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I got a pretty good opinion as opinions go, but then I am in an exclusive religion, you wouldn't understand. As the bible tells us in so many places, '' the eyes are blind and the ears are deaf,'' to those who are enemies to the God of Israel.
Maybe I was wrong, just sounded like you may be jealous of God's chosen, peculiar, exclusive people. It's not all bad, maybe you will have a kind master in the next life.
What you are missing is the utter absurdity of a bunch of souls getting together to plan for every contingent free will choice of every person you will meet in your life, and every person that these people will meet, and so on, until, FAPP, you need to be in cahoots with virtually every person who will be alive on Earth during your lifetime.
Let's return, once again, to the girl who was badly burned and lives several years with a lot of suffering until she commits suicide. Suppose she was burned by a malfunctioning stove and the malfunction traces back to the free choices of people she never met: A careless factory line worker, a plant inspector who plays video games rather than doing inspections, and numerous other people who were part of the causal chain (e.g., a driver on a nearby road who honks their car horn and distracts the child's mom, etc.) If any one of these many people makes a different choice, the girls does not get burned. I'm reminded of the infamous "three body problem" in physics. Even in determinate Newtonian physics, we cannot calculate the long-term behaviors of merely three non-conscious objects in perfect conditions wherein we don't have to worry about "noisy" factors like friction. So what happens if you have trillions of bodies in the complex real world, billion of which have free will? How do all of these souls agree to all of the possible contingencies? Answer: they can't. It's mathematically absurd. So what you have to do is wave your hand and say that somehow it all works. Souls make these choices and everything just works out. Never mind the details.
We can not "calculate" behaviors but we can choose our own behaviors. How we respond to whatever we are facing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
...Somehow all of our free choices form a perfect tapestry in which the girl is burned according to some prior agreement of souls. Period. Well, of course you can take that leap of faith and just assume that, despite everything we know about the natural world, this collusion of souls all works out the way you say it does, but don't pretend you're being rational when you take this leap of faith. It's basically just a variation of "God did it" as the answer to everything, when in fact it answers nothing.
"God did it" is not the same as "I chose it"
Shaped, created, designed, planned, agreed, chose
every aspect of the life we are living today
God designed the system.
God is the system.
The system is intelligent and responsive, kind and compassionate, wise and loving. The system adores us and treasures us and always has our best interests at heart.
We operate within the system.
The system offers us help if we ask it.
Within the system we have free will.
The essence of free will is a high level of personal responsibility and conscious choice of how we use our attention, intention, thought, speech and action.
Because those are the very powerful tools which shape, create, design, plan, and alter our day life future. We either apply them in a haphazrd way or with conscious attention.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 01-15-2018 at 03:10 PM..
....as the answer to everything, when in fact it answers nothing.
Life is not an answer it's living in the question, seeing where it takes us, which invariably leads to more questions.
It's how we live each day, how we choose to respond to whatever is facing us. You said something along those lines....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
..."Life's a journey, not a destination."
In art we say "process not product."
It's not what we create its who we become in the creating of it. It's not the life we live its how we grow while living it.
.... How do all of these souls agree to all of the possible contingencies? Answer: they can't. It's mathematically absurd. So what you have to do is wave your hand and say that somehow it all works.....
Ahhhhh not a problem. remember, there is fire in the equations. and "we will never capture, in any net of words or numbers cast into the Depths of Being, the true essence of this fire of life."
That is a quote from a favorite poem, here is the poem, the writer is from your neck of the words, you may be familiar with his work. I am a big fan of his work.
Fire in the equations by G.W.
"Reality is not a purely mechanical system.
not an ordered collection of ontologically independent parts
that are simply "unwinding" in accordance with algorithmic/deterministic laws
that can be, in principle, characterized in purely objective terms,
or modeled by a purely quantitative/mathematical system of concepts.
"There is fire in the equations
and there are endlessly unfolding narratives filled with meaning.
Beauty and virtue are not pure fictions.
"It is the fire of life burning brightly in her mind,
despite the darkness of her surroundings.
"God doesn't have to exist in order to be real.
If She animates the mind of a believer in such a way
as to bring comfort, beauty, and meaning to what might otherwise be a dark and desolate existence,
"then even if the nature of Her existence is best compared to a fleeting dream,
She serves an immeasurably important purpose in the Grand Scheme of things -
a purpose far more profound than any analysis dreamt of in my philosophy.
"I will never capture, in any net of words or numbers
cast into the Depths of Being,
the true essence of this fire of life."
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 01-15-2018 at 04:05 PM..
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