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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (1642)	10/12/2000 4:54:38 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 28931

The marbles are a visual metaphor that you are taking a little too literally, Greg. These are magically animated marbles!! I know, I know. You don't like the magic part. I'll get to that under "What is consciousness?" below. But first another analogy: We have a hamster for the kids. Normally the hamster lives in a very elaborate Habitrail system. But, there is a little ball that the hamster goes inside to explore "our" world in relative safety. Think of it as a spherical "wheel". In about 2 minutes, the hamster learned how to control the sphere in our world (it is a "smart" little hamster). There are some places the hamster can't go ( e.g., up the stairs) no matter how much said hamster wants to. A linear object of low height can be overcome if the hamster gets a running start. There is also a circular track that we (God) use to amuse ourselves and thwart the free will of the hamster, despite its best attempts to follow the normal rules of navigation on planar surfaces. In the circular track, normal control is impossible. All that happens is the hamster goes around in circles... it amuses us and frustrates the hamster. You are a brain in a marble talking to another brain in a marble. The marble is like the sphere the hamster runs around in. That is the nature of consciousness. You can run around, throw yourself against the walls, and generally control where you want to go, within the limits. What is consciousness? It is a point-field of "will". IT has the same relationship person has to people. One to many. In that way we are in the image of God, like your cells are in the image of you. They don't have your abilities but in a real way they are very much like you (even made in your image from a DNA point of view). So, yes I did answer - to my satisfaction. It seems that either you just didn't understand my explanation or you don't like the explanation. I can help in the first case with more details or explanation, but can't in the second. It is every bit as logical and coherent as the system you present (IMO, more so). It doesn't rely upon any properties I can't measure like miracles that happened in the past and is entirely based upon logic, reason, and experience, analogs, and a belief: that the specific is a fractal instance of the whole. It is elegant in that it is symmetrical, works on many levels, allows for and explains animal intelligence, and the general sense of connectedness I see in the universe. I am comfortable with it and it works when I try experiments with it. That's the best I can do for you. You can't see it or refuse to see it because your metaphysics doesn't allow you to? That's fine with me. Nothing bad will happen to you if you don't believe it, but a lot of things that make sense to me won't make sense to you. Or, you will have to jump through a lot of hoops to explain them ONLY within your reference system. Mine has the advantage of being open. New information doesn't threaten my belief because I just move the unknown into the remaining part of the Universe, which will ALWAYS be infinite.