I have no use for either one of those. I, in no way associate God(if there is one) with religion. To me, God is ambiguous. It could be some sort of eternal being, or some fundamental cosmological constants. It could be a Unifield Field that divided itself to cause the Big Bang and create the Universe. Or maybe God could be hiding in Gravity. Gravity is the force they say extends beyond this Universe into the "Bulk", making it infinite...an attribute of God. And one of my favorites, God could be the Quantum Electrodynamic Field. Last but not least, the Higgs Boson. Seem to have an obsession with trying desperately to find God through science and theoretical Physics. I dont have any great knowledge of any of these, maybe if I did I wouldnt even consider them.

actually I am not much of a fan of religion but I think hardheaded atheism is a lot worse. At least religion leaves some room for the imagination and a sense of possibility. The Dawkinsian atheism leaves me completely cold. If I had to choose, I would choose the former.

Fortunately, we don't.

do you think it would ever be possible to literally "find" God?

actually I am not much of a fan of religion but I think hardheaded atheism is a lot worse.

At least religion leaves some room for the imagination and a sense of possibility. The Dawkinsian atheism leaves me completely cold. If I had to choose, I would choose the former.

Fortunately, we don't.

I wish every theist held the position you hold. Just wondering, do you think it would ever be possible to literally "find" God? And do you think that God thinks?

Believe in God m/f is more important than your humilty

Humanity is the aim of Being God and re-D-sign.

Like you said, other Theists have a different idea of what god is. For example, if science proved that at the time before the Big Bang, all the four fundamental forces were combined into a single Superforce. And it was this Superforce that initiated the Big Bang. Then I would consider it a "God like" force.

It makes sense that if God were to do anything, it would be preceded by a "thought" of doing something.

Are you familiar with Plotinus? I mean, what sources have you consulted thus far?

How would you go about asking such a question anyway? 'Finding the eternal being' was the aim of all philosophy before the modern period, when we abandoned the search and switched to physics.

One thing that ought to be said, perhaps, is that in classical philosophy, or theosophy, the asking of such a question could not really be asked at an arms-length as a theoretical concern, because such issues are not truly objective.


(Incidentally, the association of 'God' with the Higgs Boson comes from a book called 'The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question" by Leon Ledderman. I haven't read it.)

Finally I interpret references to 'the Life Eternal' in Christian and other religious literature, as references to a sense of being beyond time, not references to something of infinite duration.

I totally agree. When we are absorbed in anything from great rock n roll, to the contemplation of a great painting, or perhaps the plotting of a checkmate, time is not real for us. Time is of course just an abstraction, a numerical system imposed on the perception of change. Time is founded on memory and imagination, and complicated social rituals. Such as the tolling of bells. Or nowadays the numbers on our cell phones.

I would argue that eternity is more real than time, that time is the child or offspring of eternity.

Another butchering of the definition of time but not surprised since very few people seem to grasp what time is and does. You simply can not do anything without time. Time is movement, it differentiates two occurrences or events. Without time, nothing moves, nothing changes, and you can't do anything. You can't have a thought, you can't experience, can't think or be anything. A realm without time would be frozen in a single moment without ever changing. You wouldn't even know you were existing within a realm without time because you would first have to experience it and have the thought, but you can't without time.

I have been through this argument a billion times previously.

Well that makes sense, but I wonder what those Physicists are talking about when they say that time didnt exist before the Big Bang. Surely they must be mistaken, or according to the above there never would have been a big bang.

Are we all talking about the same "kind" of time here?

Yes. I know I do not hold the popular belief that the BB created time. I do not hold that time was created at the BB. I stand where your question is. That time had to have been there for the BB to even happen. Why physicists do not see this or gloss over it, baffles me.

I'd rather say that time is a mind-illusion, and that there ultimately only exist the "now", and that everything ultimately happens at the same time - now.

In that sense, (the illusion of) time started with BB, where time and space - the medium for the time-mind-illusion - began.

No I don't think there is a now as you are attempting to convey. My definition still stands, without time, now would just be a non-moving moment, like a photograph or a painting. It simply can not change. The fact that now changes from future to past means time is in effect changing the future into the past. That is the only thing happening now...

I define Now as a fixed point, an eternal and absolute point of stillness and motionlessness which is the reference point for all motion. And since time is defined by motion (a clock must tick to be able to measure time), time must also be relative to this absolute point of stillness.

The fact that time/motion is relative indicates that it cannot be an absolute reference point. Only stillness/motionlessness can be the reference point in this context since it only has one possible "speed" - zero - while time/motion can have any speed other than zero. If you were to choose time as a reference, which time-speed would you choose then, and why? The only logical reference for all time is therefore zero, just like the logical reference for all temperature is absolute zero.

The absolute point of stillness - zero point - is actually the source of all motion - the fixed point from which motion emanates/radiates. That is the reason why all motion and thereby all time is relative to this point.

Rado