Fundamental (not -ist) Theology

[DavidD]

I haven't been able to read everything here carefully, but to continue from the other thread about the problem of evil, I notice that the comments here and there are focusing on God as Creator. My biggest problem with the way everyone talks about God is making this fit believably with all of God's other attributes like power, love and goodness. If someone wants to define God as whoever or whatever created the physical universe, spiritual universe, however much there is, I would welcome such specificity. I find that to be a rather distant God, with no reason to care about me especially, so I can understand the attitude that natural disasters are just the way there are, so deal with it.

 

I listen to many scientific colleagues say they have no need for such a God to understand the universe. It's not that they dismiss any possibility of God in creation. Cosmologists talking about this universe being created out of another one can cast God in the role of some hobbyist who was caught up in the creation much as Fred writes of God being involved in the creation rather than crafting it. Why favor traditional views of God as Creator over that one?

 

My favorite definition of God is that God is the one who answers when I pray, "God help me!" Is that the same thing as the Creator? It doesn't have to be. They don't have to be related at all.

 

I admit a bias toward the God Aletheia described as a bell boy. There are other ways to see that, God as Helper. I don't know exactly how much God hates suffering, if at all. If not hate, is it a different sort of determination to ease excessive suffering, if indeed some suffering is necessary? I just know that the God of my understanding is centered around intimacy and love. I can see that in a Trinitarian way or more generally, but it is hard for me to look at everything people say about God and say that it fits with this Helper part about which I feel most sure.

 

As far as the problem of evil, it was an obstacle to me in my twenties, then some time after I started praying and pursuing God again in my thirties, it disappeared as a problem without my deciding on an explicit solution. I don't see anything God does or anything natural as evil. I see people doing evil. I think why they do is more complicated than Adam's sin and a fallen world, but whatever it is, I don't hold it against God. Then again, I'm sure we're not all talking about the same God.

[FredP]

I haven't been able to read everything here carefully, but to continue from the other thread about the problem of evil, I notice that the comments here and there are focusing on God as Creator. My biggest problem with the way everyone talks about God is making this fit believably with all of God's other attributes like power, love and goodness. If someone wants to define God as whoever or whatever created the physical universe, spiritual universe, however much there is, I would welcome such specificity. I find that to be a rather distant God, with no reason to care about me especially, so I can understand the attitude that natural disasters are just the way there are, so deal with it.

There's no reason, in principle, why God as creator must be distant. Emotional distance is a human response to power that we project onto God. Actually, if God is the transcendent ground of all that exists, then God is in a uniquely good position both to know and to care about you personally. If God were just another being fumbling around inside the universe, he may never happen to run across you at all in his travels, or have the time and energy to be of much help to you.

 

In my mind, a "helper" God is just another being in the world, ultimately subject to the same limitations we are. I don't really understand what's so inspiring about that. Maybe it touches our sense of pathos, and gives us a warm fuzzy feeling in a cold, heartless universe, to know that somebody out there is trying his darndest to look out for us. But even this is just another "creature" in a universe with no ultimate ground or purpose. Maybe this is really the way the world is; but in that case I'd just say the universe has a helper, and there is no God. At that point, yes, I'd say we're definitely not talking about the same God.

[flowperson]

To top it all off Lisa Randall looks enough like Jodie foster to be her sister. The twilight zone again!!

That in itself is a good enough reason to look her up! Jodie is just awesome.

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There was an extensive article about Ms. Randall in The New York Times Science Times on Tuesday, Nov. 1st. The accompanying picture reveals her to be a genuinely foxy lady.

 

flow....

