Dear George,

Sorry for mixing up your views with those of Penrose.

It may prove to be, after all, not a confusion about the word "God", but about the word "supernatural". I think of "supernatural" as those aspects of nature which we do not encounter everyday and are not inclined to accept as scientific or even true. This is the realm of telepathy, telekinesis, ghosts, angels, super-powers, etc. It is those that I alluded to as being mostly a diversion away from God, because they tend to increase our fascination with the world.

If God is part of the mental world, then how is He different than Tinkerbell? would He also die if we stop praying (at least this half of Him, the other half being supernatural)?

I accept the POSSIBILITY of layers/aspects of reality with which we can interact (physically), but which we will never be able to research in an objective, scientific way. As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to separate those aspects of the world which can be researched and those (if any) which cannot.

Obviously when we do science we need to dissect the world in too many ways to mention, but once the experiment is over there is no need to maintain that artificial dissection.

Box-ticking: should be weighed on a case-by-case basis, whether it is more important to be truthful or to achieve/prevent something (suppose the ticking-outcome were to throw every newborn son of theists to the Nile river... I regret not hearing back from Ammonite).

God is not natural -therefore He cannot be trivialized.
God is not unnatural -therefore He cannot be condemned.
God is not supernatural -therefore He cannot be mocked.
God is not scientific -therefore He cannot be proven.
God is not unscientific -therefore He cannot be discarded.
God is not physical -therefore He cannot be broken.
God is not mental -therefore He cannot be cured with drugs.
God is not mathematical -therefore He cannot be contradicted.
God does not exist -yet there is nothing but Him and yet it is possible to experience Him directly.

God is TIMECUBE

in the many afterlife readings i have read
no one specificly speaks of 'meeting' god

yet many recognise the key lies..
in knowing god 'is'..within us all

some narrow it down further
god is love...[yet love isnt 'god'

we feel most 'godlike'[good]..
when we do good for other..give others grace and mercy
it is easy to not judge others..lest we judge that we dislike within ourselves..[and thats the place where god does his/her..thing]

hating others..or hating ourselves
demeans the simple fact god hates no-one
[see how he sustains even the 'least'..their life too]

god naturally dont judge anyone..
and this is where those who claim to know her
get it most badly wrong...[yet god still wont stop loving us]

what does it hurt to give back to god
the most loyal most...serving equally the best as the worse
when 'bad'...accepts grace/mercy..and 'goes and sins no more'
its like the long lost son returning home

[he...even if only as one
who held the faith...of a parent
that we would all..eventually see the light]
loves atonement...[that shares the love/grace mercy unto other]

we know the word atonement
[at one meant]..that in time love conquers all

the hints of the good of god abounds
and still those who dont know the science...claim science knows all
[but again..science has never 'made' life..the quaran specificly challanges them..'to make but one like them'..to make but one living thing...and this science has not been able to do]

i still love science
but will allways love god more
and keep trying to love neighbour...cause
in this way..i can serve the bit of god in you..

you are sustained to realise the greatness within you
but only by recognising[respecting]..the greatness with/in us all

where god is..is the holy of holies
god makes me feel wholly whole...[but i cant be complete..till we all unite...the whole holy spirit...by atonemeant..

why should any wish to feel any less
god lies within..how can any feel alone

lets be all-one
one for all

Dear Yuyutsu,

I agree that “supernatural”, (i.e. “The Sacred”,“The Holy Other” etc) is not easy to define, firstly because it is not easy to explain what in philosophy of science is meant by “reality that science can investigate”. Very roughly put, there are essentially two approaches: “critical realism” and “constructive empiricism”.

Your “telepathy, telekinesis, ghosts, angels, super-powers” is a mixture of different things: science can investigate the first two (their claims are falsifiable), the others are constituents of a naive (or not so naive), model of the supernatural, rooted (or not) in the Abrahamic religions that culturally moulded what we now call the West. You can choose to believe in angels, like millions of adherents of those religions, or to believe in ghosts, poltergeists etc that today nobody seriously believes in.

>>If God is part of the mental world, then how is He different than Tinkerbell? would He also die if we stop praying (at least this half of Him, the other half being supernatural)?<<
I think you are not being fair. I never spoke of parts or halves of God. I wrote “man created anthropomorphic images or models of God that he/she often identifies with the ineffable God/YHWH/Allah”. I am afraid I could not explain better in one sentence what I meant by the subjective/objective understanding of God (as I see it) in Abrahamic religions.

Neither did I speak of “dissections” in science. Newton’s, Einstein’s (or some new) theories of gravitation do not "dissect" physical reality although they ignore many phenomena, and are not bothered about that unless their predictions contradict some of them (c.f. the efforts to find a theory, TOE, that would reconcile Einstein’s theory with quantum physics). (ctd)

(ctd)
“the ticking-outcome were to throw every newborn son of theists to the Nile river”
Again I do not think you are being fair, since I believe you know the difference between statistics that opinion polls are after, and discussion panels. However, if you sincerely think this is the intended outcome of such opinion poll, then you should not tick the theist box. Or refuse to participate, c.f. the question “Have you stopped bashing your wife?”

The last part is poetry that I can say nothing against (probably you are hinting at apophatic theology), although in this sense I prefer Lao-Tsu’s Tao Te Ching or writings by Christian and other mystics.

Yuyutsu,

"....and yet it is possible to experience him directly."

I suppose the keyword here is "experience". How does one experience something without recourse to the mind which decodes sensory input.
If one had no senses there would be be nothing [out there] and consequently nothing in here. Your mind is the venue where "experience" is made "sense" of.

Now it may be that when you subtract the human experience of the material world that what is left is something that could be conceived as God. However, in order to experience the conception of God amid the human condition, you can't negate the mind.