Do you believe that God intervenes in any way?

[Ervin]

Peace. I do believe that God intervenes. You can make that out from reading my posts on my health issues in the open forum. I don't believe that I can tell you wich religion is true but from my experiences there would be a God who is good and also some sort of oposing evil forces.

I believe that all the good emotions such as love, compassion, etc come from God, intentionally not accidentaly.

At times when I have been very sick, I have also felt closeness to someone great, good and pure. To me that's God suporting me in " surviving".

I think Chuck once said somewhere that he likes to go into nature and feel the creation. Meditate upon it.

I find that actions of good deeds are very important in geting To feel the connection.

Once I read that a sufi master Rumi said " Wound is where light enters". I can relate to that.

Anyway I believe God and other plowing beings intervene. Do you?

Thanks

[Aaron]

Yes and no.

[Ervin]

Yes and no.

Peace. Hi Aaron. Would you speculate a bit on that. Do you mean yes and no both at once or sometimes yes and sometimes no? And when yes, then how?

Thanks

[nicolek531]

It seems like you're bringing up two different questions here. 1) Can we interact/connect with God? and 2) Does God intervene with the natural course of our lives?

Based on my own personal spiritual experiences, I wholeheartedly agree that we can interact/connect with God. However, I don't know if that implies that God actually intervenes. What do you mean by that? Do you mean that you believe He will act on your behalf through supernatural means (say, in response to prayer)? In that case, I can't say I agree. There's simply no evidence for it in my own experience. I'd imagine that for every prayer that is "miraculously" answered, there are millions that are not. And those "miracles" that do occur very likely have natural explanations.

That said, I can accept that God might intervene with the natural order of things, but in a way that does not defy natural laws. I can definitely say that I've caught some lucky breaks in life through events that are improbable, but not downright impossible. However, I'm not sure if such divine intervention could ever be differentiated from "dumb luck" or "coincidence". I'd say: attribute these things to God, or don't. I don't think it makes much difference which is which.

Thinking about this reminds me of a joke I heard once. One time, a man prayed to God "Dear God, please let me win the lottery!". Every day he prayed the same thing. Finally after months of praying he hears a booming voice from the sky: "IF YOU WANT TO WIN THE LOTTERY, YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING FOR ME!". The man said "Yes, God, I'll do anything." The reply? "BUY A TICKET!".

[Ervin]

The simple fact that we exist is that God at some stage would have to have willed for it in order to happen. Now, if you would move one step further and say that he might still intervene especially if we ask him to do so.

You might not get exactly what you pray for but that doesn' t mean that he is not involved in your life when you do need him in his own way.

Thanks

[Aaron]

Yes and no.

Peace. Hi Aaron. Would you speculate a bit on that. Do you mean yes and no both at once or sometimes yes and sometimes no? And when yes, then how?

Thanks

Yes in that I hold an emanationist view of god. In other words existence is an emanation of god in a similar way that heat and light are emanation from the sun. In this way everything is a part of god and therefore can't help but be connected to or influenced by "it".

No in that I don't view god as a separate being or entity that plays favorites or deliberately effects outcomes in this world.

[Helium]

I can accept that God might intervene with the natural order of things, but in a way that does not defy natural laws.

Erv, in my time here the one statement that I've said the most, is that the natural laws of the universe have never been, never are and never will be abrogated.

Further, I don't even entertain Nicole's notion that God could still intervene but do so as kind of an invisible 'wind' that can manipulate itself undefected through the natural laws.

At the same time, I believe in the very same notions of good and evil that my parents, God rest their souls, did through their Christian religion, that is a legacy I carry on even through my adoption of deism.

One reason is pure logic, in that the abrogation of the laws of nature not only do not seem commonplace, they're all downright murky. Why do they all seem to be these tenuous healing 'miracles' rather than trains flying or trees walking???

The other logic equally compelling for me, and one that speaks more to Nicole's 'invisible hand that can manipulate while not disturbing the laws of nature' is that for every so-called "miracle" (i.e. escapes car crash virtually injury free) there's also an opposite compelling tragedy, one coming to mind, of a very minor fender bender in which the driver still died because she was small enough for the air bag to crush her.

Or another way to put it ...

If God does intervene ....

Then he sure has a lot of explaining to do ...

On why he doesn't intervene in equally numerous and compelling situations.

I find I cannot accept an intervening God. Period. Which is why I'm a deist.

I find I have to trust the facts as I see them; that because of free will, some drunk person can get in a car and kill an innoncent bystander. It could happen to anyone. And that's a real tough concept to take. Sometimes I wonder if I truly accept it, other than logically. But at the end of the day, I do not believe that God will ever save that innocent bystander because he has, for one reason or another, set up a system where the drunk person had the free will to drink and get behind a wheel.

Also we are part of nature, with both living (i.e. fierce predators, terrorists, etc) and natural forces (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes). And I cannot believe that if I and a bear are on a collision course that God is going to alter it any way.

Because if he can?

Why does he not?

[gnomon]

Further, I don't even entertain Nicole's notion that God could still intervene but do so as kind of an invisible 'wind' that can manipulate itself undefected through the natural laws.

