How do you define "God" without religion?

RI Patriots fan said:

Please explain to me how someone feels a connection to the universe on a scientific scale?? What exactly does that mean?

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Well 'scientifically' the idea of quantum entanglement

Quantum entanglement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In terms of belief systems Taoism is pretty compatible with the concepts of modern physics.

Some Physicist had written books on the topic over the past 20 years.

TBradyOwnsYou said:

I recently had a discussion with a friend who has studied multiple religions, HATES organized religion, yet claims to KNOW that God exists. He can't define what that God is, or why he knows it (and he admits it sounds silly) so I figured I'd throw that out and see if there is anyone else with similar views who could help him describe it.

I personally think that it's just his leftover indoctrination from his upbringing in organized religion and when he cast it off, he kept this small nugget with him to give him comfort. I believe his inability to define or explain it is a psychological defense mechanism to prevent his logical mind from removing that last hook of comfortable delusion that would cast him away into the chasm of the unknown which he was raised to be fearful of.

What say you?

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I work with the mentally ill, and 3 years ago I ran a spirituality group for the chronically mentally ill (those who have schizophrenia and other very serious disorders). During my first group, I went around the room and asked what spirituality meant to them. One of them, a man who rarely said a word, answered with, "My conscience." I thought that was a wonderful response, and in a way I think it answers your question. For many people God is simply their conscience, though they might not put it like that. If you think about it, while science has demonstrated many things, the idea of consciousness, conscience, and the mind don't have a strong scientific basis. There are still great mysteries out there, leaving room for the possibility of the supernatural. You don't need religion to raise profound questions. Those of us who are not religious have "faith" that science will explain all the unknowns, but how different really is that than faith that there's a God? I don't think organized religion has any particular claim to God.

Patters said:

I work with the mentally ill, and 3 years ago I ran a spirituality group for the chronically mentally ill (those who have schizophrenia and other very serious disorders). During my first group, I went around the room and asked what spirituality meant to them. One of them, a man who rarely said a word, answered with, "My conscience." I thought that was a wonderful response, and in a way I think it answers your question. For many people God is simply their conscience, though they might not put it like that. If you think about it, while science has demonstrated many things, the idea of consciousness, conscience, and the mind don't have a strong scientific basis. There are still great mysteries out there, leaving room for the possibility of the supernatural. You don't need religion to raise profound questions. Those of us who are not religious have "faith" that science will explain all the unknowns, but how different really is that than faith that there's a God? I don't think organized religion has any particular claim to God.

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Well, if your conscience is "God" then I guess in the world of the Progressive, each person is his/her own God. Well them and the state.

Faith in "a" God for Catholics is faith in "the" God, not because we have figured it out through our own initiatives but rather through God's own favor....his grace. God reveals himself to those who are open to that grace, not because they have earned it in any way but merely because they allow themselves to be justified and sanctified by that grace.

Although's God's work and his existence can be known by the natural man, man cannot "know" (have a relationship with) God without grace. That's why the natural man cannot understand the "submission" of the faith filled man to God's will.

I ran across this article while checking another site, I think you guys might find it interesting. Forbes published it in 1996, written by author Tom Wolfe. It's long-ish but he talks about many of the topics discussed here, including things like PET scans, neuro-imaging, and why oh why so many are entering the field of neuroscience (this was in 1996). Some of what he says is downright chilling but he raises some interesting points too, including the morality of scientists and morality in general.

Good stuff if you're interested, I'll just quote his last statements but read the whole thing. He ends by talking about one of Neitzsche's final writings in which he predicts that science will eventually destroy itself. Wolfe ends with this:

Recently I happened to be talking to a prominent California geologist, and she told me: "When I first went into geology, we all thought that in science you create a solid layer of findings, through experiment and careful investigation, and then you add a second layer, like a second layer of bricks, all very carefully, and so on. Occasionally some adventurous scientist stacks the bricks up in towers, and these towers turn out to be insubstantial and they get torn down, and you proceed again with the careful layers. But we now realize that the very first layers aren't even resting on solid ground. They are balanced on bubbles, on concepts that are full of air, and those bubbles are being burst today, one after the other."

I suddenly had a picture of the entire astonishing edifice collapsing and modern man plunging headlong back into the primordial ooze. He's floundering, sloshing about, gulping for air, frantically treading ooze, when he feels something huge and smooth swim beneath him and boost him up, like some almighty dolphin. He can't see it, but he's much impressed. He names it God.

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Tom Wolfe -- Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died

patsfan13 said:

At the time the way the Germans viewed Darwin was pretty widespread. Many scientist believed in genetic superiority of one ethnic group over others based on their views of Darwin, IQ tests ect. .

It wasn't junk science just the logical outcome of the Darwinian world view.