[flowperson]

["It is a paradox isn't it and yet it seems to be right on the tip of my brain.  I think so much of it goes back to mankind's believing that for a being to be perfect, for a being to be God, that is must not change. For if it changed, then how could it have been perfect before? I owe a debt to process philosophy and most especially to Taoism for helping me to appreciate that CHANGE is perfection and that our definition of perfection needs to change. "

 

Ok, maybe I'm too simple-minded for this discussion... but it seems clear to me that one of the things we as humans tend to see as intelligence/consciousness is the ability to change/adapt.  It seems that God would be so very limited if He couldn't change... and, like a hard-line determinism, I'm stuck with the thought, "then what's the point"???!!!    AND, if the purpose of this spiritual quest stuff is to effect our own change, then, are we superior to a God who cannot change????? 

/off to find advil 

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As observed elsewhere on this site, one of the hottest topics for discussion among some progressive theologians about a decade or so ago was whether or not God and His/Her messengers were shape-shifters. You can't have any more profound a change than that.

 

Seriously, I too believe that the Tao Te Ching has more wisdom in it on this matter than anything else I've read.

 

 

flow....

[Cynthia]

David - I'd be in the Both/And category again! The idea that the Creator God and the God with us God are separate is, I believe (I know Fred knows this!!!) an ancient heresy called.... (starts with an M???ism ). If you read Genesis carefully, it actually makes a lot of sense. The creator God speaks and interacts very differently than the relational God. The Urantia Book (anybody ever seen that one???) also makes a similar case for separate creator and Immanuel Gods.

 

On the other hand, God is much bigger than we can perceive. If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. In other words, if you think you can picture God or have the concept of God nailed down, you can be absolutely sure that you are wrong. Finally! A certainty

 

I too believe in and experience God as personal and inexplicably interested in and fond of me. Ever so cool. Still transcendent though.... and so much more that I haven't even thought of yet. That's the fun of this relationship - you never run out of new things to learn about God. This board makes it fun! I appreciate all the big thoughts from everybody here!

[AletheiaRivers]

The idea that the Creator God and the God with us God are separate is, I believe (I know Fred knows this!!!) an ancient heresy called.... (starts with an M???ism  )

 

I looked and looked and couldn't find a heresy of this sort that started with an M. Now it's driving me crazy. Gnosticism (I swear I'm not picking on it Fred!) is described that way. "Modalism" is considered a heresy, but that has to do with the Trinity. "Marcion" was a gnostic who lived circa 85-160 AD. His followers came to be known as "Marcionites". There was the Montanist heresy and Manichaeism (who was sorta gnostic). Are any of these what your were thinking of Cynthia?

 

Fred, I hope you do know this. It'll bug me all day if you don't.

Edited November 19, 2005 by AletheiaRivers

[AletheiaRivers]

If you read Genesis carefully, it actually makes a lot of sense. The creator God speaks and interacts very differently than the relational God. The Urantia Book (anybody ever seen that one???) also makes a similar case for separate creator and Immanuel Gods.

 

You read the Urantia book Cynthia? Seriously, the whole thing? I'm impressed if you did. That thing is HUGE.

[flowperson]

Ummmm, I believe it was Manecheanism that was the heresy that was so despicable to the early church. Marcion was also considered to be a heretic, but I don't believe that he had a widely dispersed group of believers (Marcionites) as did the "M" word followers. The Manecheans were people who followed the thoughts and beliefs of an early Gnostic by the name of Mani.

 

The Urantians were a late 19th century sect that believed that they migrated here in spirit from another place in the cosmos. They had a very strong group of believers in and around the Chicago area, with a place of education and worship on Division St. near the lake. There was also a large contingent in and around LaGrange in the Western suburbs.

 

The late Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead was a sometimes believer in Urantianism, and read the Book of Urantia frequently.

 

I tried to read it once, but it bored me so much I lapsed back into my habits of reading ancient texts and scientific publications. More reality and less pie in the sky bye and bye.

 

flow....

Edited November 19, 2005 by flowperson

[Cynthia]

Marcion sounds right... sorry for the brain freeze!

/off to Google

 

Yes! Here's a quote:

"Marcion taught that the god of the Old Testament was not the true God but rather that the true and higher God had been revealed only with Jesus Christ. Marcion wrote the Antitheses to show the differences between the god of the Old Testament and the true God.

