Hello, jgill.

Your example is greater in quantity not in quality.

Big difference. — Joe Mello

Please give a definition of 'greater' that isn't quantitative. That will perhaps serve as a starting point to understanding the statement in your opening post:

No combination of lesser things can create a greater thing without something greater than the greater thing added to the lesser things. — Joe Mello

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.

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.

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. — Joe Mello

Life, love, god.

Just a bunch of extremely vague concepts. Also you claimed science has confirmed your opening statement, yet science deals exclusively with the quantitative and doesn't touch these vague concepts.

reaching out for support of like minds and administrators — Joe Mello

I am speaking to you and for myself. Nothing you have written so far rises to the level that requires moderator involvement and I didn't imply that it has.

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. — Joe Mello

What's important is not my ideas of what adequate justification looks like, it's what reason requires that matters.

Life is greater than the elements, and thought is greater than life, and love is greater than thought, and God is greater than us. — Joe Mello

It’s an interesting progression, going from the elements to life, then to thought, to love, and finally to God. The last step seems unnecessary. In any case, all these things are interdependent so it is nonsensical to say that one is greater than the other. Thought can’t exist without elements, love can’t exist without thought, God can’t exist without elements and thought, etc.

After 7 years as a mystic letting God do the talking ... — Joe Mello

"If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.." ~Thomas Szasz

Szasz who, 180?

My heroes are greater.

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.

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. — Joe Mello

I'd be interested to hear a bit more about your ideas. Those are claims. They may well be true. but perhaps you could show us more about how they work. I have been interested in nondualist approaches and have read and appreciated work by Father Richard Rohr. Do you see him as useful in your system?

Garrett, your trust in your thinking is scary. — Joe Mello

Your trust in your imagination is scarier. You are quite literally making the claim that a lack of an explanation for something constitutes evidence for something else entirely, even the the evidence clearly implies that just the very thing you are believing is not true. This is called an argument from ignorance, it's an invalid and unsound argument. And the kind of mentality that has left the world in such an unethical state.

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. — Joe Mello

No, that's why his people all throughout history are mass murderers. You've been completely duped by mysticism. Love of God is hatred of human and self, to varying degrees of intensity. Also, which god we talking here, yours? Mohammad? Your logic would imply that a singular entity could not be powerful enough to create such a complex universe, no singular entity could have created all of the facets of nature, the chemicals and their interactions, the phenomena of quanta, billions of galaxies, cognitive behaviors of all life-forms. It absolutely must be a vast team of brilliant gods all working together.

I went through the thread and pulled out many of the statements Joe Mello has made with no attempt to provide justification or even explanation. Here they are:

No combination of lesser things can create a greater thing without something greater than the greater thing added to the lesser things. — Joe Mello

No scientific discovery has shown to us that, for example, a combination of the elements created the first ancient bacteria. Or that living tissue created thought. — Joe Mello

the simple fact that, for example, a living being is "greater" than a rock. — Joe Mello

The thinking of evolution as a top down order is supported by every failure of scientists to move past theory to proof where evolution is evolved. — Joe Mello

an infinite line of finite things is illogical. — Joe Mello

human beings are the spokespersons for reality. There are no others. — Joe Mello

a multi-universe is illogical. — Joe Mello

Only an omnipotent infinite being can be the logical beginning of a finite universe. — Joe Mello

placing a human being at the pinnacle of creation. — Joe Mello

the physical universe is made up of only finite things. Nothing else. — Joe Mello

nothing could exist without God. — Joe Mello

only the science of Logic creates a metaphysical principle. — Joe Mello

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. — Joe Mello

I went through the thread and pulled out many of the statements Joe Mello has made with no attempt to provide justification or even explanation. Here they are: — T Clark

To be honest, I get the striking feeling these have been long held beliefs of his that he has never explored the strength of his arguments against, in genuine interaction with other's. I am a philosophy student myself, I know what kind of training your recieve to cut through the fallacies that characterize everyone of these arguments. There's no way a philosophy degree holder is failing to see this. We're talking basic stuff, if you yourself don't already know.

To be honest, I get the striking feeling these have been long held beliefs of his that he has never explored the strength of his arguments against, in genuine interaction with other's. I am a philosophy student myself, I know what kind of training your recieve to cut through the fallacies that characterize everyone of these arguments. There's no way a philosophy degree holder is failing to see this. We're talking basic stuff, if you yourself don't already know. — Garrett Travers

Although his way of seeing the world is different from mine, I have no trouble with him making these assertions. My problem is that he has not justified, or even tried to justify, any of them.

Although his way of seeing the world is different from mine, I have no trouble with him making these assertions. My problem is that he has not justified, or even tried to justify, any of them. — T Clark

Right, the idea here is, if he would say "here's my faith, let's talk faith." Cool, no problem. When you tell me there is a God, I'll be needing some evidence. That's how philosophy works.

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.

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.

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.

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. — Joe Mello

You provided no examples, no evidence. no reason, no logic, no philosophy. Just insults and unsupported claims.

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. — Joe Mello

All you've provided is bragging, pontificating, browbeating. Polishing your pride and showing it off. It's infuriating. You should be ashamed.

Are those things independent of each other or relying on each other? — Joe Mello

Interdependent means dependent upon one another: mutually dependent.

Take your relationship with God for instance, God cannot be loved by you without you, and you cannot love God without God. You're codependent, but in a good way, I hope.

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. — Joe Mello

This confirms that all you have to offer is your love story with God, insults, and nothing of intellectual substance.

An impression of this thread......

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. — Joe Mello

That is correct. I am the Living Man. I am he who loves his life, and his love of life is his own standard and warrant for existence. I am the Man of the same cloth the emissaries of God put to the sword to save themselves from the truth of. The Emergent Conscious Man of the world who needs no force from without of himself to provide him his value, and values no one who would seek to take it from him by force, or from any other human being. I'm the Man who loves humanity, more than God could ever dream of.

I am sorry if such disturbs you. I once loved God just like you do. But, I did not have it in me to love something of such brutal monstrosity through the age of reason. Nor, could I accept that he would leave loving people here, alone, to be slaughtered and abused by those who embodied the very evil he himself claims to have created. The very evil he tortured Job with and whose family he murdered. If the Lord wants to create a sword with all that power of his, then may he die by it. But, he will do so without me.

Thanks for clarifying.

This thing needs to go to the Lounge.

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.

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.

You’re welcome, Tom

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.