A Working Definition of God

But this phrase... ...is simply wrong in the sense that you are trying to downplay the implications of "physical death" in the passage of Scripture in question.Furthermore, this is not a question of evolution vs. creation. It is a matter of clear catholic dotrine -- which you are distorting by making this statement.The passage in question, from a Catholic perspective, means that original sin of humanity...1) ...turned the "potential" of physical death for humanity into a "reality". In other words, it "allowed" the natural processes to take over......and...2) ...it also resulted in the "potential" of "spritual death" from then on.This to say, sin and death are certainly not the same thing. But one definitely opened the door for the other to happen -- at the local human level.Based on what you're saying above, it seems as though you're saying that the Catholic church is teaching that humanity would have died even if they hadn't sinned -- which is not at all an accurate statement according to the Catholic Church.Do you see what I mean?

You give this non sequitur to my proof that Catholic doctrine agrees with me????

My apologies Faith. I should have explained my position more clearly.I guess in this discussion usually the concept of man's dominion being related to having to "subdue" the animals often comes up... A quick perusal of the Scriptures seems to reveal much about the concept of subdual and the violence and death that often accompanies it.For example: Admitedly, if the world were a peaceful place before Adam and Eve arrive onto the earth, the concept of them having to subdue it (as clearly defined within the Scriptural passages presented above) seems to contradict this assertion.I confess that I might be wrong in this observation. However, all things considered, it seems to make a lot of sense to me that the world that Adam and Eve had to subdue was not a peaceful place outside the borders of the Garden of Eden.It seems reasonable that death was a natural part of the lifeforms that preceeded Adam and Eve's appearance on earth -- but that Adam and Eve were effectively "set apart" from death in the garden.Some would likewise suggest that in their initial phase they were essentially created immortal, being a little lower than the angels in their connection with God. Conversely, after their fall, some would suggest that they were now mortal, being slightly elevated from the animals in their ability to reason.That's how I see it anyway -- based on both Scriptures and Church tradition. Consequently, I do believe almost every aspect of what you've said here.My only concern comes up when noting that our future "glorified bodies" may still require sustenance.For example, the theophany that appeared before Abraham certainly didn't mind enjoying a meal -- this is to say, their spiritual bodies could still eat food.Consequently, when we look to the book of the apocalypse, we see something very similar to the Tree of Life residing there. Admittedly, like the Genesis account of Creation, I think the Book of the Apocalypse uses allegorical language to described things. However, nonetheless, I still think that the leaves of this tree (which may be symbolic of Christ himself) will be required nutrition to live in paradise.That's my thoughts anyway.This message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-22-2005 06:15 PM

