Problems with this section; for Frank (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 19:42 (5264 days ago) @ Frank Paris

On 15 November, in response to my comment that some people believe "God himself created the laws of Nature", Frank wrote "count me in", whereas on 22 November he wrote: "I don't look at it that way." I see this as a contradiction, and you don't, so let's move on.-You write: "The fundamentals aren't taken from a "component" of God that happens to be physical and the rest of him is not. When particles of himself are spun off and allowed to interact with each other, what is manifest is the physical universe of which we are a part, and the laws of nature." I can follow the reasoning that the laws of Nature are manifested in the development of the physical universe. As regards the particles, however, you wrote earlier that they "don't so much become physical as they are what is physical in our universe." If they are physical and are spun off God, it seems logical to me that at the point where God spins them off, they must already be physical, which means he has physical components. Otherwise they would have to become physical.-I pointed out that in the NDEs David described, the patients received messages from dead third parties about the death of someone they knew, and this does not fit in with your explanation of broken contact. You reply: "It certainly does, if you view the vision that people see dead people as a hallucination." Yes, of course it does, if you have already made up your mind beforehand that it's an hallucination (see David's responses on the subject). I was putting forward an alternative explanation, which you say you failed to follow, as you thought my statements seemed to "wildly switch from one topic to another" without the link of a single argument, which is "the trouble with these forums" etc. etc. I'm a little surprised that someone so well practised as you at unravelling the complexities of philosophy and process theology should not have been able to follow my little thread, and I fear your "limited perspective" got the better of you again in more senses than one, but let me summarize the single argument for you as simply as I can (I'll flesh it out again in a moment when I discuss your responses): if God has both physical and non-physical components, and if he has no control over the particles of himself that he cuts loose, why should not we ourselves have an individual identity comprising an autonomous combination of the physical and the non-physical, with the non-physical surviving the physical, just as it does in God? This would be a logical pattern, and would explain NDEs.-You have separated this proposal into sections, because you couldn't follow the thread. I have no problem with the argument that the original, simple particles combine to form "higher organizations". As you say, that's evolution. You then manage to latch on to the conclusion of my argument which, in your words, "would be God creating 'souls' that may live on after death". Correct, except that I'm not talking about him creating ... i.e. making something out of nothing ... or about a "consciousness that arises naturally out of a physical organism". I think this preconception may be the reason why you lost the thread. God's own consciousness does not, according to you, arise out of a physical organism, and I'm suggesting that, if he is capable of spinning off physical particles (or particles that become physical) which he can't control, he may also be able to spin off non-physical particles that he can't control either ... i.e. particles of his consciousness. The brain would then be the receptacle but not the producer of consciousness, while his lack of control gives the particles their autonomy and us our individual identity. If you are able to believe (20 November at 15.29) that there is really only one consciousness, which is God's, and it can "run through" our physical channels until death destroys them, I don't see why you can't believe that an autonomous particle of it may keep on running just as God's does when his own physical particles perish. This would be what people call the "soul". Hence NDEs, and countless other related experiences. (As always I must stress that I'm putting forward ideas, not beliefs. I remain open-minded as to whether such a thing exists.)-Finally, (23 November at 21.45) you have grossly distorted the comment that ended my post of 23 November at 13.47, firstly by leaving out the remark I was referring to, and secondly by leaving out the all-important words "if not" in the course of your response. The statement I found shocking because of what seems to me a dramatic callousness was: "it's no great tragedy if we as individuals die." I thought that you might like to qualify it, but if not, I could only assume you had never lost a loved one etc. You have now qualified it. Thank you.-(Finally plus one: a note on Occam/Ockham. His name was William and he came from Ockham, a town in Surrey, England. My dictionaries give both spellings with his famous razor, but you won't find Occam in a British atlas!)