What is God?

[spazelord]

God does not come in any shape or form if you can understand energy you can understand God. Everything in the universe is energy you body is energy, money, the room you live in, everything you can ever imagine is energy. Let me help you understand that a little better what is energy or God? This is not a new idea Fuzzy hared guy in 1925 wrote on his chuck board E = MC squared no 1 could grasp what that meant. What that says is on 1 side mass light and everything that we preserve and in all = energy. Let me help you understand that a lil better

[Kiyouta]

God is a very long thread, containing two or more Gunwounds posts in quick succession. If you're lucky, the topic of homosexuality might just crop up too.

[Dude_Doc]

God does not come in any shape or form if you can understand energy you can understand God.

Well, God certainly is everywhere, according to the great religions - but He also is "one" Himself. Perhaps if you speak of Buddhism you may find a form of "energy" that is everything - i.e. a god.

AND THEN THERE IS ENERGY.

There has been talk about these so called "superstrings" - a form of matter that vibrates differently to create different things. In one sence, the universe (and maybe beyond) is really a form of computer software.  

It always has and will be It can never be created or destroyed, everything that it always existed and always exists, its moving into form though from and out of form.

Well, it is certainly true in science that matter (or energy) never really is destroyed, only transformed. But speaking strictly scientific, this doesn't actually prove that there is a god, it only shows that there is something smaller than neutrons, and eventual theories about what the universe is, how it came to be etc.

So you see it

[Darth Kwisatz]

God is the most lucrative business on Earth.

[Dragoon Knight]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God

There you go. :)

[Dante]

I don't really care either about the argument in general or this particular instance of it, which is poorly phrased and really quite dull, but there are two points I'd like to make.

1. God doesn't exist.

2. If god did exist, common opinion seems to place the creator outside the universe, and not necessarily following its rules.

Bonus question: What exactly is the point here?

Edit: This is incredibly boring, you know that?

[Darth Kwisatz]

In an infinite universe, it is impossible to be outside of it, and impossible to be within it except according to the laws of physics.

[Dante]

You're applying science to a concept beyond science. Also that was dull. Say something more interesting.

[Darth Kwisatz]

Its a rehash of an argument that's be done to death here and I agree.

Still, no concept is ultimately beyond science in a qualitative sense, even if it could be in the quantitative. People either agree or disagree, and best to leave it at that.

The more interesting question that probably deserves a new thread concerns the nature of infinity and void in general - the meta-universe beyond the expanding boundaries of matter and energy discharged by the big bang and so on. Its entirely speculative, but to explore those ideas to the nth degree could further illuminate or extinguish the possibility of a supra-natural force.

[Caid Ivik]

To know what is God means to accept the reality, that one cannot know it  ;)

[Edric O]

In an infinite universe, it is impossible to be outside of it, and impossible to be within it except according to the laws of physics.

I'd like to point out that the universe we live in is very much finite (though it may be unbounded, as a sort of higher dimensional equivalent of a spherical surface. Take the Earth for example: the surface of the Earth is not infinite, but you will never walk off the edge).

Besides, it is even possible to be "outside" an infinite space. Imagine an infinite sheet of paper (i.e. an infinite two-dimensional space). You can go outside it by moving up or down.

Going back to the original subject of this thread, God cannot be energy for two reasons:

1. Energy is not intelligent, and one of the things that any god must have is intelligence and free will.

2. Energy is an aspect of the universe; energy is inside the universe, and energy certainly did not create the universe. But the gods of all major world religions did create the universe.

To sum up, God cannot be energy and He cannot be made up of energy because a being of energy could not be intelligent and could not have created the universe.

[Acriku]

Do you have strong reasons to support both assertions? Of course, I'm being the devil's advocate here...

[Kiyouta]

I don't really care either about the argument in general or this particular instance of it, which is poorly phrased and really quite dull, but there are two points I'd like to make.

1. God doesn't exist.

2. If god did exist, common opinion seems to place the creator outside the universe, and not necessarily following its rules.

Bonus question: What exactly is the point here?

Edit: This is incredibly boring, you know that?

I told everyone that in my post!

[spazelord]

heheh listen to what you just said? God is every where, that

[GUNWOUNDS]

A creator doesnt necessarily have to be made of the same substance as his creation.

A human sculptor creates statues of stone and wood... but he isnt made of wood or stone.

A painter creates paintings but he isnt made of paint or canvas.

God doesnt have to be energy nor matter, even tho that is what he created.

Also good point Edrico about our universe being infinite and yet still able to exist outside of it... i.e. infinite 2 D plane.

For a 3 D example imgaine a balloon being inflated.... imagine the balloon is our universe.... everything inside the balloon is our universe.  Everything outside the balloon is not.  The big bang didnt just create matter and energy.. it created space and time.  Which means the big bang was very much so like a balloon inflating.  The question... what environment/dimension did it inflate in?  And who was there?

