inside of us. That's somewhat an "unequality" which could lead to a better understanding of our relationship with the absolute. Remember a hologram. A single piece of this hologram can reproduce the whole original structure - only less sharp. Something is missing. So in every conscious fractal of God there's a kernel of God in it, but not yet the complete essence of God.

For the purpose of drawing nearer oneself to God, it is in my opinion inevitable to explore the own unknown sides of oneself. If we do so, we learn to perceive the present in a way that isn't anymore so much determined by the past. God surely could be able to bring us into existence by some single pop-up-events. But he wants us to be also *responsible creators* as he is, and bringing some beings into existence via pop-up-events would mean determining the emotions of such beings independent of any development of these beings out of the void (and without fear of death and all the hard struggles of life for the purpose of realizing what this void is able to implicate). Dependence is necessary to gain some independence in the future. Therefore every own creation of such a being poped-up out of the void would be determined also right from the start and moreover, some of these possible creations would be surely amateurish and even horrible. So it seems to me that we learn via distinction-processes to responsibly create and to be more and more independent. Creativity in my opinion has something to do with love and passion. Every mother/father would lead her/his children - a product of a "creation" - to independence but would not install to much independence too early. that would be wisdom.

Surely my lines of reasoning are somewhat analogies or even anthropic tautologies, but, surprisingly, knowledge can be gained not only by a distinction, but sometimes also by analogies. Analogies are "similarities", and, who wonders that one can gain some knowledge via analogies if there wouldn't be a fractal structure of reality that enables these "similarities"? Take the interference-pattern of two stones thrown into a sea. Via this one can deduce that in an quantum mechanical interference-experiment a single entity (name it "particle", "Bit" or whatever) obviously can take both ways.

My result of these lines of reasoning is, that even God doesn't know everything - everything about our development and the development of the whole physical universe. That's so, because we are fractals of God and a part of God, developing in many ways towards him. In this sense he could be understood as an "attractor", but no more in a strictly mathematical sense but more in an emotional sense of coherent existence. If one takes the border between knowing/unknowing not too serious, knowledge itself is somewhat more relative in comparison with emotions and coherence. Emotions indicate pretty well where we stand right now, abstract knowledge can't indicate this because it is a secondary concept of God.

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Heck. I have to be back to work in an hour...

Paul,

I think we have to agree to disagree. Again. My point is that the western conception of God in more of an answer than a truth, ie. what people want to hear, than what really makes sense.

To quote, "It is therefore possible to reverse decisions that were made and travel in the opposite direction to gain an understanding of...

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Heck. I have to be back to work in an hour...

Paul,

I think we have to agree to disagree. Again. My point is that the western conception of God in more of an answer than a truth, ie. what people want to hear, than what really makes sense.

To quote, "It is therefore possible to reverse decisions that were made and travel in the opposite direction to gain an understanding of that opposite path also."

Yes, God is all things, but when you add up all things, they cancel out to an equilibrium. We spend our life desiring the ideal, but God is not the object of our desires. It is the source of our ability to desire. It is the essence, not the ideal. We attain goals all the time and than move on to new ones. If we didn't think these goals would solve our problems, we wouldn't desire them. The problem is that any goal attained just sets our sights a little higher, but the larger reality is that when we don't seek to move forward, we fall backward.

Lawrence,

Yes, the western concept of God as the ideal has been very powerful in motivating large social movements, but the spirit of humanity is that rawness of awareness all life possesses.

Jason,

I didn't say, Discover our limits. I said, Explore our limits. One is a goal. The other is a journey. Even proposing the fantastical, whether religious or purportedly scientific, is a necessary method of examination. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Stefan,

You certainly have a clear perspective. One point though;

"I rather assume that we are totally inside of God, but God isn't already totally inside of us. That's somewhat an "unequality" which could lead to a better understanding of our relationship with the absolute. Remember a hologram. A single piece of this hologram can reproduce the whole original structure - only less sharp. Something is missing. So in every conscious fractal of God there's a kernel of God in it, but not yet the complete essence of God."

It is that missing part which makes us who we are. It's the separation that is the distinction. It is the fact that our individual point of reference is what we measure the rest of the entire universe against that gives us this overwhelming sense of being and clarity, even though we are so frequently overpowered by it. When we die, we lose that and melt back into the whole.

Steve,

It is up to us. We would just be spoiled children if we were to wait for some higher order to save us.

There is a time when what comes before is the model we follow, but eventually it becomes the foundation we must rise from.

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Lawrence,

It is the nature of the beast that we all possess this sense of clear eyed objectivity, but that our efforts to explain it to others, interpret what others have said, etc. creates some pretty bizarre descriptions. It does present an enormously interesting puzzle to try to reverse engineer. It's also safe to say that any model generally accepted by a number of people, isn't going...

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Lawrence,

It is the nature of the beast that we all possess this sense of clear eyed objectivity, but that our efforts to explain it to others, interpret what others have said, etc. creates some pretty bizarre descriptions. It does present an enormously interesting puzzle to try to reverse engineer. It's also safe to say that any model generally accepted by a number of people, isn't going to be understood by a fair number of those people and mutations occur.

As to the concept of and term "God," it has any number of meanings to people. For reference, consider all the ideas and interpretations of time put forth in the recent contest. Now multiply that by a few billion. Personally I would describe my version by my recent comment to Paul, that it is the source of desire (and awareness), not the idealized object of it.

From a biological perspective, I do think humanity is developing the characteristics of a planetary central nervous system. Not so much the top down authoritarian model that would be based on our current model of centralized authority, but a more organic yin/yang relationship, where the mind reacts to the situation more than it attempts to confine, define and control it. History and physics show closed sets collapse.

In that process I think it would prove very useful to co-opt the term God from the top down monotheists and reconfigure it as a bottom up source of awareness, rather than the top down idealization of it. It would go a long way to changing the terms of debate in any number of social, economic, political and religious conflicts.

One other factor of the monotheistic model is that it has a literary narrative structure, that while it has any number of plot twists and characters, ultimately it goes from beginning to end. Genesis to Armageddon. Quite literally it is time stamped and has a due date. Just as Paul points out that various aspects of the Old Testament are said to forecast the events of the New Testament, so to are there predictions and prophesies which will fit events of the future and given the large number of economic, ecological, social, resource, etc. bills coming due, it is safe to say we are in a fair approximation of the Biblical end times. What this means is that when it does all come crashing down, what come next will be, in many ways, a fresh start. Yet one in which everyone will be trying to define. That is why I put so much effort into trying to figure out what the essential reality is. At the very least, it allows me to see through all the competing agendas. Humanity will survive the coming mess, but how well is an open question.

Jason,

What does it feel like? Is it like an emotional expansion, followed by an intellectual consolidation? High tech can be quite a head rush, when you think how young it all really is, compared to how long civilization has been working toward it.

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Steve,

I tried doing this as a file, but wrote it on email and it won't convert and download, so if William wants to change or delete it... I'm writing it for a friends publication. It ties several of the points I've been making here to a further observation about economics. It's my effort to pose another paradigm for humanity.

Between Culture and Nature on Planet Earth

In...

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Steve,

I tried doing this as a file, but wrote it on email and it won't convert and download, so if William wants to change or delete it... I'm writing it for a friends publication. It ties several of the points I've been making here to a further observation about economics. It's my effort to pose another paradigm for humanity.

Between Culture and Nature on Planet Earth

In trying to make sense of life, there is a constant tension between moving forward and reviewing the past. We neither want to be stuck in the past, or miss any lessons it might have to teach us. There is no one guide to the future, so it is a constant process of adaption. Often the corrections are so natural, we make them subconsciously, while other times they are the source of endless agonizing. The larger society goes through this process and political coalitions form to advocate for various propensities, such as conservatism looking to the presumed order of the past, as liberalism leans to the as yet formless energy of the future.

What is time itself? Is it a narrative path along which we travel from the past to the future? That is the common assumption on which our knowledge and the concept of history is based. It is Newton's absolute flow of time and Einstein's relative fourth dimension of space. There is a problem though. The past is a generally agreed upon series of events, while the future is an infinite number of possibilities, fanning out from the present. According to Relativity there is no absolute measure of time and since Quantum Mechanics says the laws of nature are not entirely deterministic, many physicists propose that multiple realities emerge whenever the laws governing the progression of events are not deterministic. Schrodinger's Cat is both dead and alive.

What if some basic logical error exists in our thinking? There are natives of South America who think of the past as being in front of and the future behind the observer. That is because their frame is the event, not the observer. Something happens, is observed and then is past. We, on the other hand, are a few degrees removed from this basic reality. For us, time is that series of events recorded in our minds and history books.

Are you confused? Consider this; If two particles, waves, whatever, collide, it creates an event. While the physical reality proceeds from past events to future ones, those events go the other way, from being in the future to being past. So which is the real direction of time? Are we traveling this path from the past into the future, or does the activity of what is present create a series of events which go from being future potential to past circumstance? Does the earth travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates? This logic means that time is a property of motion, not the basis for it. It has more in common with temperature, than space. Energy creates and replaces events. The arrow of time goes from the event happening to its observation, not from the observation to the event(s), so Schrodinger's Cat hasn't multiplied before it's observed. There is no such thing as a dimensionless point in time, as that would require a cessation of the very motion being measured. Time is the measurement, not what is being measured.

The past is information. The future is where the energy goes.

Reality is composed of energy manifesting structure and information. While the energy is neither created or destroyed, its constant activity is creating and consuming the information. The timeline of energy is from past events to future ones, while the timeline for information and structure, being created and consumed, is from future to past. While this structure is constantly evolving, it does so at varying rates, so that change can be rapid or undetectable. As long as structures can absorb as much or more energy as they lose, they continue to exist, but this requires adapting to the information which the consumed energy manifests, whether it is an organism eating food, or an institution adjusting to changes in the larger culture. As institutions become more powerful, they tend to become less adaptive and insular, while provoking external reaction. As long as structures grow and adapt, the future is an evolving continuation of the past. When they can no longer adapt, the future becomes a reaction to the past. Evolution and revolution.

While our brains are of the physical reality that goes from past to future, our minds are the record of events which scroll away into the past. Eventually though, our lives are units of time that begin in the future and ultimately recede into the past.

This dichotomy is analogous to the top down order, vs. bottom up process of Complexity Theory. Order is the information receding into the past, while process is the energy expanding into the future.

Space, on the other hand, isn't simply three dimensions. Dimensions are really just linear projections. Lines. Three dimensions are simply the coordinate system of the center point. While relativity tried to model time as an additional dimension, based on the narrative series, it did succeed in showing that space cannot be considered a three dimensional grid, because the perspective is distorted from one point of reference to another. This is evident in basic political terms, since everyone has their own view of reality and they often clash, yet both points of view are correct, relatively speaking. You could say the Arabs and Israelis use different coordinate systems to define the same space. There is no universal perspective, as the more universal a concept is, the more generalized and inconsequential it is to any particular situation. It is this infinite dimensionality which make life dynamic, since there is no ultimate pattern into which it can settle. The brain feeds on chaos and turns it into order. Without that constant stimulation, it stagnates. Than again the opposite effect is that if we cannot discern order in the chaos, we would literally go insane.

When you have large numbers of points moving about, the one concept which does define the overall situation is temperature. The scalar level of activity. In fact the same logic which uses the speed of light to say time is a fourth dimension of space, could use a given amount of energy to say temperature is an additional parameter of volume, since a change in the volume of this energy would have a proportional effect on its temperature.

So time and temperature are actually quite similar, as emergent effects of motion. They describe the conceptual dichotomy of narrative and the larger network of activity from which we distill the narrative.

Physics is trying to solve a problem arising from our intellectual distance from reality, not a problem with reality. Other disciplines, such as biology, neurology, computer sciences, etc. are working around this conundrum in their own fashion.

Since thinking is conceptual reductionism, we tend to be focused on the contrasts, rather than the connected medium. With morality, this is the conflict between good and bad. The popular assumption is of a conflict between two extremes, but the attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental is the primordial biological binary code, of which we are complex manifestations. It evolves from the bottom up, rather than proscribed from the top down. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken, yet there is no clear point where the chicken ends and the fox begins. Life is a bootstrapping process of creation and consumption. Success is being the foundation of what comes next, while failure is being fodder for it. Both are necessary and all are part of the larger organic process. While we like clear and easy answers, rather than hard and painful truths, it should be remembered that between black and white are not just shades of grey, but all the colors of the spectrum.

We think of God as an all-knowing absolute, but the universal state of the absolute has no division, while the distinctions of knowledge are relativistic feedback loops of information and judgement. The essence of interpersonal morality, to treat others as you would have them treat you, is moral relativism. A spiritual absolute would be the raw essence of consciousness from which complex organisms rise, not an all-knowing moral ideal from which humanity fell. When society does prescribe moral absolutes, it is confusing, since the linear assumption is that if a little of something is good, than a lot must be that much better and if anything is at all bad, than it must be all bad. There is no conceptual regard for reciprocity, reaction, balance, laws of unintended consequences, silver linings, etc. These are derided as moral relativism and people are expected to line up with the good and fight the bad. The result is endless chaos as masses of people are herded around complex situations by simplistic assertions of good and bad.

Monotheism began as an idealization of social hierarchy and the wisdom of elders, but it overlooks the more fundamental process by which society regenerates this order, as each generation dies off and is replaced by the next. The top down order is periodically replaced by bottom up processes.

It was polytheists who developed democracy, as tribes and cults interacted and had to compromise, while monotheism gave us the divine right of kings. While it is necessary to have a common set of goals and standards for any group to co-exist, it is more effective to have one built on a sensible foundation of common goals, than one chasing after abstract ideals. The perfect is enemy of the good.

Even though our religions remain monotheistic, our political institutions are largely democratic because they need the ability to regenerate from the bottom up, as old ways and leaders get stagnant and rigid. Now our social hierarchies are not so much a matter of political power, but economic weight, as wealth accumulates to those most adept at controlling the flow of it. It is becoming increasingly obvious this situation is both unstable and destructive to both society and the environment. The question is how to institute a system which combines healthy bottom up growth, with effective top down leadership and the ability to adjust both to changing circumstances. The old system of adolescent greed and fear, constrained by government regulation and protection, becomes less effective as the level of economic and social complexity increases.

A potential solution might lay in a reconsideration of money, that institution of collective trust on which our mass society is based.