 

Marcion was excommunicated from the Roman church c. 144 CE, but he succeeded in establishing churches of his own to rival the catholic Church for the next two centuries. "

 

 

As for the Urantia book, no, I haven't read it all. I usually read pretty fast, but that one takes about an hour per paragraph - - - and then I only have 10% comprehension!!! I knew some people years ago who had a study group and were pretty into it. They lived in a centered, peaceful, compassionate way that I admired but I never really "got" the book. Jerry Garcia, huh????? interesting.

Edited November 19, 2005 by Cynthia

[AletheiaRivers]

I googled "List of Heresies" yesterday, figuring it would give me an alphabetical list of "official church heresies" and I found this page:

 

Course on Heresies

 

It has quite a bit of interesting info. For example: I never knew Augustine followed Mani for a while, or that Origen had one foot slightly over the line into the heretic camp. Cool stuff.

Edited November 20, 2005 by AletheiaRivers

[FredP]

It has quite a bit of interesting info. For example: I never knew Augustine followed Mani for a while, or that Origen had one foot slightly over the line into the heretic camp.  Cool stuff.

Yes, Confessions VII deals specifically with his conversion from Manicheanism to Neoplatonism. You might be especially interested in Confessions XI after the discussion we've been having, as he deals with "The Eternal Creator and the Creation in Time."

[FredP]

Yes, Marcion taught that the wrathful God of the O. T. was a different (and inferior) God than the God of Christ. This became the basis of some of the harsher dualistic forms of Gnosticism, who unilaterally equated the O. T. God with the Demiurgos. However, not all Gnostic groups wanted to be this controversial. I'm not sure if Manicheanism made that identification explicitly or not, but it was there implicitly at least.

 

There is a lot going on in the O. T. -- thinking about creation and fall, the flood, and the tower of Babel, especially -- that really raises my eyebrows. As I don't believe these stories are historical, my concern isn't over who was the god in these stories, really? It's just the fact that there is this conception of god buried deep in our cultural and religious subconscious, who seems intent on keeping us in our place at any cost, including thwarting, and destroying if necessary, all our efforts at reaching him. It's tempting to chuckle in our modern smugness, and say, "Oh, look at those primitive folk and their silly tribal conceptions of God! How unenlightened they all were!" But upon closer inspection, the god they projected into these myths turns out to be a frighteningly accurate representation of our personal, social, and cosmic situation -- so much so that I'd go as far as to use the unfashionable word "inspiration" to describe them. Maybe our flowery, modern conceptions of God are the ones that are really unenlightened.

 

All the same, I don't buy into the two Gods theory of Marcion and the Gnostics. A polarity of cosmic "principles," yes; gods -- small "g" -- in a much more limited sense, if you want to call them that, sure. It's back to the primal duality of manifestation into which G-d enters in the self-creation of the cosmos. But the "two gods" are no more two than the two ends of a magnet. If you cut them in half, you don't separate the poles, you get two polarities instead of one. If you keep cutting them in half, you get an endless procession of polarities, you get... well, the universe.

 

I was mulling this over the other night, and it occured to me that these two fundamental concepts in metaphysics -- procession and opposition -- together are sufficient to explain the universe in its totality. Procession, which has been explored by Western thought, deals with the structural nature of forms, that they differentiate and integrate along the "chain" of Being. Opposition, which has been explored by Eastern thought, deals with the polar nature of forms, that a form logically includes and implies its opposite. It occured to me that these two views are in fact at perfect right angles to each other. Cool, huh!

[flowperson]

I agree with much of what you say, Fred. But I would take it a step farther away from the realm of the philosophical into the realm of the physical.

 

I would connote procession with light, and opposition with darkness. In the physical universe it is evident that one cannot fulfill its nature without the other; and, while the light logically proceeds with structuring, the darkness disassembles, represses, and provides the raw materials for such structuring.

