Two paradoxes related to God

[bahman]

No proof of other consciousnesses....only your own. There is an assumption that because you are conscious, others are too, but there is no proof of consciousness other than the self evident consciousness that is you only.

To assume other consciousnesses exist separate from your own is an idea, it’s a thought appearing in consciousness only.

We’ve already established that “thoughts” are illusory manifestations within consciousness.

If you insist there are separate consciousnesses...then the onus in on you now to show where my consciousness ends and yours begins?...which you haven’t addressed yet?

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Let's give this a try:

1) Mind makes all decisions
2) This means that Mind has to be aware of all decisions
3) Decision is personal (we are not aware of all decisions)
4) (2) and (3) contradict with each other
5) Therefore (1) is wrong.

The mind is not aware of anything, that’s the apparent paradox when mind claims it is the doer.The mind is the “known”...not the knower.

There is awareness of mind activity, mind is the “I thought” the embodied living sense of identity, but it’s illusory, it’s an appearance of awareness which is not a thing, but is aware of all things..aka concepts as and when they arise in it.

There really is no paradox...except as an illusory conception, aka a mental construction arising in awareness.

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I have a argument that mind exists: Consider a close system which is subject of motion, S->S', where S is initial state and S' is final state. S and S' cannot coexist. Therefore S has to vanishes before S' takes place. There is however nothing when S vanishes and we cannot have something like S' from nothing. This means that there should exist a mind which is aware of S and can create S' as it wishes through decision.

[Dontaskme]

Let's give this a try:

1) Mind makes all decisions
2) This means that Mind has to be aware of all decisions
3) Decision is personal (we are not aware of all decisions)
4) (2) and (3) contradict with each other
5) Therefore (1) is wrong.

The mind is not aware of anything, that’s the apparent paradox when mind claims it is the doer.The mind is the “known”...not the knower.

There is awareness of mind activity, mind is the “I thought” the embodied living sense of identity, but it’s illusory, it’s an appearance of awareness which is not a thing, but is aware of all things..aka concepts as and when they arise in it.

There really is no paradox...except as an illusory conception, aka a mental construction arising in awareness.

.

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I have a argument that mind exists: Consider a close system which is subject of motion, S->S', where S is initial state and S' is final state. S and S' cannot coexist. Therefore S has to vanishes before S' takes place. There is however nothing when S vanishes and we cannot have something like S' from nothing. This means that there should exist a mind which is aware of S and can create S' as it wishes through decision.

The mind is the “I thought” which is illusory.

The nothing and something are one and the same here now. No thing being everything.

No thing is aware of itself....is the divine paradox that isn’t.

So it appears that decisions are made..but there is no thing making them.

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Trying to see this using thought is a waste of time, it can’t be seen from that approach...

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[bahman]

The mind is not aware of anything, that’s the apparent paradox when mind claims it is the doer.The mind is the “known”...not the knower.

There is awareness of mind activity, mind is the “I thought” the embodied living sense of identity, but it’s illusory, it’s an appearance of awareness which is not a thing, but is aware of all things..aka concepts as and when they arise in it.

There really is no paradox...except as an illusory conception, aka a mental construction arising in awareness.

.

.

I have a argument that mind exists: Consider a close system which is subject of motion, S->S', where S is initial state and S' is final state. S and S' cannot coexist. Therefore S has to vanishes before S' takes place. There is however nothing when S vanishes and we cannot have something like S' from nothing. This means that there should exist a mind which is aware of S and can create S' as it wishes through decision.

The mind is the “I thought” which is illusory.

The nothing and something are one and the same here now. No thing being everything.

No thing is aware of itself....is the divine paradox that isn’t.

So it appears that decisions are made..but there is no thing making them.

.

Trying to see this using thought is a waste of time, it can’t be seen from that approach...

.

Illusion does not have causal power. Nothing cannot be something.

[Dontaskme]

Illusion does not have causal power. Nothing cannot be something.

There are no “things” except in this conception..there is no thing outside of conceptual language.

Language has nothing to do with beingness, beingness requires no concept to be. But concepts need beingness. Similarly awareness does not need consciousness to be, but consciousness needs awareness.

Awareness is Acausal.


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The illusion is that there is a causer...there is no causer, there is only effect aka a causeless cause.

[bahman]

Illusion does not have causal power. Nothing cannot be something.

There are no “things” except in this conception..there is no thing outside of conceptual language.

Language has nothing to do with beingness, beingness requires no concept to be. But concepts need beingness. Similarly awareness does not need consciousness to be, but consciousness needs awareness.

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So you believe in beingness?

[Dontaskme]

Illusion does not have causal power. Nothing cannot be something.

There are no “things” except in this conception..there is no thing outside of conceptual language.

Language has nothing to do with beingness, beingness requires no concept to be. But concepts need beingness. Similarly awareness does not need consciousness to be, but consciousness needs awareness.

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So you believe in beingness?

It’s not a belief...it’s an unavoidable presence....the belief is the I thought.

