Dear George,

Re "halves of God", was in reference to you saying that God is both part of the supernatural and part of the mental world. I used "half" to save on word-count, thinking you would understand.

Re "dissections", was in reference to: {>>Dividing the world according to the level of sense it makes, is artificial.<< Well, I do not understand how else could you “do” e.g. science.}

Thanks for bringing up the "have you stopped bashing your wife" question. I confess having this personal tendency to answer "No" to it, regardless of what people would think of me, but I guess that if the questioner was a policeman or held a gun, then I would answer differently.

Re poetry, I'd never dare to conceive that something I wrote in 5 minutes is better than Lao-Tsu's.

Now where does it leave us?

Since you claim that "God exists", comes the metaphoric question "where does He live?":

* Not in the physical world, not even in its remotest corners or under its carpets
* Not in the mental world
* Not in the mathematical world

That leaves the supernatural, but as you already agreed [with my poem] that God is not part of my idea of "supernatural", then only your idea of it is left.

You wrote: "I agree that “supernatural”, (i.e. “The Sacred”,“The Holy Other” etc) is not easy to define", but would you care to try and explain it to me anyway, because otherwise I really have no clue what you are referring to. Can you give me an example of something which is not physical, not mental and not mathematical, nor a combination of these three?

Dear Poirot,

You are getting close!

So let me just adjust the last screws a bit:

Indeed, if you and God were separate, as in the case of two different bodies in space, then experience was not possible without a mediator, such as the mind or the senses. Fortunately, this is not the case.

Just as one can divide their attention, listening and tasting at the same time (and women in general can do even more simultaneously), there is no principle reason why one should not be able to experience God both directly and indirectly at the same time.

While you do need to practice setting the human experience aside, at least for a while, you do not need to die or to become blind, deaf, atactiliac, anosmic and ageusiac in order to experience God directly. Further, so long as you have a working brain, you can still think, do your sums, write your reports, engineer your projects, etc.

Even further, your mind itself may not shrivel completely overnight. You will not be feeding it any further because you would find it superfluous, but remaining shreds may still display themselves in automatic habits or even bring old emotions to the surface. Even though you would experience God directly and realize your identity with Him, other people may still consider you as human as themselves.

pure/o..quote..""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.""

i must react to that
god is within all living things
essentially where god is life is
thus all of the life experiences..IS affected by the cause.*god
to extract the material 'life'..is to miss much of what god achieves materially

then there is what he does in the afterlife
the sum of god is all experience..[huh?man or otherwise]
he alows us our choices,..todo or chose to not do..to know or avoid knowing

but essentially..he provides the means
we then chose the tao..[the way]

""However,..in order to experience
the conception of God amid the human condition,
you can't negate the mind.""

ok im with you that the mind is the key
but any conception of god...cannot be limited to mere experience
but rather the quality of the experience level..[evolution]..
we are allowed..[qualified]..to experience

our experience of mind
is greater than a flies experience of
via the sennses recorded within it's brain
its the higher mind functions that differentiate 'us'..from all the other lives god[good]..sustains into life/living

""If one had no senses
there would be be nothing..[out there]""

the reality dosnt rely on the sense
[because all sense is subjective]
we mostly are unaware...via our base senses[for egsample]
to realise the other dimentions..that definitly egsist along side this materially sensual experience [spirit by the way has many more senses

""nothing [out there]..and consequently nothing in here.""

but there is the crus
we have something in mind
but also aware of the reality
..of a lot of that..[which seems to many]..to be really 'out there'

im glad we do have poiints of con-sensus
""Your mind is the venue where "experience" is made "sense" of.""

its where we realised..
that the brain isnt much..without the real present
[presence of mind]

[that when present
lifts us into the realm of god..[awareness of self]

as well as awareness of 'other'...
then expanding the basic mean

that love of other..is as vital as loving of self..
[perhaps even more so]

Dear Yuyutsu,

>>the metaphoric question "where does He live?”<<
Where do you, your identity, live? In your body? That would bring up cartesian duality, the substance of soul that lives in your body. We do not use that language today, we say that what makes you you is NOT REDUCIBLE to your body, although we cannot say “where” it resides: one cannot investigate your brain to find you, your mind, I can only make conclusions about who/what you are from your manifestations, e.g. here over internet. This analogy, of course, has limitations, when applied to your question.

Some, even some materialists, (“emergent materialists”) see the mind as “an irreducible existent in some sense” (Wikipedia), so perhaps one can see the “supernatural” in a similar way.

I have learned on this OLO that many atheists do not like it if you say they do not believe in God, they rather define their atheism as “lack (absence) of belief”, full stop. So in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9389#150883 I formulated my belief in the “supernatural” as absence of belief in what I called Sagan’s maxim.

In other words, I cannot answer your question, metaphoric or not, satisfactorily, because my understanding of “where” refers to space and God is understood to be BEYOND (not the same as “outside of”) space-time. (Children are told that He is everywhere; also under my bed?; yes, also under your bed.)

In physics they assume the existence of dark energy as something they know practically nothing about, but need to assume its existence in order to make sense of what they know about the cosmos.

In this sense I - and many others - need the concepts of “supernatural” and “God” who is reducible to neither the mental nor the material world (although is intrinsically related to both of them in our understanding of these terms) to make sense of what I know about the human condition and the role religion plays/played in it on the anthropological, historical, sociological and psychological levels.

An interesting observation, George.

>>I have learned on this OLO that many atheists do not like it if you say they do not believe in God, they rather define their atheism as “lack (absence) of belief”, full stop.<<

While you are correct that atheists identify themselves as having an absence of belief in God, I cannot recall any atheist on this Forum objecting to the definition that they do not believe in God. It would seem to me that the two are entirely congruent.

Except possibly for the abstract philosophical notion that it is impossible to disbelieve in something that does not exist, since it cannot be sufficiently identified in order to make specific that disbelief.

If you have examples where "many atheists do not like it if you say they do not believe in God" are expressed here on OLO, I'd be interested to see them.

On your characterization of atheism, I'm firmly a "c) it does not make sense to ask for [the universe's] cause or purpose". In fact, the very assumption that everything requires some form of purpose in order to exist, is to my mind thoroughly primitive, analogous to the early hominid's contemplation of the moon, or the sun.

Given the timeframe in which human life is likely to exist on earth - which is a mere blip in cosmic terms - I suspect that we will be unlikely to resolve that question, one way or the other, before our planet boils away. Which, if you agree with that proposition, renders all supposition that a) there is a purpose, b) that purpose is God and c) that we humans are able to "communicate" with that God, entirely without substance or merit.

Dear George,

"I - and many others - need the concepts of “supernatural” and “God” who is reducible to neither the mental nor the material world (...) to make sense of what I know about..."

You clearly went to great lengths to describe your need for concepts that may provide sense. This is why scientists consider dark energy. This is also, for example, how the number "i", the square-root of -1, was engendered.

If indeed dark energy is discovered, then it must be of the physical realm. Otherwise, it must remain in the mental and mathematical realms, just as the number "i".

You already agreed that God is neither physical nor mental and previously agreed that he is not mathematical either, but for some reason the later was omitted in your last post - I wonder whether inadvertently you think of God as a mathematical object, but to avoid the disrespect of placing Him together with "ordinary" numbers, sets, polinoms, functions, vectors, matrixes, alephs, etc. you've set up for him an exclusive "first class" partition within the mathematical world?

(this way, if God could speak He would say: "Hey, I am not a number - I am supernatural!")