Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Monday, March 30, 2009, 03:03 (5716 days ago) @ dhw


> To David: You believe in a designer, but you advise us not to attribute any human qualities to it. This suggests to me that your version of the designer has no personal interest in us. If so, I have two questions: 
> 1) How does this panentheist God differ from that of the deists? 
> 2) If the designer has no personal interest in us, why should it matter to us ... apart from the scientific satisfaction of explaining the origin of life and the universe (though not of the designer) ... whether there is or is not a God?
> 
> And two general questions:
> 1) Are we cells in a superorganism?
> 2) Are all religions facets of the same universal truth, or are they elaborate fictions devised by humans to explain the inexplicable and to lay down rules for individual and social behaviour? - To answer the questions addressed to me simply: deism is a belief in a God force that created the universe and is within it, is still present but not particularly active in controlling the progression. Panentheism believes that the God force is both within and without the universe and pervades all parts of the universe and is active. Pantheism feels God is only within the universe but is active. Since space and time began with the creative Big Bang, where was the God force before that? I think it is more logical that the God force existed as a mass of quantum energy of intellegence in a void and thought the universe into existence. We don't know that the God force is interested in us or not. Religion claims He is. We have minds, a part of His universal mind; we can be in communication with that mind, which I find a satisfying concept. I think your expectations are so influenced by existing religious teaching, you cannot see beyond those expectations of God propagandized by religion. - As for the two questions. 1) we are not part of a superorganism. We are not ants in a cooperative colony. 2) There is a built-in tendency for religiosity, as Karen Armstrong declares. Newberg's books on the neurophysiology of the meditating brain clearly point to this. I don't know that the religions know the 'truth'. There are so many of them with all the answers, that demonstrates the fact they are just guessing.