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This certainly says something about how distasteful Darwin's conclusions were, and those that followed. It says a lot more about how idiotic a society can get, armed with a grain of truth and a lot of hate -- "scientists" included, although we usually mean technologists, or scientists misapplying across disciplines with none of the rigor they might apply to their daily work within their fields.

As to what had to happen in natural selection, I thought I remember reading about Darwin initially being aghast when he realized a hundred of some sea turtles he was watching had to die in infancy... of course, when he finally got around to publishing, he was ready for theological reaction as well as scientific.

One of your favorite outlets has this about it:

Articles: What Darwin Said About God

Charles Darwin said:

There is grandeur in this [natural selection] view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

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So, American Thinker is at pains to show that Darwin believed in God, which is all well and good; the difficulty many have is that Darwinism can be understood without God. Not so "revealed religion."

Can you get to Auschwitz with only Martin Luther and the Gospels in hand? Europe had gone down the road gleefully in the past, but without the will and the technology to reach Nazi heights. Did the Nazis enlist the spirit of their age in their great national project of genocide? Of course. They fancied themselves ubermenschen largely along social darwinist lines. Are there social darwinists still among us? One need only read a day's worth of right-wing opinions in the political forum to see that the answer is yes.

So you can certainly get there without Darwin. Can you get there without Luther, and the gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? I don't think so -- but that's the specific context of an anti-Semitic genocide. Other genocides have no specific need of theological anti-Semitism.

This neither proves nor disproves either Christianity or natural selection. It just is.

The Left (Both the National Socialist and Marxist) used Darwin to support their 'scientific' worldview. It is easy to mislead people with twisting the ignorant who don't have scientific training. We see that today with the Climate Change nonsense that is used by politicians to fool the ignorant.

Darwinism has been used to justify by more than just the nazi's to justify racism. Planned parenthood was founded to encourage black people to abort their babies, the founder was a racist.

BTW the National Socialist were hostile to Christianity also, they fancies a Norse paganism coupled with their anti semitism. We don't get to the Wanasee conference with a 'scientific' rationale combined with modern technology and a powerful centralized state the empower final solutions.

patsfan13 said:

The Left (Both the National Socialist and Marxist) used Darwin to support their 'scientific' worldview. It is easy to mislead people with twisting the ignorant who don't have scientific training. We see that today with the Climate Change nonsense that is used by politicians to fool the ignorant.

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The Nazis were far right racist jingoists. There was, up to a point in time, a left-nazi tendency. If you've heard of the night of the long knives, you know what happened to it.

Darwinism has been used to justify by more than just the nazi's to justify racism. Planned parenthood was founded to encourage black people to abort their babies, the founder was a racist.

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You really miss the political forum, dontcha? Okay, I'll play... link... you know, from a real website, not some kind of Party dogma echo chamber site.

(Edit: the Mrs. says there's truth to that one... you go back far enough, and you're in eugenics-land throughout the West. Would still like the link.)

BTW the National Socialist were hostile to Christianity also, they fancies a Norse paganism coupled with their anti semitism. We don't get to the Wanasee conference with a 'scientific' rationale combined with modern technology and a powerful centralized state the empower final solutions.

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Hitler was fine with a Christianity purged of its shameful "Jewish" tendencies, though he'd take his pageantry and mysticism wherever he could find it. If that sounds contradictory, explain a Christian owning a gun in light of the doctrine of "turning the other cheek." Nothing wrong with Christianity. I think someone should try it.

PatsFanInVa said:

The Nazis were far right racist jingoists. There was, up to a point in time, a left-nazi tendency. If you've heard of the night of the long knives, you know what happened to it.



You really miss the political forum, dontcha? Okay, I'll play... link... you know, from a real website, not some kind of Party dogma echo chamber site.

(Edit: the Mrs. says there's truth to that one... you go back far enough, and you're in eugenics-land throughout the West. Would still like the link.)



Hitler was fine with a Christianity purged of its shameful "Jewish" tendencies, though he'd take his pageantry and mysticism wherever he could find it. If that sounds contradictory, explain a Christian owning a gun in light of the doctrine of "turning the other cheek." Nothing wrong with Christianity. I think someone should try it.

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You seem to not know about the History surrounding WW2.

As to the racist MS Sanger, and eugenics, a google search will suffice.

If you choose to remain ignorant that is not my issue as you point out this isn't the political forum.

patsfan13 said:

You seem to not know about the History surrounding WW2.

