Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Friday, October 30, 2009, 19:42 (5286 days ago) @ Frank Paris

Frank is explaining his concept of process theology to me: "I'm trying to get at what I've "seen", but rationalizing it is most difficult." -I'm sure you've tried to do so before, but I hope very much that this discussion is as helpful to you as it is to me. Expressing the inexpressible is impossible, but I'm with Matt (and Nietzsche and Emerson!) in my admiration for all human efforts to make the attempt.-At the risk of exhausting your patience, I would like to continue the questioning in the hope of further clarification, but I'll begin with a couple of points which in themselves raise no problems and establish a great deal of common ground between us. The "supreme experiences" you receive from certain works of classical music are of huge importance to me too (another time, we can swap names). We obviously differ in their ultimate effect, and also in the fact that even those works that make me sad have never led to depression, despite my own lack of belief. I'm in awe of the genius that creates such music, and this is in no way diluted by the awareness that there may be nothing beyond the human mind that created it. -You "understood that the faith was much more important than the intellectual framework I gradually wrapped around it." Absolutely. And when I question the intellectual framework, please don't think I'm trying to undermine the faith (which I would not be able to do even if I wanted, and I don't!). -I would like to go back to one of your earlier posts. You wrote: "[...] all there is is the physical and all there is is the divine." You agreed with Dawkins who "believes there is nothing beyond the natural physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking beyond the observable universe." In your latest post you emphasized that "the world is entirely physical, but God is both within and outside of the world." Both David and BBella have used similar mystic terms, and it may be that there is no explanation possible, but let's see how far we can go. By "world" do you mean the same as Dawkins' "observable universe"? If not, what do you mean? Let's forget the word "supernatural" (we've had long discussions on this, and I maintain that since we are nowhere near understanding Nature, we can't draw borderlines between natural and supernatural) and, for the time being, let's forget "creative" too. I can grasp the sense of God being 'within', but I need further explanation of what you mean by 'outside', which sounds very like Dawkins' 'beyond'. Are you saying that outside the observable, physical universe there is an infinite consciousness that is NOT physical? You will realize for yourself that this would have enormous ramifications, as would any suggestion that God's infinite, physically induced consciousness stretches indefinitely into multiple physical universes. Each time I've posed this question, you've related it to the link between human consciousness and God's, but that's not the issue here. The issue is the nature of an infinite consciousness outside the physical world.-I would like to come back to the "creative" side of God on another occasion, but I think it might be easier for both of us to take one step at a time. Once again, though, my apologies if I'm asking about things that seem obvious to you. These are ideas you have lived with for a long time, whereas for me the combination of materialism, abiogenesis, and an infinitely conscious and loving, but fundamentally helpless God comes as something of an intellectual shock!