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Is 'god' an impersonal force of nature, a 'universal consciousness' similar in quality to other natural physical laws, like electromagnetism or the speed of light?
As such, would it not amount to a 'governing principle' describing and limiting the extent of our freedom of thought and action, much like, say, gravity or heat limit what our physical bodies can do, beyond which it encounters resistance?
If so, did men and women then give human thoughts, feelings, and motives to something which is purely impersonal?
Many scientists now believe something like this could be true.[mindmatters.ai]

#freedom #limit #laws #god
Storm1752 8 Dec 23
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43 comments

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0

Level 7

test everything, and keep what is good yeh

5

Level 9

God isn't. It does not exist, but a false human conception.

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.

5

Level 8

That seems to me to be a contrived, needlessly complex explanation for the rise of religious thought among early people who grappled with things like where the sun went at night and why diseases struck down some people and not others. I don't think these folks who lacked an understanding of heliocentrism and germ theory had developed a framework for natural limits of the universe, a constant speed of light, or some convoluted notion of universal consciousness and applied the "god" label to any of that.