An Omniscient God Negates Free Will

  • Welcome to Christian Forums, a Christian Forum that recognizes that all Christians are a work in progress.

    You will need to register to be able to join in fellowship with Christians all over the world.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

Dustykitten

Member
Dec 3, 2022
41
47
18
Netherlands
Faith
Christian
Country
United States
I pose a set of simple and imo concrete logic that might inspire significant discussion among the membership.

An Omniscient (all-knowing) God by definition means that free will can not actually exist.

A person is presented with a Choice of A, B or C

But God knows, infallibly, unerringly with 100% certainty that option A is going to be the choice.


That being the case it MUST be impossible for option B and C to be chosen, for otherwise that would mean God was wrong, fallible and imperfect.

If B an C are not in fact possible options, then there was never a real choice to begin with. Hence, there is no free will because the result of all actions and choices are known to God before they happen and therefore all alternative choices are not actual possibilities.

This is a tricky argument for many Christians to face up to and they will frequently invoke the "Divine Default" saying "it just is" or "God just knows" without being able to quantify or rationally explain any of it.

Discuss
Free will is a myth if we believe scripture and God's words that in fact tell us this.

God is sovereign. Romans 8.

Proverbs 16:9 ESV
The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.


Proverbs 16:33 ESV
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
 

Lapidem

Active Member
Jan 30, 2021
653
66
28
DinglyDell
Faith
Other Faith
Country
United Kingdom
We have free will to act according to our own nature and our own circumstances, to gain our own knowledge and opinions, to create our own reality.
Pure subjective opinion and supposition.

Adam said:
But here is a question for you: where does consciousness come from? In a purely mechanistic universe, there would be no such thing as a conscious being, whatever strange shapes chemical processes might take.

That doesn't follow at all. Consciousness is simply another aspect of that purely mechanistic universe. It's chemical reactions going on in the brain.
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
Pure subjective opinion and supposition.



That doesn't follow at all. Consciousness is simply another aspect of that purely mechanistic universe. It's chemical reactions going on in the brain.
Are chemicals conscious? When go clean my kitchen with cleaner, am I smearing some being's brains all over the place?
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
Are chemicals conscious? When go clean my kitchen with cleaner, am I smearing some being's brains all over the place?
Or I suppose it might be a specific chemical molecule that consciousness comes from? If I collect a jar of it, it would be conscious? Is it atoms that are conscious? The bonds between atoms that form molecules, are those conscious? Or maybe it is not chemicals that are conscious, but it is the brain structure? In which case, are physical structures inherently conscious? I have a baby who plays with Megablox, when she stacks two blocks together, is this a form of consciousness? Or maybe consciousness is a biochemical process, or in other words, energy; in which case: are photons conscious? Or maybe consciousness comes as a manifestation of physical information. For example, a light switch has an on/off state. Is my light switch conscious?

The problem is that physicalists are relying on the Atheism of the Gaps. They make an illogical claim: that the physical world can create metaphysical consciousness; and when pressured for how this is possible, they claim they cannot know the answer due to complexity. Well any complex problem can be broken down to its simplest components, so that is what we are doing here. Are atoms conscious? Are physical structures conscious? Are photons conscious? What is the basic elementary building block of consciousness?

Well the answer to all these questions, funnily enough, is yes, but not for the reasons you are thinking. You will never have your answers as long as you are looking at the question backwards. It is not the physical that creates consciousness, but it is the other way around: it is consciousness that creates the physical.
 

I.O.U

Well-Known Member
Aug 8, 2021
1,813
329
83
Brisbane
Faith
Agnostic
Country
Australia
Some people are just jerks. Jesus was killed by religious jerks. Some people believe in God but their faith has been corrupted by false teachings; others only pretend to believe for the sake of self-aggrandizement; and there are some people who are humble and genuinely loving to others. A person's real religion can be seen in how they treat others.
I should have not come here. Anyway, now that I am here I'll just talk about how stupid am I. There must be a way to punish myself for logging on here (I hate myself so much!) and I enjoy loathing myself, it's like a type of reverse-narcissism. Bye for now.
 
Last edited:
  • Sad
Reactions: Adam

I.O.U

Well-Known Member
Aug 8, 2021
1,813
329
83
Brisbane
Faith
Agnostic
Country
Australia
Talking about freewill, I will quote Christopher Hitchens. "I know I have freewill because I don't have a choice about it"

That's funny, really funny.
 

