BBella\'s Universe (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 17:33 (4721 days ago)

Lots of interesting material, so I hope BBella and Tony won't mind my slightly shifting the focus by starting a new thread.

BBella, if I’ve understood your “theology” correctly, it ties in with Abel’s belief in a race of alien “gods” who share many human characteristics. There are then two other levels of “god”: Gaia, the spirit of Mother Earth, and the “true Creator God”, which you call ALL THAT IS. (I’m trying to break the argument down into its component parts, so please correct any misunderstandings.) It’s not clear to me whether you think the alien race created life on Earth, or were just superior beings whom our ancestors worshipped. The question naturally arises as to who or what created them. As I tried to discuss with Abel, if they arose spontaneously, you may as well argue that we did too, so we don’t need them to create us. They might provide a possible explanation for myths, certain unexplained features of ancient civilizations, and UFOs, but are not integral to our overall view of the universe.

You see Mother Earth as a conscious, sentient being, but more emotional than intellectual, while ALL THAT IS presumably constitutes the whole universe. Strictly speaking, then, we don’t need to distinguish between them, because ALL THAT IS = the macrocosm, and Mother Earth is a microcosm, while everything on Mother Earth is a kind of mini-microcosm. The emphasis on emotion as opposed to intellect suggests that this concept excludes deliberate creation of life, which requires knowledge still far beyond the intellectual capacity of even our greatest scientists. Therefore life presumably arose and evolved spontaneously (either ours, or that of the creative aliens).

If we jettison all concepts of God in favour of a creative force we call ALL THAT IS, I don’t see how anyone can object. It’s only if we ascribe particular attributes to this force that problems emerge. “Sentient” is one of them. That there are sentient beings on Mother Earth is clear, but even here, can we really believe that for instance a piece of rock is capable of conscious sensation and perception? If not, where do we draw lines: are the waters of the oceans, the clouds in the sky, the stars in the firmament capable of conscious feeling and perception?

This is a very literal approach to your “theology”, but please take it as an attempt to understand, not to criticize. Similarly, when you say the ALL THAT IS “can have personality […] can be all or anything you ‘need’ it to be […] because it reacts/responds/creates in reaction to emotion”, in what way does it respond? I’m thinking here of your own astonishing experiences, in which you somehow came back from a living death into vibrant life, but what did you communicate with? Could you really identify a personality, or a specific reaction? Or was it contact with some unidentifiable but positive, strengthening form of energy? This I can understand, as Nature itself is living proof of a positive, creative force at work all around and in us; we’re part of it, and there are many cultures that emphasize our oneness with it. But there’s no evidence that all of Nature is sentient, or that there is even life beyond our planet. So is the unity that binds ALL THAT IS in fact only the common bond between all that lives? You say that your hope is not placed in “gods”, “but the power of LOVE itself.” Do you think that love has an existence independent of the creatures living on this Earth? Without life here, do you think ALL THAT IS would still be a sentient being?

I should add that at moments of deep sensitivity, I share the feeling of oneness with all living creatures, and even with the stars in the firmament. But I have no sense that the universe has a personality or is sentient, as my fellow creatures are to varying degrees. Nor do I expect a response to my needs. The feeling of unity does not entail anything personal at all – just that we’re part of one vast mass, and one day every living thing will be dead, and will be replaced by other living things. I find this rather sad but extremely beautiful. It may all boil down to personal experience, but I’m only reflecting on your post, and exchanging thoughts – not trying to pick holes.

There are other areas of discussion that I’ll deal with more briefly. You think the concept of morality has a shelf life. So long as there is human society, I think there will have to be moral codes to prevent social chaos. Tony equates sin with “mistake”, but I take sin to mean violation of a moral code (in the sense of causing harm to others), and although codes are constantly changing, I still wouldn’t equate mistaking a potato for a tomato with, say, the cold-blooded rape and murder of a child.

Reincarnation: Perhaps we could discuss this on the Afterlife thread, which is a topic in itself.

Finally, Tony says: “One of the reasons DHW has a hard time pinning down my beliefs is that *I* have a hard time pinning them down.” This made me laugh, but at the same time kind of warmed my heart. When people’s beliefs are already pinned down, it means they’ve closed their minds. Such folk usually leave this website very quickly. I’d like to think the rest of us are keeping one another company on a fascinating quest.