And yet when others who believe differently from you profess the same trust in God's word, you accuse them of being tricked by the devil. Then you arrogantly deny your own vulnerability to this possibility, holding yourself above all the weaknesses man is heir to. Your blinders cause you to see only the Bible and to deny the community of mankind beyond the borders of your own blinkered faith community. I'm afraid there is far more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your Bible. Why, yes, of course! I must not understand what you're saying, because this appears to contradict your earlier statements that you know your views about God are correct. I can only say that, once again, the Bible is blinding you. It is interesting that all the hardness and coldness and rigidity is coming from the Christian side. God is understanding and forgiveness, not condemning others as possessed by the devil because they hold different beliefs. I suppose the certainty might attract some to this hard Christian position, but there seems little else to recommend it. So you say, but in your very next paragraph you say this: This passage clearly reveals that you are deep into a predicament of confusion, because you have God performing physical deeds that leave no physical evidence. Perhaps if you provide an example it would make what you're trying to say more clear, especially to yourself. Yes, I know you worked hard, but the journey is not over and there is far more to learn. You say that without the Bible the universe cannot be fully apprehended (I'm translating that in my mind as "comprehended", but let me know if you were saying something else), but consider that it is the Bible that creates the contradiction between it and God's word written in his true works of the universe. We know the Bible was written by men, and we know the universe was created by God, and it is only because you have the priority backwards that you find so many contradictions.The world is not the way it is because of anything the Bible says about fallenness, but because it is but the way God created it. The universe came first, the Bible came later - much later. The Bible represents one ancient people's attempt at making sense of this world as they strived to know their God, but it is by no means the only attempt. Many more holy words have been written than are between the Bible's covers, many of them in the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita and the Tipitaka, many of them elsewhere. What makes words holy is how well they speak to our soul, not a council of men in an eastern Roman Empire outpost centuries ago. Try reading Gifts of the Magi by O. Henry some time for some truly holy words. You don't need other people to tell you what is holy, only yourself.The advances wrought by science in the modern world have enabled us to make much sense of what formerly made no sense at all and seemed the work of gods and devils. I do not know what chaos in your life led you to conclude the world so harsh a place, but the risks you're exposed to are far less than for past generations. The Bible writers attributed to evil or the devil or sins the many life-affecting disasters of past times that are now known to have material and preventable causes, like many illnesses. You have nowhere near the excuse ancient peoples did for finding the world so harsh a place as you judge it to be. By what logic can you judge the world a harsh place when compared to the world in which ancient peoples lived? Given the hardships they faced the ancient Israelites thought the world a fallen place, but given the wonders of the modern age how can you possibly conclude the same? What is truth, Faith? When you can answer that question perhaps you'll be better able to answer the question, What is God? When you can define truth in a way that is generous instead of selfish and exclusive and hateful you might find you are on the right track. That you have a definition of truth as something rigid and absolute and exclusive only makes it apparent how far off you are. Truth is subtle and multifaceted. Truth brings people together. Perhaps God knows a single definition of truth that is not yet known to man, but we must still harken to God's message of love and tolerance and apply it even to those things we do not yet understand. I understand the point you're trying to make about witness testimony, and I can now see how we're simply using different definitions of the word objective. But you're misusing the word objective even even by your own definition. Objective, in the sense you're trying to apply it, means leaving aside one's own thoughts and impressions. Yes, people testifying to witness evidence attempt to be honest and accurate about what they've experienced, but they're talking about their own thoughts and impressions, and so they cannot possibly leave them aside. In the sense you're using it, objectivity is the virtual antonym of witness testimony.I was, of course, using a different definition of objective, the one about reliably establishing what is actually so. This is why I was referring to multiple observers, because the more people who observe the same thing the more confidence we have that that thing exists, and with enough observers we begin to say that it has been objectively verified.UFOs are a good example. One person sees a UFO and the report gets ignored. A few people see a UFO and it gets dismissed as swamp gas. A whole neighborhood of people see a UFO and it begins to get some serious attention. When a whole neighborhood of people see the same thing, we might not be able to figure out what they saw, but we can be pretty sure they saw it, and the local airbase or airport or university or whatever will investigate, because the reliability of the observation has been established fairly objectively (not rigorously, of course, but that would be rare for random events). That's the sense in which I'm using the term objective - something that we know really happened or really exists because of the number of people who have observed it. Or, when speaking scientifically, because of the care with which the phenomena was observed and measured, and because of replication by other scientists or teams of scientists. But I didn't define faith, nor was I attempting to. I said, "Peace and goodness and caring and compassion are the realm of faith." I was speaking of spirtual faith or religious faith. The point I was working toward was that objectivity is the realm of the material world, while peace and goodness and caring and compassion are the realm of spirtual faith.We seem to be having trouble with definitions, because you offer the definition of faith as putting one's trust in something or someone. This is certainly one of the definitions of faith, but as we were in the middle of a discussion about evidence from the material versus spirtual worlds, the definition I of course had in mind was, to quote GuruNet, "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." You provided the quotes containing the contradiction yourself (of loving God with all your heart in one passage, and that the heart is deceitful above all things in another). The labyrinthine exercises used to deny Biblical inconsistencies are unnecessary once you accept that the Bible is man's word, not God's.--Percy

I gave examples somewhere back there. Maybe you missed them. I gave the example of the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea, which would have returned to its normal state, leaving no physical evidence of the miracle.I gave the example of the pillars of fire and cloud that led the Israelites. Once they're gone they're gone. What evidence would you expect to find?I gave the example of the gift of manna. I suggested maybe we could go comb through the sand if we think we can find the right area, and maybe find a 3500-year old grain of manna. You for it? Or even the quail God gave when the people complained about the manna. Would you expect to find their bones in the Sinai peninsula?How about the plagues in Egypt? What physical evidence would you expect to find there?How about the sun's standing still for Joshua? It went back to its usual course. Physical evidence, where, how?I suggested that finding the Ark of the Covenant would be evidence and it would, if it remained intact. Moses' tablets would be in it, a pot of manna too, and Aaron's rod. Where shall we look?There are also the many miracles of Elijah and Elisha, partings of the Jordan for instance -- same problem for physical evidence as the Red Sea parting.The fire from heaven that devoured the sacrifice? Well again, they saw it, it's gone, we can't see it.I mentioned Jesus' resurrection. No body to be found. Jesus' healings? Well those people eventually died.NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE left by any of these things. ALL we have is witness evidence, as I said.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-22-2005 06:47 PM

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Asking for what it is.