I.O.U

Well-Known Member
Aug 8, 2021
1,813
329
83
Brisbane
Faith
Agnostic
Country
Australia
F it! I was going to post something for Elissa. But your forum cares more about ad money and (Well that's about it I guess) Sorry babe, sorry.
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
Talking about freewill, I will quote Christopher Hitchens. "I know I have freewill because I don't have a choice about it"

That's funny, really funny.
The consciousness exists first, and your experience of the world is created by projecting your thoughts outward like onto a movie screen. You recognize symbols, like trees, people, etc. and this creates your reality. The will very obviously exists because you know that you are here, the real question is: does matter really exist? Physics has proven that matter is just another form of energy. The properties of energy are also proven to be dependent on the observer. This proves that consciousness is also a form of energy that can physically alter the material world. So if consciousness is energy, then it is possible that all energy (and therefore matter) is also a form of consciousness in itself.
 

Lapidem

Active Member
Jan 30, 2021
653
66
28
DinglyDell
Faith
Other Faith
Country
United Kingdom
The consciousness exists first, and your experience of the world is created by projecting your thoughts outward like onto a movie screen. You recognize symbols, like trees, people, etc. and this creates your reality.

This doesn't hold water at all. For you to recognise something it must be there to be recognised. You can't recognise a tree that isn't there ! Furthermore, to recognise an object or manifestation as say a tree, you must have had prior exposure to a tree in some way otherwise you would not know it was a tree. Additionally, if everyone were individual and having this experience as you describe it then we'd all be seeing constantly changing things, shapes and forms instantly appearing out of nowhere and most we wouldn't recognise because they'd be creations from someone else's thoughts/consciousness. Since this is not happening there are just 2 possibilities. One is that no-one else actually exists except me and the people I see are merely constructs that I have created by my own will. The other is that your theory is wrong, and things are created quite outside our will and consciousness. Created by someone or something else.

Adam said:
The will very obviously exists because you know that you are here

What you call "will" could simply be an artificial construct. Everything around you could be an artificial construct in which you are imprisoned. You have no way to know either way. All you can do is experience what you experience according to the boundaries and rules of the environment in which you appear to be in. You can only experience it according to the limited senses you've got, or been given.


Adam said:
the real question is: does matter really exist? Physics has proven that matter is just another form of energy.

Can't see that the distinction matters that much TBH. I personally believe everything is made of energy of various forms and the entire universe is simply a chaos of constantly changing energies. Every life form is just a transformer of those energies. Life forms take forms of energy in, they transform them into the type of energy they need to sustain themselves, to sustain their current form and if they don't get enough of that required energy they lose that form (what we call dying) and revert back to other energies which will ultimately br transformed into something else.

In this sense energy is immortal. Humans worry about living and dying and speak in those terms but the reality is we are immortal or rather the energy which makes us what we are is immortal. Hence there's really no such thing as dying at all. We've all been here since the universe began billions of years ago, born in stars likely as atoms of Hydrogen and Helium but over the millennia transformations have happened and trillions of different forms of energy have been generated. The greatest lie ever told by nefarious life forms is that we're all going to die and unless we do X, Y and Z or them, we'll go to perpetual Hell and the like. We're all immortal. We are all part of the universe that's been here since the beginning (if indeed there ever was a beginning). What's not immortal is our current energy form. It's fickle, vulnerable and unable to sustain itself indefinitely, most likely because it doesn't get access to the certain types of energy that it really need to fuel it.

Adam said:
The properties of energy are also proven to be dependent on the observer.

Well, every type of energy reacts differently to every other type of energy so no surprise there really. A cold energy will react to a hot energy differently to how another hot energy would react to it.

Adam said:
This proves that consciousness is also a form of energy that can physically alter the material world.

Can't see how that follows at all TBH. The "material world" is nothing but energy in various forms. So really there's no such thing as a material world. It's all just an energy world. Humans perhaps like to think of a rock as material but really it's energy.

What you perceive as consciousness is just a collection of properties of the various energies that make up your form. Do we need to assign the word "consciousness" to those properties? Would a flame consider its heat properties to be it's consciousness?

Adam said:
So if consciousness is energy, then it is possible that all energy (and therefore matter) is also a form of consciousness in itself.

I don't think you've got this quite right. Energy is energy. You're wanting to call some of the properties of that energy consciousness for whatever reason. Energy isn't imo consciousness. Consciousness is simply an artificial construct of humans which they use to describe certain properties. Everything is just constant exchange of energies. We simply act and behave in accordance with the type of energies that we are made of. For whatever reason those energies desire to maintain the form they are in (human form) though for 99.9999999% of humans that turns out not to be possible because we can't get the energy fuel we need to sustain that form so we age, grow old, decay and decompose.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Adam

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
This doesn't hold water at all. For you to recognise something it must be there to be recognised. You can't recognise a tree that isn't there !
Have you ever had a dream before? A dream is a series of impressions without matter.

