If you define 'god' as consciousness, it exists. If everything has consciousness, from the very tiniest particle, to you (very big IFs), everything is 'god.'
So, the line of thought goes, the people who created these religions (and god) were really trying to describe, explain, and understand consciousness, their own and everyone elses'.
That they projected THEIR and everybody else's consciousness into a separate "entity" or "entities" may have been simply a result of their inferior understanding of the nature of the physical universe and what are it's constituent parts.
As our understanding of it--and consciousness--increases, it stands to reason, the closer we get to understanding "reality" itself.

@Omnedon This whole discussion proves my point. When we define anything as "god" we are simply forming a human conception. No gods exist except in human minds that wish to believe that the concept means anything at all.

@Omnedon All hail the Mighty and most Magnificent Spud Murphy, aka the Potato, btw, I'm a 'spud' loving person, fried, steamed, mashed, etc, just love and enjoy eating them.

@Storm1752 Consciousness is the emergent property of evolutionary intelligence.

@Now that you have said that, please elucidate. Please clarify and provide the intellectual or evidence basis for such a statement,.

@wordywalt The increase of intelligence in any species is linked to evolutionary development, is it not? Consciousness is relative to an organism's degree of intelligence, hence self awareness.

@Atheist3 You still have not defined what you mean by consciousness or evolutionary intelligence. I still do not know what you are real;ly saying.

@wordywalt I think therefore I am. This sense of 'I am' is what is called self-awareness, the cerebral ability to contemplate ones existence, to be conscious of ones place in time & to extrapolate one's future. If this is not the result of evolution, then how be it?

@Atheist3 Biological evolution, including the evolution of intelligence as a evolutionary advantage, is a fact. I see no reason for applying the concept to the universe.

What's your point?

@Storm1752 Why does there always need to be a point?? I guess the point is that nature abhors a vacuum, so it probably detests god as well. At least, according to the old school works of Aristotle...

@Bobby9 Nothing is pointless.

@Bobby9 Oh, you think so?? I can respect that.

@FiliusInfernum So, would say that there was a point contained in the Greek Legend of Sisyphus having to spend eternity pushing a huge stone up-hill every day only to have it roll back down hill every night?

@Triphid The point is that fruitless labor is unfruitful.

@Triphid Probably a test of the mettle. That legend could easily be a metaphor for giving each new day your all. People are drawn to strength, triumph, and determination. These are all poetic motifs of Sisyphus.

@Bobby9 My point is in line with the original post, suggesting that 'god' might be a personified impersonal force/concept. My example of that was to equate 'god' with something purely theoretical and intangible, such as a perfect vacuum. If, FOR EXAMPLE, the universe is skimming the surface of some perfect vacuum, there'd be no way to tell outside of the observed effects this vacuum has on it. Similar to the singularity of the Big Bang. This cannot be directly observed, only its effects can. Sort of like death, in a sense. Nobody can directly observe the moments before and after they are alive, but the relative effects of such an inevitability dominate a great source of cognitive decision making throughout the courses of our lives. I'm purely spitballing here. Hypothetical mumbo jumbo, if you will. It's honestly hard to provide any form of serious "point" in the realm of philosophical discourse. The post I am commenting on in the first place is an entirely and purely hypothetical debate, over possible philosophies, that some scientists might accept and that many do not. I see no reason whatsoever to provide any of you with even half a point while on the subject of philosophy. It's a meaningless gesture to fish for one. What, you want me to tell you the meaning of life just to give you something to argue about?? Fat chance. You decide for yourselves. I can't always spoon feed people my thoughts and opinions. Sometimes you just need to put the work in and develop view points on your own, especially when it comes to the intangible and philosophical. THERE IS NO POINT that I can provide for you, only that which you can provide yourselves. Sometimes you just can't help the helpless, no matter how much you want to. Sad, but true.

Here I am, I really exist, yes, I have eaten a taco. What more evidence do you need of my existence?

I have only my own experience as a living, breathing, conscious person. Do I exist? Do you? Does the chair you're sitting in?

@Storm1752 I created Taco God, any person that has eaten a taco is a God by way of eating a taco. Have you eaten a taco? If so, did the taco exist, did you really exist when eating a taco and do you exist after eating the taco becoming a taco God?

@Word But you're not god! Unless your delusional. And I'm just going by your medical records. lol

@Atheist3 eating a taco is not delusional. Trying to be your god would be delusional.

@Word And you would luv every minute of it! Send me yer $.

@Word God! Is that you?