Money functions as both a store of value and a medium of exchange. These work at cross purposes, because as a store of value it is a form of private property, while as a medium of exchange it is a form of public utility, similar to a road system. Most people focus on their own wealth in comparison to others and thus think of it as private property. The reality is that the system belongs to whomever guarantees its value. We do possess the money we hold, in the same way we possess the section of road we are driving on. You own your car, house, business, etc, but not the roads connecting them. Money is a similar medium. It was one thing when money signified some commodity you had stored or traded and its value was entirely based on that underlaying commodity, but now the money supply far exceeds the underlaying value of the real economy and so its value is maintained by the ability of the government to support it through taxation. This means that it has broken away from being an actual store of value and it is now entirely a medium of exchange. While this is potentially catastrophic, it presents an opportunity to change the basic economic equation.

Believing money is private property encourages people to hoard it. The problem is that capital is subject to the laws of supply and demand, with the lender as supply and the borrower as demand. Since the supply of capital must be balanced by demand for it, there must be sufficient borrowers for this notational wealth, or its value will collapse. The problem is that political power is on the side of those with money, rather than those borrowing it and this lack of balance regularly creates situations which swell the supply of money, while depleting the abilities of those borrowing it. This results in periodic credit collapse, as masses of borrowers default. We are at an extreme state of this particular situation, since lenders have persuaded the government to borrow massive amounts of its own money back, lowered loan standards and blown enormous bubbles of excess circulation, essentially pari-mutual wagering, aka, derivatives, to hold this surplus notational wealth. Now that the bubble is collapsing, the powers that be are engaged in even more destructive behavior, by issuing ever more debt and currency to keep the bubble from imploding. Since the money supply already exceeds the value of the general economy, the only way to prevent this additional money from being seriously inflationary is to draw ever more value out of society and the environment in order to support and pay interest on it, to the increasing detriment of world health.

Consider how it would change public perception of monetary wealth, if we were to come to the realization that the monetary system really is now entirely a form of public commons? The practice of hoarding excessive amounts would lack moral, logical and eventually legal justification. If people understood monetary value constituted public property, than they would be far more reluctant to drain value out of their social networks and environment to put in a bank in the first place. We all like having roads, but there in little inclination to pave more than we have to. In this situation, the same would apply to monetizing our lives. Other avenues of trust and reciprocation would have the space to develop.

We made politics a public trust, why not do the same with the banking industry? As the currency is a public utility, so profits from its administration could be public income. A public banking system would not be one huge behemoth, but consist of institutions incorporated at every level of governance, so that individuals could bank with the ones which funded the services they are most likely to use. Different communities would seek to provide the best services with these funds, otherwise they would lose business and citizens to other communities. As it is, banking doesn't need the inventiveness for which private enterprise is most suited, but the stability that is the strength of the public sector.

The lack of extreme amounts of monetized wealth might also reduce the potential for bloated regimes to develop.

The only unit which fully defines humanity and life is the earth. Possibly humanity is the embryonic central nervous system of a planetary organism. Otherwise we are just top predator of a collapsing ecosystem.

Regards,

John B. Merryman

Sparks, Maryland

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John,

I hope you got to work on time.

I never agree to disagree. I believe that it is always best to continue to try to find common ground to open up understanding as long as the other person is willing. You never know sometimes you say something in a little different way and it suddenly becomes clear to the other person. There was a time that I would have at least partly agreed...

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John,

I hope you got to work on time.

I never agree to disagree. I believe that it is always best to continue to try to find common ground to open up understanding as long as the other person is willing. You never know sometimes you say something in a little different way and it suddenly becomes clear to the other person. There was a time that I would have at least partly agreed with you about the western conception of God in general, but even then it always made sense to me that if the world was created by a God, that God would have to be very intelligent, well beyond our abilities in order to create a system as complex and organized with complex interacting rules of construction and operation that is well beyond anything we can do as is evident in the world that we live in. This leaves out most eastern religions because if they actually have a god it is often some mindless force or even in some cases the religion looks at man as that god, etc. so it would be evident that it could not create this world. The concept that the world created itself was all that was left and after analyzing that concept I found it to be lacking also because the world that would come from mindless chance happening would not look like the one that we live in. After I had obtained a better understanding of how the world works than I had at the beginning even beyond the level of the current scientific community, so that I could find no one else that had found out many details that I came to understand and had by chance (at least I thought at the time it was by chance) decided to look at the Holy Scriptures (Christian Bible to you) and found that it contained information on the structure of the heavens and earth (creation) that was in agreement with what I had found out even including more that I had not yet determined myself at that time, I thought it good to look into the western religions in more detail. I found that much of the information that I had found in the New Testament book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ was also present in the Jewish Old Testament. I found that the Old Testament predicted the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of the New Testament, so they work together as a unit and agree in overall content. They did not predict Islam and the Islamic text did not agree properly with either the Old Testament or the New Testament and had many inconsistencies in itself that were not present within the Jewish and Christian scriptures. At this point I looked at the various versions of the scriptures in English and found that all the versions with a copy write had left out certain information apparently in an attempt to make them simpler to understand or to make it different enough in content, so that it could get a copy write. I was then left with only the King James Version without a copy write. As I studied the Old and New Testaments further, I found that it addressed things that I had previously had a hard time accepting as the result of the creation of an intelligent God such as why the world appeared to be only a temporary structure and why it seemed to be designed to deteriorate over time. In the long run when I understood the details of the scriptures better I could see that the world’s structure fit perfectly into the purposes that God had created it for according to the scriptures. You are right that it is an answer, but it is also the only answer around that actually does make sense as the truth.

Yes the ability to reverse ones path and go in the opposite direction when the evidence suggests that you are on the wrong path or that there is a better one that adheres closer to reality is a good skill to learn because it will allow you to get out of dead end paths. Another skill is to learn to examine as many paths as you can before you start to travel down any path and continually examine any new paths that you come to along the way down the chosen path.

Actually, according to the scriptures God is not all things. He is good, but he is not evil, for example. If your concept that all things cancel out to an equilibrium were true we would all be better off to try to learn as little as possible because the closer we would get to knowing all things the less we would actually know because it would be mostly canceled out. We all know that in truth the more knowledge, wisdom, understanding, ability, resources, and power, etc. to do things that we have the more that we can do and the more effectively we can do it. As an example, if God knows and completely understands all things it would not mean that all that knowledge and understanding is canceled out so that he can effectively not know or understand anything and not be able to do anything, instead it means that he is able to always know the best way to do anything that he desires to do. If this was not true, people would not send their children to school to learn as much as possible so they can do more in the world. Under your theory companies would hire the most inexperienced people with the least training because then most of any small amount of knowledge that they had would not be canceled out. You are right that God is the one that is the source of our ability to desire. For me and I suspect also for all that get to know him and understand what he has done and is doing for us, he is also the object of our desires and is the ideal to us. We seek goals and when we attain them we realize that we did not fully understand all things involved because as we work toward our goals we learn more, so that when we reach the goal we now understand enough more that we can see that we could have done better, so we generate a new goal that includes use of the new information that we gained in fulfilling the previous goal. We find ourselves in an endless cycle of always having to replace old things with new and improved things as our knowledge increases. God on the other hand can determine from the beginning when he is forming his goals the ultimate best way to do things, so he does not have to get caught up in the endless progression cycles that we find ourselves in because of lack of complete knowledge and understanding. Given our circumstance of not knowing and understanding all things, you are right that it is best for us to keep moving forward in our effort to gain more knowledge, understanding, etc., so we can learn more about God and the world that he has made and be more successful at doing his will (the highest that we can set our sites) and not fall backward away from him or come short of the goal. In the King James Version of the scriptures it says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It does not say fallen from God, but that all were not able of themselves to make it all the way. That is why he sent his only begotten son Jesus Christ into this world to help us make it the rest of the way by overcoming sin.

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John,

I understand the existential philosophies of this world that basically say that you cannot really know anything except possibly that you exist. In this concept the world that we know could be completely subjective and may not have any similarity to true reality. The problem with that philosophy is that even though you may just be a computer in a box on God’s desk supplied with...

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John,

I understand the existential philosophies of this world that basically say that you cannot really know anything except possibly that you exist. In this concept the world that we know could be completely subjective and may not have any similarity to true reality. The problem with that philosophy is that even though you may just be a computer in a box on God’s desk supplied with inputs that represent a completely false made up world, you still get hunger pains if you don’t eat, whether or not the food really exists, so you still find yourself living in this world and going along with its inputs to you because it is all that you have. The next step is to say that maybe the world really does exist somewhat as it appears (is objective), but since you receive all of your information indirectly (subjectively) you can’t know that for sure, so maybe you should still not accept it as all fact. You are still left with the same problem, as before, however, in that those indirect inputs of information are all that you have to go on and live your life in. You are right that all of our knowledge is subjective and that the information that we store and the concepts that we derive and store from that information input is only a small subset of all of the possible information that could conceivably be gathered if one could simultaneously gain all of the direct or even indirect information that exists in the real world (assuming that it is real). From that you can correctly deduce that we are incapable of attaining absolute knowledge because we don’t know if any of the input that we receive is in any way a true representation of the real world in the absolute sense and even if it is, it is just a small portion of the total amount of information that you would need to be able to attain complete knowledge of the real world. The fact that our knowledge is so limited gives us no ability to truly determine whether God (the one producing the input) is limited in a similar way or not because he may have a whole world of his own separate from ours in which he may be anything from a small part to the complete world. If he is his complete world, then it is possible that he could have complete knowledge if he can know himself completely, as an example. The only way that you could have any chance of finding that out at all would be if God gives you any indication of the answer to that question in the input that he gives you, since he has not chosen to communicate to you in any other way. I believe that this is a valid reason to look at the input to see if such information exists in the input. Of course, if God were to not exist, other considerations would have to be considered, but this BLOG topic is based on the assumption that he does exist and only asks the question of whether he can know that he is God. The only truly rational response is that it is possible that he could, but we don’t know because of our lack of knowledge about him and the world that he lives in. To attempt to apply any limitations that we are subject to, such as the speed of light or limitations that we find in our own abstract inventions such as mathematics would be foolish because we don’t have any idea as to whether they apply to him or not. I have attempted to provide the information that I have found about God in the input information, that fits into the concept (assumption) that the world is a real existence (is truly objective), that the (subjective) information inputs that we receive are at least a close representation of that world, and that leads me to believe that God exists and created this world that we live in. I have also provided information that I have found as to what God’s purpose was that he is fulfilling through the creation and operation of this world. I have not found much information about what God’s existence is like or about details of what the world that he lives in outside of this creation is like. Since the new world that he says that he will make for the ones that are saved is much larger and better than this world, it is apparent that he has access to resources and abilities that are much greater than were necessary to produce this world. The new world is based on at least 12 dimensions, as an example, compared to the 8 dimensions of this world.

I know that you are focused on the concept that the creation somehow created itself and is god or that it somehow will evolve into god, but that does not appear very likely to me for several reasons. One is that for the creation to have happened by the big bang (I do believe that you said that you don’t believe in the big bang either so we may have agreement here) all laws of physics that existed before and at the time of the big bang would have to have been different than they are now. Most laws of conservation would be broken by the big bang, etc. There are no other credible natural creation (without an intelligent God) concepts around. The multi-verse ideas are not scientific because they are based on pure speculation without any scientific evidence. They are purposely designed to set the multi-verse outside of testable range in the same way that God is claimed to be. This puts both concepts in the same situation of being believed mainly only by faith without proof or even any scientific evidence to speak of. Multi-verse ideas are primarily atheist creation stories and are no more provable than the concept of the creation by God. The concept that the world is somehow evolving toward some higher level in which it will ultimately be god does not fit into what we see in the world. First, if you look at the world outside of living creatures, it is slowly losing overall order, averaging out energy, and causing the higher mass and lower mass atoms of matter to change to different elements near the center of the spectrum around iron. In other words it is breaking down through entropy. Living creatures do tend to build up complexity, but at the cost of even greater overall deterioration to the world as a whole. Moreover the concept that living creatures are advancing by random mutations through natural selection is an erroneous concept because natural selection does not cause advancement, but merely adaptation to the environment. Creatures would be selected to live only by how well they can fit into the environment. This means that if the environment were to change by some event so that it would be most favorable to giant fifty-foot unintelligent amebas, they are what you would get. That would not fit into my definition of advancement, but I guess that it may fit into some people’s definition. People see all the range of living creatures and assume that there has been a progression from the smallest and simplest to the largest and most complex, but we are not seeing any of these types of changes in the world today even though the present number of living creatures in the world is enough that statistically we should be seeing many evolutionary changes each year. One present concept is that the dinosaurs once ruled the world and only a natural event (large meteor hit, etc.) changed that rule. If this happened it shows that it was only chance that would have allowed man to arise and take the top position in the world. In the absence of that chance natural event, the dinosaurs would likely still be ruling the world not by intelligence, but by size and strength. This could happen again at any time and wipe out man this time. The natural advancement of the world to become god is not very likely because some natural event would likely occur before it could be completed that would destroy it. To some degree the concept of natural advancement probably comes from the fact that if you look at a young child and watch it grow you see what appears to be a natural progression of advancement. This is partly true, but where does it come from? First most of the apparent physical growth comes as a result of programming that is built into the child’s DNA structure at conception, so there is no real basic increase in progression. There is just a playing out of the complexity that is already programmed into the child from its beginning. The child also appears to grow in knowledge, intelligence, and mental and physical abilities. When one looks closely, however, it can be seen that most of that increase in mental, knowledge, intelligence, and physical abilities comes from either the natural preprogrammed development of the brain, etc. or from the training received from others. Overall people have not changed during recorded history. Most earth god concepts are based on the idea that man is basically good, but behaves so badly because of a bad environment. Many have tried to change man by changing the environment, but man is still the same. As a matter of fact those people who have put in the greatest effort to change the environment for the better have actually been some of the worst offenders of man’s environment. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all tried to make the world over to make that perfect environment so that the perfect race of man would develop, but all ended up killing millions of people and left the world environment worse off because of their attempts by negatively affecting the lives of many more millions of people. All the evidence is that man is basically bad and the only way that I have seen a positive long-term change in anyone is by introduction into and application of the scriptures (God’s word) in a man’s life. I had intended to make this post much shorter, but I wanted to show you that I understand the concept that man cannot know anything about the external world in the absolute sense (we cannot have any knowledge that is guaranteed to be true), but also show that in our daily lives we always end up living them accepting what we see and otherwise sense as real and acting accordingly. I also wanted to cover the concept that has been proposed by some in this BLOG that god did not exist before the creation of the world, but is somehow now evolving and show that this concept is contrary to our everyday experience in which we are continually being bombarded by experts in many different fields telling us that the world is getting worse not better. Whether it is the increases in murders and massacres of large numbers of people by other people and the killing of millions of babies each year by abortions, etc. showing the increase in man’s inhumanity toward man, or the apparent increasing rate of the deterioration of the environment, such as the melting of the polar ice caps, etc, or the lower test score results of school students showing an apparent loss of mental ability in the next generation. In addition to this there is no real theory that I have seen proposed that would cause such advancement from nothing to god. Natural selection of random mutations only produces adaptation to the environment not true advancement and I have not seen a coherent presentation of any other theory explained that could cause such an advance from nothing to god.