Furthermore, to recognise an object or manifestation as say a tree, you must have had prior exposure to a tree in some way otherwise you would not know it was a tree.
Indeed, you must only be recalling the idea of a tree from its perfect form. You understand perfect forms because you yourself are a perfect form, a spirit.

Additionally, if everyone were individual and having this experience as you describe it then we'd all be seeing constantly changing things, shapes and forms instantly appearing out of nowhere and most we wouldn't recognise because they'd be creations from someone else's thoughts/consciousness.
Mark 11
23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

2 Kings 6
17 And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

Mark 6
5 And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he marveled because of their unbelief.

You are creating your own reality, seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Even Jesus could not force people to see miracles when they did not want to.

I know you may not be Christian, but you don't have to believe these verses, only understand that I am using them to illustrate an idea.

Elijah rose bodily from Earth to Heaven, proving that Earth and Heaven are the same place. Jesus went even further, he was condemned for the sins of all mankind, sent to Hell, and ascended from Hell to Heaven, proving that Hell and Heaven are the same place. The difference between Heaven, Earth and Hell is a state of mind. We exist in celestial realms already, but are blinded to them. It is what the Hindus refer to as "Maya".

Since this is not happening there are just 2 possibilities. One is that no-one else actually exists except me and the people I see are merely constructs that I have created by my own will. The other is that your theory is wrong, and things are created quite outside our will and consciousness. Created by someone or something else.
No, there is another possibility you have not considered: that your concept of yourself as you perceieve it, is an illusion, as is the concept of yourself as being distinct from others. Others do exist - but they are all in fact one. The unifying spirit of everything, you can call that God. The face of other people is an image of God, a fraction of God's personality and ideas. Imagine yourself inside of their body, because that is the truth of it, they are a reflection of you, and you of them.

Have you ever dreamt you were something else? Maybe a soldier, or a celebrity, or whatever? In the dream, you believed it was who you were, but you woke up and realized instantly that you are someone else.

God is the dreamer, God's consciousness is all that exists, and everything is spun off from that. Existence is an eternal meditation, looking inwards.

What you call "will" could simply be an artificial construct.
I know that consciousness exists because I would not be able to contemplate consciousness unless consciousness existed.

Everything around you could be an artificial construct in which you are imprisoned. You have no way to know either way. All you can do is experience what you experience according to the boundaries and rules of the environment in which you appear to be in. You can only experience it according to the limited senses you've got, or been given.
The senses only feed information into the consciousness. When you look at a tree, do you see photons of light? Or do you see elements of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen? Or do you see the impression of a tree in your mind? You can never experience anything directly, you can experience only your own mind.

Can't see that the distinction matters that much TBH. I personally believe everything is made of energy of various forms and the entire universe is simply a chaos of constantly changing energies. Every life form is just a transformer of those energies. Life forms take forms of energy in, they transform them into the type of energy they need to sustain themselves, to sustain their current form and if they don't get enough of that required energy they lose that form (what we call dying) and revert back to other energies which will ultimately br transformed into something else.

In this sense energy is immortal. Humans worry about living and dying and speak in those terms but the reality is we are immortal or rather the energy which makes us what we are is immortal. Hence there's really no such thing as dying at all. We've all been here since the universe began billions of years ago, born in stars likely as atoms of Hydrogen and Helium but over the millennia transformations have happened and trillions of different forms of energy have been generated. The greatest lie ever told by nefarious life forms is that we're all going to die and unless we do X, Y and Z or them, we'll go to perpetual Hell and the like. We're all immortal. We are all part of the universe that's been here since the beginning (if indeed there ever was a beginning). What's not immortal is our current energy form. It's fickle, vulnerable and unable to sustain itself indefinitely, most likely because it doesn't get access to the certain types of energy that it really need to fuel it.



Well, every type of energy reacts differently to every other type of energy so no surprise there really. A cold energy will react to a hot energy differently to how another hot energy would react to it.



Can't see how that follows at all TBH. The "material world" is nothing but energy in various forms. So really there's no such thing as a material world. It's all just an energy world. Humans perhaps like to think of a rock as material but really it's energy.

What you perceive as consciousness is just a collection of properties of the various energies that make up your form. Do we need to assign the word "consciousness" to those properties? Would a flame consider its heat properties to be it's consciousness?



