Of course every decision is compelled, how is it not compelled? I agree with Dianah completely, ifree will is an illusion. We have choice, but the choices we make are heavily influenced by life experiences etc, how then is that really free? We are akin to programs following our path. The free will we experience is only apparent it has no real substance.

It is not compelled because of reasoning power to learn from mistakes. If free will were an illusion, wouldn't life be effortless?

The illusion is that you think that there is a decision that creates something from nothing.
The now includes every possibility.
God is not stuck with the eternal experience of everything.
Awareness moves with freedom of intent. What it moves toward is already in a state of being.




Being united with the absolute, one is choice.
Unless you become separate from God/Self then you will believe you have become choiceless and controlled by something other than you.

Learning from mistakes does not show that we have free will. Example: They have programmed robot mice to be able to navigate itself through a maze to find the 'cheese' in the fasted time possible. It does so by learning from its mistakes. Does this mean the mouse has free will?

What is meant by free will being an illusion is that we think that our choices are what we will, but that is only apparent our choices are heavily influenced, and quite frankly predictable.

Eh? How can you choose to be united to the absolute? You can only ever be united to the absolute(infinity point). You are not really making any choices.

We are free to do anything that we can possibly do within the laws of Nature.

We are also bound by Human laws and must expect the consequences of our actions.

We really need a definition of 'free will' for this post before we can discuss it properly, in my opinion!

It seems to me that we are free to create events (make choices from what we perceive to be available) which comply with natural laws, local laws, human laws, mother-in-laws (if we do not seek recrimination)!

It's not the learning from mistakes per se, but the reasoning power of humans to do so.

Predicting human choices may be more difficult than some believe. How many people predicted the suicide attacks of 9/11?

Third time to define free will in this thread (for Rhymer): being able to chose other than one does.

If all human choices are compelled, then how can we expect anyone to be responsible for the unnecessary harms they might do?

The same way you can choose to ignore the reality of union, the choice I was referring to was in being choice. The universe is not random and it doesn't come at you.
Some think it's an illusion but that is an incomplete and erroneous idea.


Everything is united with the absolute, however not everything or everyone is self aware or cognisant of that reality.
Many like yourself speak of the reality of Union but stand outside of it waving flags of identity hoping that if they say something clever it means that they are.


A nice fantasy, but you're not really saying anything intelligent or intuitive, you are simply chattering meaningless ideas that have no anchor in experience.

The brain is not rooted or ramified matter.

Dendrites do not assume the connection of neurons in a continuous fabric. The discontinuity between cells, the role of the axons, the functioning of the synapses, the existence of synaptic microfissures, the leap each message makes across these fissures make the brain a multiplicity immersed in its plane of consistency or neuroglia, a whole uncertain, probalistic system. Many people have a tree growing in their heads, but the brain itself is much more grass than tree.

What I am saying is, if you already are united to the absolute(infinity point) - how can your choice to be united with it really be valid? And if it isn't valid, is it really a choice?
I agree that the universe is not random, infact randomness cannot exist. But why is the idea that it is an illusion erroneous?



How do you know that I am waving a flag of identity? Was my intention to say something clever or something of worth? How do you know that I haven't experienced identity-dissolution? Or know of it?




All is illusion.

This is a difficult thing to accept.
Psycopathy is characterized as an extreme and persistant total disreagard for others, a lack of empathy and remorse and most importantly a failure to be deterred by punishment. Why do they act like this? There is some evidence of frontal lobe abnomalities, however the main problem is that they actually lack the emotional capacity for empathy. They actually have no negative response emotion when doing something harmful to others.

The question is this, if they actually do not feel anything i.e that there actions are negative, when selecting choices that inflict [/i]hurt[i] on others, can you really blame them for doing inappropriate things?
A usual person would see and empathize with another person in harm, feeling remorse, sorrow and guilt for wrong actions commited - but not a pyscopath. Can you really blame them for their actions if they havent the genetic determinants to realise what they are doing is detrimental?

Kluver-Bucy syndrome for example, where the hypothalmus is damaged, or malfunctioning, the sufferes perform various sexual acts and revert to a child-like state. Can you blame them if they lack the mental constructs to realise that what they are doing is socially inappropriate?

Can you blame children for their inappropriate behaviour?

It's like blaming a car with no brakes for not stopping.

The validity lies in the reality of Truth. Knowledge that is rooted in the truth/absolute can be ignored or it can be congnized and consciously united with in thought feeling and action.
The mind that is rooted in the associative patterns of judgment and attachment to ideas is living in illusion created through filters of limited perceptions of reality.
God and that which is the manifest is subject to interpretation, but that which is God manifest is not illusion. The idea that illusions are not real does not apply to the reality of the absolute in action and the perception of it, the self witnessing itself, consciousness being self aware.

Call it intuition, or in your case just say I had no choice to say anything other than what is true and what applies to you. As to the idea of saying something clever or of worth I was using the idea as an example of what the mind is easily attached to when it speaks. It thinks it is saying something that has meaning to another when there is no other unless one chooses to delude ones self.
I never said you said anything clever or of any worth.

