• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

What is God?

grip

Slow 🅖 Hand
DP Veteran
Joined
Dec 1, 2011
Messages
33,000
Reaction score
13,973
Location
FL - Daytona
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Independent
I think of God as pure energy, boundless mind and potential without center or limits? Nothingness and the infinite are literally the same concept and cannot be physically experienced by humans because we are limited, so we are only able to discern pockets of information, not the whole picture, yet.

A New Way To Think About 'God' : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR

So let me propose a new way of thinking about God. Let me explain with an analogy.

Ants are very simple creatures. They can recognize a dozen or so pheromones (scent molecules) and can sense where those pheromones are more intense. They also can tell the difference between meeting two ants in a minute and 200 ants. That's about the extent of their individual communication abilities. But if we observe 10,000 of them in a colony, a "swarm logic" has emerged. The colony is continually adjusting the number of ants foraging for food, based on the number of mouths to feed, how much food is stored already in the nest, how much food is available in the vicinity, and whether other colonies are out there competing. Yet, no ant understands any of this.

The colony can engineer the construction of an ant hill as high as a man and as busy as a city, yet no one is in charge. Some ant hills can last a century. Over its lifetime, the colony will go through predictable stages of development, from aggressive youth to conservative maturity to death, yet no ant lives more than a tiny fraction of that time. What is going on? Where does swarm logic come from?

It emerges from the complexity of the interactions among the ants. An ant colony is self-organizing. Emergence is a powerful scientific concept that cuts across many fields - in fact, it happens throughout evolution. From the formation of galaxies to the evolution of life to the folding of proteins to the growth of cities to the disruption of the global climate, emergence creates utterly new phenomena out of interactions of simpler things.

Almost everything we humans do collectively spawns an emergent phenomenon. So, for example, people trading things has led to the global economy, an emergent phenomenon so complicated and unpredictable that not only does no one know the rules, but the professionals don't even agree on what the rules should be about. The never-ending effort to get people to behave decently toward one another has spawned governments. Our innate desire for gossip has spawned the media. Economies, governments and the media are all emergent phenomena - like an ant colony. They follow new and complicated rules that often cannot be derived from the behavior of the parts that make them up. They are real and have immense power over us, but they are not human or humanlike, even though they arise from human activities.

Something new has to have emerged from the staggering complexity of all humanity's aspirations, interacting. What is that something - that emergent phenomenon both fed by and feeding the aspirations of every human being? It didn't exist before humans evolved, but it's here now, and every one of us is directly connected to it, simply by virtue of being human and having aspirations. It didn't create the universe, but it has created the meaning of the universe, which is what matters to us. Meaning, universe, spirit, God, creation and all other abstract concepts are themselves ideas that took form over countless generations, as people shared their aspirations to understand and express what may lie beyond the visible world. This emergent phenomenon has created the power of all our words and ideas, including ideas like truth, justice, and freedom, which took millennia to clarify in practice, and which no individual could ever have invented or even imagined without a rich cultural history that made it possible.

This infinitely complex phenomenon, which has emerged and continues to emerge from instant to instant, growing exponentially and shape-shifting, can accurately be said to exist in the modern universe. It's as real as the economy, as real as the government. It doesn't matter if you're Hindu or Christian or Jewish or atheist or agnostic, because I'm not proposing an alternative religious idea. I'm explaining an emergent phenomenon that actually exists in our scientific picture of reality. You don't have to call it God, but it's real. And when you search for a name for it, it may be the only thing that exists in the modern universe that is worthy of the name God.

Now at first, I thought that 'swarm intelligence' was merely habitual information encoded within a species collective DNA, like instincts. But so far, it appears more like algorithms that can be employed even within A.I. Swarm robotics - Wikipedia

Could God, partially, be this pure intangible energy that's emerging as a complex group thought, giving us individual meaning thru an interconnection of hidden purpose?
 
I think of God as pure energy, boundless mind and potential without center or limits? Nothingness and the infinite are literally the same concept and cannot be physically experienced by humans because we are limited, so we are only able to discern pockets of information, not the whole picture, yet.



Now at first, I thought that 'swarm intelligence' was merely habitual information encoded within a species collective DNA, like instincts. But so far, it appears more like algorithms that can be employed even within A.I. Swarm robotics - Wikipedia

Could God, partially, be this pure intangible energy that's emerging as a complex group thought, giving us individual meaning thru an interconnection of hidden purpose?

In other words another wasted thread that offers nothing more than a god of gaps fallacy. If we do not know what it is , then blame god for it.

So to answer your question. God is what we do not know.
 
I think of God as pure energy, boundless mind and potential without center or limits? Nothingness and the infinite are literally the same concept and cannot be physically experienced by humans because we are limited, so we are only able to discern pockets of information, not the whole picture, yet.



Now at first, I thought that 'swarm intelligence' was merely habitual information encoded within a species collective DNA, like instincts. But so far, it appears more like algorithms that can be employed even within A.I. Swarm robotics - Wikipedia

Could God, partially, be this pure intangible energy that's emerging as a complex group thought, giving us individual meaning thru an interconnection of hidden purpose?

If it's an 'intangible energy' how can you show it exists? If it's intangible, why call it energy?
 
A fantasy that has been used and abused, for good and evil.
 
If it's an 'intangible energy' how can you show it exists? If it's intangible, why call it energy?

If it intangible then how can it affect us? The word 'energy' is often misused. As for the OP, a figment of the imagination.
 