I don't think you've got this quite right. Energy is energy. You're wanting to call some of the properties of that energy consciousness for whatever reason. Energy isn't imo consciousness. Consciousness is simply an artificial construct of humans which they use to describe certain properties. Everything is just constant exchange of energies. We simply act and behave in accordance with the type of energies that we are made of. For whatever reason those energies desire to maintain the form they are in (human form) though for 99.9999999% of humans that turns out not to be possible because we can't get the energy fuel we need to sustain that form so we age, grow old, decay and decompose.
gonna finish the train of thought later brb
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
Can't see that the distinction matters that much TBH. I personally believe everything is made of energy of various forms and the entire universe is simply a chaos of constantly changing energies. Every life form is just a transformer of those energies. Life forms take forms of energy in, they transform them into the type of energy they need to sustain themselves, to sustain their current form and if they don't get enough of that required energy they lose that form (what we call dying) and revert back to other energies which will ultimately br transformed into something else.
I agree but I would go one step further and say that energy itself is life. Quarks form protons, and protons form atoms, and atoms form molecules, and molecules form proteins and amino acids, and these form cells, and these form mammals. The energy coalesces and becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The cells of the body are alive, but they are not independent like bacteria, being part of something greater gives greater purpose.

A light switch has an on-off state, not very good for doing math; but take millions of on-off states and you have a computer.

So what happens when you take all the energy of the universe. It seems random at first, but it obeys laws, there is logic to it, and we are a part of that logic.

In this sense energy is immortal. Humans worry about living and dying and speak in those terms but the reality is we are immortal or rather the energy which makes us what we are is immortal. Hence there's really no such thing as dying at all. We've all been here since the universe began billions of years ago, born in stars likely as atoms of Hydrogen and Helium but over the millennia transformations have happened and trillions of different forms of energy have been generated. The greatest lie ever told by nefarious life forms is that we're all going to die and unless we do X, Y and Z or them, we'll go to perpetual Hell and the like. We're all immortal. We are all part of the universe that's been here since the beginning (if indeed there ever was a beginning). What's not immortal is our current energy form. It's fickle, vulnerable and unable to sustain itself indefinitely, most likely because it doesn't get access to the certain types of energy that it really need to fuel it.
I agree

Well, every type of energy reacts differently to every other type of energy so no surprise there really. A cold energy will react to a hot energy differently to how another hot energy would react to it.

Can't see how that follows at all TBH. The "material world" is nothing but energy in various forms. So really there's no such thing as a material world. It's all just an energy world. Humans perhaps like to think of a rock as material but really it's energy.
I agree

What you perceive as consciousness is just a collection of properties of the various energies that make up your form. Do we need to assign the word "consciousness" to those properties? Would a flame consider its heat properties to be it's consciousness?

I don't think you've got this quite right. Energy is energy. You're wanting to call some of the properties of that energy consciousness for whatever reason. Energy isn't imo consciousness. Consciousness is simply an artificial construct of humans which they use to describe certain properties. Everything is just constant exchange of energies. We simply act and behave in accordance with the type of energies that we are made of. For whatever reason those energies desire to maintain the form they are in (human form) though for 99.9999999% of humans that turns out not to be possible because we can't get the energy fuel we need to sustain that form so we age, grow old, decay and decompose.
Okay, so it sounds like we believe in similar things but there is maybe a difference of the language that we use.

Tthis example may be crudely formed and is not exactly what I believe, but it's just an illustration:

Imagine being God, you wake up one eon, and realize you exist. You're the only thing that exists. You have no senses, no eyes, ears, nothing exists outside of you. You have no idea what you are or why you exist. So you begin to contemplate. Before even language exists, symbols exist. You have a symbol for yourself. You symbolize yourself with a word, God. You know that you have a way of experiencing existence, you call this consciousness. You formulate ideas, basic mathematics and geometry, basic principles, and then move onto more and more complex ones. You do this until you know everything there is to know. Yet knowing everything there is to know, you now want to experience these things in action, so you create. You create energy, set things in motion, and see how they play out. You cause a part of yourself to forget that it is you, it breaks off and follows the logic set out for it. Within a photon is basically a 0-dimensional existence: it either is, or isn't. This is all the photon knows. It travels forward in a straight line for a single instant (from the photon's perspective given time dilation), then it hits something. When it hits something, it changes both itself and the thing it hits. Now it has a more complex existence. It takes on a different form of energy. In this manner, this photon is the image of God, it is a fractal image, it starts knowing nothing and it expands until it knows everything.
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
To continue the analogy of the photon...

Many photons never hit anything, they are blasted out into empty space. Because they have no mass, they also do not influence anything. If a tree falls in the woods with no witnesses, does it make a sound? The photon decides in its single instant of existence, that it must not really exist. It decays away, and returns to the underlying field to be recycled and is eventually born as another photon. The photon's "sin" was to believe it doesn't exist and thereby it wills itself out of existence, it "dies". The wages of sin are death, as the Bible says.