Presence is nondual...it doesn’t require the I thought to be...but the I thought requires presence to be....

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Presence IS...but there is no knowledge present.
Knowledge of presence is an overlay upon itself, an illusion.

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[bahman]

There are no “things” except in this conception..there is no thing outside of conceptual language.

Language has nothing to do with beingness, beingness requires no concept to be. But concepts need beingness. Similarly awareness does not need consciousness to be, but consciousness needs awareness.

.

So you believe in beingness?

It’s not a belief...it’s an unavoidable presence....the belief is the I thought.

Presence is nondual...it doesn’t require the I thought to be...but the I thought requires presence to be....

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I call beingness, mind.

[Dontaskme]

I call beingness, mind.

I call beingness no thing.

We both are conceptualising what is essentially non.conceptual. That is the problem with trying to talk about the nondual self...it’s a paradoxical contradiction.

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[seeds]

there was no time prior to BB.

Yes, that is true. BB is the beginning of time and it is the point of act of creation.

The alleged Big Bang simply represents the beginning of a bubble of reality whose inner-workings are mediated by the speed of light which, in turn, determines how time (its movement/passing) will be experienced by the bubble’s interior occupants.

It (the BB) does not represent the “beginning” of the phenomenon of time itself.

For example, we (the conscious beings on the inside of the bubble) have the reference point of the universe itself from which we can picture time as being infinite and eternal.

As a thought experiment to help demonstrate what I mean,...

Past <---------[

...imagine the bracket above as representing the inception point of the universe and that each of the tiny dashes represent one billion years of time prior to that inception point.

As a matter of speculative logic, at no point would we ever encounter a wall that would prevent us from extending the billion-year dashes infinitely into the past.

Likewise, the same would apply if the bracket below represented the thermodynamic ending of the universe...

]---------> Future

...for at no point would we ever encounter a time-halting wall.

In which case, the most logical way of viewing the situation is that the universe is simply a 13.8 billion year old phenomenon that is suspended within the infinite stream of time itself...

TIME<----[UNIVERSE]---->TIME

It is a phenomenon that imposes its own unique temporal cadences on its indwelling occupants, perhaps, but its coming into existence should in no way be perceived as the point where time “began.”

i fail to see a paradox.

The paradox is related to the fact that God is timeless.

From where in the world did you acquire the notion that God is “timeless”?

What does that even mean?

And if you suggest that it is because God is alleged to have had no beginning, then that still does not mean that he is “timeless,” as if it were somehow impossible for God to experience the passing of time in his own way.

Now I hope I am not coming off as sounding mean-spirited in this post, for I appreciate and respect the sincere intent of your OP.

However, I cannot help but think that your paradoxes are founded upon some highly questionable premises.
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[bahman]

there was no time prior to BB.

Yes, that is true. BB is the beginning of time and it is the point of act of creation.

The alleged Big Bang simply represents the beginning of a bubble of reality whose inner-workings are mediated by the speed of light which, in turn, determines how time (its movement/passing) will be experienced by the bubble’s interior occupants.

It (the BB) does not represent the “beginning” of the phenomenon of time itself.

For example, we (the conscious beings on the inside of the bubble) have the reference point of the universe itself from which we can picture time as being infinite and eternal.

As a thought experiment to help demonstrate what I mean,...

Past <---------[

...imagine the bracket above as representing the inception point of the universe and that each of the tiny dashes represent one billion years of time prior to that inception point.

As a matter of speculative logic, at no point would we ever encounter a wall that would prevent us from extending the billion-year dashes infinitely into the past.

There is however a problem with this picture. If time existed in eternal past then it takes infinite amount of waiting to reach from past to now. This is practically impossible.

Likewise, the same would apply if the bracket below represented the thermodynamic ending of the universe...

]---------> Future

...for at no point would we ever encounter a time-halting wall.

I agree with this picture. Future could be boundless.

In which case, the most logical way of viewing the situation is that the universe is simply a 13.8 billion year old phenomenon that is suspended within the infinite stream of time itself...

TIME<----[UNIVERSE]---->TIME

It is a phenomenon that imposes its own unique temporal cadences on its indwelling occupants, perhaps, but its coming into existence should in no way be perceived as the point where time “began.”

I have problem with this picture as it is explained in two comments before.

i fail to see a paradox.

The paradox is related to the fact that God is timeless.

From where in the world did you acquire the notion that God is “timeless”?

We discussed two different scenarios, temporal and timeless. That is all options we have.

What does that even mean?

It means that there is no time.

And if you suggest that it is because God is alleged to have had no beginning, then that still does not mean that he is “timeless,” as if it were somehow impossible for God to experience the passing of time in his own way.

God can experience temporal things once time is created but that means that God is not timeless anymore.

Now I hope I am not coming off as sounding mean-spirited in this post, for I appreciate and respect the sincere intent of your OP.

quote=seeds post_id=362751 time=1529438476 user_id=12576]
However, I cannot help but think that your paradoxes are founded upon some highly questionable premises.
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I appreciate your input but I don't see any problem with the premises.

