Dear John,
I am also putting my reply to your reply that you put in my box here, so that you can reply to it here also if you desire to do that rather than reply to it in your box. Of course, you can reply to it in both places or just in yours also if you wish.
Dear John,
Thank you for your more detailed description of your beliefs concerning God. I think that you somewhat underestimate me. I just needed adequate information to understand your point of view. This is because I have found that there are many different definitions that are applied to the same words and phrases by different men. If someone says that he believes in God the most prevalent definitions would mean belief in a being that would be worthy to be worshiped or served, generally with the belief that God would at least in some way relate positively in some way back to the person that worships him or at least would be less likely to treat him negatively. Generally a belief that God is only the sum of all the myths that men have made up about God to comfort themselves or to have less fear in times of trouble, etc. would not be considered a belief in God by most people. This belief would generally be considered more a part of atheist religion (belief that there is no true God) as part of its doctrine to explain away why so many people all around the world believe in the existence of God as some form of being.
I can understand that concept because as I mentioned we both have similar backgrounds in some ways. We were both brought up in more or less Christian homes to some degree. I believe yours may have actually been more so than mine because I was brought up in that environment until my parents were divorced when I was about 10 years old. That environment pretty much ended at about that time and was after that mostly a neutral environment without much family influence in either direction. Of course, over time I did discuss the subject with some who believed in God and some who did not believe in him, but I found their arguments lacking on both sides both in detail and in logical reasoning. During those 22 years that I was searching to see if there was adequate evidence to come to a conclusion as to whether God existed or not I was mostly informed by scientific observation, both of my own and that of others. I also saw that there were many different religions both in the past and also in the present that portrayed God in vastly different ways. It became apparent to me that at most only one of these religions could be true and it was possible, of course that none of them were true. At the same time the fact that so many different people believed in God in one way or another as a living being suggested that either man had needs that he could not meet and was falling back on that belief for comfort, etc. or that God really does exist and made man to have a relationship with him, which caused man to try to fill that relationship need that had been built into man's structure with a belief in him even when they could not have the true relationship with him. The fact that a large number of men would have to be in the group that did not have a true relationship with him in order to allow for the creation of all of the false religions and all of their followers meant that the way of obtaining the true relationship with God would have to be restricted by conditions that would exclude most people from obtaining that relationship. The other possibility was that they all were wrong and God did not exist at all. I found that both of these possibilities existed, but I did not have adequate evidence to determine which was true, so I withheld judgment and continued to look for more evidence as to whether God did exist or not. It appears to me that you came to the conclusion that God does not actually exist as an intelligent being who created the world or even as a living being at all. If I am right about that, how did you come to this conclusion? What evidence did you see that convinced you that God does not exist as a real living being? Whether God really does exist as the creator of the world who has chosen to communicate with us to tell us about him, his creation, and our purpose in it in the scriptures or not is the important understanding to gain because if he does, although all of the things that you mention in your reasoning about why each of the gods were believed to be as they were might apply to all of the others, the things recorded in the scriptures are as they are because they actually tell us about how God actually is, how his creation actually works, and what his purpose for us actually is, etc. We should, therefore, first look at the evidence for and against God's existence as a living being who created the world, etc. I have already provided to you some of the evidence that has convinced me that God does exist as a living being as mentioned above, so I will wait for your evidence to the contrary before I go any farther.