@Storm1752 Sure! But that.doesn't mean that your subjective experience exists in the naturalist world.

I didn't mean to theorize religions accurately depict this purported consciousness--far from it.
Rather, they may be co-opting and misinterpreting the limits that consciousness puts on us. By doing so, they would be only muddling and confusing the issue, because they are speaking out of ignorance.
For instance, why DOES 'god' allow "bad things happen to good people" and vice versa? Why DOESN'T 'he' intercede, answer prayer, etc.?
Because 'god' ISN'T a person, an entity, with human characteristics, but simply that 'thing,' according to this concept, which brings awareness to matter?
If it's true even electrons have this consciousness, maybe the higher up the evolutionary ladder you go, and the more ordered and complex an animated life form becomes, all the way up to animals and humans, the more SELF-aware it becomes.
But maybe that's ALL it does; if so, the only operative 'divine' laws which apply come from how one consciousness interacts with another, like how atoms attract and repel each other depending on their chemical and electromagnetic properties.
So when people erroneously have tried to explain these impersonal interactions in personal terms, they end up rendering the whole complex process meaningless and worse, nonsensical and ridiculous.
That's my idea anyway, though I'm sure I'm poorly expressing it.

@Storm1752 Got it. Makes sense.

@AtheistReader The article from who j I extropolated this train of [mindmatters.ai]:

@Storm1752 It's an interesting idea, but I wouldn't call it science. Interesting hypothesis, but I try to check the author's background usually, and this is published by the Walter Bradley Center, whose mission is as follows:

"The mission of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Discovery Institute is to explore the benefits as well as the challenges raised by artificial intelligence (AI) in light of the enduring truth of human exceptionalism."

An enduring truth of human exceptionalism? Hmmmmmm.. This is a part of the Discovery Institute that advocates for... wait for it... the Intelligent Design. Go figure, eh?

[en.wikipedia.org]

@AtheistReader Interesting. It goes to the question of, 'Where did the physical world 'come from?'
I'D say, with my only evidence Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics, since matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed, it didn't 'come from' anything. It always was and always will be.
How can that be? After all, everything comes from something.
Not true.
Everything just changes form, from matter into energy and back again, depending on other forces acting on, and interacting with, it.
I don't think, then, there is any such thing as intelligent design, because I don't think anything WAS designed.
Ask yourself the question: can you imagine things being any other way?
As far as human "exceptipnalism" is concerned, I personally doubt we are exceptional in any way, but just a next logical step in a process of increasing complexity.
If you ask me, we should be taking a much more active role in accelerating this process, rather than endlessly debating the "morality" of "playing god" and interfering with the "natural way of things."
We ARE "the nature of things!" That's like saying doctors interfere with 'god's,' will by treating patients! Or lifeguards shouldn't save drowning swimmers. Or firemen should let people fry in a burning building...
There is no way to know to what this process could lead. And I'm not talking about horse/human hybrids...

Yeah, I see it.
I think of myself as inhabiting a body, but it could just as easily be some other body and it'd still be me.
Or would it?
If I was different in looks, physiology, and circumstances, would I be the same person?
Is there something uniquely ME about me, or am I interchangeable with everyone else?
Are we ALL interchangeable, or is there something uniquely YOU about you?
Btw, I can't speak for "many scientists," but I'm not sure they "believe" consciousness is universal, just that it MIGHT be.

@Storm1752
Still have to use the word believe, a true scientist wouldn't use the word believe. They would say "it isn't proven to be possible and untill it does it can be discarded...

@Storm1752 My friend, the body any of us inhabits is the one made by the union of 1 single sperm cell and 1 single ovum that is ALL there is to it.
The fertilized ovum develops into an embryo, then into a foetus and finally into a human baby, what becomes of that tiny baby is a matter of what it eats, learns and does as it grows, that is the only and major choice we have in life, we cannot inhabit any other body EXCEPT the one we are born as.

@Triphid Agreed halfway... maybe we will be able to inhabit another body some time in the future. It might be a scientific possibility that we haven't discovered. Maybe there will be a great scientist someday who will be able to transfer human conciousness to a computer. Maybe another great scientist will be able to create a body that can effectively host that conciousness. Who knows just yet?

@HumanistA Yes BUT that is still a long way down the track, atm and as it stands, like it or not, the body we get is the body we are stuck with until we kick the bucket.

The article:[mindmatters.ai]

@Storm1752 LOTTA wooo.... and quantifiers in every single sentence! Not exactly definitive science.......

Mind Mattets Podcasts are produced by a marketing organization known as Morris Creative Services, which is a subsidiary of a larger marketing organization known as, the Quad Organization.