What makes you think that you do?

All is consciousness/God/the absolute, hardly an illusion.
What you focus on grows, you just keep feeding yourself more good ideas about who and what you are, to firmly plant those ideas of identification.

Yes, we can and should blame them even if we understand or believe we understand the underlying physical reasons for a person's behavior. It's called accepting responsibility for your actions. Otherwise, every criminal taken to trial would argue that determinism and fate forced him/her to commit heinous acts and that he/she is therefore disclaiming responsibility.

It all comes down to accepting responsibility regardless of whether free will is an illusion or not, and regardless of whether all of our actions are deterministic or not. I would further argue that accepting responsibility for your actions regardless of underlying physical causes is an integral part of maturation (i.e., growing up).

Ah yes, the absolute. Of my own free will I choose to accept the wisdom of Aristotle's Golden Mean that the truth about things, including the truth about whether or not there is such a thing as free will, will probably be that which lies between two extremes. For example, I think it is extreme to say that we are absolutely free to do what we want to do. It is also extreme to say: we are nothing more than automatons, puppets on the strings of our heredity and environment.

In addition, I need to remind myself: What I desire, what I want and will to do is under the discipline of what is possible. For example, I can say: I want my own private rocket ship. Using it, I will join the space station in the next few hours.

SURE, ANYONE CAN WILL, OR IMAGINE, ALMOST ANYTHING; BUT DOING IT IS SOMETHING ELSE. SOME THINGS ARE NOT POSSIBLE

I admit and confess that there was I time--I think I was around fifteen or sixteen-- that I flirted with the arrogant concept that we human beings, on our own, are capable of making all the things we are capable of imagining, possible.

Having learned from experience, in the university of life, some life lessons, for some time now, I have been amused, and often annoyed, by motivational speakers--who say: "You can be and do whatever you choose to be and do. What you think about you can bring about." Some even quote the words of Jesus where he says that "all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26).

OF COURSE THINKING. FEELING AND WILL HAVE THEIR ROLE
Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of looking for the silver lining, the half-full glass, not the half-empty one. It is good to be realistically opitimistic and enthusiastic. Positive thinking is powerful, but it is not omnipotent, on its own.

Those who quote Jesus forget that he includes the condition, "with God..."--open to all kinds of interpretation.

I like the story of the preacher who preached what he thought was a humdinger of a motivational sermon. For his finish he quoted the famous poem, IF, by Rudyard Kipling. See link, below.

However, he noticed that one person, a stranger to him, had stayed behind. His whole countenance was that of a person whose head had not only been bloodied in the stuggles of life; it was currently bowed. He had the limp and bedraggled look of a failure written all over his face and body. Suspecting that the stranger was looking for a handout from the church's benevolent fund, the preacher asked, "What can I do for you?" the stranger replied, "Lots to think about in you sermon, Rev. But all I want is the opportunity to pose and discuss a simple question?"

And what is your question sir?

"What IF I can't do all the things mentioned by Mr. Kipling in that very challenging poem of his?"
===========================================================================
Ah yes, what if I CAN'T! Over the years, I have had many individuals, who fitted the description above, come to church and to the special lecture series I gave under the general title, PNEUMATOLOGY--The study of the spirit, or of human nature.

The goal of my preaching and the lecture series was not to tell people how they could become healthy, wealthy and wise simply by pulling themselves up by their own boot straps, wishing upon a star, saying their prayers, belonging to the right religion, reading their horoscopes, consulting some guru, doctor, hypnotist, psychiatrist, expert, evangelist, listening to the recorded pep talks of Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Anthony Robbins, etc.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
The goal of what I said--and it took me some time to work this out in detail--was to get individuals to be willing to take personal responsibility for who they are, now, and who they wanted to be. I told them: Where there was no will to do this, there was no way and that they had to take personal responsibility for this.

I asked people to take the time to take a personal inventory of where they were at that point and to set their own realistic goal of where they wanted to go, tomorrow, next week, or any time in the future. As Ian Thorpe points out, in his comments referenced below, sometimes the best thing to do is, nothing.

http://www.poetrylifeandtimes.com/ianthorpe.html

BTW, a wise preacher, in the story I told above, probably would have said: Let's make an appointment and talk in detail about why you can't. Pehaps, you really need to ask yourself: Do I really want to take the trouble?

I don't think you are getting what I am saying. I am saying that to join with the absolute, - you make no choice to do so. You are already joined to it so your mental constructs and perceptions are false, if you are making choice[i] then aren't you working within your mental constructs? How is this really your-self? You are not your biological brain- surely you know this by now?

QUOTE

God and that which is the manifest is subject to interpretation, but that which is God manifest is not illusion. The idea that illusions are not real does not apply to the reality of the absolute in action and the perception of it, the self witnessing itself, consciousness being self aware.