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Steve,

In the past, I also struggled with the question of why the world showed all the signs of being a temporary structure that is made to run down and wear out. In my early years, it also bothered me that the world seemed to treat the people in the United States more favorably than those in most other places on earth, but over the years that protection from great storms, earth quakes,...

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Steve,

In the past, I also struggled with the question of why the world showed all the signs of being a temporary structure that is made to run down and wear out. In my early years, it also bothered me that the world seemed to treat the people in the United States more favorably than those in most other places on earth, but over the years that protection from great storms, earth quakes, floods, fires, and other natural and man made disasters seemed to be decreasing. This pattern seemed to have no relation to anything that could be traced back to it as the cause of it. I could not find the cause of the protection or of its decrease in terms of man’s actions or natural laws. Some of man’s actions were definitely negative to the overall state of the world, but they were insufficient to cause the decrease in protection and they were distributed too evenly around the world to not cause similar problems in other places also. Moreover this did not explain the cause of the protection in the first place. It was not until I began to study the Holy Scriptures that I found an answer. For those who do not believe in God as the creator of the world with power over the world to do, as he desires with it, the answer cannot be found because they will never connect the changes with a greater power. They also will not understand the actions of man that cause God to make these kinds of changes in the world. When I read in the scriptures in the Old Testament about Israel, I found that God made promises to Israel that he would bless them as long as they remained with him. He also promised to curse them if they left him to worship false gods. He actually lists the specific blessings and curses in the scriptures and I found that the protection that I had observed agreed with the list of blessings and that the decreasing of that protection corresponded with decreases in the blessings and increase in the curses. I began to look in the scriptures for any similarity between Israel’s behavior in leaving God and turning to false Gods and the accompanying responses from God and the behavior of those in the United States and the observed negative changes seen in the United States. I found many similarities. For example, a great change away from God is evident beginning in the 1960’s. During that decade one thing that happened was that the Supreme Court more or less band reading of the scriptures in public schools. Immediately American children’s test scores on standardized tests began to decline and the decline has not been reversed to this day even after throwing large sums of money into the school systems around the country to try to find a way to reverse the problem. One of the blessings that God had promised Israel was that he would give them knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. The curse was that these things would be taken away from them. Another thing that happened in the 1960’s was that the Supreme Court sanctioned the killing of babies by abortion. Since then somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million children have been killed on average in the United States per year for a total of over 40 million killed from then to the present. It is interesting that the people of Israel did a similar thing when they left God and began to follow the false God Baal. They killed their children by passing them through the fire to Baal. God said that he would not have asked them to do such a thing and that it would not even come to his mind for them to do such a thing. He said that the earth would spew them out because of the shedding of innocent blood. This among other acts of man in the United States explains why the protection would have been there in the first place because the nation and its laws were founded upon or at least in great part were in agreement with God’s laws for man and why it would have been taken away as man went away from God and God’s laws and began to do the things that he told them not to do. So far this trend away from God and his laws has continued from the 1960’s to the present and the associated decrease in protection has also continued. In the scriptures the most likely long-term outcome is that the nation is destroyed. There have been some cases where the people repented and came back to God and were then restored to his favor, so I encourage people to return to him and I wait to see what happens. So far when I look at various places in the world, man’s relationship to God and man’s condition in the world follow this pattern. Man without God looks only for natural connections between man’s actions and their effects on the world, so it is not possible for him to connect bad things happening in the world to man’s killing of millions of children, etc. because he cannot find the connection link, since he is denying its existence.

It is interesting that you see that love is spread by information because that is the way that it is described in the scriptures. Man has built in laws (information structures) that are programmed into his make up that include a type of love. This love is connected to survival of the individual and allows a man to give love in order to get at least that much love in return. This is the kind of love that is predominant in the world without God. In this type of love one will marry another to receive love from the other, but may not even think about the need to love the other. If he does return the love that he receives, he will be offended if more is asked of him than was given to him. This type of love does not work very well because people almost always over estimate what they have given and under estimate what has been given to them. If you ask someone who’s marriage has broken up the reason for the break up and they respond that they did not receive the love that they had expected from the other person, their relationship is almost certainly based on this type of love. There is another type of love that is not natural to man, but is given to man by God in his word. God created this type of love by first giving man laws to keep that man in his natural state could not keep. The laws that God gave are good and include the other type of love, but man’s natural laws that are written into man at birth are selfish laws designed for survival and gain for the individual even at the expense of others, so man could not understand the fullness of them and keep them. God said that if a man kept his laws throughout his life, he would be saved by his own works of keeping God’s laws, but if he did not keep the laws of God he would die as the penalty for the sin of disobedience. As can be expected, everyone has failed to be able to keep them. God did this on purpose so that man would see that he needed God to save him (because God made man to become his body, so man is not made to be sufficient to live on his own without God). God then sent his only begotten son into the world to live a perfect life to fulfill his laws, so he could be the perfect sacrifice for the people, so that they could have their sins forgiven and be saved. In this he not only provided for salvation for all that willingly receive and believe on his son for the forgiveness of their sins and the restoration of their relationship to God, but he also demonstrated true love in that his son (who was the only one that was worthy to not die because he had kept God’s law) willingly died for man in man’s place to pay for man’s sins (not when man was almost perfect and at least close to worthy to be saved, but when man was living in sin and destroying his own life and the lives of others in his sin) so that man could have a chance to be restored to God. His love went out to us who cannot in anyway return his love for us, so we can be saved even though he suffered torture and death at the hands of the ones he was saving. This type of love is not natural to man and requires the information that is supplied in God’s word to reprogram man’s internal program information, so that he can understand and exercise this type of love. Those who receive God’s love are the lighted ones.

The ultimate connectivity is when we who are saved are all joined together in the body of Christ, with Christ (God’s only begotten son) as the head of the body and God as the head of Christ in the same way as we have a body that is ruled by our soul that is in tern ruled by our spirit. Then we all who are members of that body will experience the fullness of the love that you desire to have, both with each other and with God. God has given each of us the choice to either become members of his body or not. You must actively choose by accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Those who do not choose to become members of the body become part of the machinery used to make his body members, but after the body is made they will no longer be needed and will be destroyed along with this world which will also no longer be needed. A new, bigger, and better permanent world without entropy, etc. will replace this world as the place for God and his body to be joined together in and live in together without end in perfect love for one another.

As far as this world is concerned, we cannot make it better ourselves without God. When we leave God we leave the blessings of God and come into the curses. Everything we do in that condition will work against us even the things that seem the most reasonable to us to do and the world will only get worse. If all would come to and remain with God the world could greatly change for the better in a short time.

When we are with God he can and will give us the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to know how to restore the earth and he will make our labor to do so prosper, but it can’t be done without him because he will not allow it. There are great parts of the creation that man is not yet even aware of the existence of that can be used to supply us with all that we could ever need or use, but God has set each thing in its own time and he will give them to his people at the proper times and places.

There is no real hope of obtaining what you are seeking for from the world without God. If you were an intelligent car that could think, would you be better off putting your hope in the manufacturing plant that made you to take care of you or in the one that made the manufacturing plant, so that it would make you, so that he could have you to act as an extension of his body to take him where he wants to go. The one that made the plant has the real power, ability, and desire to take care of you. The plant just follows his orders. The plant becomes expendable after you are made, if he made you to last without end. We who are saved are like parts of that car, except much better because we are not only an extension of his body, but together we are the whole body itself.

I have looked around me in this world and some of the things that I have seen are mentioned in this post to you and my other posts on this topic that you can read if you wish. I do desire to change the world for the better. It is just that I see the problem from a different viewpoint than you do. What I see is that the problem is not the growth or lack of growth of earthly plants, but the fault is in man. The answer is not to serve the earth, but to return to and serve God. We need to trust not in an imaginary evolution from nothing to God, but to trust in the God that made all things. I understand the appeal of the evolution concept because it basically says that man will eventually become God by his own works. It is the same deception that Eve fell for in the Garden of Eden that began sin in the world that “Ye shall be as gods”. It didn’t work for her and it won’t work for anyone else either. You can actually become a part of God, but only in the way that he has set up for it to happen. The action that works to make the world better is that action that God has given us to do, which is to preach (speak) the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of the world. Each one who receives God’s word and is changed into one of the lighted ones by it makes this world a little better. The movement that I am a part of is of God not man and goes far beyond this universe. It goes beyond science because it is controlled by the one that does not need science to try to understand the universe because he made the universe and knows all details about it from direct experience. Man’s life is not truly improved by external conditions, but by the change in the inward parts of the man that can only come from God by his Word. There are those who have all that money can buy and yet live inward lives of sorrow and despair and spread that sorrow and despair to others and make the world a worse place to live in regardless of how well the earth supplies their needs and desires and there are those that are poor in this world that inwardly live lives of joy and love in Christ and spread that joy and love to others and make the world a better place to live in, both by what they do and by what God does for them in the world that they could not do themselves no matter how hard they try. The end result of the spread of that joy and love and God’s response to it is both a world that recovers to provide all the resources that man needs and a life of love and joy for all in the world.

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Hello Paul ,Jason ,all ,

It's so complex and simple in the same time .

The christian message of love is a road of universality .When I read the bible ,the Talmud ,The Coran ,the bouddhism ,........we find always the love and universal message .Those informations of love are a secret of the harmonic evolution.

You know Paul ,I live in Belgium and the main religion is the...

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Hello Paul ,Jason ,all ,

It's so complex and simple in the same time .

The christian message of love is a road of universality .When I read the bible ,the Talmud ,The Coran ,the bouddhism ,........we find always the love and universal message .Those informations of love are a secret of the harmonic evolution.

You know Paul ,I live in Belgium and the main religion is the catholicism ,I see some realities ,the people prefers the christianity than the catholicism ,it's different I think .

Indeed Jesus and his message is a pure love.....When I had 16 years ,I was fascinated by that ,...........These informations of love permits to harmonize the evolution ,and permits too to decrease the chaotics effects .

I think ,Paul ,we must create this Eden ,a beautiful Earth is Harmony and complementarity ,it's a rule of the human ,a catalyzer of love .All must be respected ,the minerals ,the vegetals ,the animals ,the evolution .

The human potential in complementarity and love can do many things ,so many things .

I beleive it's important to balance the personnal vision and the universal vision .Never we must impose an ideology because the love is the love ,on the other side we must act on ground ,it's a reality ,I am a horticultor too since any years ,the secret is the ground on Earth .Without an optimization of soils ,it wxill be difficult for our future .The love is that too ,the complementarity with the nature and all its creations in evolution and optimization towards harmony.We have all around us and many secrets are still to discover .

We see God everywhere in all things ,God says us ,act my babies ,he loves us and helps us by love informations and the discoveries of sciences .

Act is important because without that some people wait and it's too personal I think ,it's two points of vue ,act or wait the divin act ,if we consider those informations ,we must admit too the act,it's the rule of human I think ,act in love and universality .

In all case ,thanks for your article it's relevant .

The humanity is like a rainbow ,a diversity of colors united in the Light ,

it's difficult to turn off a big fire with one water drop,nevertheless a whole of drops makes Ocean......

sincerely

Steve

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John,

I am glad that you have taken the first step of accepting reality. In a way the structure of the world is very simple. It is the details of how all of the simple parts are made and how they interact with each other that get complex. We live in a world that is composed of two main parts, the dimensional system and the motion that exists within that system. All of the sub-energy...

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John,

I am glad that you have taken the first step of accepting reality. In a way the structure of the world is very simple. It is the details of how all of the simple parts are made and how they interact with each other that get complex. We live in a world that is composed of two main parts, the dimensional system and the motion that exists within that system. All of the sub-energy (dark energy to you), energy, matter, all fourth and fifth vector structures that exist outside of man’s present knowledge and ability to detect except to some degree as dark matter on very large scales of detection, etc. are composed completely of motion. All you need to figure out is how the first five dimensions are structured and how they interact with one another and how each kind of motion entity that exists in them is structured and you have all you need to understand how reality works. I have supplied a lot of the basic information that one would need to begin to understand how it all works in the information that I have already entered in various places on this site. I have provided it primarily in layman’s terms so it is easy to understand. Of course, that means that some things have been provided in approximate forms that must be modified in more advanced applications (similar to Newtonian Gravity compared to relativity, etc.) and in some places I have used over simplified concepts that would need to be fleshed out to go very far in some areas, but it is enough to begin with and work out many details. The world could really care less about you either way. It just follows the rules that it was given to follow from the beginning when it was created. It is the one that made it and controls it that might under certain circumstances have sympathy to you or your concerns. You are definitely right that destruction is an essential part of this world. As a matter of fact it is slowly destroying itself. Not only are all of the atoms slowly changing to those in the center mass range around iron, but although people don’t yet know it, given enough time all matter particles will turn into energy photons and all energy photons will turn into sub-energy particles and all sub- energy will eventually travel at the same velocity and in the same direction in the lower three dimensions, so that there will be no differentiation of motion in the universe. It is just made to run down and nothing that man can do can change it. As a matter of fact man inevitably will speed up the process by breaking down the matter particles to get energy and by spreading the excess energy out into space to keep the local temperature acceptable. A better way to put it is that you can’t have your matter and eat it too. You can’t really have tomorrow (the future) at all and you are stuck in today (the present) and can’t get out even if you want to. You are right that there is no time dimension. There is just a continuum of motions that continually travel through distances and interact at various points with other motions. The number of energy photons does not remain the same because some change into matter or sub-matter and some sub-matter and matter particles change into energy photons, etc., so the total number of energy photons is continually changing. It is total motion that is conserved, which brings up an interesting question. Why don’t those motions cancel each other out, so that all the motions just disappear? Figure out the answer to that question and you will be a long way to understanding more advanced concepts. You are right that the motions are just recycled. The real problem is the motion differential dissipation. You can have all the motions still present in the world, but if they all travel in the same direction with the same velocity, you end up with a world that cannot support life because life requires the change of motions from higher motion levels to lower motion levels to support its functions. This world is made, so that will ultimately happen and nothing can be done to stop it. It is entropy at work.

