MU, you simply can’t get out of your head.

If I have to “define” for you how a living being is greater than a material object, then you’re not in touch with common sense.

Skeptics all share the same nonsensical relationship with things as dictionary definitions first and foremost.

My God, man … see the nonsense you write. As a human being, you are the spokesperson for reality. Get the intellectual marbles out of your mouth.

A true skeptic is skeptical of himself, too.

javi, you wrote:

I do not want [to] share the space [in] my box with such [a] useless thing.

The brackets are the corrections. But since English is your second language, your mistakes are certainly not the hasty and sloppy writing I thought they were. So don’t worry about.

But you should worry that God is “useless” to you.

One day God will be the only useful one you will need. And your life today is not any richer without God.

Joshs, do you know the difference between an evangelical conservative Christian and a scholastically trained theologian and philosopher?

It’s quite vast.

I don’t identify with liberals or conservatives or Christians or atheists or any groups actually.

What I have identified, however, is that Donald Trump is obviously a self-loving greedy piece of shit, politicians obviously only want to stay politicians, the far-right tend to be racist bigots, the far-left tend to be worldly idiots, and people mostly tend to be mediocre faces in a crowd.

T Clark, then I gave him some good advice.

And the regulars on this forum don’t speak for the forum. The owner of this forum and the administrators do.

Groupthink is the death of every debate, not an antagonist.

You’re not posting to me out of intellectual curiosity but out of emotional needs.

Joshs, did you see the new Beatles documentary?

I watched every minute of it and enjoyed it immensely.

But I couldn’t look at John for too long because he was so filled with drugs he was a hollow shell of a person.

javi, proofread so your nonsense so it isn’t even more painful to read.

emancipate, I told you that I have spent decades experiencing God, and you replied that “no one experiences God”.

So you implied that I was either lying or delusional, and your implication came as a declarative statement, so you “called” me one of these things, or both.

And “finite representation” is revelatory of God’s existence because he is the author of our finite universe. Who created it? Another universe?

But the revelations of God that I have also claimed to have had are far more revealing than some intellectual experiences that you can’t seem to rise above.

The word is “Spirit”, if you still need to be told it because you have chosen to forget it. And “Spirit” is not finite.

The greatest person who ever lived said to a group of confused people, like many confused people here:

“God is Spirit”

MU, everything you’re saying is basically true. But it’s also off track because all I’m trying to get at is that the principle logically answers and points us to the necessity of an omnipotent power (the something greater than the greater thing) being added to lesser things when these lesser things evolved into greater things.

There were only the physical elements present in the forming of the Earth. Now there is a teeming biosphere. Science has only theories about how such an evolution came to be, and all these theories fall short to the degree that many scientists throw up their hands and admit that science will probably never discover the answer.

The principle is the answer.

And the parameters of science as subjectively drawn by philosophically inept human beings are not broad enough to include it.

But the science of Logic is a thing.

Why God does what he does in his infinite wisdom and willful choices is a fantastic question for another time that I would love to have at any time.

emancipate, you didn’t just call me a liar or delusional for claiming to have received from God a direct revelation, you called everyone throughout the history of humanity with such claims, and they’re myriad, liars or delusional.

You must look at churches, temples, and mosques and giggle to yourself because you know every person in them is a fool.

You’re either a truly amazing fellow or just a superficial jerk. There is no middle ground for a hard atheist making such claims about God.

Boys, you’re gathering together now because you feel the same uneasiness.

I know you all have put God in a safe little box. But you should understand that you’re in that box, too.

You’re welcome, Tom

jgil, why don’t you go to the lounge.

Experience is a philosophical necessity in any claim of knowledge.

The “thing” I wrote above should have opened your mind, for it was a rare reality only experienced by a few of us, and there have been others.

But your mind is not open. So you could only pray for it to go away.

But you read it and it will be with you forever because it was the truth and not another opinion that you can forget a minute later.

In a word, your spirit heard it deeper than your head did. And since your head is your favorite place, there will be turmoil.

Garrett, you couldn’t disturb me even a little bit. I’m not talking about ideas in my head. You are, as your manifesto shows.

Your atheist talking points are all over the Internet, not in the halls of science and reason.

I told you the absolute truth about why there is suffering and evil among us while we live temporarily in this physical reality. And you didn’t understand anything I said.

Your posts are riddled with emotion and nonsense.

I feel nothing when I read them, for they are not inspiring or profound, just the thoughts bouncing off the top of your head.

My posts are only about my experiences and the knowledge derived from them.

Garrett, you're the perfect example of a person who is so filled with pride and self-love that he will only trust the thoughts bouncing off the top of his head.

Look around you at your family and friends to see if anyone else does.

A tree is known by its fruit.

Tom, it's not my system.

I'm telling you what you have heard before -- Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

Humanists love their neighbor, but only so far.

We need to know and love God in Spirit and Truth before we can truly be giving and loving to others. That's how it works.

