Have I offended anyone?

Absolutely no offence from the dark Western corner of Wales, and I love PF site as well.

NOW will you improve my trust status.....Just joking. You are a valued member of this community and I tend to find that people who do give rise to genuine offence here on a regular basis get very short shrift, and quite rightly to.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ this clearly depends on how you define "God". If you're talking about the "Einsteinian" god, then I certainly won't disagree.

no, I am not talking about the Einsteinian God. but I am also not talking of "God the wandweaver" who can let just anything happen.
I think of the world not as a combination of matter and energy. for me the world is a gigantic process, maed of myriad of subprocesses which interact with each other. and the sum of all these processes is "God". the question is: does this God have a consciousness? to answer that we first have to answer where consciousness comes from, something which is still a total mystery to scientists. all we know is that human beings appear to have one; at least every human being believes him/herself to have one and by inference that other human beings also do. but what exactly IS this consciousness? one thing is for certain: it is a highly complex, self-referential process. now I propose that any process of a certain level of complexity and self-refference will develop a consciousness. at least some processes do; human beings are living proof of that. and the most complex and self-reflective process in the world is of course the Cosmic Process (a word I use instead of "universe", since for me everything is a process). my proposal is that this process has a consciousness too, and this consciousness I call "God".
some may argue that this is quite a leap of faith, but I don't agree. on the contrary, I think it is nothing but the last recess of anthropocentrism to believe that our consciousnesses are the only conscious processes in the world. I see no reason why consciousness should be confined to living beings only. why, the definition of what "life" actually is may as well have to be changed as our knowledge extends

Offensensitivity.

^ yeah, that would make no sense. We need more babies to replace the people who just died, not fewer!

Offended...No

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - April 01 2010 at 23:32

BaldJean wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ this clearly depends on how you define "God". If you're talking about the "Einsteinian" god, then I certainly won't disagree. no, I am not talking about the Einsteinian God. but I am also not talking of "God the wandweaver" who can let just anything happen. I think of the world not as a combination of matter and energy. for me the world is a gigantic process, maed of myriad of subprocesses which interact with each other. and the sum of all these processes is "God". the question is: does this God have a consciousness? to answer that we first have to answer where consciousness comes from, something which is still a total mystery to scientists. all we know is that human beings appear to have one; at least every human being believes him/herself to have one and by inference that other human beings also do. but what exactly IS this consciousness? one thing is for certain: it is a highly complex, self-referential process. now I propose that any process of a certain level of complexity and self-refference will develop a consciousness. at least some processes do; human beings are living proof of that. and the most complex and self-reflective process in the world is of course the Cosmic Process (a word I use instead of "universe", since for me everything is a process). my proposal is that this process has a consciousness too, and this consciousness I call "God". some may argue that this is quite a leap of faith, but I don't agree. on the contrary, I think it is nothing but the last recess of anthropocentrism to believe that our consciousnesses are the only conscious processes in the world. I see no reason why consciousness should be confined to living beings only. why, the definition of what "life" actually is may as well have to be changed as our knowledge extends

If it's not a leap of faith, then you should be able to prove it. Does this cosmic consciousness interfere with what we know as the laws of physics?

Sorry if I'm not intrigued by your theories ... I think that there's a chance that you're right, but it's much too small for me to even begin to investigate.

Take only the bold part: It's a non issue. You can't prove your theory. I can't disprove it. But why should I even try? Whether your theory is true or not has absolutely no bearing on my life.

Erm.. Mike, there is a possibility, albeit remote, that you may end up having to start another thread apologising to anyone offended by your posts in this thread which was originally created to establish if you had offended anyone prior to now ? 

ooops....I think I've just disappeared up my own bottom again

BTW You have never offended me but you are one helluva stubborn critter

ExittheLemming wrote: Erm.. Mike, there is a possibility, albeit remote, that you may end up having to start another thread apologising to anyone offended by your posts in this thread which was originally created to establish if you had offended anyone prior to now ?  ooops....I think I've just disappeared up my own bottom again BTW You have never offended me but you are one helluva stubborn critter

I guess I'm doing what Zappa did on the album that inspired the title of this thread ...

Keep the abuse flowing. Bring it on baby!!!

Mr ProgFreak wrote: I try to be reasonable. I also try to be respectful of persons - but I can have no respect for unreasonable theories. It's interesting though how religious people can sometimes take personal offense when you criticize the concept they believe in. I really don't think that religion deserves any respect. If you are a true believer and at the same time you believe in concepts like freedom of speech and freedom of religion, you should simply not care about what I think about the Pope or Jesus.

1. Ignorants
2. Delusional
3. Fanatics
4. Many more strong ephitets

Do you believe this is trying to be respectful with the peope?