As part of my work here, I look for and examine patterns that I find in this world to discern and define larger overall structures in order to determine the relative intelligence of their source of production and I have found that the scriptures contain some of the most interesting and advanced structural patterns in existence. Many of those patterns have explained the interactions and the purposes behind many of the patterns that I had seen in the world, but had not understood their meanings and some have pointed out patterns that I had not observed in the world until I was led to them by the pattern structures found in the scriptures. I suppose, though, that what is extremely interesting and useful to one can be stuffy to another that is not interested in such things. It is the same with all aspects of science. Some people just aren’t interested in science at all because their focus is on other things like art or sports, etc. To them the things that they place their focus on are very important to them just like understanding as much as I can about the world and how it works is important to me. The Bible does not frame my view of reality. It is the combination of the patterns that I have viewed in reality with the patterns that are in the scriptures and how they interact and work together that is truly interesting. As Steve might put it, it is the complexification of complementarity between the two that joins them into the harmony of the whole. I don’t know about cold, but if you want facts that are hard to understand, the scriptures contain some facts that are well beyond the understanding of anything that man has found so far in this world. Of course anything is only hard before its time. After its time has come even high school students usually have some understanding of things that were hard to understand before their time had come. Since the scriptures contain information not only about the past and present, but also contain information about the future all the way to the end of this world and even some information about the world to come, it is to be expected that many of those types of things will not be understood by many.

I find your comment to Steve about the commandment of God to go forth and multiply very interesting because it is a problem that I had trouble with in the past also. I found that the problem was not with that commandment, though, because the universe is large enough to accommodate all the expansion that man could possibly accomplish for a very long time. The problem is why have we not been allowed to open the next door to our cage and enter the next larger room. From the beginning the world has been to man like a cage within a cage, within a cage, etc. As we have expanded in population, God has opened up new and larger areas for us to expand into. The last such opening was the opening up of the new world of North and South America to expansion. The next opening will be to leave this world for the moon and later Mars, etc. These things are obvious. The real question is why God has not given man the ability to open up these areas yet. In the 1960’s it seemed like we were on the way to doing so with the first man on the moon, etc., but then it was all shut off. This was also the time that there was a great shift away from God, so I see this as another part of the pattern of blessings to curses transition. Since that time physics development also has slowly ground more and more to a halt. It is like a tree branch that has been cut off from the tree (the source of its nourishment). It stops its growth into new areas and begins to consume itself so that at least some part of it can live on, but it is in the long term an exercise of futility unless it is grafted back onto the tree. If it is grafted back on it will once more be able to get the resources that it needs to expand into new areas and prosper, otherwise it will die. God is the source of all of our knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. He is the one that allows us to find and be able to utilize the resources that we need. He is also the one that gives us the keys to the next area for us to expand into. Man has gone so far away from God and is so focused on how to divide the dwindling resources that remain that he has not considered that if he were to join back to God the source of all things he would be supplied with all that he needs and more. The progression from blessings to curses suggest that God does not suffer fools forever either and is certainly able to use the laws of nature that he created to accomplish his goals.

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Paul,

I'm not convinced entropy rules the universe. It applies to a closed system losing usable energy, but is the universe closed? Energy does coalesce into matter, but then matter breaks back down into energy and while light radiates out to 13+ billion lightyears, that also means we are absorbing energy from the same area. Since I'm one of those who think redshift is due to something...

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Paul,

I'm not convinced entropy rules the universe. It applies to a closed system losing usable energy, but is the universe closed? Energy does coalesce into matter, but then matter breaks back down into energy and while light radiates out to 13+ billion lightyears, that also means we are absorbing energy from the same area. Since I'm one of those who think redshift is due to something other than recessional velocity, that limit on the distance light travels is simply a horizon line, not the edge of a finite universe, so it is an infinite cycle of expanding energy and collapsing mass. Time is a process, not a narrative dimension that goes from beginning to end.

Why doesn't it collapse into a neutral medium? Possibly because the equilibrium is just not stable. It might be that the 2.7k temperature is all the energy space can hold in stable form, while concentrations above that start the process of gravitational collapse, which reaches its final stage with the stars and galaxies that break down this matter and radiate it back out, creating the illusion of expanding space, just as gravity creates the impression of collapsing space.

I am quite sure that the Bible contains far more information than I could ever possibly digest, especially in light of the millennia over which it has been written and edited. But than again computers, biology, atomic structure, etc. contain far more information and unusual connections, relationships, etc. than I could ever possibly imagine.

In the contest about time, there were a fair number of extremely well thought out and received essays on various interpretations of "block time." That being the effort to explain time as a linear dimension along which events are strung. One of the main problems this concept of time has is projecting the seeming determinism of the past onto the future. It would seem logical enough that if there is a narrative direction that seems readily apparent to past events, that it should continue to manifest onto future events. This results in any number of explanations, the most remarkable being those saying the future branches out into these multiple realities and is only defined by our observation of one of them. As I keep pointing out though, time goes the other direction. Events occur and recede into the past. Our observation of this is due to the fact these events selected us, not us them. It's not simply that the victors write the history books, but only the survivors are left to tell the tale. The wave of future potential collapses in the present and recedes into the past. So in a sense, prophetic narrative is an early form of block time, or at least derived from the same basic principle that time is a narrative dimension along which events exist and we travel.

Now again patterns do repeat and we can often deduce hints of the future in the past, but the process does have a bias toward seeing this series leading to our perception of it, since we are the ones selected by the process.

I'm also not saying I don't believe in my own understanding of a god, since I do feel we are all part of one larger whole and that when we begin to understand that and not just meditate on our own particular belly buttons, we will begin to reach for that next stage. We are separate, but part of a larger field effect, just as our brains consist of separate neurons that function as one larger field effect.

We are not going off this planet, until we get it right first. It's a big old universe out there and we have many lessons to learn from our trials here, with many false starts and dashed hopes along the way.

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Jason,

It looks like we have somewhat similar histories in terms of religious experience and exposure to evolution and other science concepts, etc.

I also had early teachings in a denomination that turned out to be in error and not according to the scriptures that caused me some problems when I was young and actually led me away from God. It wasn’t until after many years of...

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Jason,

It looks like we have somewhat similar histories in terms of religious experience and exposure to evolution and other science concepts, etc.

I also had early teachings in a denomination that turned out to be in error and not according to the scriptures that caused me some problems when I was young and actually led me away from God. It wasn’t until after many years of following after an understanding of the world around me through science that I found out (when I read the scriptures) that God was not as I had been told that he was. I had pretty much been led to believe that God was there to answer my prayers to give me what I desired. When it didn’t happen that way at a time that was important to me, I was offended. When I put that concept of God together with other religions concepts that seemed to be saying that anyone could approach God in any way that he pleased by any set of rules that he made up and it would be ok with him, it did not make much sense to me. Most religions seemed to be saying that although each religion usually had some certain works that God wanted a man to do to get to him or to become a god himself, etc. and each religion differed somewhat in what those works should be they all still seemed willing to say that it was ok for the people in the other religions to come to God in their own way and any way they did it was acceptable to him. It looked to me like God was the servant to give everyone what they wanted and had to accept any kind of relationship that was offered and the people were acting like they were the gods. God did not seem to have any real purpose for creating the world at least not any that made any real sense. When I read the scriptures I found a different situation. I found that God had a purpose when he made the creation and us in it, which was to make a body for himself. We were given the chance to become members of his body. As such, it was only reasonable that he would expect us to do his will instead of the other way around. After all, none of us would want our body parts to just go off and do whatever they want to do instead of what we want them to do. It is also reasonable that he would expect us to accept the order of things that he had created, such as accepting Christ as the head of the body and God as the head of Christ. Considering that God made these things to work in that way to fulfill his purpose, if someone approaches him in some other way than the one he has established or wants a different relationship with him than the one that he is making, it is not hard to see why this would not be acceptable to him and that person would be rejected. Those that come to him and accept becoming parts of his body in the way that he desires are the ones that are accepted by him and those that are not willing to accept his offer, but want some other way to come to him are rejected. The body that he is making will last without end so once it is made this world will no longer be required by him because he will make a new better world for him to live in within his body. He will then reclaim all of the motion that he had put into this world back into himself, which will cause this world and everything in it to be burned up because his motion is much greater than the motion in this world. The end result is that those who accept becoming members of his body according to his design will be saved and live without end with him in his body while those who reject him altogether or try to come to him in some other way contrary to his acceptable way will be destroyed also. He gives everyone the chance to choose which he would rather have. The bad thing isn’t that God destroys those that reject him, but that when they have the chance, so many people reject having such a close relationship to God as becoming members of his body. I believe that many convince themselves that God will accept them even if they reject him and his plan and try to get some other relationship with him, but he says they can only come to him through his chosen one Jesus Christ his only begotten Son. I am glad that you are happy to have God in your life. Just remember that he will only accept you into his life if you come to him in the way that he has set up for you to come to him through Jesus Christ. People don’t really have to worry about ideological disagreements with other people. The only real problem is if you have an ideological disagreement with God because he is the one that decides what he will accept and what he will reject. If you come to him, follow him, and love him in the way that he has given for us to do in the scriptures, he will accept you and you will have the true joy that no one can take away from you.

I pretty much agree with you concerning evolution

It is not that there are many true Gods, but only one true God. Some worship false Gods that don’t exist, so their worship is in vain, some worship the true God in a way that is not pleasing and acceptable to God, so their worship is in vain also. It is the ones that worship the true God in the way that he has made to be acceptable to him that get eternal joy in the true meaning and intent of God in his love and in the love of his body in which we who are saved will all generously share in the richness of our life experiences together and share the continual revitalization that can come only from God.

God does give each of us the freedom to believe as we will, but he encourages us to believe him and choose the way that leads to life and not death. He says in the scriptures, I set before you life and death, choose life. It is not God’s will that anyone should perish, but that all would come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved, but in order to truly give people the freedom of choice he has to allow those that choose death rather than life with him to get their desire.

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Steve,

The scriptures talk about a time when Satan would rule in the church. This came to pass in the early church when the Roman Empire sanctioned the church and the church changed from a persecuted minority to an accepted institution that was looked up to and it became popular and a positive mark of distinction to be a part of the church. Many entered in that were not of God only to get...

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Steve,

The scriptures talk about a time when Satan would rule in the church. This came to pass in the early church when the Roman Empire sanctioned the church and the church changed from a persecuted minority to an accepted institution that was looked up to and it became popular and a positive mark of distinction to be a part of the church. Many entered in that were not of God only to get acceptance as being good people by others for the gain that they could get from that association with the church. They began to change the way the church was run in order to make gain for themselves such as requiring sinners to pay penance in order to have their sins forgiven, etc. Ultimately the hierarchy of the church got so perverted that they set up the pope with the idea that he was God on earth and considered what he said to be greater in authority than the scriptures. This organization became to be known as the Roman Catholic Church and was responsible for much of the evil that was done in God’s name in the dark ages. God said that he would fight against the church controlled by Satan with the sword of his mouth. This came to pass with the development of the printing press that allowed the scriptures to be printed in large quantities at a price that many more people could afford thus giving God’s word to the people. The result was the protestant movement as people found out that the rules of the Catholic Church were not according to the scriptures. The Catholic Church says that it has now reformed, but it still holds onto many of the traditions that were started in that time. The protestant denominations that broke off have discarded many of the traditions of the Catholic Church and are closer to the scriptures in their practices, but generally have not escaped those traditions entirely. It has been a progressive movement back toward God with people slowly finding and coming to accept that some of their practices are not according to the scriptures and either changing them or breaking off of the group that they are in and forming a new group that walks a little closer to agreement with God’s Word. This is in agreement with the scriptures that predicted that this would happen also. It is best to just get the scriptures and read directly what God has to say to you than to go through others to get it.

You are right about Jesus and God’s message of his love for us that comes to us through him.

The point is that man cannot create Eden. God created it for man and man only destroyed it in his sin. Only God can restore the earth to that condition, which will happen when Jesus returns and rules this world for a thousand years near the end of this world. Until then the best that we can do is to return to God so that the curses will be taken away and the blessings will be restored, so that the work that we do will then be blessed by God and will make the earth better. The scriptures talk about a time like that happening at the end of the time that we are in. At that time God’s people will have work to do and God will bless us in that labor and the earth will get better. Those who attempt to do it without God will see their works cursed and they will fail. I don’t really think that many will be persuaded by my words to that effect though because in the scriptures God says that when a person begins to leave him he begins to worship the creation instead of the creator, so he is not really in control of himself and cannot stop himself from doing so because God has made it to be that way. The only way to reverse that behavior is for the person to return to God. I find it interesting that God has set some things like that up to work in a certain way and under those specific conditions people always behave the way that God says that they will.

You are right that we should not try to force others to believe in a certain way both because you really can’t do that and also because God has given it to man to be able to choose him or not. We who are of God are supposed to preach (speak) the Gospel to others, but it is up to them to receive and believe God or not as they choose.

My experience is that without God man has very little potential to accomplish anything of true value. As an experiment I have gone to government planning meetings and said flat out, This is the way to really solve the problem you are working on and this other way is the way that you can get more money, but it will not solve the problem. They always pick the way that will give them the money, but won’t solve the problem.

When one is of God the personal vision and universal vision are the same so there is no balancing necessary. The true harmony is to be in harmony with God the creator of nature and all things. You will then also be in harmony with the nature that he created just as he is because he can then give you the understanding of the secrets of how his creation works and what he desires for you to do to take care of it. Then God, man, and, nature will truly be one in harmony as a whole.

You are right that God gives us all of the information that we receive and all of the abilities to use that information that we have and that he has made the world so that even the invisible things can be clearly seen by the things that are seen because he has made similarities or images of the invisible things in the things that we can see. If he had not done this we could not understand the invisible things. These images also let you know about God because he has made images that tell us about him also even though we don’t see him directly.

It is important for us to act by coming to God through his word and receiving him as our Lord and Savior by Jesus Christ. It is then also important to act to preach the Gospel to others so that we can all come together in Christ to act as God has given for us to do, so that he will restore the world through us in the way that will really work to make a better world for all.

We believe the same in many ways, but on the most important subject we disagree. You believe in the creation to save you and give you a good life through evolution and I have followed those concepts out to their end and have found that they don’t work, so I believe in the creator of the creation to save me and give me a good life both in this world and also in the world to come. My analysis of man has come to the conclusion that (except under the influence of God in Christ) man is basically a destructive creature both to himself and to others. That is why it has been decided to withhold certain advanced technologies from man until it is necessary for man to have their understanding in order to complete long term structural plans for this world. It may then be necessary to implement certain control mechanisms to assure satisfactory results. Of course that could be modified if man returns to God in large enough numbers to assure adequate positive structural control.

