The only thing magical about cause and effect is the selective absence of it when referring to god (talk about imagination). All causes have causes, there is nothing specularity about that.
Remember the first turtle! Realizing an infinite number of causes will never get you to the present. You do exist, don't you?
I'm sorry , don't fractals and chaos theory illustrate my point? I once heard a physicist (who's name I can't reacll right now) espouse an interesting theory: Everything you see in the universe right now is the only possible result of the causes and effects, actions and reactions of the big bang. i.e. Given the exact same conditions at the moment of creation and you would yield the exact the same unverse at this point in it's development. Here's one of mine: The nothingness of dark outer space is by definition endless. The roughly 25 billion light year radius sphere we call the known univese might be but one of an infinite number of big bang structures. Ooo, dude! let's get small.
Back to my point, before you can debate the existence of God you have to define the word. Is God an anthropomorphic, even paternal conciouness that purposely created the universe and man ( in his own image?) Is god the first cause without a cause of it's own, the physical beginning of the physical universe. Or something else?
There is no first turtle. The past is also influenced by the future, time is an illusion. The present moment is the only reality. Yes and no. What we call our self is a collection of things. The nature of things only exists in relation to everything else that exists. Existence as we know it is thus completely relative and conditioned by everything else. We are interdependent with the entire universe.
My point is things that we don't understand seem like magic (or God). Fractals and Chaos theory illustrate that as we advance our capacity to understand complex systems, things that once seemed random turn out to be ordered and predictable. I guess it come right back to whether you consider this order to be the result of conscious design or simply the result of the physics though. (bachelor??)
Care to cite any scientific observation or logical backing to justify this? So is the universe caused or is it the first cause? Or is God, the infinite first cause that caused the design of everything through physics?
"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." ~Albert Einstein "I still believe the universe has a beginning in real time, at the big bang. But there's another kind of time, imaginary time, at right angles to real time, in which the universe has no beginning or end." ~Stephen Hawking "To talk about the world as being made by God tomorrow or yesterday, would be talking nonsense. God makes the world and all things in this present now." ~Meister Eckhart "Beginningless time and the present moment are the same. . . . You have only to understand that time has no real existence." ~Zen Master Huang Po "The idea of time is only in your mind. It is not in the Self. There is no time for the Self. Time arises as an idea after the ego arises. But you are the Self beyond time and space; you exist even in the absence of time and space." ~Sri Ramana Maharshi Everything has a cause, and everything thing is empty of a separate self. That's I all I know.
You do realize the difference between subjectivity and objectivity right? I get asked repeatedly (professionally and personally) about the reasoning behind my statements. Even if I have proven my proficiency in the area in question, people still want to understand the proof as I understand it. You've listed some quotes from some heavy thinkers, but do you know why they think that way? Do they have scientific data that backs them, or even their documented logical extrapolation? Or are you going by faith in what they have accomplished? You say that everything has a cause, and that we don't have a real understanding of multi-dimensional time, but you fail to deal with the disruption in logic that the concept 'cause-and-effect' dictates. Linear time must be followed for something to cause an effect. The effect is always after the cause. Now if everything has a cause, as you believe, the only way that everything has a cause is if everything is in a cause-and-effect loop. But then what caused the infinite loop to exist? Something must have if everything has a cause, as you say. So what if something caused that infinite loop? And something caused that cause, and so on and so forth, infinitely. Because there is no starting point to this linear chain of events, it is impossible to even fathom when our reality has been caused. But we have evidence that our reality has been caused, or at least I do. Who knows if you exist at all? Because we have evidence that our reality was caused, there must have been a starting point to the linear progression of causes-and-effects. That starting point is the focus of this thread.
Eternity has no beginning and end. Now I'm much more inclined to believe that "no beginning and no end" pertains to everything, and just not god. It is just more "logical" to me. (even though it's all just a mental fabrication) I wish I had more TIME to talk about this right now, but I don't. Hopefully I will later.. .
Welcome to the grand illusion Come on in and see what’s happening Pay the price, get your tickets for the show The stage is set, the band starts playing Suddenly your heart is pounding Wishing secretly you were a star. But don’t be fooled by the radio The tv or the magazines They show you photographs of how your life should be But they’re just someone else’s fantasy So if you think your life is complete confusion Because you never win the game Just remember that it’s a grand illusion And deep inside we’re all the same. We’re all the same... So if you think your life is complete confusion Because your neighbors got it made Just remember that it’s a grand illusion And deep inside we’re all the same. We’re all the same... America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition Get yourself a brand new motor car Someday soon we’ll stop to ponder what on earth’s this spell we’re under We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are
The BBS can end now-- we've finally, finally had a quote from Meister Eckhart. OUTSTANDING. I just don't understand how anyone could accept this scenario.
