To any theologians here...

[Spendthrift]

PlatinumGold - did you mean to say omnipotence, or did you mean omniprescence? as for relativity, point taken. my knowledge of the theories is limited to the few physics courses i have taken. and none of them covered time in depth.

Rio Rebel - "So the traditional concept of God, in my view, is not possible. Either God is different than that description, or God defies logic. And since I don't know what it would mean to defy logic yet still exist, I am left with the belief that God is not the way He is described in Western Theism. God is unknowable, but not RADICALLY unknowable - he is bigger than our concepts, but not contradictory to them."

yes, our language is woefully inadequate for describing God and hes is bigger than our concepts. but it gives me pleasure to attempt to logically and rationally construct concepts that improve my understanding of God. i may, upon meeting Him, find out that i was way off. but the exercise gives me pleasure and comfort in this life.

"This is why the question haunts me - I believe in One greater than myself, but if this One cannot be described within my conceptual framework, how can I talk about Him at all? (Maybe Aquinas was right - in the end, we can't."

without fail, the one way we can talk about Him is to repeat what He has said about Himself. Jesus talked about the Father and througout the Old Testament, God talked about Himself and His attributes. these are truly things we can say about God.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

What others have said that he has said about himself? Aren't the transcribers faced with the same limitations and lack of credibility? Or because they tell us something that is nice and comforting we overlook that?

 

[Spendthrift]

well the underlying assumptions of the discussion being that Christianity is true and that the Bible is the Word of God, inspired by God, and therefore reliable.

so yes it would be what others have written that God says about himself. i could relate to you what God has told me personally (not that any of it relates to the discussion at hand), but for most people that doesnt carry the same authority that the Bible does.

i trust that the transcribers of the Bible were writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and that what they have written is true and accurate. otherwise there is no foundation upon which to have this discussion.

 

[Moonbeam]

The reason, more or less, that I post is that the fact that there could be no foundation upon which to have this discussion changes nothing. The rightness or wrongness of the Bible doesn't affect truth in any way. The thing about truth is that it doesn't care what anybody thinks or what any book says. It's the truth.

 

[linuxboy]

Hey guys

You know I'm usually in these threads but I've had huge time commitments to a new project so I'm under some constraints. There have been many issues raised that have been covered and many more that people have missed that seem a little futile to cover at this point since we've done it in the past and know each other's positions.

I like how Moonbeam has said it in this end, the idea of truth.

We live through life struggling and aiming to achieve, to find out truth and to consequently live with it and abide in it. Culture shapes us to such a point that we laugh at another and claim to have the sort of answer that really matters. We talk about issues of faith, about issues of "true selves", conditioning, psychopathology and drugs like euthogens. We try very hard to come to know knowledge in order to understand the world and understand ourselves a little bit better. But in the process, in our immense intellects, in our striving for humility, for insight, and for a genuine experience of what has been called God or to whom I refer as You, both as "out there" and "in here", we may miss something that really is truth by claiming a position that comes to hold truth. A real danger exists in our interactions and in the way we acquire knowledge because we must give a little, to submit, or crucify, or forget in order to come to really understand and know anything.

Having said that, what are my motivations in posting that? Heh...

Truth is there. We can claim circularity due to our senses or an authority lacking any ground, but we still must have that. And we should spend time to know You, both personally, and in some intellectual context, so we come to a full understanding in reliving what humans have struggled with for ages.

There are problems with any position, and one can make objections to them. And one must seek truth fervently, having gotten it, to learn and let it interact. But at the same time, let us not forget that there is a possibility that everything we know is wrong. Even the rocks cry God and praise You. The children inherit Your kingdom. Are we rocks or children? Then how are we to say what a rock prasing feels or experiences? How are we to say what it means to be a child, having perhaps forgotten?

The earth is crammed with heaven and every lowly bush afire with God. I think we should seek that in our lives and recognize it in ourselves. And perhaps, for the Christians, we should remember what Paul says about philosophy and what Ecclesiastes says about reading many many books and how dim the eyes can get in old age because of it.

The end point is that we should seek but remember that too much idle talk can miss the point. Truth is still there.

thank you for the wonderful reading and for staying so civil.

Cheers !

 

[Moonbeam]

<<I write better than I live>> Hehe, I already factored that in.