The Mind Matters Podcast features discussions with leaders in the fields of psychology, education, and beyond, with an emphasis on gifted/talented and 2e (twice-exceptional) children and adults. Mind Matters explores parenting, counseling techniques, and best practices for enriching the lives of high-ability people.

I could not find any info on what their criteria for acceptance of research material. Their podcasts are well linked and associated with many well known and established sites.

@Storm1752

The scientists and periodicals in which they published are pretty obscure. They represent an incredibly small contingent of researchers in their fields. Doesn't mean they are wrong, but they are not a convincing set of credentials. I followed several links in several of the associated articles, was not impressed.

I'm saying that's what men do when they create religions. Maybe the 'god' I think may exist is the impersonal consciousness all matter down to every single atom has.
I don't KNOW exactly what I'm saying. I'm not trying to start a religion here![mindmatters.ai]

@Storm1752 Basic consciousness is awareness of one's surroundings or environment. All life has a certain level of consciousness. Even AI senses and monitors its environment and to that extent possesses some consciousness. It is simply silicon-based intelligence rather than carbon-based intelligence. Self-consciousness may be nothing more than (neural) feedback loops that allow one to be conscious of one's consciousness. In that case, a certain level of intelligence will automatically and naturally lead to self-consciousness, even potentially and eventually in AI. I don't really think of consciousness as being anything special or mysterious but inherent to life. Now, I suppose you could speak of a collective consciousness of the Universe but it does not necessarily follow that it is centralized into a Supreme Intelligence. In fact, I see no evidence of that, just human projection of human consciousness onto nature. Nevertheless, it does seem that there may be some guiding principles to the formation of the universe and the life within it that we usually refer to as the laws of physics or the laws of nature. This would, it seems, include the characteristic of consciousness endemic to life.

It's not that I'M calling it 'god.' It's that some other people interested in understanding "reality" do, indirectly, by imagining consciousness is centered in a hierarchy, going from the least to the most organized, which must have an apex, a crown.
This is patterned on man-made social structures, right? But it could be an anarchy instead, or a democracy. Or something else. Or nothing.
Maybe we just ARE.
And to suggest we and/or our self-realization are to be "worshipped" is ridiculous, and may betray a misunderstanding of who and what we are, which is everything, so to speak.
Should "everything" be worshipped? Of course not.

@K9Kohle789 Ummm....do bees and ants communicate with each other telepathically, you mean? Or something like that?
I don't know; I doubt it, but who knows? Instincts can mysterious.
As far as we're concerned, I'm thinking of 'energy' common to all matter which with increasing complexity becomes more and more self-aware. That may suggest a 'collective consciousness' of some kind, at least at it's most evolved level. It doesn't seem the scientists themselves have much more than a vague notion what that really means... but if there IS any validity to it, that may be the source of man's conception of 'god,' and the wellspring from which religion itself originated.
Sorry, I appreciate your respect for T.S. Eliot and the book you're reading, but do YOU think past and present (and future) exist simultaneously? I can't see it.
I CAN see that time is a kind of illusion. Organisms--and inanimate objects for that matter-come into being, have a life cycle, and die. It's a chemical process governed by physical laws.
TIME only exists in our minds relative to our OWN life cycle and OTHER life cycles. I personally do NOT think any of it is pre-determined.
Moreover, the idea some 'god,' even supposing one DID exist, knows the future is ludicrous, and apparently comes from the "paradox" between "free will" and the supposed fact 'god' knows EVERYTHING, including the future, making it a fait accompli. But since the 'future' hasn't happened yet, there is nothing yet to know! -.[qz.com]

@K9Kohle789 Only if the future were known could it be "pre-determined."
Leaving aside the parallel universe for a moment and focusing on this one, take a decision you are considering but haven't I made yet. You could choose from a number of different options, each of which will set in motion different chains of events, some very similar, some widely divergent. Or, you could decide to do nothing, which in itself is a decision with it's own results.
No matter what you do or don't do, however, the hours will tick away and today will pass and tomorrow will arrive.
If you've done nothing, things in that regard will have remained unchanged, but other chains of events you've previously set in motion will continue to unfold based on the interaction of millions, billions, even countless trillions of random events based on decisions other people have made in the same way as you, totally outside of your control.
If you've decided on a course of action and begin executing it, likewise an equal number of random events will interact with your actions at THAT juncture, and the result will be different, in some ways readily apparent, but in other ways unseen and unknown.
In other words, no matter what you do or don't do, the result will be random, to a large degree. So much of the result depends on events of which you'll never be aware. The people affected will never know where and how these unseen forces originated. So much of what you do cannot be "pre-determined," in other words, but are the result of countless random events outside of your control.
Not even 'god' would know!
Think where you are today compared to what you had planned a few years ago, say Do two outcomes resemble each other in any way? I'll guess not! Out lives more closely resemble ping-pong balls in a lottery hopper, than a carefully-orchestrated 'plan!' This is the reason.