I see that you have a real and strong aversion to the concept of top down authority. Did something happen in your life associated with this type of authority to make you believe this way? You did mention that you rebelled in your earlier years. Did that and the results of it have anything to do with the establishment of that belief or was it based more on external observations, etc.? I have found that top down authority is built into the structure of the world and can be a great positive influence when used properly, of course, like most other things it can be used wrongly to create negative results. As an example, when we are born into this world we all experience the top down authority relationship with our parents. Because at birth we are all completely helpless none of us would survive for very long without this relationship. As we grow and begin to be able to interact with the external world, we would not likely survive long without obeying the top down authority commands of our parents to not play in the street and not get into a car with a stranger, etc. Even though we do not yet have an adequate understanding of how the world works to justify it, it is common around the age of 12 to 14 years old to begin to have a strong desire to be free to do what we want to do in the world. At the same time we are driven by hormones as a result of puberty to fulfill desires that can easily result in very detrimental outcomes that can negatively affect our lives for many years to come if allowed to be fulfilled. Although it is not usually appreciated at the time, strong top down authority during this time can be of great value to children in this time of life. Of course, it is best if a positive relationship between the parents and their children has been cultivated during previous years, so that the children have come to respect their parent's guidance and can, therefore, accept it during this time without rebelling against it, thus preventing the negative outcomes that would result from that rebellion. I have found that children in this age group talk about having freedom, but this freedom does not extend to actually having to take care of their own needs, etc. It is usually around the age of 19 to 21 when the children are truly set free to make their way in the world and they find out how much work is involved in it, and they tend to see how much work their parents had to do to take care of them while at the same time trying to keep them from rebellion to prevent them from having to suffer its negative consequences, that they begin to come out of rebelling. This time can sometimes be delayed somewhat by college attendance, etc., however. Top down authority can be very useful in situations that involve very complex structuring because the greater the number and complexity of decisions that need to be made the more difficult it becomes to get bottom up agreement of all involved as to the best decision to make in each circumstance. I do agree with you that top down authority can result in very negative results when used improperly, however. Similar results can also occur when bottom up authority is used improperly (mob rule). These things are tools and all tools can be used for good or evil resulting in the corresponding output results.
I find the use of the concepts of objective verses subjective to be greatly misunderstood by most people. The term objective normally refers to an object or thing as it actually exists in reality while the term subjective means the subject that is generated by the mind such as thoughts and concepts, etc. This would mean that E=mc2 would be subjective in nature because it does not exist as an object in the real world, but is instead an abstract concept made by the mind of man to express a relationship between real objects. Your coffee, keyboard, and fingers would be real world objects and, therefore, would be objective. You could, of course say that you don't actually experience these objects, but only the images of them that are received by your mind from interactions of photons with those objects and then further interaction of the same photons with sensors that are parts of your eyes. You could then say that your mind interprets these interactions and, therefore, you are only seeing subjective information produced by your mind. Looking at it in this way everything would have to be considered subjective to us because we would have no way to directly observe the real world objects. The other way that people sometimes think of objective and subjective is: that which can be obtained by deduction is objective and that which can be obtained by induction is subjective. Induction is usually considered to be less surely known because it is obtained from information obtained from a finite number of observations, so it is always possible that the next observation would prove it to be wrong, while deduction is achieved by a closed loop of logical reasoning from that which is positively known to that which is not presently known to gain an understanding of the unknown. Induction does have the problem mentioned above of lack of certainty. Deduction is harder to understand. You could consider E=mc2 as deductive because all of the elements are defined and their possible interactions are defined according to logical rules that have been made by the person who made the formula. Since a man has created the formula and made all of the rules concerning it, all of the possible outcomes can be known with surety because they are all defined in its structure and the associated rules that describe it. Of course this does not mean that it in any way conforms to reality. The only way that this can be confirmed is by making many observations and subjectively reason that if they all agree with the formula, the formula must be true to reality. The use of subjective reasoning in this proof makes the result uncertain, however, because if another observation had been made it may have not agreed with the previous observations because of some unknown variable that might only come into play under very uncommon circumstances that no one was aware of up to that point. The end result of all of this is that there is always a degree of uncertainty concerning our knowledge of objects that exist in reality except those things that we completely create ourselves in our minds and these things are of very limited use to us if we don't connect them to reality. In the above example, you can positively know all things about the formula E=mc2 as long as you do not try to connect the E with real world energy or the m with real world mass or the c with the real world speed of light, but if you do so, you can never know for sure that the formula is then completely accurate because you can only access this information by subjective observation. Scientists often think that because the formula that they made is objective in nature it is more certain than that which is obtained by observation, but they often don't see that when they connect it to reality it loses that certainty and if it is not connected to reality it is practically useless. As long as you restrict your statements to the outcomes of current observations and all of those observations agree with the statements, both subjective and objective arguments that completely agree with the observations can be considered completely accurate within the scope of the available observational data. Subjective experiences are not always more detailed than objective observations. You could set up a simple subjective observation of a voltage meter's output while you turned a variable resister in a circuit while you were in a dark room to limit the detail of your experience and at the same time you could observe a very complex objective math formula that would contain more detail than the subjective observation.