 

I believe the Gnostics may have understood these distinctions and based their beliefs upon these foundations if for no other reason than most of the philosophical foundations for mathematically-based scientific thought emerged from the classic Greek civilization rather than the Roman. What do you think? Another category of forces in harmonic opposition?

 

flow....

[FredP]

I agree with much of what you say, Fred. But I would take it a step farther away from the realm of the philosophical into the realm of the physical.

The two aren't at odds. Of course one finds these patterns expressed in the physical universe, because (in Platonic terms) the particular is an expression of the universal. Creation begins with universal forms, and proceeds downward to matter. That's not a "beginning" in chronological time, however, but an expression of ontological dependence. In chronological time, the situation is reversed: elementary matter evolves through higher and higher forms to embody universal principles.

 

I would connote procession with light, and opposition with darkness.

I don't think so. Light and darkness are opposites; procession and opposition are orthogonal. (That's the $64,000 word for "at right angles," or independent from a structural standpoint. But they're not opposites.) Darkness is the mirror image of light -- its photographic negative, an analogy which works especially well in this case. So, if light is procession, then darkness isn't opposition, but the opposing procession. Does that distinction make sense? That may be what you meant.

 

In the physical universe it is evident that one cannot fulfill its nature without the other; and, while the light logically proceeds with structuring, the darkness disassembles, represses, and provides the raw materials for such structuring.

Yes, for every form, there is an equal and opposite anti-form.

 

I believe the Gnostics may have understood these distinctions and based their beliefs upon these foundations if for no other reason than most of the philosophical foundations for mathematically-based scientific thought emerged from the classic Greek civilization rather than the Roman. What do you think? Another category of forces in harmonic opposition?

Greece and Rome in harmonic opposition? I don't think Rome really gave us anything, intellectually speaking, that didn't come from Greece. (Of course, I had an ex-coworker who would say everything worthwhile from Greece actually came from Turkey. The fact that he was Turkish probably didn't cloud his judgment on this particular claim at all...)

 

Christianity, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism all relied heavily on classical Greek thought for their metaphysical structure. Which is why they were so right on just about everything.

 

[AletheiaRivers]

I've never tried this before and I don't know if it's going to work, so cross your fingers!

 

Christian Hybrid Discussion

 

Heart of Christianity Discussion

 

Heart of Christianity 2

 

Hopefully those links will go directly to three posts I made back in March 2005.

 

PS - Whoo hoo, it worked! (With lots of editing.)

 

My beliefs and views towards Christianity have changed so much this past year (I was more "pagan" then), but my overall ontological view is still pretty much the same. I appreciate so much that after a year the "dialectic" idea/discussion has come back around. Fred's comment about the magnet made me think of my old post.

Edited November 21, 2005 by AletheiaRivers

[FredP]

My beliefs and views towards Christianity have changed so much this past year (I was more "pagan" then), but my overall ontological view is still pretty much the same. I appreciate so much that after a year the "dialectic" idea/discussion has come back around. Fred's comment about the magnet made me think of my old post. 

It is interesting, as I remarked when we bumped this thread, to see how my ideas have and have not changed. I see some subtle differences, but then I also read some posts that sound like I just wrote them yesterday. Others were crucial in the formation of some ideas that I now hold in a more developed fashion. (Like the one where I discovered Anti-being!)

 

I was mulling again tonight (I have a 45 minute drive to/from work now), and it seemed to me that the notion of procession needs to be expanded upon, so that there is an explicit reference to both differentiation (downward) and integration (upward), as these seem to be quite distinct processes. This actually produces another triad -- differentiation, integration, opposition -- which, apart from just so happening to take the shape of a cross, also holds an interesting relationship to Hegel's triad. Hegel's triad -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis -- maps stations or substances, where my triad maps procedures or processes. Interestingly, my triad represents the relationships that hold between Hegel's stations, and Hegel's triad represents the poles that crystallize out of the various processes of mine. I thought it had a certain wave-particle duality about it that was rather satisfying.