The interesting thing is, the gnostic xtians considered 'ruach' as a way to impart mystic, unrevealed knowledge. Hence, the mystic kiss.

@Atheist3 never heard of it that way.

The uneducated with no interest in mystical traditions and the esoteric may regard Ancient Egypt as little more than a place of pagan worship, strange hieroglyphics, and monuments erected by thousands of Hebrew slaves. But those more learned, especially those having undertaken the initiative rituals of Freemasonry, will see a link between the Egyptian metaphysical tradition and modern mystery schools, of which Freemasonry is one. www dot gaia dot com /article/ancient-egypt-and-freemasonry

Lord of host Lucifer the devil leading the Masonic lodge secret religion racist devil worshippers in the establishment of the mark of the beast 666 identification for taxation and government control. No justice for the innocent, more children can be trained to speak and act abused to wrongfully prosecute innocent people especially those that oppose there Masonic lodge secret religion racist devil worship "my teacher made me touch her p.p ". Take the original indigenous inhabitants of their land call it America call them such as Mexicans, Indians and native Americans

@Word lol, luv the rant! Send me yer $. I have the key to the mystery?

@Atheist3

I was just saying maybe HUMANS called it 'god,' and built religions around it make it comprehensible. But 'it' was simply consciousness itself.
By giving 'it' human characteristics, then, they only obscured it's true nature.
The article: [mindmatters.ai]

@Storm1752 Just to be clear, are you saying the application of the concept of "god" was purposely put on the concept of panpsychism, or universal consciousness? I would say no. They applied it to much simpler concepts like the lightning that started the fire that destroyed their crops one season. I'm hard pressed to believe that they were staring at their navels and came up with the philosophical concept of universal consciousness that included rocks and trees. The article itself discusses it as a new phenomenon and not generally accepted and makes no historic claims that it affected any culture or philosophical thought in the past.

As I said, 'god' is a word with too much baggage to be useful, except to describe what reality is NOT.

@Storm1752
I understand the feeling.

You got something better to do? I don't, at the moment.

I do, but the world does not rotate around me . . . . you have that right, and if ever you manage to come up with something useful from it, I am all ears.

Not talking about 'god' as a 'thing' or 'entity,' but as consciousness. Or are you yourself a figment of your own imagination?
Do I exist, or are you just making me up?

@Storm1752 Sir, Cut me and I bleed, kill me and I die, no figments can ever bleed or die and that is a fact.
As the Latin saying goes, " Cogit ergo sum, " I think therefore I am."

Until it's no longer a mystery... The only reason I would like to live forever is to be able to see the discoveries we will make in the millennia to come.

@HumanistA Ha! Living forever is like always getting the same pussy. Boring!

[mindmatters.ai]

Here's the article:[mindmatters.ai]

I'm going by the articles I read.[mindmatters.ai]

Why go all the way to 'universal' consciousness, then? Why not just your OWN consciousness, as a human your self-awareness?
I'm not saying it's 'god,' merely what men CALL it. By doing so they obscure it's true nature by then giving it emotions and feelings, when it's really an impersonal 'energy' which flows through EVERYTHING.
That's the thought, anyway. [mindmatters.ai]

The article from which I extropolated my admittedly [mindmatters.ai] idea:

Tell that to those people who corrupted the word to the point it's no longer useful as a convenient shorthand for consciousness. When one hears or reads it they automatically think of an "entity" much like a person, except with superhuman powers without limit. This is stupid and ridiculous by today's standards. Yet some people still believe it.
They'd be much better off, of course, building their beliefs systems on the much firmer foundation of observable fact. You and I know this.
But even scientists have to then take the latest factual building blocks and deduce from that new hypotheses on which to base future research. This is how knowledge accumulates.
So what are pure fictional speculations today are tomorrow's facts

I totally agree and that's my point exactly.

Of course not. They may have just taken what they percieved with their five senses and made sense of it the only way they knew how: through their own very limited understanding...that's why it ended up turning into the convoluted mess we call religion!
Maybe.

Hey, I like reading 'old dead meat' records!