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We don't know. We're humans. Allwe know is that it exists. It may be frustrating but what we do matters and we're here.

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What is truth, Faith?

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Ok...I admit I'm as guilty as the others for deviating from the OP of this thread -- but Percy and Faith, could you guys please take this to a new thread?I'd really like to get back to the main thrust of our attempts to provide a Working Definition of God.

I agree we are having trouble with definitions. Their definition is simply the popular one, based on who knows what; it certainly does not define the faith of any genuine Christian. The very idea of religious faith began with Christ and it meant faith in HIM, in the God of the Bible, in the promises of the Bible, in the prophecies of the Bible, but it was taken over into other contexts where it really doesn't fit.It has the basic everyday meaning of faith THAT something or other is the case or will come about, or faith IN someone's integrity or faith that a person will fulfill a promise. All these standard meanings fit the Christian meaning.There is plenty of logical proof, a wealth of logical proof, and a wealth of witness proof. Nobody on this planet believes IN anything, has faith IN anything without thinking they have good reason for it. We are not built that way. The idea that faith means groundless belief is, well, groundless.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-22-2005 07:26 PM

Faith, But you don't know if the "testimony", if it can be called that, is true or not. For this very reason your "witness evidence" cannot be considered evidence that can establish any sort of veracity, it's meaningless. You may as well accept that Watership Down is evidence of talking rabbits.In this regard your evidence is actually a hypothesis to be tested. How do we test the hypothesis that the Red Sea parted, for example? We can't, because as you rightly point out there is no evidence that corroborates the story. Ergo, the parting of the Red Sea remains a myth.MarkThis message has been edited by mark24, 04-22-2005 07:44 PM

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Bad reasoning there. Many things happen that leave no evidence. Many things you yourself have experienced. Think about it. Things you can't prove but you know they happened. They are not myths, they happened and you know it but you can't prove it physically, you can only tell people about it. The lack of physical evidence does not = myth.When all you have is witness evidence, your job is to judge its credibility. You believe it or you don't, but the lack of physical evidence is NOT proof that the report is a myth.{Edited this for clarity}This message has been edited by Faith, 04-22-2005 07:56 PM

I sympathize but I think this thread is shot for that purpose. There are only 80 posts left here anyway. Maybe you could write a proposition for a new topic that would help organize what interests you about it more clearly than Dan did. You are the only one who really seems to grasp the topic or care about it.

I apologize if I've been difficult to follow, but my participation in this thread stems from a statement someone made, might even have been you, that God is defined not just by what he is, but by what he does. This leads to considerations of evidence of what God does, which is what Faith and I are discussing.It's Dan's thread - if he thinks this aspect is off-topic that's okay with me. I'm taking up far too much of Faith's time anyway, time she could be spending on a response in the Deposition and Erosion of Sediments thread.--Percy

No, I didn't miss these examples, they were all fine. They're all examples of God performing deeds in the physical world that left physical evidence, in some cases copious physical evidence. But the passage of much time has erased this evidence. And this makes perfect sense. It's analogous to lost layers in geology, where sediments were created but time and erosion wore them away and now the evidence doesn't exist anymore. There's nothing difficult to understand about this.But though the physical evidence no longer exists for the crossing of the Red Sea and pillers of fire and the manna from heaven and so forth, the key point is that the physical evidence *did* once exist. So you *are* saying that God *does* have a physical impact on the corporeal world. You're just further saying that the evidence hasn't survived the passage of time. I know I'm being somewhat repetitious, but I'm just trying to be very clear.But are you also saying that time has wiped out all physical evidence of all God's deeds in the physical world? I was assuming you weren't saying that because of the obvious contradiction with your position in other threads that you believe the geological layers represent evidence of the great flood of Noah. Another problem with assuming this was your meaning is that it would assume you believed that God stopped performing deeds in the physical world some time ago in order for sufficient time to pass to erase the evidence, and I didn't think you believed God no longer performs physical deeds.Whatever your answer, consider that once you accept that God performs his chores in a manner not outwardly apparent in the physical world and that the Bible is the story of a people and not the word of God, then all your contradictions and problems are explained and evaporate away.--Percy

It's cool with me if it's cool with Dan.I just thought that Dan and Mammuthus might be interested in other things that I had in mind.But I digress.Wait a second. Am I digressing now? Or was I digressing before?