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Yes, yes, of course. I am ignorant of the "history surrounding WW2," despite the fact that we're discussing the Nazis and the Shoah, not "WW2." Despite the fact that Hitler purged the left elements of the Nazi party, assassinating them en masse. Despite the fact that Rohm and his Strasserites were already discontented that there was no actual socialist content to actual Nazi governance. Despite the fact that the Nazi state was revanchist and racist in character. Yes, yes, the Nazis were leftists. Yes, when I learned about the period from my father, a Jew born in Vienna in 1917, and from numerous books, films, etc. -- as much as I could absorb, in fact, and then some -- I did it wrong. I should have watched Glenn Beck instead.

But as you say, that's an argument for the political forum. Here, you appear to be advancing the idea that Darwinian science is "bad," just as "Jewish" science was bad in Nazi Germany.

:ugh: Thanks for bringing Godwin's law to the religion threads.

everlong said:

It means they feel that everything in the universe is connected and many people feel quantum physics and string theory justify this.

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"Everything in the universe is connected" and "There is a god" are two very different things.

Quantum Physics and String theory don't suggest god at all.

RI Patriots fan said:

Well, if your conscience is "God" then I guess in the world of the Progressive, each person is his/her own God. Well them and the state.

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Conservatives are significantly more likely to express a belief in a god, so I think you've got that backwards.

Synovia said:

"Everything in the universe is connected" and "There is a god" are two very different things.

Quantum Physics and String theory don't suggest god at all.

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Taoist would take issue with that statement.

patsfan13 said:

Taoist would take issue with that statement.

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I must admit my ignorance in eastern religions, but does Taoism declare a singular god/creator being?

TBradyOwnsYou said:

I must admit my ignorance in eastern religions, but does Taoism declare a singular god/creator being?

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Only in the sense that they would consider the entire universe as a process where 'god' manifests, or as Buckminister Fuller said (he was not a Taoist) "God is a verb not a noun".

A couple of Physicist have written on these topics, Fred Allen Wolf and Fritjof Capra are a couple that come to mind.

Synovia said:

Conservatives are significantly more likely to express a belief in a god, so I think you've got that backwards.

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You missed my point entirely.

Synovia said:

"Everything in the universe is connected" and "There is a god" are two very different things.

Quantum Physics and String theory don't suggest god at all.

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Your phrasing assumes a very specific characterization of "God."

First of all, we're thinking of God in our image, as an individual who's acquired a certain spatialization of time, allowing for internal dialog, strategic "if/then" thinking, etc. We've also got language (probably the lion's share of said future thinking.) So God must operate that way. Okay, let's accept all that. God's like us but bigger.

So, it's a simple enough matter to say that if every conscious thing -- indeed, every unconscious thing -- is connected, it could well be in the cells of a greater body, which for schlitz and giggles (for the moment) we could call God.

So let's call the all-connected oneness of everything "God." If that's the case, and we need God to not be a personal God, that is fine. We have, then, the unusual phenomenon of "cells" being of a higher order than the whole, which is of a higher order of complexity. By way of analogy, it would be like pinpointing one nerve cell, and looking at why it has all these messages going in and out of it -- because, you see, it is the brains of the operation. What we really know to be going on is that the whole achieves consciousness (or doesn't,) and each cell is a relatively puny operator in the process. Lose one cell, and the organism does not lose its ability to function.

So, let's think. If all things are connected, they may just all be connected, to no higher effect. Individual humans, or dolphins or aliens or something, may well be the highest order of consciousness we know of.

How shall we separate the assumption from the "science"? I don't think we can. Science is by nature objective, and involves the study of objective phenomena.

If we are studying even individual consciousness, we have enough trouble, although it can be done in a way, provided we are studying someone else's consciousness. But who'll stand outside of the connected universe, if indeed we accept that it's connected, and design the experiment to determine the character of the higher being said organization might (or might not) comprise?

I have no illusion that one can prove such a thing. We all understand that. I for one do not think we can disprove it either.

::shrug:: this is the trouble with discussing proof of religion in general. But universal connection is being discussed. To the extent that we establish a universal connection, but not yet a universal consciousness, we've certainly established a necessary but not sufficient condition to establishing the principal of a universe that at some level is conscious.

You can't interrogate a grain of sand, a turtle, or a neutron, and find the universe to be conscious, any more than you can interrogate a single neuron and find out that a person is conscious.

But at the very least we can make note of unusual connectedness when we find it. And of course, it's always best to explain it without some unwarranted flight of fancy about the supernatural.

What we're beginning to talk about, however, is "religion" that's in synch with nature, rather than "super"natural -- not a God who creates, but a God who is the sum of creation. (and we can save the infinite regression of "who/what created that" for the end of the conversation, where indeed all such conversations seem destined to end.)

PFnV

How do you define "God"

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god is a backwards dog

Hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? Stayed awake all night wondering if there's a dog.

This has always sounded like the op has a paper due in phylosophy and came here looking for ideas/answers.