Gun

[Darth Kwisatz]

Someone lectured me about extra dimensions, to which I replied, off the back of another thread here somewhere that at least 10 have been described in lay terms.

Okay, I can see that this is going to be a flat earth-type argument characterised by automatic gainsaying justified by irrelevant analogies and limited on one side by the imgination of the theists.

As Dante said, boring.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Someone lectured me about extra dimensions, to which I replied, off the back of another thread here somewhere that at least 10 have been described in lay terms.

Okay, I can see that this is going to be a flat earth-type argument characterised by automatic gainsaying justified by irrelevant analogies and limited on one side by the imgination of the theists.

As Dante said, boring.

You obviously didnt understand the descriptions of the 10 dimensions.  You only get to 10 dimensions by describing probability factors in abstract terms.   Edrico and I are speaking of the physical universe expanding.  WE're not talking about going back in time and changing your past, we're not referencing drawing an abstract line in "time" nor are we trying to draw arrows in infinite possibilities of outcomes of all the possible endings of all the possible ...ad nauseum.  I know of the laymen video describing the 10 dimensions and its interesting but what it considers a "dimension" is mere probability of action outcomes.

We're speaking about the physical nature of the universe and giving example of different possible physical layers by using lower dimension examples.    Lets arbitrarily assign  the dimension # of 4 to "Hyperspace".   That would be one dimension higher than our physical 3-D plane.  We cant possibly imagine 4-D with a 3-D mind so we must use 2-D to 3-D interaction examples.

Its not irrelevant... it may be insufficient but its better than nothing.   

And with your most recent posts i am starting to reconsider my first impression of you.  At first i thought you were intelligent but now i see you're just a blow-hard who uses unnecessary over-embellishing language in an attempt to appear intelligent in order to cloak your incomprehension of the opponent's argument or lack of your own decent rebuttal.  Nice distraction tactic.  Whats boring is someone who cant debate without getting pissed every 2 seconds when someone outwits him. Its easy to see that Edrico drives you nuts because you cant bullsh!t him like you do everyone else.

Also i would like to add that what is  BORING is people who cant think outside of the Box. There are few friends i can talk theoretical physics with and dimensions, etc, etc that are actually interested in them.  Other friends just wanna sit on a couch and drink beer and grunt and snort and say DIMENSIONS? WHAT DIMENSIONS?? *BELCCCCCH*. To me its the atheists that seem limited and closed minded.

Oh and here is the 10 dimension video flash animation...

http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php

just click on the ZERO at the bottom of the spiral animation to see it play.  Oh and by the way the flash does mention what would happen if a 3-D creature (human) were to pass thru an infinite 2-D plane (hence objects can leave infinite planes.  So even your beloved flash video agrees with us in terms of physical properties of dimensions.  So thank you very much and have a nice day!  Next.....

Gun

[Dante]

Nah, it's the topic that's boring. I'm not sure why, or how, but every word in this thread is somehow incredibly tedious. This post itself is really quite dull. Extra dimensions and theoretical physics are interesting to a degree, but that isn't the topic at hand. The topic at hand is that everything is made of energy and so is god and therefore everything is connected and also god. Which is wrong, and boringly so since it isn't even an interesting argument. I mean at least when Gunwounds says something stupid there's usually something to be debated or refuted, but in this case my first instinct upon seeing the first post is just to say "No" and move on. The reason why I haven't? I like to express my low opinion of the topic.

The odd thing is that of all the things that Gunwounds has said in this topic so far, I actually agree with one of them.

Of course I'm not going to say which one.

I'm whimsical like that.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Nah, it's the topic that's boring. I'm not sure why, or how, but every word in this thread is somehow incredibly tedious. This post itself is really quite dull. Extra dimensions and theoretical physics are interesting to a degree, but that isn't the topic at hand. The topic at hand is that everything is made of energy and so is god and therefore everything is connected and also god. Which is wrong, and boringly so since it isn't even an interesting argument. I mean at least when Gunwounds says something stupid there's usually something to be debated or refuted, but in this case my first instinct upon seeing the first post is just to say "No" and move on. The reason why I haven't? I like to express my low opinion of the topic.

The odd thing is that of all the things that Gunwounds has said in this topic so far, I actually agree with one of them.

Of course I'm not going to say which one.

I'm whimsical like that.

ah i see ...  you're saying the originaL topic of the post is so easy to refute that its no challenge.  eh yea i could see that... i guess thats why people were changing the subject  :P

[spazelord]

A creator doesnt necessarily have to be made of the same substance as his creation.

A human sculptor creates statues of stone and wood... but he isnt made of wood or stone.

A painter creates paintings but he isnt made of paint or canvas.

God doesnt have to be energy nor matter, even tho that is what he created.

Also good point Edrico about our universe being infinite and yet still able to exist outside of it... i.e. infinite 2 D plane.

