Comment by Jim G on December 10, 2009 at 11:31pm

Sounds good to my brain on a six pack James. However, the important thing to me is the direct relationship with a God. I don't think the ultimate God cares if my relationship is with the demiurge (lesser God.) Today, I decided it was OK for me to have a relationship with Father Sun. That does not mean that I am going to worship Father Sun. Father Sun is merely a replacement for my father, which I ... well which needs a replacement.

Comment by Jim G on December 10, 2009 at 11:33pm

And it is you sir who private messaged me the brilliant email message that I will cherish forever. If I had a teacher like you in college, I'd be a genius. And without a relationship to a father I cannot be balanced. If that is Father Sun, then the ultimate Father will not care. Because he would just want me to be balanced.

Comment by James S Saint on December 10, 2009 at 11:43pm

Yes, this proof is not about what is most significant or any of the other characteristics commonly associated with God. This proof is strictly concerned with merely the existence. That God might be big or small, have a long beard, wear pick panties, or only have an IQ of 13. Those are other issues.

There ARE other provable characteristics of God.

The idea of a "Father" is the idea of an instigation and limiter. A Father requires of you and confines you. And yes, one is absolutely necessary to have balance and sanity.

And I thank you for your appreciation of that PM. ]:o)

Comment by Jim G on December 10, 2009 at 11:49pm

Which makes you the Web Master James.

Comment by James S Saint on December 10, 2009 at 11:57pm

"May the Force be with You"

];o)

Comment by John Matthewson on December 11, 2009 at 4:45am

God would need to be a mind to be worthy of the name 'God'. When I examine my own mind it seems to be events arranged in space and time that are directed at a centre-point (although I do not experience anything flowing into this centre point). See Time and conscious experience. When I apply instruments to the world I get the same configuration - a 4D manifold of events.

The big difference between my mind and the world in general is that things just pop into my mind that seem to be produced by the non-conscious, processing parts of my brain. Does my mind need a processor to be a mind? Does the universe in general contain a universe sized processor ?

Comment by James S Saint on December 11, 2009 at 7:17am

It might be good to add the quality of mind/intelligence/consciousness to the idea of a God if people actually knew what those were, but seeing how they don't, of what value is it to say that God must have them?

Comment by david thurman on December 11, 2009 at 9:04am

I think that you are right, we get screwed up in trying to determine the determiner and that is a problem. There is no such thing as first cause, there is only causation in relationship to or in context of. So the universe started, many would hold that it defines it's self by it's own causation. This to me is circular in logic the math doesn't support the big crunch in that math in and of itself breaksdown. Cosmologists are starting to venture intellectuallly outside the universe (with great controversy I might add) but logic dictates this because the universe has a beginning, that implies causation, not to itself but to something else. To me it's stupidity to think otherwise. As soon as you expand past the universe there is no first causation and so, then determinism can be seen in a couple of different ways. An external determiner beyond infinity as defined by Cantor, that's absurd, since the superset in and of itself is undefined, so then God can't be seen as purely separate from reality as God is currently described. The alternative is to understand God intrinsic to reality, No first cause, and absolutely deterministic control, or no control. If God is intrinsic to reality does God Control self? That seems Odd and so the alternative is No control, absolute, deterministically. Then we have to ask what are the underlying characteristics that Are the causations of determinism to take place. i think that is where we are at in one degree or another at this time. We are sort of hashing around developing and understanding of that.

Nicely done I like that

Comment by Jeff H on December 11, 2009 at 11:47am

This is from one of my favorite authors on understanding God. The book is "The Knowledge of the Holy" and the author A.W. Tozer. The rest can be found at... http://www.heavendwellers.com/hdt_knowledge_of_the_holy.htm
=================================
CHAPTER 1

Why We Must Think Rightly About God


O, Lord God Almighty, not the God of the philosophers and the wise but the God of the prophets and apostles; and better than all, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, may I express Thee unblamed?

They that know Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou art, and so worship not Thee but a creature of their own fancy; therefore enlighten our minds that we may know Thee as Thou art, so that we may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee.

In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.

For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.

Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, ”What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow.

Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God. Thought and speech are God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him. It is highly significant that the first word was the Word: ”And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We may speak because God spoke. In Him word and idea are indivisible.

That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.

A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.

It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.

All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him.

The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with matters which at the most cannot concern him for very long; but even if the multiple burdens of time may be lifted from him, the one mighty single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, and to worship Him acceptably. And when the man’s laboring conscience tells him that he has done none of these things, but has from childhood been guilty of foul revolt against the Majesty in the heavens, the inner pressure of self-accusation may become too heavy to bear.

The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind, give beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But unless the weight of the burden is felt the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.

Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is - in itself a monstrous sin - and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness. Always this God will conform to the image of the one who created it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges.

A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God. ”Thou thoughtest,” said the Lord to the wicked man in the psalm, ”that I was altogether such as one as thyself.” Surely this must be a serious affront to the Most High God before whom cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, ”Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”

Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place.

”When they knew God,” wrote Paul, ”they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

Then followed the worship of idols fashioned after the likeness of men and birds and beasts and creeping things. But this series of degrading acts began in the mind. Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.

Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they appear. The long career of Israel demonstrates this clearly enough, and the history of the Church confirms it. So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with her worship and her moral standards declines along with it. The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.

Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, ”What is God like?” and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.

The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him - and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise.

O, God of Bethel, by whose hand
Thy people still are fed;
Who through this weary pilgrimage
Hast all our fathers led!
Our vows, our prayers we now present
Before Thy throne of grace:
God of our fathers! be the God
Of their succeeding race.
Philip Doddridge

Comment by david thurman on December 11, 2009 at 12:08pm

You know jeff I think we all are with you on that post, we come at it a bit differently but the underlying truth is coming to an understanding and yet not allowing for us to get trapped in our own web so to speak. I tried that once and it hurt like hell if you know what i mean.

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