OK Brian I went and looked this guy up and franklyI don't undestand a word of his goblygook. His quotes sound more like a Monty Pyton parody of relious quotes. I think he is just trying to baffle them with Bullsht. THIS IS MEISTER ECKHART FROM WHOM GOD HID NOTHING 1. Meister Eckhart said, A man of godly love, godly fear and perfect faith may, and he will, receive God’s body every day at the priest's hands. 2. The question is what does God do in heaven? The answer given by the saint is this, He crowns his own work: the works God crowns his saints for he created in them himself. 3. Meister Eckhart says, I have been asked what God is doing in heaven. I answer; He has been giving his Son birth eternally, is giving him birth now and will go on giving him birth forever. The Father being in labor, as a woman giving birth to a child, in every virtuous soul. Blessed, three times blessed, is the person within whose soul the heavenly Father is brought to bed in this manner. All she surrenders to him here she shall enjoy from him in life eternal. God made the soul on purpose for her to bear his one-begotten Son. His birth in Mary through the Spirit was better pleasing to God than his nativity of her in flesh. When this birth happens nowadays in the good loving soul, it gives God greater pleasure than his creation of the heavens and earth. 4. Meister Eckhart says, He who is at home everywhere is God-worth; to him who is ever the same is God present, and in him in whom creatures are stilled, God bears his one-begotten son. 5. Meister Eckhart says, Holy Scripture cries aloud for freedom from self. Self-free is self-controlled, and self-controlled is self-possessed, and self-possession is God-possession and possession of everything that God ever made. I say to you, as true as God is God and I am a man, if you were quite free from self, free as the highest angel, then you would be as much like the highest angel as you would be yourself. This method gives self-mastery. 6. According to Meister Eckhart, Grace does not come except with the Holy Spirit. It bears the Holy Spirit upon its back. Grace is no stationary thing, it is ever becoming. It is flowing straight out of God’s heart. Grace does nothing but re-form and convey God. Grace makes the soul conformable to the will of God. God, the ground of the soul, and grace go together. 7. Question, does God pour his grace into a power of the soul or into her essence, for no creature is allowed in the essence of the soul? The answer is that grace is a matter of the soul and nothing else, and grace without soul is not grace at all. It is immaterial for it is not true creature, it is creaturely. Grace, to be grace, must have the soul for substance, for if God poured his grace into a power of the soul that power alone would benefit. Not so, he instills it into her essence, and essence works by grace in all her powers.\ 8. Meister Eckhart says, Practice is better than precept; but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection. If I wanted a teacher of theology, I should go for one to Paris, to its learned university. However, if I came to ask about the perfect life, why then he could not tell me. Where then am I to turn? To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else: that can solve your anxious questions. Why, good people, search among dead bones? Why not seek the living part that is directly connected with creation and that gives eternal life? The dead neither give nor take. An angel seeking God as God would not anywhere for him except in a quiet, solitary creature. The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, scorn, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting until death without a why. 9. Meister Eckhart says, He who is ever along is Godworth and to him who is ever at home is God present and in him who stands ever in the present now does God the Father bear his Son unceasingly. 10. God's every inflection is a lure. I give no thanks to God for loving me because he cannot help it, it is his nature to; what I do thank him for is that he cannot of his goodness leave off loving me. 11. Meister Eckhart being questioned as to God's greatest gift to him answered, There are three. First, cessation of carnal desires and pleasures. Secondly, divine light enlightens me in everything I do. Thirdly, daily I grow and am renewed in virtue, grace, and happiness. 12. Brother Eckhart said, Not all suffering is rewarded; only what is cheerfully consented to. A man hanged on the gallows, suffering unwillingly, were better pleased that it had been another. There is no reward for that. Other sufferings the same. It is not the suffering that counts, it is the virtue. -- I say, to him who suffers not for love to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But one who suffers for love suffers not and his suffering is fruitful in God's sight. 13. Meister Eckhart says, we ought not to have to ask God for his grace, his divine goodness, we ought to contrive to take it ourselves without asking. God has gotten himself in his divine outflow just as the flowing ... 14. Mind you, all our perfection, our whole happiness, depends on our traversing and transcending creature, time, and state; and entering the cause that is causeless. 15. God being still sets everything going. So desirable a thing starts them all running back into that from whence they came: to that which stays unchanged in its own self; and the nobler the thing the more jubilantly it runs. 16. What could be sweeter than to have a friend with whom, as with yourself, you can discuss all that is in your heart? 17. Speaking of man we mean a person; speaking of manhood we mean human nature. 18. Doctors define what nature is. It is the thing that essence can take on. God took on manhood and not man. I say: Christ was the first man. How so? What is first in intention is last in execution, as the roof is the finish of the house.