[Sir-Sister-of-Suck]

Here we consider God as temporal and timeless. We show that we are dealing with a paradox in each case.

Temporal God: In this case God creates the universe at specific time so the universe has specific age. God however has no beginning which means that He has to exist in infinite past. This is however paradoxical because one cannot reach from infinite past to now.

I think that most secular cosmologists would actually disagree with you on that.

Timeless God: In this case there is no time reference for which we can assign the act of creation to therefore the age of universe could be anything which this is paradoxical.

In the case of the Kalam Cosmological argument, this is specifically addressed; The reason why theologians believe that his act of creating the universe does not need a form of progression to actualize is because he has a form of free will. So, to give a comparative example of why this matters to them - a rock that starts rolling down a hill to hit a wall needs time in order to make any progression in order to hit that wall; God's action to create the universe does not need progression, because it doesn't rely on a series of steps that need to progress in order to happen.

[-1-]

This paradox can be explained by knowing the shape of the logarithmic exponential funcionon of Y = n**X where you can choose n to be any real number.

So once you see in front of your imaginary eyes this curve, you notice that each value of Ya that is right of Yb is more complex than Yb. That is, where Ya=n**a, and Yb=n**b, and b<a and b and a are both real.

In this case no matter what arbitrary point on the x scale you choose, the values of Y will be always larger to the right of X than to the left of X.

Imagine now two things: that 1. this function describes the complexity of thought that god has given himself to before creating the world and 2. at one point (for instance, where x=0 or ex equals zero) the thought became reality and creation occurred.

In this picture, the thought has never started; it has existed forever; it has become more and more complex, as thoughts are wont of doing; and it became so complex, that creation occurred, when the thinker god decided the thought was complex enough to create a physical representation of his mental model of this complex thing.

So yes, to us it seems that if the world started at one point, then the creation can't be placed on a scale of an infinitely long timeline; that is what our intuition has told us. But the mathematical model of a logarithmic function can alter our intuitive insight, and tell us that yes, there is possible for a though which constantly increases in complexity to have existed in the past forever.

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I am an atheist, and a reasonable thinker. I don't say this is the case; I don't believe this is the case; but as a logical thinker, I have come to the conclusion that the creation of the world as a finite event on an infinitely long timeline is possible when thinking purely in terms of philosophical possibilities.

[-1-]

In the case of the Kalam Cosmological argument, this is specifically addressed; The reason why theologians believe that his act of creating the universe does not need a form of progression to actualize is because he has a form of free will. So, to give a comparative example of why this matters to them - a rock that starts rolling down a hill to hit a wall needs time in order to make any progression in order to hit that wall; God's action to create the universe does not need progression, because it doesn't rely on a series of steps that need to progress in order to happen.

Progression is not necessarily excluded. Please see my immediately previous post.

In fact, the Kalam Cosmological argument is another faith-based impossiblity, to make people's belief compatible with reality, which can't be done in real terms.

But my argument has shown that an infinitely long progression in time which never has had a starting point in time (since it's infinitely long) does have values of complexity at any point in time in the infinitely long timeline.

I daresay that theological thinkers are just not smart enough to have figured this one out, since they study as undergrads theology and more theology, instead of math and physics and chemistry. These bóchers are not necessarily stupid, they can be incredibly intelligent, they simply haven't encountered the model I brought up, because they never had to study it in their entire lives.

[bahman]

Here we consider God as temporal and timeless. We show that we are dealing with a paradox in each case.

Temporal God: In this case God creates the universe at specific time so the universe has specific age. God however has no beginning which means that He has to exist in infinite past. This is however paradoxical because one cannot reach from infinite past to now.

I think that most secular cosmologists would actually disagree with you on that.

So they obviously think wrong.

Timeless God: In this case there is no time reference for which we can assign the act of creation to therefore the age of universe could be anything which this is paradoxical.

In the case of the Kalam Cosmological argument, this is specifically addressed; The reason why theologians believe that his act of creating the universe does not need a form of progression to actualize is because he has a form of free will. So, to give a comparative example of why this matters to them - a rock that starts rolling down a hill to hit a wall needs time in order to make any progression in order to hit that wall; God's action to create the universe does not need progression, because it doesn't rely on a series of steps that need to progress in order to happen.

I was not talking about progressing. I was talking about the act of creation which happens in one instant. The problem in here is that there is no time reference to say when God created the universe. Therefore the age of universe could be anything which this is problematic.

[-1-]

I was not talking about progressing. I was talking about the act of creation which happens in one instant. The problem in here is that there is no time reference to say when God created the universe. Therefore the age of universe could be anything which this is problematic.

It certainly is ming-boggling why the creation happened when it did, since god has had an infinite amount of time to decide when to go for it.

But it did happen, and it happened whenever it happened.

This cuts through the polemification and pondering and speculation when god decided to do this creation. That is not an issue any longer when you think that this is when it happened.

You actually can't say "it was impossible for god to do the creation" when you are a creature of creation.