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Since this thread is supposed to be about what caused ex-Christians to lose their faith, I really hope you'll post your comments here in public, rather than just DM Pleroo. I don't see them as off topic but as pertinent to the discussion.
I was thinking the same thing, Katz. I think it'd be a shame for anyone to miss out on Trout's insights.
I can't quite wrap my head around that. I don't understand where life comes from, if not from life.
So, to me, Life = God and my brain reads your sentence as "...God created god" or "...Life created life". Which to me makes sense in that I almost always come back to a procreation scenario in my head when it comes to God, and the idea that our reality is an offspring of some sort of a greater (or more mature) Reality, and is in the process of 'becoming'. But I don't think that's how you mean it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
Since this thread is supposed to be about what caused ex-Christians to lose their faith, I really hope you'll post your comments here in public, rather than just DM Pleroo. I don't see them as off topic but as pertinent to the discussion.
Well, I lost faith in Christianity 50 years before beginning to mull in this direction. But okay. I'll try to articulate what for me is still a rather amorphous concept.
I first saw this clip several years ago and it instantly resonated with me, especially the idea that we - that everything - is connected at a sub-atomic level. The atoms that form us, turtles, sponges, bananas and rocks, all came from stars. We're just arranged differently.
This feels like a true thing. Truer than anything I've read in a holy book.
Nobody knows how the universe (and all that star stuff) came to be. Most people on the planet posit a omnipotent God who magi-poofed everything into being and when asked how that God came to be, they flail around trying to find a reasonable explanation. And, in my opinion, fail miserably.
So, I'm starting with what is known: The universe exists and we are a part of it. So, obviously, is everybody and every thing. And we're connected.
As a (reluctantly labeled) Animist, I believe there's a spark of consciousness in everything alive. And that virtually everything IS alive. Now, our consciousness differs from that of a plum tree, a squirrel or a stone but if there's a commonality among everything at a sub-atomic level, perhaps there's also a consciousness pool, or collection, of which everything is a part.
I'm exploring the idea that this growing, evolving pool of collective consciousness could be the formative stages of a god-like being - an entity which can tap into, indeed BE that giant pool of consciousness.
But it also seems possible that this collection is in its infancy and, like a human infant, is more about potential abilities rather than what it is capable of now.
I think it also possible that after death, we may be able to access that pool in ways that we cannot when gravity-bound.
I could go on but there's the gist. God could be a byproduct of life - the sum of everything that exists - rather than the agent of its beginning.
The phoniness of Religious institutions is what got me thinking. I believe in a superior being but not the god of the bible. Then you have to look at people who look at and criticize people from having different beliefs than them. Who made them believe that they were right about everything?
Well, I lost faith in Christianity 50 years before beginning to mull in this direction. But okay. I'll try to articulate what for me is still a rather amorphous concept.
I first saw this clip several years ago and it instantly resonated with me, especially the idea that we - that everything - is connected at a sub-atomic level. The atoms that form us, turtles, sponges, bananas and rocks, all came from stars. We're just arranged differently.
This feels like a true thing. Truer than anything I've read in a holy book.
Nobody knows how the universe (and all that star stuff) came to be. Most people on the planet posit a omnipotent God who magi-poofed everything into being and when asked how that God came to be, they flail around trying to find a reasonable explanation. And, in my opinion, fail miserably.
So, I'm starting with what is known: The universe exists and we are a part of it. So, obviously, is everybody and every thing. And we're connected.
As a (reluctantly labeled) Animist, I believe there's a spark of consciousness in everything alive. And that virtually everything IS alive. Now, our consciousness differs from that of a plum tree, a squirrel or a stone but if there's a commonality among everything at a sub-atomic level, perhaps there's also a consciousness pool, or collection, of which everything is a part.
I'm exploring the idea that this growing, evolving pool of collective consciousness could be the formative stages of a god-like being - an entity which can tap into, indeed BE that giant pool of consciousness.
But it also seems possible that this collection is in its infancy and, like a human infant, is more about potential abilities rather than what it is capable of now.
I think it also possible that after death, we may be able to access that pool in ways that we cannot when gravity-bound.
I could go on but there's the gist. God could be a byproduct of life - the sum of everything that exists - rather than the agent of its beginning.
Well, I lost faith in Christianity 50 years before beginning to mull in this direction. But okay. I'll try to articulate what for me is still a rather amorphous concept.
I first saw this clip several years ago and it instantly resonated with me, especially the idea that we - that everything - is connected at a sub-atomic level. The atoms that form us, turtles, sponges, bananas and rocks, all came from stars. We're just arranged differently.
This feels like a true thing. Truer than anything I've read in a holy book.
Nobody knows how the universe (and all that star stuff) came to be. Most people on the planet posit a omnipotent God who magi-poofed everything into being and when asked how that God came to be, they flail around trying to find a reasonable explanation. And, in my opinion, fail miserably.
So, I'm starting with what is known: The universe exists and we are a part of it. So, obviously, is everybody and every thing. And we're connected.
As a (reluctantly labeled) Animist, I believe there's a spark of consciousness in everything alive. And that virtually everything IS alive. Now, our consciousness differs from that of a plum tree, a squirrel or a stone but if there's a commonality among everything at a sub-atomic level, perhaps there's also a consciousness pool, or collection, of which everything is a part.
I'm exploring the idea that this growing, evolving pool of collective consciousness could be the formative stages of a god-like being - an entity which can tap into, indeed BE that giant pool of consciousness.
But it also seems possible that this collection is in its infancy and, like a human infant, is more about potential abilities rather than what it is capable of now.
I think it also possible that after death, we may be able to access that pool in ways that we cannot when gravity-bound.
I could go on but there's the gist. God could be a byproduct of life - the sum of everything that exists - rather than the agent of its beginning.
Just stuff to mull when the fish ain't biting.
I don't know ... seems like we agree more or less, because it seems to me that you are also saying that life (or consciousness) is god, since it is that which gives existence to... everything, yes, or am I reading that into what you've said? Our reality, as I see it, is an offspring of Life, or a manifestation of it. Either way, that Life IS God.
I know some times people come around that see things in the hadiwork of creation that others find strange.
But always remember, you never know when you are entertaining angels.
I don't know ... seems like we agree more or less, because it seems to me that you are also saying that life (or consciousness) is god, since it is that which gives existence to... everything, yes, or am I reading that into what you've said? Our reality, as I see it, is an offspring of Life, or a manifestation of it. Either way, that Life IS God.
Your last three words indicate the direction in which I'm leaning. But it's more like God is a byproduct of all that lives and all that lives is part of God.
But God - if it is in its infancy, as I think it and the universe may be - might not know it can grow into and accumulate all that universe full of consciousness and channel it on its way to knowing/feeling/experiencing everything.
Or, in other words, being God-like.
Ish.
So much to speculate upon when nights are long, the phone never rings and traffic sounds are a distant memory.
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