I could tell you that I spend money and time on others whenever the opportunity and need arises, and the opportunity and need is daily, and many times a day. But you would only see this as some intellectual decision I keep making. It isn't. I truly have an aversion to selfishness and an attraction to giving of myself. Who I was before my years in a monastery is the polar opposite of who I am today, and who I have been for the last 40 years.

I could tell you that when God gives to us something powerful from his omnipotent being, we never lose it for the rest of our lives. But how could you understand this claim unless you experienced it for yourself?

For example, there's a book called The Philokalia, which is a collection of writings written between the 4th and 15th centuries by Eastern Orthodox Church mystics. Years before I read this book, I was sitting in a church and suddenly a tear fell from my eye, and then another, and another, and many more for a period of 90 minutes. I wasn't sad and was trying to stop the tears the whole time. From that day to today, I am moved to tears daily by so many things I experience when I look at others. In the Philokalia years later, I read from a monk that what I experienced was a "Baptism of Tears". The monk described my experience perfectly, and also its lasting effects. And he said that to receive this baptism is a special gift God gives to those of us he desires to be close to. And close to God is where I have been ever since.

To hear this story will matter differently to each person, but that does not make the story different, only the persons who are hearing it.

The same goes with everything I have been writing since I got here.

The skeptic wants to receive a one size fits all explanation of God's existence. There is no such thing. Our individual being is what God desires to know, not a group of people.

It is written: God delights in playing among his children.

And I know that it is absolutely true that he does.

The story above is one of very many.

It's good that you guys are talking to each other.

You certainly haven't been listening to me.

Even Neil Degrasse Tyson said that Dark Energy is pretty good evidence that a God could possibly exist, and I explained to you why it's so. But you ignored it to talk to yourselves, just as you ignored every example I gave of where the evidence of God can be found.

I have never mentioned "faith" because I don't have any. But you went there because you had to, as all groupthink skeptics have to.

I have only spoken about knowledge and experience.

And I'm not telling you there is a God, but telling you where and how to find him, which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.

Your ideas about "evidence" for the existence of an omnipotent God are the same ideas for the existence of a cockroach. And that's just stupid.

You are lazy thinkers and lazy human beings. I sacrificed years to come to a knowledge and love of God. And you expect to intellectually receive God on a plate.

Why would God put himself in the only place where you want to look?

He is a divine being who could care less what a bunch of pride-filled delusional skeptics think or demand.

Enjoy your conversations with each other. No one else is listening.

praxis, which is it? Are those things independent of each other or relying on each other?

And your premise that you couldn’t possibly know, that God isn’t anything, is poisoning any well your thinking is drawing from to the degree that your words are dead because you keep killing them.

The truth about God and love of God are intertwined in that more we come to know God the more we love him; and vice versa, as in your case.

And the failure to love God and others because of this love, which is our truest purpose, is far more important than what the thoughts rattling in our head have to say about God.

Skeptics live and die in their heads.

Szasz who, 180?

My heroes are greater.

javi, do you experience love? If you do, then it is a thing in your life, and therefore can be argued as a thing in a philosophical debate.

Who is the greater person, the unloving scientist who hates other people or the loving garbage man who doesn’t hate anyone?

This question answers what is greater — intellectual ability or a loving heart.

emancipate, I’ve given many.

So, again — Life is greater than the elements, and thought is greater than life, and love is greater than thought, and God is greater than us.

T Clark, your judgment of me only matters to the extent that you are acting in good faith.

But you’re reaching out for support of like minds and administrators to help you deal with whatever has your panties in a bunch.

If you haven’t found anything in my posts to ponder because in your mind I haven’t justified them according to your ideas of what such a justification looks like, then you are simply riding along a rail you can’t get off.

dimo, if you have been telling yourself for so very long that the points you make are the only points worth making, then you’ll probably live the rest of your life standing on the head of your own pin.

Jump off, man.

javi, I said the “first” place, for only after our hearts are in the right place will our minds be.

Learn to read … and to proofread.

Janus, your question displays your lack of understanding of what God's omnipotence means.

God is the greatest being we can imagine, but our imaginations are not a perfect understanding of God's abilities, or even of what words mean.

It is God's will that dictates what he does or does not do, not his omnipotence.

When we observe our own will, we see that we ordain things to happen and allow things to happen. So does God. So, if God, for example, ordains that he will not do an evil act but allow an evil act to happen, he is free to do so, even if he is omnipotent, and no matter what Epicurus has told you.

Mww, so I'm not aware, I'm repetitious, I'm drawing attention to myself, I'm not interesting ...

You feel better now?

Your work is done. You put me and the principle tidily in a small draw in the corner of your mind.

You're free again to walk away from any argument you don't understand in the same pair of shoes you have probably been wearing since you were a teenager.

Bye bye, then.

Bartricks, "people like us"?

What kind of people should God have created? Winged angels? He did. But angels watch us in awe, for we stand between eternal bliss and temporary struggle, with a personal and individual destiny to become what we ourselves achieve or do not achieve.