 

 

I also noted that these fundamental metaphysical symbols of triad and cross are quite uniquely important to Christianity.

[AletheiaRivers]

It's back to the primal duality of manifestation into which G-d enters in the self-creation of the cosmos.

 

Universal Dialectic - "The infinite, essential, and fundamental principle of evolutionary and/or progressive creation/change which actualizes all potential states of being through the self-organizing integration of complementary existential polarities. The process of Becoming, or existence."

 

"The term itself gives evidence of what it is intended to mean - in all things there is a dialectic (a pairing of opposites), but this dialectic is itself universal (singular and infinite in scope)."

 

"The majority of metaphysical systems throughout history have found themselves forced to affirm the reality of one dualistic aspect at the expense of considering the other illusionary or ill-conceived.

 

Some traditional ontologies (those of Indian and Oriental origin in particular) favor Oneness, considering the unity to be the 'real reality,' and duality to be 'maya' or illusion. Others consider the world of duality the only reality and reject any talk of unity or Oneness as metaphysical abstraction.

 

The concept of Universal Dialectic shows that both positions settle for a half-truth. The solution offered is the recognition that unity is experienced as duality. There is no unity which does not manifest as duality, and there is no duality which does not reduce to unity."

 

The Universal Dialectic

 

I still don't agree with everything the website says (after all, they are atheist), but it's amazing that their view of "ultimate reality" describes a view which I thought I came up with all on my own (only in my view the Unity that all duality is reducible to is God).

 

The writer of the article said "For me, this is evidence that thought which is focused alongs these lines tends to proceed in a logical, sequential manner to arrive at certain eventual conclusions." I agree.

Edited November 22, 2005 by AletheiaRivers

[AletheiaRivers]

This actually produces another triad -- differentiation, integration, opposition -- which, apart from just so happening to take the shape of a cross, also holds an interesting relationship to Hegel's triad. Hegel's triad -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis -- maps stations or substances, where my triad maps procedures or processes. Interestingly, my triad represents the relationships that hold between Hegel's stations, and Hegel's triad represents the poles that crystallize out of the various processes of mine. I thought it had a certain wave-particle duality about it that was rather satisfying.

 

I've always applied the terms "thesis, antethesis, synthesis" to everything: substances, procedures and processes, matter and spirit, but then, I've never read Hegel. I assume from your comment that "his" dialectic focused more on the material? Am I understanding you correctly? (I have a feeling I'm not. )

[FredP]

I've always applied the terms "thesis, antethesis, synthesis" to everything: substances, procedures and processes, matter and spirit, but then, I've never read Hegel. I assume from your comment that "his" dialectic focused more on the material? Am I understanding you correctly? (I have a feeling I'm not.      )

No, "substance" doesn't mean "material." I was just distinguishing between looking at something as a "thing" or as a "process," and saying that theses, antitheses, and syntheses are types of "things," while differentiations, integrations, and oppositions are types of "processes." Of course there is a polarity going on here too, because you can view a process as a thing, and a thing as a process -- but that was my whole point in saying that the two triads map directly onto each other.

 

Remember brain droppings?

[DavidD]

I was mulling this over the other night, and it occured to me that these two fundamental concepts in metaphysics -- procession and opposition -- together are sufficient to explain the universe in its totality.  Procession, which has been explored by Western thought, deals with the structural nature of forms, that they differentiate and integrate along the "chain" of Being.  Opposition, which has been explored by Eastern thought, deals with the polar nature of forms, that a form logically includes and implies its opposite.  It occured to me that these two views are in fact at perfect right angles to each other.  Cool, huh!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Anything this simple that explains everything must glitter, but what is the truth beyond the sparkle?

