Problems with this section; for Frank (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 22:36 (5477 days ago) @ dhw

"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'm obviously not communicating. "Physical" only has a meaning within the universe. When particles of God are "spun off," there is no change in nature taking place. Somehow the universe emerges from this spinning off. There is no universe apart from these particles. Together they constitute the universe. I have no idea whether there are distinct types of particles or whether they are all exactly the same and then twist and turn (or whatever) when they encounter each other and differentiate into different species of particles (something like is supposed to happen in string theory: one basic string type that "hums" to different frequencies and harmonics, manifesting themselves as different species of higher level particles).-Basically, I think you're trying to find more exactitude in what I'm saying than is required for the points I'm making, and we're spinning off into unproductive directions. You could do this forever and get so wrapped up in speculative intricacies that you'll never get back to the higher level formulations that I'm trying to make. Naturally if you spin down into dozens of different possibilities you're going to manufacture contradictions left and right. I'm not trying to create a mathematical science of the divine. I'm just trying to make broad strokes. If you're looking for the kind of mind that could flesh out a highly refined geography of the divine, you won't find that from me. I'm not that smart, in fact at my age, I'm quite sure my IQ doesn't even reach 100 anymore. All I can see at this point in my life are the broad strokes.-"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"-You're being sarcastic, right? I don't think I've given a shred of evidence that I can unravel the complexities of philosophy and process theology, at least not anymore. So you just must be making fun of me.-"if God has both physical and non-physical components, and if he has no control over the particles of himself that he cuts loose..."-I've already balked at your conclusion that I'm implying that God has both physical and non-physical components, so don't try to conclude anything I might believe from that assumption. And I'm sorry if you got the impression that I believe God has no control over the particles of himself that he cuts loose. I'm sure he has complete control over this. He may run "experiments": seeing what kind of a universe arises if he cuts loose particles with x, y, and z characteristics as opposed to a, b, and c. But I don't know if he does this, and whether he does or does not has absolutely no bearing on my theology. That's a question for the science of physics if it ever gets sophisticated enough to actually get down to the analysis.-"...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?"-Even though this quote is disconnected from your antecedent "if" clauses, I'll try to answer it independent of them, since I just rejected them as irrelevant to what I've ever intended to say. I've actually already answered it. "Individual identity" is a fiction that ignores the fact that "we" are just processes that have no immutable substance. Consciousness emerges from certain activities in the brain and it comes and goes. Any "identity" we have is locked up in structures in our brain, which are not immutable, but which can come and go with the exigencies of any fragile biological material. Have a stroke and the "identity" can change radically and forever. So there just isn't anything that can survive the physical, at least nothing that you've identified so far.-"This would be a logical pattern, and would explain NDEs."-Hopefully you can now see that this is not a logical pattern that could explain anything.-"he may also be able to spin off non-physical particles that he can't control either ... i.e. particles of his consciousness."-I've already claimed that God could theoretically do this, and so I don't know why you're bringing it up as a possible objection to my theology. What I've said is that this is as much pure conjecture as the basis of my theology itself, in spinning any parts of God off at all and giving them a life of their own. If God can do that then obviously he could spin off larger chunks of himself with more sophisticated experience, even to the point where they are conscious (at which point God could obtain some control over them, through his "lure" that I keep talking about). This is precisely what disembodied "angels" would be and the conjectured embodied souls of human beings. I actually think that there are fewer problems of coherence involved in the conjecture that there are angels than the conjecture that there are souls somehow attached to human bodies.