The skeptic ignorantly looks at a man hanging on a cross as a horror and failure when he is the most successful human being who ever lived. For he thought as God thought and lived not in service to his own temporary gain but in service to the eternal gain of himself, everyone else, and God, the author of reality.

If you cannot look around you, and within your own heart, and see humanity's spiritual need as its greatest need, and the man on the cross as humanity's perfect and beautiful Messiah, then all your learning just made you less of a human being.

To think as God thinks is to play both the long game and the deep game.

To think as man thinks is to play an ignorant and selfish superficial game.

I couldn't be more grateful to be born in this world and a "person like me".

And I couldn't be more exited to get up every morning to see what lies next, good or bad.

It was written in the first century that "The Glory of God is a human being fully alive".

The skeptic is half alive through a superficial prideful ignorance of who he is and where he is.

Your mind is not the first place to search out God and the meaning to your life. Your heart is.

salamander, you’re right on track. Good for you, really.

This principle was formulated by Father Marius Schneider over fifty years ago by him taking his complete understanding of Aristotle and Aquinas, mainly, and many others, such as Duns Scotus and Anselm, and contemplating on this body of philosophical thinking that was no longer scattered texts but an integral part of his own thinking.

This principle did not spring up in his mind, but was a true achievement of his life’s work and personal talent.

Google it and you get nothing … or possibly me.

Philosophy is basically dead in our world today. And philosophical genius, the type of which takes a lifetime to develop, is basically extinct.

jgill, equating God with religion in a philosophy forum is rather ridiculous.

I have been quite clear that a greater thing is greater in reality, not in mathematics.

Don't accuse me of not being clear because you fell into a fog.

T Clark,

Your judgement of my contributions here so far isn't really much of a thing, now is it?

dimo, if you're so sure of your thinking you wouldn't get rattled and emotional when it gets upended.

Science uses metaphysical principles to function.

And only the science of Logic creates a metaphysical principle.

I asked you to ponder the principle, not hold my hand and skip away with me.

Tex, you're absolutely correct.

Srap, I discovered the principle by being in the right place at the right time with the right mind and with the right people.

There was this one teacher of mine, a German priest, who spoke in a half dozen languages, read in a dozen, had doctorates in Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology, refuted everything from communism to Freud, and spent his long life constantly reading and writing alone in his room.

He taught it to me, and it was he who formulated it.

All I did was spend years learning to understand it, and years seeing how every new scientific discovery only supported it and never refuted it.

Hello, jgill.

Your example is greater in quantity not in quality.

Big difference.

Bartricks, you're the most qualified person here, yet you can't follow a simple conversation.

I have been maintaining quite simply that in our observation of the physical universe, God exists out of necessity to logically explain it.

And you fell into some idea that has probably been stuck in your head for decades that God cannot exist out of necessity as he exists in himself because then he wouldn't be capable of not existing and therefore couldn't be God.

I never even got close to saying that God, as he is in himself, exists out of necessity.

And anyone can study philosophy for many years and get many degrees. But only a scholastically trained philosopher has become philosophically advanced in learning how to think.

G.K. Chesterton admitted that becoming a scholastic academic did not teach him what to think but how to think.

Your inability to ponder the metaphysical principle I gave to you is not a small thing. You simply do not have the philosophical clarity to think profoundly and without personal prejudices in the third degree of abstraction.

praxis, go be a fool someplace else.

Batricks, you're attempting to reason about God without doing the work it takes to do it well.

God does exist out of necessity, for nothing could exist without God.

We exist because he exists. We think because he thinks. We love because he loves. Etc.

And to see the imperfections in creation as a problem for the existence of God is to not know the value of the freedom that is the greatest gift to creation.

What good would it be for us to have been given, without any effort or growth or achievement on our part, a perfect life from birth?

We don't exist to exist, but exist to become like God, our father. And he receives his greatest glory through his children who become fully alive, just like any father does.

I wouldn't want it any other way. My joys are what they are only because of the sorrows that come and go.

T Clark, you are providing examples of more complexity, not greater things.

A more complex molecule is still a molecule, not a living being ... not a thought.

praxis, the physical universe is made up of only finite things. Nothing else.

But God's omnipotence is seen in the manner these finite things move and have their being.

For example, the Universe is moving outward from a single point in every direction, and with an ever-increasing speed.

Dark Energy is the physical force behind this movement of the Universe. And, although it is a finite power, it is acting like an infinite power. For how can a finite power move an object without that object slowing down after a time?

magritte, I was a counselor for 12 years, so I was a therapist for 12 years.

And you forgot to show me where I went wrong in placing a human being at the pinnacle of creation.

Is it a dolphin?

A star?

Please tell me your profound discovery of creation's greatest reality.

It's the human personality, by the way.

180, I don't do well with bullet points.

And God isn't a "mystery" to me in the least.

After 7 years as a mystic letting God do the talking, and acquiring a scholastic education at the same time, belief became knowledge, and the mystery became truth.

And (this is the best part) truth became love.