Posted on 01/03/2006 12:12:37 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Thank you so much for the excellent essay-post putting everything in historical and most especially, Spiritual, context!
There are some confessions that believe God is a flesh and bone human. And therefore, presumably, they would confess that the God the Creator was a man.
That however is certainly not my confession; and I am confident the majority of Judeo/Christian confessions do not hold to that interpretation either.
Oh, really? And are we to understand that those who can barely get by paycheck to paycheck every month can have YOU pay for their child(ren) to attend the private school of their choice, religious or otherwise?
Please provide your actual name and address here so they can know who to send the private school bill to.
BTW, evolution (aka atheism) is a religion itself, but somehow, you seem to think indoctrinating/brainwashing children with that religion is okay.
To borrow a phrase from The Fox News Channel, let's have schools report (i.e. present both/all sides) and let the children (and their parents) decide!
MLC9852 RESPONDED: "I'm confused. Which particular religious beliefs were they trying to promote?"
The old school board was trying to prevent the schools from brainwashing/indoctrinating children with the religion of Atheism.
The new school board wants to violate the Constitution by excluding anything which challenges or contradicts the religion of Atheism.
See my comment to Junior at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1551240/posts?page=1003#1003
Because Photons(light) is/are way too slow.. disgustingly slow.. silly slow, universally..
Just getting around in one galazy photonically is way too sluggish to be practical.. Going from one galazy to another would be silly.. transversing the Universe (nobody knows how big it is).. is rididulous.. Light is the fastest thing we humans know of.. There must be something faster.. And Fester humans are slower than the speed of light.. which as I said, is way too slow.. for Universe maintenace..
God says he/it is spirit.. What is the speed of spirit?.. Actually God says we are spirits too.. Handcuffed to these bodies true, but not forever.. What is the speed of spirit.?.. Faster / Slower than the speed of light?.. I'm serious as a heart attack..
HEY!... you asked.... And I'm taking YOU seriously.. Good question..
But how fast is spirit?.. or does spirit transcend speed..?
Meaning spirit could make Universal Maintenance possible.?..
All we would need are some spiritual tools to maintain it(the Universe)..
Its all in my book... LoL...
Course you know I'm kidding.. OR DO YOU.?.
Quantum particles? And they are such tiny little rascals that I wonder how many would fit on the head of a pin.
HOW MUCH FASTER?...
Starting point for interested Lurkers: Postulates of Special Relativity
Only spirits anchored to space/time (as when Jesus Christ was enfleshed, we mortal humans, etc.) are space/time-relative and subject to its properties.
Otherwise, spirits are non-corporeal and have no space/time limitations.
I believe the classic biblical understanding is that God the Creator became incarnate at a particular point in our history, and that when He did so, it was in human form. Not the form of angels or plants or animals. WRT time and space, and in view of the fact that Genesis denotes God as saying "Let us make man in our image" as the final act of creation prior to the seventh day, it is fairly certain that human attributes attend the Creator. "I AM THAT I AM" at least denotes person-hood, which in turn is largely what constitutes the human estate.
To iterate things a bit differently, it is awkward to suggest that God was entirely nonhuman at one point in time, and then changed in essence at the time He became incarnate. It is part of His essence as expressed from the beginning to become flesh and redeem His creation. Obviously it would be preposterous to understand from the biblical texts that a created human is responsible for designing and building the universe. But an uncreated being with human attributes? Not so far fetched.
I see, had to think about a bit eh!... Nyah.. d;-)~'.'. I agree..
Any self respecting, Evo would gag on this concept.. Which was the intent..
I'm a BAD MAN, a bad man, a sinner really..
Human attibutes?.. maybe those attibutes are spiritual.. and humans that are identified with that BODY, merely ape them.. Since humans are spirits in an earthly shell.. and Jesus assumed earthly form so as to NOT freak out the villagers.. and provide an object lesson for them to pattern/model by..
It seems to have worked in many cases but not all.. Some think that DNA'osaurs(the human body) with its bones and qualia, is NOT just a shell..
My two cents: the "image" does not refer to anything corporeal, in space/time, flesh or blood - nor does it refer to a simple soul (nephesh) as in animal life.
Rather it refers to the "neshama" - the breath of God - which made Adam a living soul. The English word for it is "spirit". Man is unlike all other living creations in that respect, and he is an image of God in that same respect because God is Spirit (John 4).
Neshama "the breath of God", which is obviously a metaphor.. by its implication.. One could spend days considering the impact of this one metaphor.. even years.. if you're not too bright like me..
Consider the clean crisp clarity of that metaphor.. describing a "spirit" like no other could (that I can think of). The breath of God washing over an object appreciating it, and even transforming it.. if needed.. A spirit like smoke, like a breath of wind, as a personality, even a force..
Its winter here in Alaska.. Betcha KNOW what I'll be thinking about as I go about my daily rounds.. Observing MY BREATH as a cloud every time I breathe today.. However its quite mild today.. lower twentys(high).. low enough to do the "breath" thing as I breathe.. Within MY BODY is a spirit as surely as God has one.. And the words I breath out can have some impact..
Thanks for reminding me of this metaphor.. I will take it with me today on my rounds.. " and God breathed on him the breath of life".. Heavy stuff.. After additional prayer this morning, I plan on doing a little of that myself.. Not just breathing but releasing the spirit within me.. in my breathe'ings.. (must not forget mouthwash) I'm on a quest..
Nor mine, A-G. That would seem to be the view of a very small minority.
One attribute of God is said to be omnipresence: He is everywhere at once, so "speed" cannot be a factor.
Which observation actually received a scientific treatment, from Sir Isaac Newton no less. It was speculative and controversial in his own time, and still is.
According to Newton's conjecture, God's omnipresence is the determinative factor of Absolute Space, which Newton (unlike Descartes and Leibnitz) conceived of as absolutely "empty." Absolute Space is the manifestation of what Newton called the sensorium Dei, which might be imagined as a sort of universal field that arises from the eternal omnipresence of "God with his creatures," as Newton put it. Newton said that Absolute Space must be empty -- A-G, your Ayn Sof here??? -- in order to "make room" for the coming-into-being of all phenomena in the Universe, which manifest from the creative will of God. For Newton, Space as primary construct is indivisible, universal, and as eternal as God Who produces it, as the primary manifestation of His contact with the universe of created things, via the sensorium Dei of the God Who is "the Lord of Life, with his creatures."
Pretty wild, huh? I bet few folks around here would ever have suspected that the great theorist of mechanics would say such a thing.
The Hebrew word neshama means breath, wind and most especially, spirit. The same concept is carried forward in the Greek, in John 3:
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. - John 3:6-8
The concept comports well with cosmology and geometric physics. The void in which there had to have been a beginning of physical reality (regardless of cosmology) - has no space, no time, no energy, no matter, no physical laws, no physical constants, no logic, no mathematics, no qualia, etc. - no thing - including most especially no physical causation.
The void is singular and transcendent - Ayn Sof. Only God can be the uncaused cause of "all that there is".
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