 

The most ubiquitous opposition apparent to everyone is sexual reproduction. The Greeks thought there must be some ancient unity that was split apart to explain how hungry people are to get back together. One can find metaphorical truth in this. Life was once asexual. It still is for many species. DNA exchanges are made between like organisms, which then go on to make daughters cells without the death of the mother. Maybe someday we’ll go back to this in some technological way and just have sex for fun.

 

In reality this process in nature developed where there was a differentiation of who made eggs and who made ######, allowing additional specializations as well, both of them having death programmed into their genes to get out of the way for the next generation. Who decided on this duality? Biologists are quite happy seeing this as being driven by the natural advantage of bringing in outside DNA, liable to have many advantageous messages compared to one’s own and vice versa, and the advantage for the older generation to die off and leave the species and available resources to their offspring. It’s a powerfully flexible system, as every recovery from mass extinctions has proven.

 

At a minimum, one needs two to do this. Getting three together would be many times more complicated and apparently not worth it or life would have found that. So here is a duality. Now is it the dualism that gives this any meaning? I don’t see how. For one thing, male and female still have much more in common than different. They’re not like an electron and positron that will blow each other up. To use the language that’s been used here, this is much more of a process that involves differentiation and integration in various ways, even though the opposite sex is what has this startling effect on most of our consciousness.

 

Yet this duality gets lumped in with dualities such as electrical charge. That’s an opposite, but does that opposition have any meaning? A positive charge is some place where electrons are scarce. A negative charge is where they are abundant. This is a spectrum over various values of electrical charge. Does it matter that zero is in the middle of the spectrum? The overall electromagnetic force never involves one kind of charge without the other. At the same time, in places of like charges it is repulsive. That’s what keeps gravity from pulling me down through my chair into the Earth. Is any of that a meaningful dualism? That the electromagnetic force tries to bring all net charge down to zero is not a real duality, only if one insists on seeing it that way. The force has one goal, toward zero charge, from every direction possible, namely too many electrons, too few electrons, or already at zero.

 

The balance between electromagnetism and gravity that keeps me in my chair provides me a moment of stability in an evolving universe. So will every mechanism of homeostasis be a balance, but only because that’s the only way to have homeostasis in a universe where the fundamental physical forces never rest. An unopposed force will always knock something somewhere.

 

If “one” can’t work, and “two” does, there are going to be many examples where nature didn’t go on to “three” or more. There will be more than two only when it doesn’t cost anything or there are advantages to have more, like limbs. It’s not mystical every time two shows up in the world. I’m not sure if there are any meaningful dualities at all. The ones I see certainly seem to be the natural result of a process that is fundamentally one process, like life. That doesn’t imply unity if one totals up all the processes. To say all life is one sounds incredibly reductionist to me. Nor does there need to be unity within a process, such as any sort of unity within all of life, within a species or even within an individual. I think people try to make it too simple. It’s human nature.

 

It drives me crazy when people argue some version of “everybody’s right” or “ancient people were just as smart as modern people.” Yes biologically it seems people have been the same for many thousands of years. But culture has changed a lot. The culture of knowledge has changed so much in the last 100 years that I’m not surprised people can’t keep up with it. But it’s not that hard to see that the old stories were just stories to fill in a gap in knowledge. The problem with any metaphor like the Greeks used to explain sexuality is that huge pieces of the real story are missing in the metaphor. Looking for generalized abstract principles suffers from the same problem. Maybe Fred is right and God is much more involved in the universe than some think. If so He will teach us through His reality, not through abstract words that seem to send people off in the wrong direction as often as not.

[AletheiaRivers]

Maybe Fred is right and God is much more involved in the universe than some think. If so He will teach us through His reality ...

 

That's what I thought we were discussing ...