For a 3 D example imgaine a balloon being inflated.... imagine the balloon is our universe.... everything inside the balloon is our universe.  Everything outside the balloon is not.  The big bang didnt just create matter and energy.. it created space and time.  Which means the big bang was very much so like a balloon inflating.  The question... what environment/dimension did it inflate in?  And who was there?

Gun

"A creator doesn

[VigilVirus]

For what reason is a being of energy not able to have intelligence, while a being matter is able to? I'm guessing this would fall under the thought that something needs to possess some physical sort of "brain" to be intelligent? Does this mean that God would have to be made of matter to be intelligent?

[Dude_Doc]

"A creator doesn

[Edric O]

For what reason is a being of energy not able to have intelligence, while a being matter is able to? I'm guessing this would fall under the thought that something needs to possess some physical sort of "brain" to be intelligent? Does this mean that God would have to be made of matter to be intelligent?

Actually, intelligence and consciousness are very strange phenomena that defy all hard scientific knowledge. Neither matter nor energy can truly have intelligence, in the sense of being self-aware, carrying free will and so forth. At most, matter can be used to build a very complex machine that simulates self-awareness and free will. According to all current scientific understanding, that is what humans are.

If we are something more than complex deterministic machines, then we must have something - let's call it a "soul" - which carries our self-awareness and free will. This soul might be made of the same kind of "stuff" that God is made of. But - and this was my original point - our souls and God cannot possibly be made up of energy, because energy is subject to the same deterministic laws as matter.

God cannot be made of either matter or energy, for the reasons I gave above and also because matter and energy are subject to the laws of physics (and God, in order to be God, must be able to manipulate those laws at will, which is something that "pure energy" cannot do).

But for the record, spazelord, I'd like to say that there was a time in my early teenage years when I also thought that God is made up of energy. That was before I learned more about physics and realized that energy cannot break the laws of physics and could not have created the universe (since it can only exist inside an already-created universe).

[MrFlibble]

The problem is that, using words like God, soul, free will, or, on the other hand, matter and energy, we refer to concepts that exist in our minds, not to the facts of "reality/ies". Not only does the statement "God is energy" explain nothing (one could use the very same arguments to prove another statement, "God is matter", with seemingly same success), it also mixes up science and religion, which are, although not mutually exclusive, but still separate forms of human thought that, by the way, have had problems going along with each other for a relatively considerable period of time.

My own point on the title subject of the thread is as follows:

a) The only feasible way of understanding the world around us is to try and understand ourselves in the first place, primarily our cognition/mind, which, in my opinion, constitutes the core of human being (when I'm talking about the "mind", I mean both the rational and the irrational aspects of our consciousness).

b) Any discipline of thought developed by humans is only a tool that has practical uses as well as limits. Putting too much faith into one of such disciplines' efficiency is dangerous.

c) It seems that things exist in this world that are well beyond human comprehension, and will always be.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Actually, intelligence and consciousness are very strange phenomena that defy all hard scientific knowledge. Neither matter nor energy can truly have intelligence, in the sense of being self-aware, carrying free will and so forth. At most, matter can be used to build a very complex machine that simulates self-awareness and free will. According to all current scientific understanding, that is what humans are.

If we are something more than complex deterministic machines, then we must have something - let's call it a "soul" - which carries our self-awareness and free will. This soul might be made of the same kind of "stuff" that God is made of. But - and this was my original point - our souls and God cannot possibly be made up of energy, because energy is subject to the same deterministic laws as matter.

God cannot be made of either matter or energy, for the reasons I gave above and also because matter and energy are subject to the laws of physics (and God, in order to be God, must be able to manipulate those laws at will, which is something that "pure energy" cannot do).

But for the record, spazelord, I'd like to say that there was a time in my early teenage years when I also thought that God is made up of energy. That was before I learned more about physics and realized that energy cannot break the laws of physics and could not have created the universe (since it can only exist inside an already-created universe).

Correct, God is the one thing that is immune to cause and effect, peer pressure, or any other form of determinism or outside influence.  Something interesting i found out is that Jewish philosophy stresses that free will is a product of the intrinsic human soul, using the word neshama (from the Hebrew root nshm or נשמ meaning "breath"), but the ability to make a free choice is through Yechida (from Hebrew word "yechid", singular), the part of the soul which is united with God, the only being that is not hindered by or dependent on cause and effect (thus, freedom of will does not belong to the realm of the physical reality, and inability of natural philosophy to account for it is expected). So basically part of our souls are tied into God and allows us to "tap" into His free will since He is truly unhindered by cause and effect. 

So it makes sense that God cannot be pure energy or matter, or else He would be subject to deterministic forces and then the entire notion of free thought or free will is lost.  Without God we are just complex automatons simulating intelligent thought and free will as Edrico stated above.  Wow, the more i think about that... the more it seems that we need a Deity to give us real identity and freedom or else we become nothing but elegant machines. 

Gun