Back to free will: free will isn't the ability to choose good or evil. Good is wisdom, power, knowledge, benevolence, peace, bliss. Evil is simply the absence of these things. The greatest good is all knowledge and benevolence: God. The greatest evil isn't the Devil... because as long as the Devil has some knowledge, some power, he also has some ability to do good. The greatest evil is non-existence.

Free will is the ability to choose the good, the ability to arise from a state of ignorance to find wisdom and knowledge and power and happiness. Because all humans are made in the image of God, no one will ever, when faced with knowledge of God, ever choose to dissolve into the evil of nonexistence forever, but will always strive to perfection like God.

For example, a basic wisdom is not to touch the stove. Nobody would ever deliberately touch the stove once they realize it causes them pain. You have free will, but your free will causes you to act in a logical and even predictable manner in regards to that stove. It does not negate your individuality or your purpose. Even if you decide "I'm going to touch the stove to prove you wrong", this is a form of wisdom-seeking, because you want to understand the nature of evil and free will, and the burns on your hands will be the answer to that question. This is called the left hand and right hand of God. The right hand is choosing good through faith, the left hand is choosing good through getting burned.
 

Lapidem

Active Member
Jan 30, 2021
653
66
28
DinglyDell
Faith
Other Faith
Country
United Kingdom
Have you ever had a dream before? A dream is a series of impressions without matter.
A dream is just the energies of the brain operating whilst other energies of the body change the way they were previously operating (to produce sleep). Everything we dream is what we have already seen and experienced through life thus far, data that is imprinted in the brain but which the mind energies are rifling through in an abstract way (because we're in sleep mode). Hence when we dream we see people and landscapes and seas and animals. We're taking things we already know and/or have experienced and creating abstract art with it.

Indeed, you must only be recalling the idea of a tree from its perfect form. You understand perfect forms because you yourself are a perfect form, a spirit.
I'm recalling each and every image of trees I've ever experienced which are planted and recorded in my brain. Likely none of them are perfect. Nature is not perfect.

Mark 11
23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

Yeah. That doesn't work for humans. We don't have the ability to "not doubt". No-one in history is recorded as being able to make a mountain jump into the ocean. With Biblical passages you need to realise that most of it is not remotely literal. It's allegorical and cryptic and written that way, by humans, to conceal certain truths and secrets. Genesis for example is not taking about the creation of the universe and the weather when it talks about mists rising and dew dropping down as rain and so on.

2 Kings 6
17 And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
Again not literal

Mark 6
5 And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he marveled because of their unbelief.
The healing was the result of the special substance he had which he obviously concealed just as every other human in history who has laid their hands on it has done. With this "elixir" he could cure blindness, raise recently deceased, heal just about any ailment and transmute things. Except that the healing is actually done by the body itself, the special substance just provides the body with immense amounts of the real life energy that we all need to sustain our form and fuel our bodies. It's not a miracle. It's just energy, the right energy and lots of it. The result is the body's own natural self-repair and healing mechanisms operate super fast, cells regenerate super fast and so it appears to be a miracle to the uniformed.

You are creating your own reality, seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Even Jesus could not force people to see miracles when they did not want to.
As above. No miracles. Just energy transfer.

I know you may not be Christian, but you don't have to believe these verses, only understand that I am using them to illustrate an idea.
I have read much of the Bible and been through Christian indoctrination and emerged out the other side thanks to rational thought, critical thinking and lots of research into Philosophy and esoteric matters. I understand the allegorical and cryptic meanings of many passages and indeed Jesus's parables and other contributions. Most Christians are horribly unaware of the true meanings and incorrectly take the passages literally.

Elijah rose bodily from Earth to Heaven, proving that Earth and Heaven are the same place. Jesus went even further, he was condemned for the sins of all mankind, sent to Hell, and ascended from Hell to Heaven, proving that Hell and Heaven are the same place. The difference between Heaven, Earth and Hell is a state of mind. We exist in celestial realms already, but are blinded to them. It is what the Hindus refer to as "Maya".
As above again. The Bible is frequently not literal. The terms Heaven and Earth are used a lot in Genesis. They do not mean what you think they mean. They are not realms or places. Taking the passages literally just walks you down blind alleys and obstructs your spiritual journey by applying blinkers which ought not be there.

