Solstice

[mibn2cweus]

Solstice greetings to all our heathen friends.

[rowanwitch]

If I had to define what I believe in... it is we are part of a whole, created by natural progression and evolution. As has been said by a number of scientists. We are from star stuff.... I believe that we are connected to everything that exists be it the tiniest single celled creature to the largest galaxy by our common origin. That like everything we come into existance, and when out time is over we go from existance. What we were ceases to exist only in that form but is still there as constituent atoms.

But as a sentient being it helps to believe that for a fleeting moment in spacetime I can make my minute part of it better for fellow beings, and while in terms of eternity it doesn't matter in the slightest, it's worth doing in the now.

[Khandro]

rowanwitch; It amuses me how some people will creep around on eggshells, articulating everything imaginable, trying to state everything possible on matters that they don't really comprehend, saying anything, absolutely anything, rather than use the word, "God".

Even particle physicists are not so shy;

The Higgs boson is often called "the God particle" because it's said to be what caused the "Big Bang" that created our universe many years ago.

[Atheist]

Khandro, the trouble is that the word 'god' is used to mean nothing at all really, just that "I think there's something behind it all, so I'll call it god".
What do you think that god is?

[rowanwitch]

There is no place in my mind for a sentient creator. That's how I would define a god so for me there are no eggshells, no pussy footing around no god. The ' God particle' was apparently so named because Master particle would offend women, and I believe it was only ever a convenient term for explanation to non scientists from what I have read.

[drmorgans]

Apparently the term the "God particle" comes from the title of a book, "The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?" by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon M. Lederman.

[Khandro]

^^ quite right - a Nobel prize-winner at that !

[Khandro]

atheist, //What do you think that god is?//

Have you never read Thomas Aquinas ?

God is unknowable, God is truth;

https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/st-thomas-aquinas-divine-simplicity-and-knowing-the-unknowable-god/

[Atheist]

Khandro; do you know what Lederman meant when he said that? I don't know, but you seem to be impressed by his prize and so no doubt agree with his statement, whatever it means. I'll look it up if I get a chance.

[Khandro]

rowanwitch; //and I believe it was only ever a convenient term for explanation to non scientists from what I have read.//

What on earth have you been reading?

[Atheist]

Khandro; "God is unknowable, God is truth".
Do you not believe that God is a person?
If we have truth, why do we need to rename it 'God'?

[Atheist]

Wikipedia tells me that Lederman was an atheist.

[Peter Pedant]

Have you never read Thomas Aquinas ?
God is unknowable, God is truth;

yeah easy one: to know God you have to be greater than God and so what you are considering isnt God ( but cd be part)

we have had this before you know: but it bears repeating

[Khandro]

One of the greatest short poems in the English language,
for the religious, agnostics & even atheists;

God's Grandeur

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

[rowanwitch]

We will never agree If you need the creation of an imaginary friend so be it. I will continue to question and accept that while I can't learn all there is to know about the universe I don't need mankind's oldest construct to explain it.

[rowanwitch]

I look to the stars, And my spirit journeys where my body can never go
I furnish them with wild imagined landscapes, and a million million beings
Who are not us, not could ever be
Born of the same explosive beginning
Grown different from common origin
Yet it is enough that the universe is full of unseen marvels
That have already passed into unseen history
Or are still to come.

[mibn2cweus]

Thank you for that Rowanwitch. That didn't break my brain.

[Zacs-Master]

‘One of the greatest short poems in the English language,
for the religious, agnostics & even atheists’

Well, actually it’s a sonnet and GMH was a Jesuit Priest, so it’s written from a certain……’perspective’ shall we say.

[Khandro]

Zac; When is a sonnet not a poem, & when can a priest not be a poet?

[youngmafbog]

//Wikipedia tells me that Lederman was an atheist.//

Well thats an inconvenience for the 'god' botherers.

Khandro seems to have ignored it for some reason?

[Zacs-Master]

Khandro, you appear to be trying to make a point about the existence / non-existence of God via a poem (yes, a sonnet is a poem, granted) written by a Jesuit Priest. It’s a bit like trying to make a point for / against communism by quoting Lenin.