The notion of an "invisible wind" reminded me of Adam Smith's metaphor of economics functioning as-if manipulated by an "invisible hand" to achieve a dynamic-but-predictable balance between all of the various inputs and outputs. An unseen force of Nature was supposed to be a more modern rational and realistic allegory than the ancient fictional spiritualistic concept of direct divine intervention. But in reality, it's simply another name for the Normal Distribution (Bell) Curve of statistics.

If you were to watch a model of a Bell curve gradually developing like a Polaroid photograph from a myriad of random dots, you could swear that it was a sign of intention [see below]. But actually, the same curve is drawn a million times a day, not by direct intervention but from the potential order hidden within randomness. However, I believe that the Normal Distribution Curve was a part of the original design of the universe, and serves to normalize (dynamic balance) Nature, in order to stay on a constructive moderate course between destructive extremes. Normal is Natural. And that's the way God intended it.

But Nature is also dynamic, so we observe ups & downs that oscillate around a central value. Therefore, the divine intention was not for perfect static order, but for a core of order within a disorderly environment. So human economies and societies may at times seem crazy and chaotic, but Deists can rest assured that God's Will is ultimately in control. However, unlike most meddling miracle-working gods, the hands-off Deist deity doesn't have to be a frenetic juggler to keep all the gyrating events of the world from falling back into chaos. S/he makes it look so easy that we call it natural.

The Invisible Hands of God set all things spinning trillions of years ago, and they are still going round and round, as originally intended. What goes up, must come down. What goes around comes around. Economic booms are inevitably followed by Recessions. The manifest evils we see on TV every day, are always counter-balanced by a plethora of undocumented good acts. The darkest hour is just before dawn. Even though we can't see a trillion little hands juggling a zillion tiny atoms, we do observe the normalizing effects of that miraculous balancing act. And it looks so ordinary that we simply take it for granted.

God's intentions don't need miraculous interventions, because the creation is Self-Regulating. Nevertheless, selfish humans pray to God every day to disturb that fine-tuned balance in order to tip it in their favor. When things turn out well, they praise God; and when they don't get what they prayed for, they shrug and say insha'Allah (God's will be done). God may work in mysterious ways, but mathematical statistics has drawn an outline of He/r invisible hand : the Bell Curve.


Invisible Hand :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand

Normalize :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_%28sociology%29

Working model of Bell Curve :
http://www.ms.uky.edu/~mai/java/stat/GaltonMachine.html

Potential :
Potential is unmanifest power. What's scary about that invisible potency is that it is unpredictable---it can emerge (manifest) anytime anywhere without warning. Randomness is inherent in the very power of Nature that drives the evolution of the universe. Cutting-edge Quantum Science envisions "empty" Space itself as a reservoir of potential energy seething with virtual particles, manifesting & disappearing arbitrarily.

Although mysterious, that Potential is not a-causal, but merely chaotic. The 4-dimensional web of causation is so complex and changeable that the next state cannot be anticipated from the last known state. Yet scientists have determined that even Chaotic systems are deterministic in ultimate effect, even though they can't trace the cause & effect steps from A to Z. Chaos is predictable only statistically---in the form of a Bell Curve.

The world we know is made of active & actual energy & matter, but there is an invisible source of potential power that can do almost anything, and can be almost anything. I say "almost", because the laws of physics set limits on what can be.

[Helium]

And when it comes down to it Gnomon, it all comes back to the watch maker. We see order; therefore we see intelligence behind the order.
And really is there only two choices.
There is intelligence behind the order.
Or there is not.
Well there is another possibility in that there is intelligence behind the order but that we are simply unimportant, inconsequential byproducts of that order, much as we would imagine most lower forms of life to be.
So there you have it.
We are just a random end result, of no consequence.
Or everything is not a random end result and is of consequence.
Or than you can bring in Aaron's panendeism, in which, basically, meaning is also being created with the passing years and with the experience gained.
Ah the wonder of it all baby, as Paul McCartney one reflected.

[seanpmc69]

Or than you can bring in Aaron's panendeism

Aaron isn't the only Panendeist here, although admittedly, I'm an on-again, off-again visitor.

My personal view is that God is literally the "Balance" between the primal forces of Chaos and Order. The Taijitu personified, so to speak...

[gnomon]

but from my experiences there would be a God who is good and also some sort of oposing evil forces.

I forgot to mention in my post above, that our self-regulating world operates like a thermostat, maintaining a "comfortable" balance between hot & cold. But some of us prefer hot to cold, and vice-versa. So, due to the temperature fluctuations, we always have something to complain about. Hint : hot/cold is a metaphor for good/evil.

If our world was designed by an omnipotent and omniscient creator, then we must answer the obvious question : why isn't the temperature always perfect to suit all tastes? Either <A> the creator screwed-up the design, and must continually fiddle with the thermostat (fighting those hot & cold demons), or <B> the system design was intended to allow some personal freedoms, which require a range of choices and a variety of thermostat settings. Besides, if everything was perfect, what would motivate us to get off our duffs to adjust the thermodynamic and moral balance of the world---does God have to do everything for us?

[gainesvillecathy]

If our world was designed by an omnipotent and omniscient creator, then we must answer the obvious question : why isn't the temperature always perfect to suit all tastes?

I believe Heraclitus was correct in his opinion that the 'strife' that is created by the constant push and pull (struggle to balance) of opposites is what propels us forward in space/time (momentum or 'logos'). Balance creates stagnation. No strife, no life. And definitely no evolution. IMO