skinny on God

Poster "HRG" on CARM asked me: Since you can't explain the existence, powers and motivations of your God either, it would be hypocritical to demand this of string theory.

Here is my attempt to accommodate:

Existence:

The problem with this kind of argument is that Hans (as most atheists) are never willing to acknowledge the answers given. I say the same answer every time you just pretend that I didn't say it.


There is a distinction between naturalistic (contingent) and spiritual (necessary) phenomena. So saying that "God just always was" is not the same kind of answer as saying "the univers just always was." It works for God because he's not made of parts, not natural so he doesn't upon prior conditions out of which he arose. But naturalistic phenomena in so far as we know, always arises out of prior condition. It is always made up of smaller things such as moleculres, atoms, protons, quarks (or strings if you dont' accept quarks). bozons if you buy the quark thing, shelptons, and so forth.

Its' a totally different kind of answer because you have to keep showing this comes form this, and this came this and so and so on. I don't have to do that with God, because the's not matter and he's not contingent.

We know something had to always be. That something is the basis what being is and what makes all things exist. Religious people use the term "God" to describe an idea of what that is.

If you understand that the rest is easy:

Power:


God is spirit and spirit is mind. So the basis of reality is mind. consciousness is the missing element would explain the unified field. this came out on that PBS show. They are still looking for the unifying element that binds the four together in unification. Well, they propose strings, because being materialists they cannot propose consciousness.

Consciousness is the new spirit; where ghost in the machine used to take the place of Atomism or was the alternative to atomism in Greek philosophy, so consciousness is today the new way to understand what spirit is (ala Hegel).

The basis of reality is consciousness and reality is the product of that consciousness, ie the thought of it. So the power of God is absolute and is based upon being the generator that produces the universe becasue God is the mind that thinks the universe.



Motivations:

The one basic motivation of this conscouisness, and it is the underpinning of being itself, love! that link is seen by Tillich and also by Hans Urs Von Balthesar (one of the most brilliant minds of all time).

The link is this: both love and being share a primal directive. They are both the most basic things that are oppossed to nothingness. Nothing is a void, it's drain pipe down which all being goes. It's the lack of anything. We can think of nothing as "off." Think of an off switch. Its' negative. the lack of something.

But something, is "On" it's the oppossite of lack, so being, or existing is "on," it's something, it's not a lack but a posative presence. It is the nature of being to give itself to the beings. Individual things that exhibit the quality of that act are "the beings." The beings take part in "being itself." So being itself bestows itself upon the beings. With me so far?

Love is a posative act. Love is the will to the good of the other. So like being, love bestows itself upon others. Love is the will to give to the other. Love is the basic absense of selfish negative nothingess, it posative, giving, "on" something. It is like being in that it is the most basic from of existing.

thus love and being are bascially one, thus God, as the foudnation of being is also the foundation of love. Since God is conscoiusness, the basic motivation of consciousness is the will to the good of the other; thus God creates others.

that is the basis of God's motivation. God creates by imaginnig worlds, that is the basis of God's power. God loves, that is the basis of God's being.


The thiness of Hans's objections:

He will say "being is only an idea in the mind." But he made that up. He doesn't know that. Being is no more an idea in the mind, than Hans is. There is no reason in the world why ideas can't refur to realities. that is just fundametnal.

There is no such things strings. It is only we theorize that they look like strings that we all them that. So strings are just an idea in the mind. But they refur to soemthing that might really be there. Hans has better an argumetn agsint my deal than I would have by saying "strings are only an idea in the mind."