No, there is another possibility you have not considered: that your concept of yourself as you perceieve it, is an illusion, as is the concept of yourself as being distinct from others. Others do exist - but they are all in fact one. The unifying spirit of everything, you can call that God.
I choose NOT to call it God because religion has cornered that term and applied it to its false teachings and any use of the term God therefore comes with all those false connotations. I do agree however that all is one. Everything an everyone is essentially made up from the same tiny universal building blocks of energy. I choose to call it life energy or the Quintessence. There are numerous terms for it in different cultures. This is essentially Pantheism. Not Christianity. We are all made of the same thing. We are all therefore essentially the same. Think of it as a giant Lego set and the life energy is the tiny bricks we can't see but which every form is made of. You can build a castle from the Lego bricks, or a tree or a mountain or a human. You can later process such forms and reduce them right back to their Lego bricks, the "prima material" and then make something else out of them. Just as a child does with a Lego set.
There is no death. Nobody dies because nobody exists as such. We're all just forms made from that Lego set and there's nothing we can do about it. It's who and what we are. We've been here since the beginning of the universe. We've been millions of different forms already. Currently we are in human form. Later we will become a different form. Ad infinitum. You CAN hold onto your current form if you apply (take in) enough of the right energy but really what's the point of doing so? Is it better to be in human form than say being a Sun or Comet? Why not be a more ethereal form that can travel light years of distance in the blink of an eye? What is it that makes us so afraid to leave this current form? It is surely just the plethora of terrible lies perpetrated by religion that try to frighten us.

The face of other people is an image of God, a fraction of God's personality and ideas. Imagine yourself inside of their body, because that is the truth of it, they are a reflection of you, and you of them.
They are just other forms created of the same Lego set. It's not God. We are all one and the same. We are all universal energy, quintessence.

God is the dreamer, God's consciousness is all that exists, and everything is spun off from that. Existence is an eternal meditation, looking inwards.
Again your need to refer to this as "God" is unhelpful. It's all just universal energy that is in a constant state of flux/change.

I know that consciousness exists because I would not be able to contemplate consciousness unless consciousness existed.
You know only what you are experiencing which is the result of that constant transfer and exchange of energies.

The senses only feed information into the consciousness. When you look at a tree, do you see photons of light? Or do you see elements of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen? Or do you see the impression of a tree in your mind? You can never experience anything directly, you can experience only your own mind.

The senses are energy transfer mechanisms like everything else. They transfer energy to your brain (another form of energy). Your perceptions that result from those energy transformations are themselves just more energy transformations.
 

Lapidem

Active Member
Jan 30, 2021
653
66
28
DinglyDell
Faith
Other Faith
Country
United Kingdom
I agree but I would go one step further and say that energy itself is life. Quarks form protons, and protons form atoms, and atoms form molecules, and molecules form proteins and amino acids, and these form cells, and these form mammals. The energy coalesces and becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The cells of the body are alive, but they are not independent like bacteria, being part of something greater gives greater purpose.

A light switch has an on-off state, not very good for doing math; but take millions of on-off states and you have a computer.

So what happens when you take all the energy of the universe. It seems random at first, but it obeys laws, there is logic to it, and we are a part of that logic.


I agree


I agree


Okay, so it sounds like we believe in similar things but there is maybe a difference of the language that we use.

Tthis example may be crudely formed and is not exactly what I believe, but it's just an illustration:

Imagine being God, you wake up one eon, and realize you exist. You're the only thing that exists. You have no senses, no eyes, ears, nothing exists outside of you. You have no idea what you are or why you exist. So you begin to contemplate. Before even language exists, symbols exist. You have a symbol for yourself. You symbolize yourself with a word, God. You know that you have a way of experiencing existence, you call this consciousness. You formulate ideas, basic mathematics and geometry, basic principles, and then move onto more and more complex ones. You do this until you know everything there is to know. Yet knowing everything there is to know, you now want to experience these things in action, so you create. You create energy, set things in motion, and see how they play out. You cause a part of yourself to forget that it is you, it breaks off and follows the logic set out for it. Within a photon is basically a 0-dimensional existence: it either is, or isn't. This is all the photon knows. It travels forward in a straight line for a single instant (from the photon's perspective given time dilation), then it hits something. When it hits something, it changes both itself and the thing it hits. Now it has a more complex existence. It takes on a different form of energy. In this manner, this photon is the image of God, it is a fractal image, it starts knowing nothing and it expands until it knows everything.

This is all very fanciful and carved out of the straight-jacket you've placed yourself in by allowing religion to influence you. The universe is just energy and somewhere right back at the start something happened to make it all move and start transforming. Since that began it has never stopped. Everything that exists is the result of that constant chaos of energies. It has resulted in the creation of billions of different life forms, likely many that are far more knowing and intelligent than we are.
 