Edited November 22, 2005 by AletheiaRivers

[FredP]

I think the strain is due to the fact that two different fundamental views of reality are being presumed in all these discussions. To make matters worse, there's enough New Age quackery out there for any naturalist to rightfully cringe at the mere suggestion of anything "metaphysical." It's difficult to defend a metaphysical or platonic view today without being accused of rash oversimplifications, even though there's nothing simple or reductionistic about it. It's important to keep in mind that a metaphysical system is not a scientific theory. The platonic belief that the universe is patterned after universal forms and structures of thought isn't an "alternate explanation" for electrical charge or sexual reproduction. It's not a flight from reality; it's a committment to face reality head on, with the confidence that whatever we find will ultimately be rationally intelligible. It seems to me that this confidence is what drives people to become scientists in the first place.

 

As far as God being "more involved in the universe," I'm beginning to lose track of the number of times I've said that this conception is incoherent. If I've sounded like I'm pushing for an interventionist God, then I've really badly failed at explaining myself. God isn't in the universe: the universe is in God. I know that feels emotionally distant, but as I said the other day, emotional distance is a human response to power that we project onto God. As the mystics have universally experienced, God is nearer to you than you are to your own self, because your own self is not other than God. But here we are getting off again into very different conceptions of God, so I'm not sure how much this is helping anyone anymore.

[AletheiaRivers]

To make matters worse, there's enough New Age quackery out there for any naturalist to rightfully cringe at the mere suggestion of anything "metaphysical." It's difficult to defend a metaphysical or platonic view today without being accused of rash oversimplifications, even though there's nothing simple or reductionistic about it.

 

True about the new age quackery affecting the ability to discuss metaphysics. It's just like fundamentalism affecting the ability to discuss "creationism."

 

God isn't in the universe: the universe is in God. I know that feels emotionally distant, but as I said the other day, emotional distance is a human response to power that we project onto God. As the mystics have universally experienced, God is nearer to you than you are to your own self, because your own self is not other than God.

 

I've always been drawn to panentheism because it is NOT emotionally distant. Guess it's all in how you view it, eh? And because I'm Christian, I think God entered into the universe too.

 

But here we are getting off again into very different conceptions of God, so I'm not sure how much this is helping anyone anymore.

 

I'm enjoying it. I've gotten frustrated over nit-picking and wish that sometimes we could discuss ontological ideas without getting so entrenched in philosophical language , but it's the best theological discussion I've had in months.

Edited November 22, 2005 by AletheiaRivers

[October's Autumn]

True about the new age quackery affecting the ability to discuss metaphysics. It's just like fundamentalism affecting the ability to discuss "creationism."

 

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

So True! I was thinking something along the same lines on Sunday when one of the hymns referred to God as Creator. I've always thought of God as creator both when I believed in a day creation and after I grew up. But if I try to discuss the idea people will only hear that I follow ID or am a naturalist. We are back to that absolute dichotomy we were complaining about earlier.

[des]

I have absolutely no problems with the term "Creator", actually maybe more comfortable than the term "God", which often conjures up images of Jesus, man on throne, etc.

But the thing is that if you consider creation a once only happening-- ie, God as Creator, past tense, then you have a God that once created but then is just sitting around looking at his/her creation. If Creation is a continual thing, which I am certain it is, then you see God as creating at all times. Creation is never finished.

 

I think the idea of ID that I have a problem with is not the concept per se. I mean I do think that a Creator is (not was) necessary. If you take the set of coincidences that must exist, then the coincidences become unworkable, imo.

 

The thing is that I see this in the realm of philosophy or religion and not science. ID is a pseudoscience, imo, that implies since evolution as we now know it (and you'd think from these folks that nothing has been done in evolution since Darwin) is not sufficient to explain things that we pull in from religion very specifically from JudeoChristian (and as it happens Islamic) tradition. And you teach evolution like htis in public schools. Do we then teach them, ok well God gave us minds so that now we need ID psychology; we need ID chemistry because God created the elements; we need ID physics as God created the laws that run the universe? If you take it to it's logical extreme there's where we get. Science, otoh, has to be disprovable. You have to be able to take the idea and say, what happens if this is not the case. So we have teh ID fans going around and redefining science to not be disprovable.

 

 

--des