In reality what will happen is that when man returns to God at the end of this time because of the famine that will come from trying to make a better world without God, fourth vector structuring technology will be given to those who are of God and they will rule over the world. In accordance to the way that man usually behaves, after God gives him the ability to overcome the famine and be prosperous again he will again leave God thinking that he no longer needs God and can take care of himself with his new knowledge. He will become very evil again and at that point God will destroy the Gentile nations and give the rule over the world to Israel. There is much more that happens beyond that and man will eventually be given fifth vector technology near the end of this world. Too bad man cannot just come to God and stay there. Much suffering such as the coming famine could be avoided and the world could be a wonderful place to live. There are so many possible wonderful things that man is missing out on that are well beyond your current ability to conceive. The problem is that all of those things can be used both for good or evil and the greater the knowledge the greater potential for greater destruction and man cannot be trusted to not use it to create that destruction. Actually man can be trusted to use it to create destruction. Then again God uses all of this to create his body members, so in the long run much good comes from it all. Not that you are likely to believe any of this anyway, at least at this time. It is always interesting to do information insertion tests like this and see what results.

You are definitely right that man can be united in the light because Jesus says, that he is the light of the world and we can truly be united together with God in him (the Light).

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John,

To give you some hints that may help you to answer your first question about whether the universe is closed or not first consider whether or not it is finite or infinite. At this time science considers that the universe is expanding. If the universe were already infinite would there be any place for it to expand further into? Even if it is infinite the speed limit of light that you...

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John,

To give you some hints that may help you to answer your first question about whether the universe is closed or not first consider whether or not it is finite or infinite. At this time science considers that the universe is expanding. If the universe were already infinite would there be any place for it to expand further into? Even if it is infinite the speed limit of light that you mention would limit interaction to the area within the present reach of light and effectively close the system to the expanding area that light can reach from the beginning making it behave like an expanding closed system within the infinite system. If it is finite it is a closed system even if it is expanding. If the universe is expanding it just means that the dispersion of motion equally into all areas of space, which basically is entropy, will occur faster and the ultimate amount of motion per unit of space will be lower and approach closer to zero over time. It has been known for a long time that if you put matter that contains a lot of motion (lets say a boiling hot cup of coffee) into a room that contains a lower amount of motion (lets say it is at zero degrees C) the motion in that matter will begin to dissipate from that hot matter into the cold room so that eventually everything will be at the same temperature (contain the same amount of free motion per unit of space). In the example given, the cup is small in comparison to the room so the whole system will eventually be at close to zero degrees C. This is the situation with our universe. The amount of matter and energy, etc. is small compared to the amount of space, so if all of the motion in the universe were evenly distributed in space the temperature of space would still be very low. If the universe (amount of space) is expanding, but the amount of motion contained in it in matter and energy, etc. stays the same, that ultimate distributed temperature is just getting lower over time. It has been proven that the greater the temperature difference is, the faster the distribution occurs, so the greater the expansion rate is, the faster will be the overall motion breakdown and distribution throughout space because the expansion effectively lowers the temperature (amount of motion) per unit of space. Even if space is not expanding, the end result of total motion dispersion will result in a very low amount of motion per unit of space. If you believe that the universe is not expanding, you might want to believe the old steady state theory of the universe that gas clouds are condensed by gravity into stars that then radiate energy out into space and eventually explode to create new gas clouds that then condense into new stars in a never ending cycle. It sounds good on the surface, but like most things when you look beyond the surface things often look different. One problem is that stars produce their energy by combining lighter elements like hydrogen into heavier elements and when they explode they don’t convert the heavier elements back to the lighter ones. On the contrary, the explosions generate even more heavy elements at the expense of lighter ones. The end result is that over time there would not be a large enough quantity of the lighter elements (mainly those up to iron) to support the generation of energy by new stars. On the other end the heavier elements are continually breaking down over time into lighter elements so that the end result would be a world without both the heavy and light elements. These two types of reactions (fusion and fission) account for most of the useful spontaneous energy production in the universe. I won’t get into the natural process of breakdown of matter into energy and energy to sub-energy, etc. because I would have to cover things that are not for current release, but after all of the lighter and heavier elements were gone the next thing that man would have to do to survive would be to begin to break down matter particles to convert them to energy necessary to preserve life in the world. This would ultimately result in all matter being turned into energy. The breakdown from energy to sub-energy would have to take place naturally without man because man needs matter to survive. Basically matter contains a higher potential energy (total motion) state than is contained in most energy photons that are produced in the world. Energy photons can be produced that contain a great enough fourth vector velocity to produce matter particles when they collide, but it is an up hill operation against entropy to produce them for the most part, so they are produced at a greater cost to the overall motion content of matter than they can add back into the total motion content of matter by generating matter particles. The end result is that the conversion of matter into energy ultimately results in an increase in total energy in the world and a decrease in total matter in the world. It is similar to chemistry where although reactions can go both ways, they only occur naturally in the direction that causes a change from a higher state of total motion to a lower one. You can only get the reaction to go the other way by the input of external energy (motion). The end result is that much more motion is drained from matter and converted to energy than is generated in matter by the conversion of energy to matter. As an example, all of the visible light energy that is produced in the world is lost to the production of matter because the photons do not contain enough motion to produce a matter particle if two of them collide. The only way that the situation would change is if the universe was to collapse back upon itself, but that would not allow life to survive in it either. Either way man and all of his works would ultimately be destroyed so all his work would be in vain. We agree that time is not a physical dimension.

Again, it sounds good on the surface, but things don’t work that way in reality. Gravitational collapse, for example, in the creation of stars does not for the most part create matter from energy or even create matter at all. It just causes matter that is already in existence to be brought closer together to the point that fusion begins. Some of the energy produced by the conversion of some of the motion contained in the matter in the star causes an expansion that offsets the gravitational contraction of the matter in the star to create a stable balance so the star does not contract further or expand outward. The rest is dissipated out into space as photons of various frequencies dependent on the specific type of reaction that made them. Stars thus mostly cause a one-way dispersion of motion from matter into energy. If matter were actually created in any area that was above 2.7K, we would be seeing matter created around us all the time since our ambient living temperature is well above that, but we don’t.

You are right that the whole creation contains a great amount of information.

In reality all that really exists is the present conditions of motions. Each motion entity contains information such as its position, direction, and motion amplitude. Its current position, the direction that it is traveling in, and its current motion amplitude define its next current present position in the next present motion conditions after the current state of those conditions. As it progresses from one set of present motion conditions to the next its position information is updated to its new current position. Interactions with other motion entities can also cause its direction and, or, motion amplitude information to be changed also. There is no real future or past in existence. Time in the sense that one thing happens before another (order) or that a motion takes a certain period to cross a certain distance are just due to variations in relative motion amplitudes and distances traveled. They are the result of comparing recorded motion conditions with other recorded motion conditions or the present conditions and identifying which of a number of motion entities arrives at a certain position first or comparing a motion entity that travels through a certain distance with a certain motion amplitude (its period) with another motion entity that travels through its own distance at its own motion amplitude (its period). Periods are generally constructs of a series of many present motion conditions of a motion entity to show the overall flow of motion of the entity and therefore only one very small part of a period exists in the current present motion conditions. The rest of the individual motion conditions that make up the period are viewed only through stored records of previous present motion conditions. Order can be determined within the present motion conditions such as the instantaneous order of positions of three motion entities that are all traveling in the same direction to determine the one that is the farthest along in the direction of travel, the one that is second farthest, and the one that is last, or it can extend over many present motion conditions such as the order that the same three entities pass a predetermined finish line position in which case it is again fully viewed only by looking at stored records of previous present motion conditions possibly along with the present motion conditions. The past is just the motion conditions that were present, but are no longer present and therefore no longer exist. Our sense of the past comes from our ability to store the current motion conditions in records and to organize sets of these records of current motion conditions in the order that they occurred. The future to us is the result of extrapolation of motion entities’ motions (as determined from records of their past positions, motion amplitudes, and directions along with their present conditions) out to determine where the entities will be in later present motion conditions that have not yet occurred. These extrapolations can be stored, so that they can be referred to later and can be compared to other such records to give us a broader overall sense of the future. These conditions that we view as parts of the future do not exist in the present motion conditions and if they do come to pass (if our extrapolations are correct) they are not in the future at that time, but are a part of the current present motion conditions when they occur. In this sense one could say that the future emerges from the present, but that would not really be completely correct, because it is really the next present set of motion conditions that emerge from this current set of present motion conditions. It would be better to say that the present continually emerges or flows from the present. If you cause a change in a motion in the current present motion conditions such as changing its direction through an interaction, that change will be transferred to the next current present motion conditions. You never change the future because it does not really ever exist. You also cannot change the past motion conditions because all that you have is a set of stored records of what used to be current present motion conditions that no longer exist because they were replaced by later current present motion conditions. You always only exist in the current present motion conditions because that is all that currently ever exists. In this context prophetic narrative that is true (actually comes to pass) would either have to be something that is obvious from the current present motion conditions, is a blind luck guess, or comes from a source that knows for sure what the specific later current motion conditions will be. If God knows the end from the beginning as he says that he does in the scriptures (planned out all motions and all their changes before he actually created the world), it would not be a difficult thing for him to do.

Yes the patterns can make extrapolation of what is called the future obvious in some cases, but the scriptures contain information about things to come that are too specific and disconnected from the main overall flow of motion in the system to be anywhere near obvious, such as predicting the name of a certain ruler hundreds of years before he was born or predicting Jesus’ birth place, that he would be born of a virgin, be put in a manger, flee to Egypt to escape being killed with the other children that were killed in an attempt to kill him, that he would be brought up in Nazareth, etc. again several hundred years before any of it happened. I have not personally counted all of them, but someone once told me that there are something like 240+ predictions about Jesus’ life in the Old Testament that all came to pass.

Without the reprogramming that only comes from God, man is basically a selfish, individualistic creature. Although it is not always the case, for the most part social interaction skills are primarily used to get others to do what is desired for the benefit of the individual using them usually at the expense of the other person. Given man’s condition, if he somehow developed the ability to link minds with others he would just use it in the same way and cause even more destruction.

Man as a whole will not get it together until Jesus returns, but man will leave this planet before that time. There will be a base on the moon that will be the control and transport hub of twelve star systems. It will be several hundred years before that happens, however. Man does go through many trials, but generally does not seem to learn much from them that lasts. Some learn, but those that come after them do not seem to be able to accept the results of the trials of the previous generation, but seem to have to repeat the same errors over and over. You are right that there will be many false starts and dashed hopes along the way. If only not so many of them were needless because they could be avoided.

I looked at your recent post to Matt and noticed something that I should have seen before, but didn’t. Because you do not believe in God as the creator of the world, you consider any such belief to be the product of man that is completely defined by the men that make it up. You, therefore, do not consider that God could actually be a being that exists as an intelligent being that is the prime definer of all things because he made all things. Instead of man defining the meaning of God he has defined the meaning of man and all other things including himself from his personal experience and has given man the definition of himself in the scriptures that he has provided for man to allow man to know him. It is evident that there are people who do make up their own false god in their image or in a way that is pleasing to them, but that does not mean that the true God does not exist or that he just wants to be any way that man decides to define him. In the scriptures God does say that when someone starts to leave him he worships the creation rather than the creator, so that means that he does make his own definition of God with the creation as his source. No matter how many people make up false definitions of who God is, it does not change who he really is because his true definition is his actual characteristics that exist as part of his actual existence. As an example, if a thousand people say that someone is stupid, it would not make that person really stupid if he is really very intelligent. Those who defined him to be stupid would just be wrong. The true nature of the definition of God is generated by the actual characteristics of his existence, not by man’s whim.

About your comment to Jason:

If you leave God (the one that knows all things and the only one that can give us the true global perspective of the world we live in and the only one that knows how all the world works) and technology (the source of most of the useful tools and the source of much of our ability to observe the world directly and indirectly and gain information from those observations that has in tern greatly increased our understanding of the world) out of your consideration when planning how to make the world a better place to live in, I believe that you will effectively be walking around with your head in the clouds without the ability to understand the complex systems that are at work in the world. Economics is one of those complex systems. I am not sure if you are proposing a system where people cannot own private property, but if you are it has been tried before many times and has always failed in the long run. Because people without God are inherently greedy and selfish they will not work hard if they do not directly get the reward for their labor. They will do the minimum and try to take the maximum that they can get from the system. Moreover, there will need to be rulers and they will take extra large shares of what is produced for themselves just like in any other government in this world. These and many other things would need to be addressed. Maybe you could give more details of your plan.

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Jason,

Personally I am very much embedded in my world, as the family and the business go back over three hundred years in this area. In fact the farm is art of a parcel an ancestor originally received in 1714 and before that, they lived where Baltimore City is now. I'm a 12th generation American. I say Marylander, except the first few were in Virgina. Which is where I was today, at a horse...

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Jason,

Personally I am very much embedded in my world, as the family and the business go back over three hundred years in this area. In fact the farm is art of a parcel an ancestor originally received in 1714 and before that, they lived where Baltimore City is now. I'm a 12th generation American. I say Marylander, except the first few were in Virgina. Which is where I was today, at a horse show with my daughter.

How I relate to it is that I did enough traveling when I was young to realize I could never beat what I had here, yet I'm not focused and obsessive enough to compete at the level those I know do, So I've spent my life working for/with various relatives, from my parents to my ex-wife and now for an older sister. This has allowed me the mental freedom to really take stock of the world as best as I could, without having to buy into any restrictive institutional frame of mind. Essentially I've carved out my own little space and am very good at what I do, even if it doesn't pay alot. My network would have trouble replacing me, though they probably will have to someday, as it involves a constant level of personal risk.

Paul,

I realize what science currently think of how the universe works, but they trade one set of questions for another and also don't provide much hope for how it ends. I think ideas will change over the coming years though. One emerging concept is that it doesn't begin with a singularity, but collapses and expands in a cyclical process. This theory raises many issues, such as whether these collapses might be the entirety, or if it is an interlocking network of processes/universes. One of the questions I keep bringing up is that current Big Bang theory argues space itself is expanding, not just the material of the universe. If this is so, wouldn't the speed of light have to increase proportionally? Otherwise it isn't expanding space, but an increasing amount of stable space. This throws a monkeywrench into the Doppler effect explaining redshift, which requires an increasing distance in a stable medium to work.

