Those who have read my essay “What is God,” at:
pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/god.htm
might be interesed in God-related conceptual difficulties of some preachers, quoted at:
pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/god2.htm
Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia).
Please share these links with those who might be interested.
what do you want from me…
Your presentation may deserve better responses than it might get here at ILP.
That being said, what do you think of the idea that all creations are emanations of God?
It depends on how the word emanution is defined.
where are you coming from…are you selling something
Espinoza was NOT merely “excommunicated” from the Jewish society, but rather cursed with the most extreme encouragement that they could muster for everyone to hate him every instant of his life in any way they could get away with. His sin was merely that he pronounced that God did not belong exclusively to the Jews.
kowalskil has been selling himself for many years. He deserves a degree of respect. But in this realm of theology … dunno. I don’t expect he will be able to catch up.
james we all deserve a degree of respect…even you and me
Emanation as an extension of. Let’s say God extended to create all that is. Would this extension amount to less than the extender? Are we not all a part of God and a part of each other?
Anyone that thinks about things that actually matter, other than their star-bucks and materialistic life deserve at least a small amount of respect.
Who is being disrespectful? When I told K. that he may not find what he wants to hear here, I include my own feeble attempts at posts. As proof I was right, the thread has turned to ego and has nothing to do with the clergy’s qualms over theological issues.
kowalskil wrote:
You have many questions, but I will start from Theologians Versus Scientists.
Stephen Gould was renowned for stating that he did not believe any scientist with a Ph.D would support a literal interpretation of the six days of creation and during the past century, the story of Genesis was reduced to the position of ‘religious myth’, for many people affirmed or believed that only those who were uneducated in science would seriously believe such a myth. Today much has changed as there are a growing number of highly educated, critically thinking scientists who seriously doubt evidence for Darwinian evolution and who choose to believe in the biblical version of creation, also noted scientists such as Kepler, Boyle, Newton, Pascal and Linn all believed in God as the Creator.
However, the Bible also states that it is “by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible” (Heb. 11:3) Biblical faith cannot be a matter of formal proof, but neither is it a blind leap.
Our world suffers from the false notion that reality and truth are limited to the empirical, and that man’s knowledge and reasoning are our supreme guide.
Ahh… can’t resist the temptation…
A god ≡ who/whatever incontestably determines what can or cannot be concerning a particular situation.
The God ≡ Who/Whatever incontestably determines All that can or cannot be concerning any situation: the ever-present, ongoing cause of the universe, the reason that the universe persists (whatever that reason might be).
Do Jews believe in life after death? Life after death may be the only logical reason as to why God saved the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage but failed to save them Hitler’s gas chambers. The logic would be that God reclaims souls, not bodies. This logic however would be contrary to the Jewish belief that the most important focus for humans is on the here and now.