In other words another wasted thread that offers nothing more than a god of gaps fallacy. If we do not know what it is , then blame god for it.

So to answer your question. God is what we do not know.

You didn't bother reading the quoted analogy to theorize on what God might be? It gives a plausible explanation for a real phenomenon, but you're going to call any theory a 'god of the gaps' fallacy because you're predisposed to denial. I'm merely proposing a hypothetical, not saying anything with certainty.
 
I just can’t see it.

One thing I can say without a shadow of a doubt.

1000% certainty, is that the god of the bible does not exist, or any of our holy texts.

It’s 100%, no nonsense, man invented fiction.

Our, pitiful way of explaining the Universe.

I’m not saying this to demean the OP as a person, but the OP’s article is nothing but a vein attempt to make the concept of god seem more... Scientific in an extremely complex way that for me just... When one considers what scientists think may be the ultimate fate of the universe, that it will eventually become, nothing at all.

Once the final black hole dies and the entire universe cools to absolute zero and all is the same temperature, nothing will exist.

Now of course the big problem with this, is the lack of understanding of Dark Matter which could end up redefining that belief, but the universe is a cold, heartless, massive place of dispassionate life and death that doesn’t really care whether we live or die, an asteroid the size of Alaska could smash into us tomorrow and that’s it, we’re gone, no rhyme or reason, it just happened and the universe sails on to it’s ultimate destiny and our “emergent phenomenon” in terms of our spirituality will be wiped from all existence, there will be no sign, no knowledge, no hint or morsel of dust that will even suggest it ever happened.

I may be getting the wrong impression from the OP’s commentary which I think he’s distinguishing from the Article but that doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a boundless form of energy would be trying to imprint on our group thought If it really doesn’t give a damn if we disappear from all known existence.
 
I believe that the bible is written by men inspired by God. That's the God I believe in.
 
I believe that the bible is written by men inspired by God. That's the God I believe in.

So God was responsible for all of the mistakes and fallacies in the Bible?
 
I think of God as pure energy, boundless mind and potential without center or limits? Nothingness and the infinite are literally the same concept and cannot be physically experienced by humans because we are limited, so we are only able to discern pockets of information, not the whole picture, yet.

Now at first, I thought that 'swarm intelligence' was merely habitual information encoded within a species collective DNA, like instincts. But so far, it appears more like algorithms that can be employed even within A.I. Swarm robotics - Wikipedia

Could God, partially, be this pure intangible energy that's emerging as a complex group thought, giving us individual meaning thru an interconnection of hidden purpose?

A couple of paragraphs from the article:
"Something new has to have emerged from the staggering complexity of all humanity's aspirations, interacting. What is that something - that emergent phenomenon both fed by and feeding the aspirations of every human being? It didn't exist before humans evolved, but it's here now, and every one of us is directly connected to it, simply by virtue of being human and having aspirations. It didn't create the universe, but it has created the meaning of the universe, which is what matters to us. Meaning, universe, spirit, God, creation and all other abstract concepts are themselves ideas that took form over countless generations, as people shared their aspirations to understand and express what may lie beyond the visible world. This emergent phenomenon has created the power of all our words and ideas, including ideas like truth, justice, and freedom, which took millennia to clarify in practice, and which no individual could ever have invented or even imagined without a rich cultural history that made it possible.

This infinitely complex phenomenon, which has emerged and continues to emerge from instant to instant, growing exponentially and shape-shifting, can accurately be said to exist in the modern universe. It's as real as the economy, as real as the government. It doesn't matter if you're Hindu or Christian or Jewish or atheist or agnostic, because I'm not proposing an alternative religious idea. I'm explaining an emergent phenomenon that actually exists in our scientific picture of reality. You don't have to call it God, but it's real. And when you search for a name for it, it may be the only thing that exists in the modern universe that is worthy of the name God."



Nothing more than blather dressed up in a tuxedo, just like the "God is thought" thread from Big Eye.
There is really nothing mystical here pointing to a "God". Just substitute "society" for "God" in the last sentence, and it all makes sense, and without any resort to any outside source such as the one listed: "God".

As such, Humanism has the answers. Humanism is people engaged in developing the societal codes in which we gather together, and it is easily done without any source other than humans themselves.

See how easy that is to eliminate the "God" factor from the presentation above?
 
You didn't bother reading the quoted analogy to theorize on what God might be? It gives a plausible explanation for a real phenomenon, but you're going to call any theory a 'god of the gaps' fallacy because you're predisposed to denial. I'm merely proposing a hypothetical, not saying anything with certainty.

Don't make me laugh. that was a not even close to plausible. All it said was there is something we do not understand so let's call it a god. basic god of gap fallacy.

And no theists are capable of many differing fallacies with their ridiculous arguments. Just this one happens to be a god of gaps fallacy.

Correct, you are not saying anything with certainty you are not even saying anything worth considering.
 
Sorry to interrupt but God is something man came up with to answer the question "What happens to us after we die?". It's as simple as that.
 
A primitive mind trying to understand it's existence.

Many people need to believe that there is something In control.

Unfortunately men who seek power have exploited that need over the centuries. Religion is used to control the masses.
 
What is God?

Since god is a man-made imaginary "entity", god can be whatever any individual imagines god to be.

I will however challenge the idea that "energy" can have a thought, or mind.

Please explain how energy can have a mind.

Infinite tons and tons of energy throughout the universe.
Tell me about the mind of the energy in a galaxy 1000 light-years away from our galaxy.

Also, does anti-matter have a mind?
 
Back
Top Bottom