Yes, a horizon line would limit direct energy, but those sources of direct energy would have their own parameters to draw from. They keep finding what looks like mature galaxies and galaxy formations to the very edge of what is visible, so I waiting to see what new information the improvements on the Hubble will give us.

To the observations about time, we are close to agreement. I would point to your explanation to observe that the only other timeframe to emerge from the present is that information we store of past events, so isn't it worth considering that if motion creates time, it isn't a dimension along which we are traveling from past to future, but the series of events which go from being in the future to being in the past? We thought for much of human history that the sun traveled across the sky from east to west. Now we know it's the earth rotating west to east. The same applies to time. We perceive it as a narrative path from past events to future ones, but it's the other way around. Only the present exists because it is the physical reality and its motion creates these series of events that go through this process.

Just because I am more than a little shy about making spiritual claims of received knowledge doesn't mean I don't think the spiritual side of the equation is fantasy. It just means I think it is far more complex and deeper than we can ever possibly know and is not entirely benign. The problem with defining anything as an entity is that means it is finite. So if there is a specific spiritual point of focus for this particular planet, that doesn't mean it is the God of the entire universe. It is the essence of totalitarianism to claim your particular guidelines are the point of focus for the entire universe. There is no node that is not part of some larger network. Even the Big Bangers are starting to admit that.

I'm not even saying this spiritual entity doesn't know what the future of this particular planet is. I've had enough strange things happen to never say never, but looking for prophesies of Jesus in the King James version of the Old Testament is a bit much. One really needs to go back and examine the evolution of languages and story telling, not just the particular record surrounding the processes which led to this particular version. It is an exceedingly rich and fertile process that naturally creates coherent and compelling narrative. It would be ridiculous to think any such story could survive, if it didn't provide an overall purpose, function, point of reference, story line, with all the requisite characters, plot development, climaxes, etc. You are talking the mission statement of western civilization. It better tie together! Of course, for much of that history, we also thought the sun moved across the sky, pulled by horses. You do need to consider how processes develop from the past into the future, vs, how we perceive them from the vantage point of a future that doesn't see all the choices not taken.

As for technology, as you point out, it does create problems as fast as it solves previous ones and we really are far more limited in terms of resources than most people care to admit. Yes, new solutions will come along, but than so will much trauma. My economic point, if you care to reread it, doesn't say anything about no personal property. It points out that the monetary system is already a public utility and if we were to admit that, it would reduce the tendency to create abstract wealth, which is profoundly destructive of tangible value, since our tangible resources are exploited as rapidly as possible, to create and sustain this bubble of abstract value. So by agreeing that the abstraction of value made it part of the public commons, than people would not destroy their communities and environment to support this illusionary wealth. Money is necessary to a functioning modern society, but than so are roads, which work quite well as public property and there is little inclination to pave everything over, because it is public property. If we treated money the same way, then people would find more natural avenues of personal and communal exchange to complement it. If you take the time to think it through, you would find it genuinely libertarian. Having everyone clinging to "their" money only benefits those really controlling that money. If we grow the brains to understand how it works, we wouldn't worship this noose around our necks!

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Jason,

It is good that you see and understand the image of God’s body that he has made in your body. It is important to remember that an image of something is not the same as the real thing. An image is generally less than the fullness of the real thing that it is an image of. For example, a photograph of you is an image of you and has an appearance that is somewhat like your actual...

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Jason,

It is good that you see and understand the image of God’s body that he has made in your body. It is important to remember that an image of something is not the same as the real thing. An image is generally less than the fullness of the real thing that it is an image of. For example, a photograph of you is an image of you and has an appearance that is somewhat like your actual appearance, but it is only two-dimensional. If you make a moving picture of yourself, it can move around in its two-dimensional world. But it is not really conscious like you are and therefore cannot control where it moves, etc. You do control the members of your body in a way that is similar to God’s control over his body, but God did not burden you with nor allow you to have the ultimate control over your body that he has over his body. There are things that go on in your body automatically that you have no control over such as an individual cell’s production of the proteins that it needs to function properly and to reproduce itself. God on the other hand has complete knowledge and control of all things that go on inside his body. Your cells probably do not have the ability to consciously consider you as god, but they may comprehend at some level that they are a part of a larger overall structure because most cells have some interaction with other cells. You cannot achieve biological immortality because to do so would be contrary to God’s will. Death of the body entered into the world through the sins of Adam and Eve as the punishment for sin and your body is a part of Adam and Eve’s body passed down to you through all the generations between them and you. Your body must therefore die for God’s word to be true. The only exception that I see to that in the scriptures is that those who are in Christ and alive when Jesus returns may not actually go through death, but they will still go through a change so that their body will be able to live the full thousand years of Jesus’ rule on this earth. That looks to be at least several hundred years from now so I doubt that anyone that is currently living on earth will escape going through death. Your cells cannot successfully oppose the natural laws of entropy because they have been established by God as a part of the structure of this world and all things in this world including your cells are subject to the laws that God has built into the world, especially those that pertain to all things in the world like entropy. The only way that could be changed would be for God himself to make an exception to the rules for your sake. He has done so in certain limited cases, such as causing the clothes of the people of Israel to not wear out during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness to demonstrate his love and care for them, but you have no control over such things yourself. You would have to talk God into doing it for you and he has mainly done such things only to show his power to the world, etc. so don’t count on it. You are right that God wants us to obey his will, not because he is all powerful and could force us to obey him or punish us if we don’t, but because he shows us what he is doing and why and we come to understand that it is because he loves and cares for us and that all he asks us to do is for our benefit in the long run so that we can all live together with him in his body and grow together in love by the effectual working of all of the body members as one in him. There is a war between good and evil both in this world and also all the way up to and including the angels in the third heaven. This is why it is important to compare what you may hear from men or other spirits with the scriptures until the time that God fully dwells in you so you can know if they are of God or not. It is God’s instruction book to you that tells you what good and evil are and lets you know what you are to do and how to do it while you are in this world. If someone (be it man or angel) tells you to do something, but God tells you not to do that in the scriptures, you will know that that spirit is not of God. God does want you to destroy evil and if you look around in the world you will be led to believe that you destroy it by doing the same evil acts yourself, but just being better at it than the bad guy. You see this concept all the time as an example on television and movies where the good guys stop the bad guys from killing people by killing them, etc. If you follow this path however you will just cause more evil in the world. A general principle that God has established that works in the world is that as you sow, so shall you reap. This means that if you try to fight evil with evil you will only plant more evil in the world and it will just make things worse. God on the other hand says overcome evil with good. To those of this world that does not seem like it will work because they are evil and that is all that they know how to use. If you chose to follow God, however, he will show you in the scriptures how to use the weapons that actually work to overcome evil and as he says they are mighty even to the pulling down of kingdoms. The weapons of the evil one only generate destruction including the destruction of those that use them, but the weapons of God are given to make alive and to restore the love and all good things that make life worth living. God will also give you the ability to identify the evil and good intents of others in the scriptures. The price can be high, but it is nothing compared to the reward. To kill a lower creature to save a man would not be against God’s will, but look for other alternatives that God may provide that would be better. It takes continuing in God’s word to learn and understand how to use the best way to do things and how to use the abilities that God gives us to work things in the way that is most pleasing to him in those things that he gives us to do. You have a good beginning understanding about the body, but remember that the true body is the body of Christ in which it is true that the way you treat the other members of the body of Christ is the way that God will treat you. That is why God commands us to love one another even as Christ loved the church (another name for his body) and gave himself for it. Talking to your body will not likely accomplish much, but talking to other members of the body of Christ can be of great value. It is good to compare what you are told by others with the scriptures to see if what they tell you is true though as there are pretenders that would lead you away from the truth and other babes in Christ that may not know the full truth yet and so could confuse you. Prosperity is one of those things that most ask God to give them and if it is his will for you to be rich in this world’s goods that is fine although more may be expected from you in return in terms of using that wealth to do God’s will, but remember that the Gospel was preached to the world very successfully by the twelve apostles and Paul all of which were not rich. As an example, Paul who was the one most responsible for the preaching of the Gospel to the Gentile nations worked as a tent maker to get the money to take care of his needs and also to help others in need and still was able to spread the Gospel to those nations. Wealth can be good, but can also be a trap it depends on whether you can control it and use it to do God’s will or whether it controls you.

It does seem like it would be good if all would be saved or if those that did not choose to be of God did not suffer punishment for it, but remember that God does not force us to be his. He gives us the choice to be his and be saved or to not be saved and not be his. The ones that are not saved are not saved because they do not make the choice to be saved and it is not hard to make that choice. The punishment and death that result from making the wrong choice act as a motivator to move some to make the right choice because of the fear of those things in the same way as the penalty of death or imprisonment for the crime of murder will cause some to not kill for fear of the punishment. It is just another way for God to encourage men to make the right choice. The real problem is not that God is bad to man, but that man is bad to himself. We all have feelings for others such as desires that they be saved, but we must remember that all have been given the right to make the choice for themselves. We can show God’s love for them in our love for them though, and it sometimes can make the difference. Patience is a hard thing to learn, but it is very important to do so. God says in your patience possess ye your souls. For example God says that if you train up your children in the way that they should go when they are young, when they are old they shall not depart from it. I have found that this is true, but you must patiently wait through those years in the middle when they may not go in the right way until they learn better and see that what they were taught is the best way to go. Remember that when you are saved you have all eternity, so what is a few hundred years. You may not get to experience some things in this world that you would desire to see, but will not come to pass until after you leave this world, but you will also avoid many very bad things that will happen later in this world. This is really not a bad time to live in this world compared to many other times. We are each set in the time that is best for us.

There are some things that are important and other things that people make important to themselves, but really aren’t. It is best to see what God says is important in the scriptures and take care of those things because your life can depend on it. Your words tell me that you really know that there are really only two possible real choices. You say that Christians believe what they believe and others believe what they believe. You already know that all the other religions are the same so choosing any one of them gets the same result. The only one that gives a different result is the Christian religion. In the Christian religion God is not just some generalized being that you can define in the way that you desire him to be. He is a being that is very intelligent and does things to fulfill his purposes that please him. He has created this world for a purpose, which is to make a body for himself to be a help to him through eternity. He has designed that body so that it will last without end and so that it will work willingly with him without end. To accomplish that in the development of its members he has chosen to make it in a certain way so that there will be no future divisions or other problems that could destroy the body or make it ineffective. That is why each prospective body member is given the choice to accept his offer to become a member of his body or not. He only wants those who truly desire to be a part of him in his body and are willing to accept his only begotten son Jesus Christ as the head of the body and God as the head of Christ. He has figured out how to make a body in which we can all live without end in love for one another and for him and his son Jesus Christ. This can only work if we accept him in the way that he allows us to in accordance to his will. As an example, Jesus said I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh to the Father, but by me. The only way that you can approach or come to God then is by Jesus Christ. If you try to come to him in some other way you will be rejected. This means that if he is telling you the truth all the other religions that say you can come to God in some other way are false. This means that you must make a choice. You can either choose one of the other pre-made gods or make your own designer god to suit your desires and be accepted by most people in the world as ok or you can choose the one God who says that he is the only true God and that you must accept him and come to him in the way that he desires and has set up for you to come to him to be accepted by him. You should already know which is the real God. You are made in his image. If you were the true God would you want people to just make up what ever characteristics that they desired to apply to you and you would then accept them according to those characteristics treating each person the way that he wants you to treat him or would you want people to know you as you really are and accept and come to you the way that pleases you. Otherwise, do you want to be with people that want to be with the real you or those that only want to be with you if you are something other than what you really are? The answer is even easier if you need for the people to accept you in a certain way so that your plan for an endless life with them will work. You know that a relationship based on a false understanding of who you are by the other person will not likely last. Beside all that the way that you wrote the paragraph tells me that you already know the answer either consciously or subconsciously or some one else wrote it and they know the right answer. That is because when a person writes two groups and then writes a property of each group they will almost always write so that the first property mentioned is the one that applies to the first group mentioned so in your paragraph you have the groups Christians and others followed by the properties culture and evil. So you have Christians, culture (the body of Christ) and others, evil.

You are right that God does desire to have a very close relationship with us as members of his body. The image of that relationship that he has made for us to give us an idea of the depth of that relationship is marriage. Man is made in the image of God and the woman is made in the image of man. In marriage God commands the man to love his wife as Christ loved the church (the body of Christ) and gave himself for it (referring to Jesus’ willingness to die on the cross in place of us so that we could have our sins forgiven and be saved). The woman in marriage is commanded by God to submit herself to the man as the church (body of Christ) is subject to Christ. If a man and a woman are married to each other and perfectly keep God’s commandment to them it would be a true image of the relationship that God will have with us who are the parts of his body. Of course, most people don’t keep those commandments perfectly and then it still would only be an image, so the real relationship will be much better than earthly marriage. The scientific community is made up of people and it therefore reflects the overall condition of the people that it exists in. If the people are mostly of God the scientific community will also be oriented toward understanding God and his creation. If the people are mostly not of God it will be oriented toward attempting to disprove the existence of God. Maybe he just wants you to search out and find the answer yourself. It’s not that hard really.

On you later post:

I am glad that we agree on so many things.

There are both those that are good (of God) and evil (of the enemy of God or Satan) in all levels of creatures from man up to and including the angels. The occult has to do with communication with those who are not of God, but are of Satan. If you are of God it does not make sense to have a relationship with those who are of Satan that desire to destroy you. There really is a war going on and you don’t want to be in the middle of it until you are prepared to survive it. When you are fully prepared you will have Christ and God the Father living in you and you will not need to have others help you because you will have the one that has all the power in you and he will show you what he is doing and you will follow him and do as he does. It will appear to others that you are saying and doing the things, but it will actually be God doing them through you with you in agreement with him. Until that time comes you are given God’s Word (the scriptures) to follow. You must do first things first. The scriptures will lead you through the changes that must first occur in you to make you ready to receive Christ and the Father into you, so you will be in agreement with him at that time. God at times does send angels to men to accomplish certain purposes, but you will not be able to tell an angel of God from one controlled by Satan until you get your spirit exercised in God’s word to know the good and the evil. Actually you can pick up a snake and the only way you can get immortality is for it to be given to you by God. He is the only one that has it to give. The same goes for God’s power. The hellfire and damnation penalty is for those who willingly work for Satan. There are things that have been given to those that live in higher levels of the creation, but with God you do not need to be too concerned about learning how such things work because God can use them if he desires to for you or he can do anything he wants to in the creation even without such things. I do understand your curiosity though and it is up to God how much that he will give you concerning knowledge of such things. Remember that all this creation and all of the things in it will all be destroyed except God’s people at the end of this world, so all the knowledge that you get about this creation will eventually be of little use when it is gone. The new creation is the really interesting one.

