Can We All Agree With These "Facts" About God?

[David Sklansky]

That if there is a god who created the universe, he did it in a way that things can hum along smoothly without his direct intervention. He had to incite the big bang, write the laws of physics, perhaps create the double helix, and (most importantly) add the spark of self awareness to human beings.

But the rest pretty much PREDICTABLY runs by itself. He is not usually micromanaging and his "middle managers" are the laws of physics themselves.

Thus the only question is how often he intervenes to override his middle managers. I think we can all agree that if he does at all it is incredibly rarely. Furthermore we can hopefully agree that the VAST majority of the time that some people are claiming an event is overriding one of those middle managers, they are wrong. Whether the overriding is supposedly due to God, Satan, or some New Age mysticism. Witnesses are being fooled by magicians, wishful thinking, weird but natural events, perpetuators of frauds, or whatever. We didn't realize this years ago because we didn't have the scientific know how to expose most of those frauds. But now that we can debunk 90% of these claims with certainty, it is reasonable to assume that most if not all of the claims we can't yet debunk are debunkable.

Does anyone here disagree?

[jason1990]

[ QUOTE ]
But the rest pretty much PREDICTABLY runs by itself.

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree with this.

[carlo]

[ QUOTE ]
THE MYSTICAL THEOLOGY

CHAPTER I

What is the Divine Darkness?

Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness; Guide of Christians to Divine Wisdom; direct our path to the ultimate summit of your mystical knowledge, most incomprehensible, most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty.

Let this be my prayer; but do, dear Timothy, in the diligent exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and nonbeing, that you may arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with it that transcends all being and all knowledge.(1) For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and of all things you may be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine Darkness.(2)
But these things are not to be disclosed to the uninitiated, by whom I mean those attached to the objects of human thought, and who





-204-

believe there is no superessential Reality beyond, and who imagine that by their own understanding they know it that has made Darkness Its secret place. And if the principles of the divine Mysteries are beyond the understanding of these, what is to be said of others still more incapable thereof, who describe the transcendental First Cause of all by characteristics drawn from the lowest order of beings, while they deny that it is in any way above the images which they fashion after various designs; whereas they should affirm that, while it possesses all the positive attributes of the universe (being the Universal Cause) yet, in a more strict sense, it does not possess them, since it transcends them all; wherefore there is no contradiction between the affirmations and the negations, inasmuch as it infinitely precedes all conceptions of deprivation, being beyond all positive and negative distinctions.

Thus the blessed Bartholomew asserts that the divine science is both vast and minute, and that the Gospel is great and broad, yet concise and short; signifying by this, that the beneficent Cause of all is most eloquent, yet utters few words, or rather is altogether silent, as having neither (human) speech nor (human) understanding, because it is super-essentially exalted above created things, and reveals itself in Its naked Truth to those alone who pass beyond all that is pure or impure, and ascend above the topmost altitudes of holy things, and who, leaving behind them all divine light and sound and heavenly utterances, plunge into the Darkness where truly dwells, as the Oracles declare, that ONE who is beyond all.(3)

It was not without reason that the blessed Moses was commanded first to purify himself and them to separate himself from those who had not undergone purifcation; and after the entire purification




-205-

heard many trumpets and saw many lights streaming forth with pure and manifold rays; and that he was thereafter separated from the multitude, with the elect priests, and pressed forward to the summit of the divine ascent. Nevertheless, he did not attain to the Presence of God itself; he saw not it (for it cannot be looked upon) but the Place where it dwells. And this I take to signify that the divinest and highest things seen by the eyes or contemplated by the mind are but the symbolical expressions of those that are immediately beneath it that is above all. Through these, Its incomprehensible Presence is manifested upon those heights of Its Holy Places; that then It breaks forth, even from that which is seen and that which sees, and plunges the mystic into the Darkness of Unknowing, whence all perfection of understanding is excluded, and he is enwrapped in that which is altogether intangible, wholly absorbed in it that is beyond all, and in none else (whether himself or another); and through the inactivity of all his reasoning powers is united by his highest faculty to it that is wholly unknowable; thus by knowing nothing he knows That which is beyond his knowledge. (4)

CHAPTER II

The necessity of being united with and of rendering praise to it that is the Cause of all and above all.

We pray that we may come unto this Darkness which is beyond light, and, without seeing and without knowing, to see and to know that which is above vision and knowledge through the realization that by not-seeing and by unknowing we attain to true vision and knowledge; and thus praise, superessentially, it that is


[/ QUOTE ]

Dionysius the Aeropagite

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
created

[/ QUOTE ]

I think there are problems with this word to begin with. Also, the general metaphor for existence as "machine" that the rest of your post implies is sophomoric in my view.

PairTheBoard

[rainonacongadrum]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
created

[/ QUOTE ]

I think there are problems with this word to begin with.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmmmm....care to explain exactly what you mean by this?

[carlo]

aREopagite [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
created

[/ QUOTE ]

I think there are problems with this word to begin with.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmmmm....care to explain exactly what you mean by this?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure the word had such problematic connotations originally. But with the current mindset of people so dominated by the metaphor from science of "machine", the word "created" is now imbued with connotations of God as the great Mechanic who "created" the machine.

Even in its original context there are objections to the Masculine connotations of the word. Suppose for example the word were replaced by, "gave birth to". There are connotative differences that persuade the insights that follow.

Read carefully the post by carlo above. You might think it is a lot of mystic mumbo jumbo. I don't think it is. These discussions that presume we can disect God like a frog produce very little light in my opinion.

There are Native American Traditions that understand this and state it very simply. They relate to a Great Spirit but have the humility to understand that behind it all is what they refer to as the Great Mystery.

PairTheBoard

[DLKeeper1]

[ QUOTE ]
But now that we can debunk 90% of these claims with certainty, it is reasonable to assume that most if not all of the claims we can't yet debunk are debunkable.

[/ QUOTE ]

A lot of these things are not debunkable by the human brain. That 10% is full of things that humans are unable to comprehend and never will be able to. It is the level of understanding and thinking that we simply are not able to achieve.

[Piers]

[ QUOTE ]
Can We All Agree With These "Facts" About God?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I thought that would be obvious by now.

[jkkkk]

[ QUOTE ]
Thus the only question is how often he intervenes to override his middle managers.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't been reading any of your posts on religion and such and this seems very obvious but, surely 'God' is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent therefore beyond the dimensions of space and time, and therefore, would never need to 'override' anything, if God did create the universe as we know it, there would be no mistakes to fix, no?