Lapidem

Active Member
Jan 30, 2021
653
66
28
DinglyDell
Faith
Other Faith
Country
United Kingdom
If a tree falls in the woods with no witnesses, does it make a sound?
It makes the same transfers of energy whether anyone is there or not. Sound is one form of those transfers, so yes, it makes sound.

The photon decides in its single instant of existence, that it must not really exist. It decays away, and returns to the underlying field to be recycled and is eventually born as another photon. The photon's "sin" was to believe it doesn't exist and thereby it wills itself out of existence, it "dies". The wages of sin are death, as the Bible says.
More religious hocus pocus clouding your thinking. Photons are just energy. They don't "think" or decide things they just are. If their energy transfers into something else then just like us they disintegrate and become something new. It's not "sin". It doesn't die. absolutely nothing dies because everything is the same universal building blocks, quintessence and it can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be changed from one form to another.

Back to free will: free will isn't the ability to choose good or evil. Good is wisdom, power, knowledge, benevolence, peace, bliss. Evil is simply the absence of these things. The greatest good is all knowledge and benevolence: God. The greatest evil isn't the Devil... because as long as the Devil has some knowledge, some power, he also has some ability to do good. The greatest evil is non-existence.
More religious mumbo jumbo.

Free will is the ability to choose the good, the ability to arise from a state of ignorance to find wisdom and knowledge and power and happiness. Because all humans are made in the image of God, no one will ever, when faced with knowledge of God, ever choose to dissolve into the evil of nonexistence forever, but will always strive to perfection like God.
Choices are just more energy transfers. Energy goes from one thing to another and clearly there are paths that energy likes to take just as say electricity chooses the path of least resistance. What we think of as free will isn't real choice. It's limited paths of energy transference. We don't put out hands in a flame because the energy transfer that occurs from that results in lots of energy transfers from our senses which are not favourable to the energies in the brain. If you truly had free will you could hold your hand in a flame and it would not result in those undesirable energy transfers. Your senses would not perceive it to be undesirable. In the end it's just one form of energy dominating another form of energy. Why should it matter if your hand burns and melts off in a flame? It's just changing your hand energy into other forms of energy which will then become other forms. This is happening throughout the universe constantly and we can't do anything about it. Because of how we are made our energies operate to maintain our current form as it is though they ultimately fail in that pursuit. The change IS going to happen at some point. It can happen now this very moment or in 80 years time.
It's still going to happen. Cosmically speaking what difference does it make if it's now or 80 years? None whatsoever. This has been going on since the universe began. It will go on forever or until the great chaos of energy change kind of settles as more dominant forms of energy prevail. Eventually the entire universe will become just one thing. One form will dominate all others, will transfer all other forms of energy to itself. Then, you probably have something alluding to death. You have silence. Stagnation. No more energy transfer. Boredom. Lifelessness. Until perhaps something happens to spark it all off again.

My life philosophy as you can see sits somewhere between Pantheism and Nihilism.
 

I.O.U

Well-Known Member
Aug 8, 2021
1,813
329
83
Brisbane
Faith
Agnostic
Country
Australia
The consciousness exists first, and your experience of the world is created by projecting your thoughts outward like onto a movie screen. You recognize symbols, like trees, people, etc. and this creates your reality. The will very obviously exists because you know that you are here, the real question is: does matter really exist? Physics has proven that matter is just another form of energy. The properties of energy are also proven to be dependent on the observer. This proves that consciousness is also a form of energy that can physically alter the material world. So if consciousness is energy, then it is possible that all energy (and therefore matter) is also a form of consciousness in itself.
Anyway.
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
It will take a bit of time to respond to everything you are saying, just a quick note:

I'm recalling each and every image of trees I've ever experienced which are planted and recorded in my brain. Likely none of them are perfect. Nature is not perfect.
No, nature isn't perfect, that is why there is no ideal tree in the natural world. It is the idea of a tree that is perfect and timeless. The natural world is subject to randomness and decay and can only approach the ideal but never achieve it because physical matter is constantly changing and breaking down.

For example, consider the perfect woman, let's call her Eve. Every woman is a reflection of Eve. They embody some traits of her, maybe she looks a certain way, maybe she looks at you a certain way. However, many women are old, all women have bodily imperfections to varying degrees. A woman's beauty is based on how much she recalls the image of the perfect woman. And - this is not a physical image, but an impression. You can call it a sort of energy. The energy of the perfect woman.

This energy of the perfect woman is the mould from which all other women are cast, it sets the pattern for our physical world, and though each individual atom might not know what it is creating, it all comes together to create a certain type of being with a certain type of energy.

The idea of this woman comes from the mind of God.