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John,

The cyclical universe is not a new concept. If our universe was just one of many in a mega-verse it would make very little difference to us because we are trapped in this universe, so we and all that we have built up would still be destroyed when it collapsed. I won’t go into the expansion topic right now, but consider that a decrease in the size of matter, etc. looks the same as an...

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John,

The cyclical universe is not a new concept. If our universe was just one of many in a mega-verse it would make very little difference to us because we are trapped in this universe, so we and all that we have built up would still be destroyed when it collapsed. I won’t go into the expansion topic right now, but consider that a decrease in the size of matter, etc. looks the same as an increase in the amount of space. The red shift is at least partly caused by sub-energy interactions with energy photons.

We can easily see the mechanism in our universe that changes a large amount of matter motion into energy motion just by looking up at the stars or by looking at the blue glow in a nuclear reactor (fusion and fission). Tell me how I can see the mechanism that changes that large amount of energy motion back into matter motion in this universe to balance it out, so it can be stable indefinitely. (I could have talked about fourth and fifth vector motion, but I wanted to keep the concept simple using only common easily understood terms.) The Hubble information may give some usable information, but remember it can’t give any information about anything that might exist beyond the light horizon, so it can’t prove whether the universe is infinite, etc. I am not saying that it can’t be done. I am just saying that man’s current technology can’t do it. I also won’t go into dispersion of structures in infinite systems, etc. right now.

We agree that time is not a physical dimension. Events don’t go from the future to the past because the future does not exist and it, therefore, can’t have any events in it to go anywhere. All events occur in the present and only can change the next present moment when they come. The change of a particle’s direction due to an interaction at the present moment is a continuous process that occurs completely in the present. The present is a dynamic continuous process. The past does not exist either, so nothing can be in the past. The sun does actually travel across the sky from east to west when viewed from a point on the earth. It all depends on the observer’s point of view. According to Einstein, all observers’ points of view are valid and none is preferred over another. I guess that it could be considered that the earth is standing still and the whole universe is just rotating around it. I have always been amazed at how the small engine in my car can rotate the earth under it that way.

It seems to me that if a being lived in an infinite universe and filled it up so that it was all that existed in that universe and was, therefore, infinite. It could still be defined by its properties such as that it is alive, it is infinite, it can do an infinite number of things, etc. and that defining it as an entity (being or existence) with those properties would not make it finite. Here is a question for you, so I can understand your concept of infinite better. If a being existed in a two dimensional infinite universe so that it stretched out infinitely in all directions within its two dimensional universe, but somewhere within it there was a 1 mile square area that it did not occupy, would it be an infinite being because it stretched out in all directions to infinity or would it be finite because it did not occupy that 1 mile square area? Of course, there would be some lines in which it could not be considered to stretch out to infinity in both directions because they would intersect the 1 mile area, but there still would be an infinite number of lines in which it would stretch out in both directions to infinity. It doesn’t seem inconsistent that the God of the entire universe could have created this planet as an important focus point for him in fulfilling his purpose for creating the universe. He could also make whatever guidelines he desired and make them the guidelines for the entire universe, since he made the entire universe. He could give these guidelines to man to follow if he desired to do so and also apply them to all of the universe. It would be totalitarianism, but as the creator of the entire universe it would be his property and his right to do with it as he pleases. Scientists actually desire that the guidelines that determine the operation of the universe are universal rather than having one set of physics rules apply to this planet and another different set apply to another planet or the sun, etc. So far it appears that those rules or guidelines are universal. If you look at this world as a network with each motion within it being a node, God could be looked at as the master node that connected to all motion nodes in this world with the ability to completely observe and control all of those nodes. He would also be the only node that would consist of only himself in the network outside of our world depending on whether you considered a single node network a network or not

I could be wrong, but I believe you have the belief that the scriptures are just a story book made by men to suit men’s plans, needs, or desires and would contain many errors due to translations, etc. compared to the original meanings at the time that each part was made. If that is what you are implying, you make a common error of those who don’t believe in God and that is to assume that there is not God to write the book and therefore it must just be the work of men. Secondly, some say God may exist and the scriptures may have been given to man by God, but it has undoubtedly been changed by men to suit their needs or desires since its original introduction by God when it has been translated into different languages or errors in transcription, etc. would have occurred that would have changed its meaning. All of these beliefs come down to looking at God as though he is just another man with no power to keep men from making such changes or to control the process of making and translating the scriptures, so that no errors were made or if they were made, making it so that they would not change the meaning in any material way. In fact though, if God could make this world, he would be able to keep his word in the world the way that he gave it originally, so that we would get the same meaning in our language as it had in the original language at its original introduction. In the scriptures God says that his word (the scriptures) will outlast this world, so that covers the other main possible problem, which is that God may have given his word to man and then just gone off and allowed man to mess it up because he had no real interest in assuring that it is preserved even though he would have the power to do so. Actually the Old Testament says that God hung the earth upon nothing. It also talks about the circle of the earth, so anyone that read the scriptures would have known that the earth is not flat. I have found that the scriptures describe things about how the world was made that are still not known by man in this world. The Dead Sea scrolls date back to about 100 AD and contain about 95 percent of the Old Testament and it has been found to agree with newer versions of the scriptures such as the King James Version. This would leave a possible window of about 60 years after Jesus’ resurrection for someone to have redone the Old Testament to include references about Jesus, but in 100 AD the concept that the earth was hung upon nothing and that it was not flat, etc. would be well ahead of their time. The concept that all matter and energy, etc. (the forms that exist in the earth) are composed of motion is clearly in the Old Testament scriptures, but even today man does not fully recognize that, even though it should be evident to most by now from observations in the last fifty to one hundred years or so.

It is not the technology that causes the problems it is the improper application of the technology that causes the problems. It’s an operator problem not a problem with the tools. If you count coal, nuclear fuels, oil, natural gas, and renewable fuels there are enough energy supplies to last another 200 to 300 years if wisely used. Food is a little more variable because it depends both on God giving good weather for crops and man expanding the use of modern farm machinery and techniques to poor countries, etc. Things greatly depend on when people return to God. It is true that the abstract wealth is a tool of those who control the economy to maintain their position of wealth in the world by having such great wealth in comparison to the average man that if the value of the money goes down greatly they will still have adequate wealth to maintain their standard of living or even increase it because those without that wealth will have nothing and have to work for them for very little just to survive. Without God people always fear that something could happen that would take everything away from them. No matter how much a person has he can always imagine some catastrophe that would take it all away. In addition to that people are greedy and desire to control others to get them to do what they want. More money makes them feel better about themselves because they can rationalize that the wealth is a sign that they are in some way better than others. It also gives them more control over others. If you shift wealth away from money to ownership of real and personal property, as an example, the wealthy would just take ownership of most of that property leaving most people with very little. The rich would bid up the price for land, houses, cars, furniture, appliances, etc. so high that the average person would have to rent these things instead of buying them. If the economy went bad the average person would not be able to make the payments and would lose everything in the same way that it works with the money now. My point is that the rich will always set up the system so that they are sure that they can maintain their wealth compared to the average person so that they will always be able to maintain their living standard and so that any problem in the economy such as a famine, etc. is always carried by the average people or the poor. I still am not sure exactly what you are saying about the money though. It appears that you are saying that all money would be owned by the public (government) and not owned privately. So, if I went to work, what would I get paid in and if it would be money how would things work differently than they do now? Would it be confiscated in some way if I decided to save it instead of immediately spending it or what?

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Paul,

I first began to question the BBT upon learning that gravitational collapse and universal expansion have to be balanced for the universe to be as stable as it is. According to measurements, it appears to be. If the process of expansion is being neutralized by gravity, such that the space between galaxies is expanding at a rate equal to which it is effectively falling into them, where...

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Paul,

I first began to question the BBT upon learning that gravitational collapse and universal expansion have to be balanced for the universe to be as stable as it is. According to measurements, it appears to be. If the process of expansion is being neutralized by gravity, such that the space between galaxies is expanding at a rate equal to which it is effectively falling into them, where is the expansion? Yes, it gets lots more complicated as to the mechanisms, but that quite a long topic. I should note that the effect attributed to dark energy is close to what a cosmological constant would be and Einstein originally proposed the CC to balance gravity.

What I'm saying about time is that it is an emergent effect of motion, just like temperature. Lawrence has been speculating on another thread about how classical reality emerges from quantum energy. You and I both agree that all that physically exists is this field of energy. The way that the classical reality emerges is through those contracting vortices of structure and expanding bubbles of energy in that field. It creates configurations and replaces them with the next, as this energy moves about. What we think of as time is this emergent effect, not a fundamental dimension. So events, which do not exist except as they are present, go from being future potential to past circumstance. The reason we can never square the circle is because our minds are linear, but reality is a network and so there are always loose threads that our models try to ignore.

You point out Einstein saying all observers points of view are valid, then switch to your religious message and say this planet is special. What if there is another planet with intelligent life on it and those beings had a central idealized individual. Would you say to them that no, their ideal is false and only Jesus is the one true way to the infinite spirit? Yes, lots of signs in the Old Testament do point to Jesus, but put it in the context of the times. Everyone was looking for a Messiah and Jesus did go out of his way to play the role. Remember the part about having them fetch him a donkey, because the prophesies said the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on one? How about all his followers laying a path of palm fronds. They knew what the prophesies said and they were consciously trying to fulfill them. Now don't think I'm trying to debunk the story. What it did was to create harmony on lots of different levels and tie people together in ways that were not consciously intended. Early Christianity strongly influenced and was strongly influenced by the ancient Greeks. As I've mentioned to you previously, it had a deep emotional connection for them because it reflected their primordial tradition of the Year King. Which was to designate a young male as such, treat him like royalty for a year and then sacrifice him at the spring bacchanalia. So Jesus' crucifixion over Passover provided a connection for them to adopt a monotheistic tradition, since their polytheistic religion was loosing focus and didn't tie them together. That Jesus and Zeus are so phonetically similar probably didn't hurt either.

The fact is though, that it's now two thousand years later and we have to figure out the next step, not just keep pushing the rewind button. For all those people who are not Christians, Jesus really is another tribal deity. There has to be some person or process that can unite all people the way that Jesus united so many, so long ago. Jesus' symbol was the fish and it's been argued that it signified the dawning of the age of Pisces, just as we are a few years away from the actual dawning of the age of Aquarius. So possibly it has something to do with water.

As for the idea that no matter how you structure society, the rich and the powerful will always find ways to enslave the rest of us, keep in mind that one of their primary tools over the centuries has been monotheism, which legitimized the divine right of kings and the whole notion that the source of all life and power was a divine father figure, so that anyone with a position of authority could play the role of minor deity over those under them. That's why I keep pointing out that the universal state of the absolute isn't an ideal. It's essence. The source is what we all rise from, not an ideal we fell from. Those at the top of the social order are there for only as long as they remain there, whether because they are doing a good job and deserve to be, or because they have seized power and are holding on until the pressures grow too great. Remember the father is of the previous generation. It isn't eternal, but a stage we reach and then pass on. Those higher up the evolutionary and social ladder are emergent layers of evolution that depend on those below them, far more than those below depend on those above. In fact, in nature, emergent levels tend to be predatory for the purpose of controlling the growth of those they depend on. If they succeed in destroying the health of those below them, then they are no longer necessary.

If we understood that money really is a form of public utility, which it is, this doesn't prevent anyone from making reasonable use of it, but does mitigate against excessive hoarding of it. It's the hoarding of money that destroys economies, because ever more has to be issued and this drives up prices and forces ever more assets to be monetized to support its value, when it would be far more economically and ecologically wise to conserve limited resources and those which don't regenerate as fast as we use them up. As it is, so much is wasted and destroyed as everyone has to race each other to gain as much wealth as possible, because it's so easy to fall behind otherwise. The way the system is set up now, it is like an enormous hurricane, sucking up as much energy as possible and sending it all crashing back down, when what we really need is a controllable convection cycle that pulls energy out of where is is excessive and puts it where it has the most long term benefit. This doesn't mean lots of large scale social programs to support lots of people who are not giving back to society, but getting back to localized economies and communities that generate and recycle their own wealth and assets. As I said, the banking system should be a function of local government, not huge private or public banks. That way, the organic foundation will be solid enough to support a broader economy, without wasting as much resources. It's an idea to work with, because what we have is close to collapse.

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John,

I am not saying that I believe in the Big Bang Theory. What I am saying is that even if the universe is not expanding, it is still not balanced and is going down a one-way road in which matter is changed into energy. The thing that is missing from the stable universe theory is the mechanism that balances out the easily evident conversion of matter to energy by producing a...

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John,

I am not saying that I believe in the Big Bang Theory. What I am saying is that even if the universe is not expanding, it is still not balanced and is going down a one-way road in which matter is changed into energy. The thing that is missing from the stable universe theory is the mechanism that balances out the easily evident conversion of matter to energy by producing a large-scale change from energy back into matter. You still did not answer my question as to what that mechanism is or how I can observe it. If such a mechanism exists and you know what it is and how it works, show it to me so we can be together in that area of knowledge. So far all I see is the great conversion of matter into energy. This makes sense to me because matter particles are a higher motion content structure than energy photons on the average. This would naturally cause matter to tend to dissipate into energy as a normal extension of entropy. It also makes sense from the standpoint of the scriptures because this world was only intended to be a temporary place for God to use to produce his body and it will last long enough for that to be completed. Yes sub-energy (dark energy to you) has a lot to do with gravity, etc., but I can’t go into that now.

Yes a motion through a distance of space at a specific motion amplitude generates a period and its order of position compared to other such motions. Such periods and orders of position are parts of the standard definition of time. Temperature is an average effect of a large number of motions each traveling with its own motion amplitude through its own distance. Because temperature is an average large-scale effect of many motions, the period and order effects of each individual motion are hidden from view. Actually I go beneath quantum theory to the nature of the structure that generates those effects. At that level one can understand the cause of each quantum effect possibility and can then get back into the situation of being able to accurately predict which of many possible effects will actually happen in a given circumstance (instead of just the probability of each possible effect) once the appropriate technology is developed to permit observation and control on the size and motion amplitude scales involved. Actually, all that really exists is the current individual motions that make up all of the motion entities such as energy photons and matter particles, etc. that exist. The contracting vortices and expanding bubbles are just images made up to explain the fact that they really don’t know what is going on that causes the various possible interaction results and their probabilities of happening in a given interaction. Just because you don’t know why or how some interaction can generate several possible outcomes or figure out which outcome will occur in a particular interaction does not mean that it is caused by pure chance. The fact that all possible outcomes that appear in reality do not always have the same probability shows that there is a hidden structure behind the scenes that causes that variation. An entity’s motion progression through space is accomplished through changes in its position information. The changes in its position information are generated by a combination of its direction and motion amplitude information. The direction and motion amplitude information can only change due to an interaction with another motion. As I have said before several times, we agree that there is no such thing as a physical time dimension.