To me it is not really important by what process man might have come to the conclusion that God was a father figure if god did not really exist because it would not really be true and, therefore, would be irrelevant. On the other hand if God does exist, then he is the way that he is, so man's belief of him as a father figure is only applicable if he really is a father figure in his relationship with us. Even then it is not important because man came to that conclusion, but because he is really a father figure to us by his nature. The real important determination to be made is, therefore, whether God actually exists and if so what is his nature and how does he choose to relate to us.
The argument that Jesus's death and resurrection was derived from year gods makes very little sense because these year gods died each year and were reborn the next year to create a continuous repetitive cycle, but Jesus died only once like the rest of us. He was then resurrected the same year and will never die again. At most this would only be one half of an additional cycle, but he was not reborn to start life all over again, but was raised from the dead fully grown as he was when he died on the cross. He then ascended up to the Father high above the highest heaven with eternal life.
That God has 3 parts (The father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost and these three are one is no great mystery. He made man in his image and man is, therefore, also made of 3 parts (a spirit, a soul, and a body). The spirit generates our intents or purposes for us to accomplish. The soul translates those intents into thoughts that our body can understand and our body carries out the actions in accordance with those thoughts to perform the intents of the spirit.
Some men three thousand years ago may have had some brilliant insights compared to the level of knowledge of most during that time, but many of today's scientific concepts could not have been envisioned by any of them because they had not yet developed the ability to make the equipment that would allow them to make the observations that would allow them to conceive the possible existence of such things as the structure of sub-energy particles, energy photons or matter particles or that they are all composed of basic motions. The observational information that would allow man to understand that all things that we can observe are composed of basic motions has only been available to man for less than 100 years and man has so far mainly ignored that data. The scriptures also contain much more advanced information than these things some of which cannot currently be disclosed to man in this world because it is not yet time for it to be known. Other things such as the existence of multiple fifth vector structural levels can be mentioned, but cannot be given in much detail at this time. I would not be in the position to have obtained all of the information that I currently have if I was not able to look beyond all of man's and other's political and ideological viewpoints and prejudices, etc. both past and present. The social and cultural ties may be what give the false religions their strength to affect the people to get them to believe in those religions, but it is God himself who gives the strength to those who seek him to find and believe in him and his Word. You are right that in the long run it is not the printed book that is most important. It is the light of God in us that gives us to be able to work with him to do his will and to also work with him to bring his light to others. The book gives us the information that allows us to get that relationship with God.
If it is just the result of men and men's works then it is of little value if any value at all. Why would I consider a god composed of men's works of any value to be worshiped when I am also a man and also not worthy to be worshiped. A spiritual essence that is profoundly elemental and not an ideal, but like light without a filter sounds a lot like religions that consider god to just be some unintelligent force that we could learn to control to get it to do what we want it to do like in Star Wars. Such a god would just be a tool that could be used either for good or for evil (the light side or the dark side) and could, therefore, not make man any better or help him to overcome his inherent weaknesses that cause him to do things in such a way as to ultimately destroy himself and possibly the whole planet in the process. It would only be able to magnify man's current condition to accomplish larger scale results that were in line with man's current condition. Those who were evil would still do evil things and ultimately advanced scientific knowledge could allow one such person to do a terrorist act that would destroy everything for man.
This does not even consider any who are more powerful than man (let's say a fourth vector civilization) who would desire to displace man from this planet, etc. Even if some fifth vector civilization that is more powerful than them will protect man from them because they have an interest of gain from relations with man, such a relationship could not be counted on in the long term. The word has it that before they consider man to be ready to be joined to them a seventh vector source will open up the fifth vector to man. The response of those from the fifth vector will be to force advancement control over the minds of those who are not yet ready. They will suffer greatly and even desire to die, but will not be allowed to do so. This will take about 5 months. Only those who are already prepared will escape this suffering (those I call true Christians). In the long run man will only be safe if the one at the top desires to protect him because he can control all of the others. This last part is well beyond man's believability quotient, but others might take note and act in a way so as to be productive and thus be judged favorably and receive positive rather than negative results. If you desire, you can consider this last part as a SYFI moment or maybe future history.
Sincerely,
Paul B.