tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post8837983848531380516..comments2024-03-29T15:13:42.610+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: The evilness of evil (in a pluralist universe)Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-27052725929687802062015-04-02T18:25:30.639+01:002015-04-02T18:25:30.639+01:00Nirvana and God-consciousness can be unified in ph...Nirvana and God-consciousness can be unified in philosophy and experience. For those who are interested Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda is freely available online.<br /><br />I do not believe there is a full rejection of incarnation, intelligence, power, or self-awareness through Nirvana, at least not in Yoga. Rather, each is subsumed to create awakening. Faculty Xnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-60079314406787286262015-04-02T06:18:13.210+01:002015-04-02T06:18:13.210+01:00@NF - The 'Tri-Omni' God precedes Christia...@NF - The 'Tri-Omni' God precedes Christianity, is 'the god of the Philosophers' - a rationally inferred God. There is no metaphysical incoherence in this God - the problem is making the T-O God compatible with Ancient Judaism then Christianity - whose God is primarily revealed in scriptures. <br /><br />"if what is called God is actually finite and bound within the universe as a result of not having the tri-omni qualities, then there is that which precedes or is greater than God. " - This does not follow. In mormon theology, God and the universe are co-eternal - and so are we - always there; and nothing is greater than God - God is of vast and incomprehensible power, knowledge etc - but not infinite. <br /><br />However, the greatness of God is (for Mormons) a matter of fact - not a matter of philosophical definition; the greatness of God is not philosophically necessary, it does not 'have to be ' so - it just is so. <br />Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-48203356660177887502015-04-02T03:47:21.413+01:002015-04-02T03:47:21.413+01:00The reason that mainstream theologians have persis...<i>The reason that mainstream theologians have persisted for 2000 years with monism (and an Omni- concept of God) despite the insoluble and fundamental problems these cause for Christianity is that they want to be able to say that God is necessarily good - i.e. that the goodness of God is built-into reality, part of the existence of the universe; and therefore that to oppose God is to be irrational (i.e. they want to be able to state that evil is simply irrational).</i><br /><br />Actually Good and Evil are a duality - two poles on a spectrum - when a tri-omni deity is considered. Not only that, but both are necessarily aspects of the deity's expression. All things that manifest are both necessary and contingent, and so Good and Evil events find their sole cause in the deity. It is in fact all that was/is/will be, and there are no actual degrees of freedom to deviate. The tri-omni qualities lead to the unavoidable conclusion that only God is, and everything that unfolds is simply the result of iterating - via time - the characteristics of divinity. Now if what is called God is actually finite and bound within the universe as a result of not having the tri-omni qualities, then there is that which precedes or is greater than God. Thinking about this leads to infinite regress, or to t=0 at least. <br /><br />Here is the thing though; a tri-omni entity is necessarily unchanging and sufficient. Viewed from the outside it is static, but from the inside it expresses itself as an unfolding instantiation of those properties - as a universe. It is the primal singularity which at t=0 contains the fullness of what instantiation reveals over time.<br /><br />Each universe can be looked at as an instantiation of something which is eternal and tri-omni to that particular universe. We could consider the set of all of these universes as the prime tri-omni deity, or to use an Object Oriented programming model; it is the base Class which defines and is inherited by any instantiable tri-omni deity. <br /><br />These are the implications that I see arising from a tri-omni deity.<br />Nicholas Fulfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15779171820370486921noreply@blogger.com