When I want to pass on some information to someone, but I am not sure whether he is willing or able to accept it, I will often make what is to me a humorous remark that contains the information hidden in it to see if the other person picks it up. The Einstein comment was such a remark. I thought you might get it with the remark about the small engine in the car turning the earth, but it is not important, so I will go on. God does not specifically exclude the possibility of man on other planets, so to me it is an open possibility. The earth is not just this planet. It is the four dimensional system containing the lower four dimensions of the eight dimensional creation. If God did create man on another planet, Jesus may have been sent to that planet also or he could intend that man from this planet will eventually go to that planet and bring God’s word to them in that way. If Jesus had appeared to them also, their central idealized individual would be the same as ours. If they had just invented such an individual that was not real, it would be best for them to come to the true God through Jesus Christ so that they could be saved also. It would just in that case open up another people in another place for those who are of God in this world to preach the gospel to. There are some things like those that you mention that one could consider that Jesus could have read about them in the scriptures and then just have purposely done those things to fulfill the scriptures. That is why I picked some of the things that Jesus could not have controlled if he was just a man. I suppose that you could say that maybe Hared could have been in on the whole thing and sent troops to Bethlehem to kill all the children under two years old there to fulfill the scriptures that said that would happen when he heard that Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem from the wise men (who I guess were also in on the whole thing) just so Jesus’ parents (who would also have been in on the whole thing) would have a reason to flee to Egypt with Jesus to fulfill the scriptures that said that would happen, but to me that would not be very credible. I suppose that there might be some conspiracy theorists that might fall for it though. I don’t know about you, but if I was just a man, I would not want to play a part that would end in terrible torture and death after only three and a half years of fame during which many people would try to kill me. After all if I was just a man, I would really have no assurance that they would not succeed way before the three and a half years was up. God did use similarities in false religions to bring people out of them and into Christ. That just shows how much power he has over things to make them all work together to accomplish his purpose.

I do realize that those who do not chose to receive Christ need to rationalize their choice in their minds and also to others. After all, to turn down the perfect life for eternity would not make one look very wise unless some reason that at least seemed to be reasonable could be thought up. I know. I also went through that phase of life in my rebellious early years.

There have been many times since that time so long ago that Jesus has united large groups of people in Christ in revivals at many places around the world, so he is not outdated as you imply. The fish symbol came about because some of the disciples were fishermen, so when Jesus called them to follow him he said, Follow me and I will make you to become fishers of men. He thereby signified that they would use his word to catch men and bring them to him so that they could be saved.

Before they used monotheism, they used polytheism, and atheism, etc. They will try to use whatever they can to divide and control people. The fact that people use things for wrong purposes does not mean that those things are wrong (or right for that matter). It just means that those people are wrong to try to fulfill evil purposes. Pretty much everything that a person can do can be used for bad purposes. Should we, therefore, consider everything to be wrong and just sit in a corner and do nothing for the rest of our lives so we won’t be thought to be wrong? People have used atheism to put a man up to the people as a God. Is that any better? I have heard that some even put the earth up as God. The only real question is, who is the real God? Is he a big piece of rock, just a man, or the one that created the universe? The fact that people try to imitate him either to try to discredit him or to try to get people to do what they want has no bearing on his reality. I look at it more that the universal state of the absolute (God) is the ideal one that we can rise to (not by our own ability, but by him raising us up to be as he is by his power). I am not sure where you get the fell from part, even God in the scriptures says, All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Notice he says that they are coming toward him not falling away. They just can’t make it all the way because of sin, which is why Jesus came into the world so their sins can be forgiven. In man the father passes away because man the image of God is not as good as the real thing, but in God the Father is eternal life that does not pass away. The problem is that you tend to look at God as though he is just a man. This is normal for those that start to leave God. You can’t help it because God has made man that way. It is one of the signs of that condition.

If I am reading you right you are saying that each city or town should have and own its own banking system to be used only for local purposes. Would each bank issue its own money or would there be a central federal bank that still issued a single currency? Would I be limited to only working, buying, and selling things in the city I lived in? Could I still save some of my money in the city bank or would that be prohibited? Could I put some money in another city’s bank if it paid more interest, etc.? Would there be any commerce between cities and if so, how would that work? What if I lived out in the country on a farm? Hint. Sometimes things that look like close to collapse are just the results of the actions of some to control others and get them to do what they want them to do so they can get gain from them. Of course, many get caught in the middle and either suffer loss or are used as scapegoats to get peoples’ minds off of the ones that really cause the bad effects. It is interesting how, if it was not all planned, the bad real estate loans are set up in phases that are divided up over the period from the end of 2008 to into 2012 as to when the payment increases occur. This period is about the same as that of the great depression of 1929 to 1933. It looks to me like the economy was preloaded to keep the negative bias going for that period. To me it does not seem reasonable that intelligent bankers would allow themselves to be set up for such a fall unless there was some other purpose that they desired to accomplish that they thought this would allow them to accomplish.

On your later post:

From the standpoint of those in charge, the ability to create a variable money supply is considered a positive benefit. If they want to get money from the tax payers for something that would not be approved by them all they have to do is create the money that they need and the tax comes in the form of a decrease in the value of the taxpayer’s money, which they are not likely to connect as a tax to them. One of the operative concepts of the current economic structure is that if you continually add extra money into the system, you keep the economy expanding and going at a good rate. If it is carried out properly, the expansion of the money supply is controlled to keep it in line with the acceptable range of economic expansion. That it wasn’t controlled properly shows either incompetence on the part of those that caused the problem or it was purposely designed according to someone’s agenda to accomplish some other goal. So far the main effect of policies has been that the wealth of most has been diminished by the decrease in value of their assets such as real estate (the average person’s house), the types of investments that the average person is locked into in their government sponsored and controlled savings plans (401K, IRA’s, etc.) such as stocks and bonds, etc. through the mutual funds that they are allowed to have in those plans and by the increases in prices that have been allowed to take place such as in the price of gasoline, etc. At the same time large amounts of taxpayers money has been transferred to the banking and financial industry. At this time the ones that are generally in the best situation are those that put their money into bank CD’s etc. when the interest rates were still high (5 years at 5% or above) and still hold those long term CD’s. Ultimately whether such will come out unscathed depends on whether the banks are allowed to fail also and (if they are) whether the government backs its commitment through the FDIC to reimburse the depositors for their losses. It is evident that the commercial sector will not be protected as can be seen in the way that the automobile industry has been handled, at least from the perspective of the employees who will lose their benefits and likely much of their pay in the bankruptcies. The companies and those who own and run them may come out ok in the long run. This lowering of average wages and benefits is an evident part of the agenda. There are other things in the works that will further lower the effective living standards of most. The currently scheduled changes to infrastructure planed for the next several years are some of these things. New power plants and upgrades to existing plants and changes to green initiatives will be primarily paid for through increased costs to the consumer. This will likely increase bills by 40 to 50 percent or more. The same will apply to sewer, water, and trash service upgrades. This will hit lower income people the most because such things are a greater percentage of their income and they tend to live in older houses that are not as well insolated etc. So far most of the government infrastructure money is aimed more at things such as roads and bridges that the government has not yet figured out how to offload from the tax base into separate payments for individuals as has been done over the years for other public responsibilities of the government such as sidewalks, sewer, water, trash, electric and natural gas power, and telephone services, etc. This means that none of the infrastructure money will filter down to the average person except possibly in the form of better roads and bridges, etc., but the costs of the overall infrastructure repairs, replacements, and upgrades in other areas will filter directly to the consumers in the form of greatly increased bills for the same amount of usage. Most of these increased bills will take place in the 2009 to 2013 time period. This is also the period in which the loaded real estate contracts will continuously phase in higher loan payments for many. Isn’t that an interesting coincidence? Oil and gasoline costs are also currently going back up. You are right that current policies are mostly destructive if the goal is to quickly return the economy to positive expansion, but the question is whether that is the true goal of those involved in making the policies. At this point most of the money that has been given out by the government has not yet entered into the economy at large. The large banks that have received it are not loaning it out for the most part. Instead they are keeping it as reserves to cover for such things as a bank run, etc. The only thing that has slowed down the rate of fall this year has been the effective tax rebate for working people and the $250 payments to people on Social Security, etc., but most of this has now occurred or has been discounted in peoples spending plans and so the fall is likely to increase again in the near future. Most people with revolving credit such as credit card debt will continue to see their bills increase due to increased interest and fee costs and increased minimum payment percentages, etc. For the next 3 to 5 years the stage is set to keep an upward pressure on the costs that need to be paid by most people while at the same time keep a downward pressure on wages and benefits. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what the results will be and what the intent of those that caused it was. As to whether the goal of those who caused this wealth contraction for the middle and lower classes in the United States extends to completely changing the economic and, or, political structure of the government, as you seem to be embracing, is yet to be seen. People tend to be very foolish in the things that they will allow under such circumstances. You could end up always having to praise fearless leader for his compassion in saving you from the capitalist pigs, or else. Of course, fearless leader will really be the same people that once were the capitalist pigs. You won’t know that, however, so you will be happy that he saved you so you can work hard to preserve the Peoples Republic of the United States, or else.

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Jason,

Because man is basically selfish, greedy and naturally desires to fill his life with as much pleasure as possible while at the same time experiencing as little displeasure as possible, it is natural for him to consider anything that helps him to fulfill these goals as love while thinking of anything that is in any way the opposite of these things as not love, but as something bad. ...

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Jason,

Because man is basically selfish, greedy and naturally desires to fill his life with as much pleasure as possible while at the same time experiencing as little displeasure as possible, it is natural for him to consider anything that helps him to fulfill these goals as love while thinking of anything that is in any way the opposite of these things as not love, but as something bad. In my experience in the natural world without God when I was young, I found that it is not until one has children that he cares for that this concept of love is found to be lacking. When his young child decides that he wants to play in the busy street, he is not likely to tell him “I would not do that myself, but because I love you and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, or make you unhappy in any way I have to say do whatever makes you happy.” Instead because he truly loves his child, he will quickly run and pick his child up and take him out of the busy street to protect his life even if it makes the child unhappy or angry with him. A similar reaction would usually result if the child were a teenager thinking of experimenting with cocaine or other dangerous drugs for the same reason. You then begin to come to the understanding that to love someone is not just the easy part of giving them that warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from giving them everything that they desire and always agreeing with them to make them feel good about themselves, but can also be the hard part of telling them that they are wrong and trying to keep them from doing things that they desire to do that are destructive to them if they do them or that would be hurtful or destructive to others and therefore would be wrong for them to do.

I find myself in that condition with you. I could tell you to just go and do whatever you desire and be happy, which would be easier on me because it would make you happy with me, but at the same time I would know that unless someone later corrected you and gave you the truth you would not be saved. It is God’s will for me to love you in truth, so you can be saved, not just make you feel good, so I have no real choice. I must tell you the truth regardless of how it makes you feel toward me, for your sake. If you come to God and he asks you to do a similar thing for someone else, you will come to understand that although it is not pleasant for you or the other person, it is just a part of your training so that you can learn what true love is and how to give it to others and it can mean salvation to the other person.

The problem is that it is not a matter of what I believe or desire or what you believe or desire that really matters. If you really desire a true love relation with God, what really matters is what God desires. In the scriptures Jesus says, (I am the way the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.) Your problem is really not with me. It is with God. I have just informed you of what God says about how he will accept you to come to him. If you believe that God did send his only begotten son Jesus Christ into the world to die for you so that you could have your sins forgiven so you can be saved and to lead you to God the Father so you can have a restored love relationship with him and the Father, then you should see that he is telling you how to come to the Father in the way that he will accept you, so you can have the relationship with him that you desire. Since Jesus said, (The words that I speak unto you are not my words, but are of the Father.) Your real problem is not with God’s son Jesus Christ either, but with God the Father who said those things through Jesus. If you really desire a relationship of true love with God you would out of your love and care for him desire to come to him in the way that pleases him. If you are not willing to do so you are just seeking a selfish earthly love. In that case you desire for God to give you what you want and to make you happy, but you don’t really care for what he desires in love from you. In that case instead of desiring for God to be your love, you just desire for him to be your servant. A true love relationship goes both ways.

Not everything that is different from the bible is evil. It is not evil to eat ice cream, for example, even though it is not mentioned in the scriptures and, therefore is different from the scriptures. It is only those things that are contrary to God’s will for you that he has expressed in the scriptures that are evil. In this case since God says clearly that you can only come to him by his son Jesus Christ, if someone tells you that you can come to him in some other way, his action is evil because it is a lie and he is really trying to deceive you to keep you from coming to God in the way that God will receive you. Ultimately, his action leads you away from God and salvation and if followed will end in you not being saved. That is why it is evil because it is an attempt to murder or destroy you. When you understand this you can see that it is not giving you wise counsel, nurture, healing, inspiration, or love. A person that gives that kind of advice to you either actually hates you and desires to destroy you or is confused himself and does not know the truth. That is why I say that if you really want a love relationship with God come to him though the way that he has given to you by the scriptures which is God’s Word or communication to you that is intended to bring you to him and let him tell you directly who he is and how you can get what you desire with him. If you want to start out easy, start with the New Testament. It will not offend me if you go directly to God through Jesus Christ through the scriptures because my desire is that both you and God get the relationship together that you both desire, if your desire is a true love relationship.

God gives blessings to all both good and evil. Jesus said to his disciples, (Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.) Receiving God’s blessings is not a sign that you are either good or evil to God because he gives them to both because of his love for all. It is good that you are being nudged to do good works now you are also being nudged to God to do them for him. He will give you the truth so you will no longer need to continue to pursue it and he will give you his Spirit so you can truly inspire others in the truth.

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Paul,

I didn't realize the issue of energy turning to matter was even a question! Fission and fusion. Even in Big Bang terms, the universe starts off as an enormous burst of energy and out of that condenses increasingly complex forms of matter. Star dust. Don't plants essentially photosynthesize matter out of light? Yes, I've added some speculation to that, such as that light travels as an...

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Paul,

I didn't realize the issue of energy turning to matter was even a question! Fission and fusion. Even in Big Bang terms, the universe starts off as an enormous burst of energy and out of that condenses increasingly complex forms of mat