Karl

Your new hero perhaps. He is odds on favourite to lead the Labour Party. He's a socialist so well worth ignoring completely, then bunging in a box marked 'failed ideologies of our time' . I agree with him on not bombing every bit of sand in the Middle East mind you and getting rid of our nuclear offensive weapons. Pretty much everything else is a bust.

Well that's perfectly acceptable, but then you just defined God AS the universe. Unless you can separate God from the universe then we just use God and Universe interchangeably. Any word will do as long as the definition is clear. I notice you said 'perceived' to exist. Was that just a turn of phrase or do you subscribe to the notion that existence is within perception ?

I'm not the one listing all the courses I have taken. I've got a swimming badge does that count ?

Yes, it surely will. The default swaps disguised the risk of default by a hoarde of bad debtors. Fiat currency is not backed by specie and it is compounded by fractional reserve banking and the ability of central banks to by and sell assets. We are on the same page here Ralis. This isn't capitalism, as you rightly identified. It is crony capitalism and it means the state is involved, through the government, in providing privileges to the banking system. The history of the central banks is worthy of a cloak and dagger movie.

If you posit the need for a creator then you have to posit a need for a creator of the creator. If you then say that the creator does not need a creator, then it also follows that neither does the universe.

and your point ?

Yes I know about the so called 'God particle' and the expanding universe and the energy deficit. I'm a geek like that-although you must be very very bright to understand the physics and maths involved ! It miles past me . Yet it does not impact on my logic at all. That there is a dynamic to the universe does not mean it needs a creator Jeff.

Well, I'm none the wiser and neither are you and it seems you don't want to discuss it further so LOL. I'm not sure where that leaves us. Stranded I expect.

Where did I say the universe is static? It most certainly isn't and that fits perfectly. I leave the physics to the physicists they do a far better job than I could in explaining the how's of a thing. :-) they struggle with the why's of a thing though.

If you believe you can, then you should. Sometimes those needles are just there, we cannot renounce them. If we cling to them, or reject them then they increase in energy. It is easier to accept them as reality, then there is no fuss. There is no suffering that way. It's like ignoring or scolding the cries of a small child, the intensity increases. If we ignore then we refuse to accept reality, if we scold then we also refuse to accept reality. We want the world other than it is. For that there is the penalty of suffering. Awareness is simply self. We cannot help but know our thoughts because we generate them. Accept what is real that's all that is necessary. It's so simple, but ridiculously hard to do.

I wouldn't. :-) you have a huge brain that has incredible powers of reasoning. The gut is like an amoeba. Pretty basic animalistic. Use the higher functions or they go soft.

Please stop with this 'I took an undergraduate course' Schtick. I don't care. I'm only interested in what you actually know. I won't think less or more of you so you can wind all this stuff up. We are two bozos on a forum discussing a subject. Over leveraging with minimum margin requirements. Let's try that in English. What did they do ? They loaned money to people who couldn't pay it back.

Yes 'defective induction'. Inductive logic is still fairly unstable, I go with the old fashioned deductive reasoning ;-) In court we have 'innocent until proven guilty'. Your version would be 'guilty until proven innocent'. If I accuse you of killing someone I can simply continue with a whole plethora of arguments against yours. I will always be one step ahead of you. We can do the role play if you wish, then it will become obvious why the fallacy of ad ignorant imam is not for sale.

That's nice, it's a lovely thing, poetic. However it proves absolutely nothing unless you can define God. If you are listening to your thoughts from the plane of self awareness then it is not God that you hear. You may call it such, but unless it is defined then it is simply a private thought unconnected with reality.

If you want to build your world on all the things that have yet to be proven true then you are going to have a pretty wild ride. In effect you are saying that everything and anything is true until it is proven otherwise. That should incline you to revisit your logic. You are essentially saying you cannot, with any certainty know anything for certain. At which point I must take my coat because further discussion on that basis is an impossibility. Unless you can know reality you will only know suffering. I've been there.

Very good, but Friedman is still an interventionist and doesn't really support free market capitalism. In reality he is a schill for Keynesian economics with a pretender of free market as monetarism. He is, in effect a corporatist.

Well 'reptilian lizard' might be somewhat of an overstatement. Over leveraging is pretty much par for the course these days. Neoliberal economics-no argument from me, I agree completely. Crony capitalism-absolutely. I shall put 'greed' on the back burner as it's just emotional hyperbole. No one can define it. What crashed the markets ? Well same thing as always. The state and its central banks pumps fraudulent money into the economy like chumming for sharks. It gives a signal to the market that everyone has lots of spare money that they are putting in the banks and the more savings the lower the interest rate. Now the market goes into a buying frenzy because the booze is cheap and needs soaking up. The investment goes into areas of production and assets that it shouldn't in an unfettered economy. I would suggest you read the ABC but you won't LOL ( I can't ever imagine you doing that). The bank regulators and the state are one and the same. They make their own laws to suit themselves.

Ok I dig it. I know that tooth Fairies or Father Christmas exist either so what label shall now be thine ? :-) See what I mean. It is not that I don't believe in. It is simply that it is not true, so why create a label ? It needs none. So, then show me God. Point him out. Prove his existence by logic. The universe needed no creator. The universe is and has always been. No thing created it. Then you back off. Create another thread ? Why ? We are here now. Let's do it here. It is the Kingdom of God that is under discussion. So surely it's pertinent ?

Oh it's you again. Can't you find someone else to haunt. Yes, you have no clue. That's correct at least.

Indeed. It has been the course we have been following since the Prussian victory in the war. Based on the Platonic pyramid of authority. 1875. A lot happened, big changes in ideology which are here to this day. Some would say the Matrix was born in 1875.

Liberal is a corruption. Classical liberal is free market anti state intervention Socialist/ communist identical Fascist-socialist but with a twist. A totalitarian state which believes in nationalism and is inherently racist, but preserves the facade of private ownership of the means of production. Nazi party- national socialist workers party. Hitler set out that as long as owners of production complied with state demands then he did not care who notionally owned what. If any business owner failed to comply with state demands the "the state would know what was needed to resolve the issue"

Milton Friedman the pretender. The man who talks about the free market like a demon talks about salvation.

Yes, for sure. We can take the fascistic economics out of Nazi nationalism. Just as we can take the Prussian ideology out of Prussia.

No. That suggests I am simply not accepting God. I have said there is no God, it is a myth. I have been down these roads many times otherwise I would not challenge. I could simply say I do not know, but that is incorrect, I do know. The idea of a God has its benefits from the point of view of self realisation, so I do not cling to the idea that it is wrong, or incorrect. Sometimes it is necessary- it was for me. However this is not what we are discussing. I'm happy to advocate the idea of God if it helps dispel the idea of control. That is one clear benefit, that on can surrender to God. You see there is duality. If it helps, then who cares if it's real or not.

We all have potential, but do we realise the same potential ? This is not born out by life. If it was we would be a homogenous mass of equals. As we are not that, then we must question that ideology. I know that that a creator ( God) does not exist by logical determinism.