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Re: The Flat Earth? - Conclusion
Matthew Scott (scott@informatik.hu-berlin.de)
10 Jul 1995 16:18:47 GMT
shelter@peg.apc.org (Madhudvisah dasa Swami) writes:
>scott@informatik.hu-berlin.de (Matthew Scott) wrote:
>>matcmjk@lux.latrobe.edu.au (Jean-Luc Picard) writes:
>>>3) (Getting back to that argument over what created the Big Bang, etc.):
>>> What created God then? Huh?
>> I can give significant evidence to show that God is the result of
>>n-dimensional evolutionistic chaos.
>What is this nonsense?
Can you explain to me why this is nonsense other than just saying it is nonsense?
If you can, I might leave my old foolish ideas and believe in yours.
>> I.e. God was created by the fact that
>God is eternal! He has no beginning or end. And you say He was created? We
>are also qualitatively one with God. He is eternal, we are also eternal.
>It is only the body that is born, the body that gets old and the body that
>dies. I am not that body. I am the spirit soul within the body...
interesting that you identify yourself only with your spirit. I wouldn't agree
or disagree with you on that matter, I just find it interesting. By what criteria do
you decide what is a part of you and what isn't a part of you? This criteria will
determine what you define to be a part of you. Altogether, there's just reality, and we
can separate it out and give names to different parts of it in whatever manner we like.
The main idea is that our categorisation process helps us to deal with reality. In what
manner does it help you deal with reality to consider yourself only to be your spirit?
This is an honest question.
I can not but agree with the body stuff
But again, you have started quoting old religious fuzzy logic. Suppose I take
eternity. You seem to imagine it as an infinite amount of time. Suppose I divide
eternity (infinite time) in three. How much time is each third of this eternity?
It's another eternity isn't it? Now suppose I say something has truly existed forever.
Isn't the meaning of this statement imprecise? Does that mean that something
existed in the first eternity, the second eternity, the third, the first and second,
the second and third, or all three eternities? What if I divide the original eternity
in 8. Each eighth is still an eternity is that not correct? Now tell me swami, if
the ancients didn't have enough understanding about infinity to start playing such
tricks with it, how could they possibly give you the answer to the question...
which eternity? Given a time model with real numbers to label each point in time
allows a complete eternity to fit into one second. You just have to view it from
the stand point of a single point of time. That's fractal, real numbers are fractal
i.e. act similarly on all scales including infinite scales. If your spiritual experts
didn't mention this sort of thing in their explainations, how can you expect to know
anything about these details? If they didn't know much about the nature of evolution,
and what it might do on larger time scales than our own, well, you just can't expect
to have heard anything from them about it? If the ancients were mathemital zeros
(which most if not all or nearly all of them undoubtedly were)..how could krishna
even explain to them concepts that require a highly developed mathematical mind just
to understand? He would have to teach them mathematics from the beginning. If he did
that, why didn't they teach the rest of the world instead of waiting for europe to
develope it on its own? In fact, if your spiritual masters know so much, why don't
they come and mingle with the rest of us and impart their great knowledge? Why don't
we see science blossoming in the east as it does in the west? Why don't they use
their great knowledge there to solve some of their problems like hunger and illness?
This appears paradoxical to me.
The more religion sticks to its old understanding of reality and refuses to
budge, because it is unwilling to admit not having understood something, the faster
the atheists will kick it into pieces...We have seen a lot of this in our world
..and maybe its better that way.
><snip>
>"For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not
>come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being.
>He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when
>the body is slain." (Bhagavad-gita 2.20)
>
I agree with the "not slain when the body is slain" part, and
with the "nor death" part. I might believe in something else if someone
could convince me of it, but I can't go believing every scripture verse
that someone quotes. Scriptures tend to disagree anyway from one book to the
other. I usually refrain from relying on scripture as proof for some obscure
truth. At most, scripture can be another voice to be seriously considered before
starting to draw a conclusion. My childhood religion taught that God created spirits
out of some form of preexisting particles. Thus God is called the father. I'll
go ahead believing this until someone can give me a reason to believe otherwise.
...Why do you label God as a father?
Alas, I have gotten perhaps a little more excited than I should. I like to discuss
for the sake of exchanging info. like people aught to. Sometimes I get caught
defending my ideals, which perhaps is nothing wrong, but I, like most people, am not
excited about being wrong, so if I really do misunderstand something, be gentle with
me and explain in understandable terms what the problem is. If, however, I do
understand, and you are the one who needs educating, don't be too worried about it.
We all need education.
scott@informatik.hu-berlin.de
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