And in fact, there are also inversions of this, the demon of Eve is the Harlot. The "other woman", the scorned one, the unfaithful wife, the temptress. She desires to be seen and adored by all, is jealous of all, but is faithful to none. A woman can embody the energies of Eve and the Harlot. The two are locked in a duel. In the same way, every man lies somewhere between Jesus and Satan. The struggle to emerge from corruption into perfection is the essence of free will.
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
The healing was the result of the special substance he had which he obviously concealed just as every other human in history who has laid their hands on it has done. With this "elixir" he could cure blindness, raise recently deceased, heal just about any ailment and transmute things. Except that the healing is actually done by the body itself, the special substance just provides the body with immense amounts of the real life energy that we all need to sustain our form and fuel our bodies. It's not a miracle. It's just energy, the right energy and lots of it. The result is the body's own natural self-repair and healing mechanisms operate super fast, cells regenerate super fast and so it appears to be a miracle to the uniformed.
I don't think it matters if you call it energy or spirit, the two are really the same. Spirit is energy and energy is spirit.

Yes, Jesus had power over this energy, but he did not conceal it. He told everyone exactly how to use it, but nobody has such strength of will to be able to do so as he did.

I made a post on this earlier, that I believe spiritual authority comes from virtue.

We are all one in the unity of the Holy Spirit; however, we convince ourselves that we are not when we do not treat other humans as the face of God. In such a way, we convince ourselves we have no unity with the universe, and lose power. Whatsoever a man sows, that will a man reap, so to reap all the universe has to offer, we must give all that we have of ourselves to the universe. Jesus told the rich man to sell all he had and give it to the poor. Jesus was a servant to all in order to be made ruler of all.

Words have a lot of power. The universe was created in just a few words. You can lift someone up or completely shatter a person for the rest of their lives with just a few words. The words of an honest and wise man have a lot of weight and are listened to by everyone. A man who says a lot of foolish or deceitful things, is often ignored. So the authority of your words, depends on just what kind of words you are prone to utter. Do you tell lies? If you are a liar, you are telling yourself that your own words have no power, you do not even believe the things you say, so why should the entire universe heed and act upon them?

The essence of controlling this energy is controlling yourself. You are inside of the universe, but the universe is also inside of you.
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
This is all very fanciful and carved out of the straight-jacket you've placed yourself in by allowing religion to influence you. The universe is just energy and somewhere right back at the start something happened to make it all move and start transforming. Since that began it has never stopped. Everything that exists is the result of that constant chaos of energies. It has resulted in the creation of billions of different life forms, likely many that are far more knowing and intelligent than we are.
And here is the essential question:

What started everything moving?

This is why I say the example I gave is crude and not what I believe. Because God isn't a lone photon that, over the blind eons of eternity, suddenly discovered it existed, but God the Father is that unchanging core of consciousness from which everything else is born. Some people say that the pineal gland, a small organ inside of the brain, is the seat of the soul. I don't know if that is true, but if it were, then God the Father can be called the pineal gland of all existence. He is like the sun, which all things orbit around, and sets things in our system into motion and sustains them with life, without being affected by anything.

If God the Father is the unmoved mover, eternally unchanging, then souls/energy are the son of God, that which is constantly changing. Souls/energy is the breath of God as described in Genesis. God breathes out, and creates life, and God breathes in, and all things return to Him. God's eternal existence is meditation on Himself, I AM. All that happens is an expression of this meditation. Experiencing every possible experience, again and again, for all eternity.
 

Adam

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2022
690
379
63
43
X
Faith
Christian
Country
Canada
More religious hocus pocus clouding your thinking. Photons are just energy. They don't "think" or decide things they just are. If their energy transfers into something else then just like us they disintegrate and become something new. It's not "sin". It doesn't die. absolutely nothing dies because everything is the same universal building blocks, quintessence and it can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be changed from one form to another.
No of course a photon cannot make logical deductions. A photon is just 1 simple particle, the brain is comprised of countless complex particles. The idea of a photon "thinking" or "sinning" or "dying" is just creative expression.

What I mean is more like, a photon's only question is whether it has power or not. If a photon is shot off into a vacuum destined never to hit anything, then it is decided in an instant, even though it seems to us like the photon was travelling for billions of years due to time dilation. If the photon never hits on anything, never acts upon anything, then it essentially has no role to play in our universe and decays back into the universal background field.

But if a photon hits something, it now has a new existence, it creates new questions, what does it become? What forces does it impart on what it hit? So there is a form of evolution at work, a simple question's answer creates more complex questions. There are unfathomable numbers of photons in our universe, each one a question. In this manner, everything constantly rams against eachother looking for answers. This will continue until all answers have been achieved, and this is when all things will have returned to God, the end of the cycle.