The very nature of this reality is illusive. God can only truly be God in essence, only truly god in essense. Everything else can only therfore be illusion. All perceptions can only be illusive, as they are not the [i]true perspective.



I love the way you use very flowery definitions and vague language to disquise the fact that you are not really answering my question. Clearly I have struck a cord with you and you are reacting according to your personality-pattern although you claim to not be in association with any 'identification' or 'ego' your answer shows otherwise.



Experience is experience.



How am I identifying with anything? You say there is no illusion yet you are against identification with anything? Can you not see how then the identification is illusion itself? Maybe you have identified yourself as a god-guru or whatever you choose to percieve youself to for far too long.

I'm not saying that you do not accept responsibility for ones actions, only how ones actions are predictable and determinable. What I am saying, is that you should accept what you are. But for the majority of cases you will find that people do bad things because bad things happen to people. Would you starve or steal? Would you kill or be killed?
And ethically, can you really blame a person with Kluver-Bucy for acting that way because he/she has that disorder? That is very unfair! I challenge you to control your actions with a dysfunctional hypothalamus!

Certainly the law makes exceptions for mentally defective criminals. Considering only people in the "normal" range, then, what can we conclude about free will and responsibility? Are they related? Some, above, implied that the existence of free will is irrelevant to responsibility. Others suggest that not having free will frees us from responsibility. If that is the case, then it also frees us from any claims to praise for heroic acts.

In the Hermetic view, all is in the mind of The All, the Hermetic conception of God, as expressed in the Kybalion: "We have given you the Hermetic Teaching in regarding the Mental Nature of the Universe - the truth that 'the Universe is Mental - held in the Mind of THE ALL."

Everybody and Everything in the universe is part of this entity. As everything is mental, it is also a vibration. All vibrations vibrate from the densest of physical particles, through mental states, to the highest spiritual vibrations. In Hermeticism, the only difference between different states of physical matter, mentality, and spirituality is the frequency of their vibration. The higher the vibration, the further it is from base matter

There is a saying from Proverbs: "As a person thinks in the heart, so is he/she..."

WHY THE HEART, NOT THE BRAIND, IS SO PROMINENT IN LITERATURE
Interestingly, the ancients thought of the heart in much they same way that we think of the brain. For them it was the seat of the spirit,soul or consciousness. For Aristotle and the ancient Egyptians, the brain was thought of simply as an organ whose sole purpose it was to lubricate the physical body.

What we call 'snot'--the vulgar or slang term for nasal mucus--the ancients thought of as the excess from the brain. In the embalming process, the Egyptican preserved the heart, but they threw the brain away as useless. Perhaps this is what is wrong with the world. The only use many of our leaders make their brain is to lubricate the nose.

Let's mention a word which has not been used in this thread, so far: The word is SIN

WHATEVER BECAME OF SIN?
Which by the way is the title of a book, from which I learned a lot, by Carl Menninger, a renowned psychiatrist, who was an elder in his church and one of the founders, along with his father and his brother, of the world famous Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. This clinic, because the therapists all face up to the fact of sin, has been very successful in helping a lot people become whole people again.
http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1974/v31...ticscorner2.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa38...07/ai_n15638109

'Sin' is from the old English 'synn'--meaning wrongdoing, hostility, injury. Theologically speaking it means being deliberately mean and breaking the moral and ethical laws which make for justice and peace.

I have the feeling that no one in this forum is openly in favour of deliberate wrong doing, agreed? Today's news out of Montreal--most of you have probably heard it by now--tells us of yet another one of those multiple shootings of young people at a school there.

No doubt, just as lovely, beautiful and true acts begin with a lovely, beautiful and true thoughts, this awful and sinful act no doubt began as a sinful thought. End of sermon.

there's no right or wrong when perceived through other means as well. Why should the heart hold a privileged position?

I like the For better or for worse.
BTW, I am not fixated on the heart, or the brain, or any part of the body, as organs. After all, I understand that, in the beginning we began, amazingly, as a single cell--one three thousand of an inch in diameter. Perhaps we need to say, "As we think in our cells..."

So you're saying all thought and experience begins in the biological brain and ends in the biological brain?


Now you are saying combined with all perspectives being of the brain that your explaination of God being something and not something is reality.


You still won't accept what's in the mirror..


Ah yes, the one thing that is not an illusion, the high regard you have for your knowledge and the corresponding feelings that go with it that set you apart from everything else.


"Everything is an illusion."
"Experience is experience.."

Two of the most recent pustules of ego emerging from the depths of your internal programs




You heard what you wanted to hear and still hang onto your identity

Clearly I have struck a cord with you and you are reacting according to your personality-pattern..


Are we having fun yet?

Joe, with whom are you dialoguing, yourself?

There is only God.

Lila..divine play

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, determinism is simply the idea that everything can, in principle, be explained, or that everything that is, has a sufficient reason for being and being as it is, and not otherwise.

Unless truly random events occur in our universe...

Everything that happens, including all our thoughts and decisions, is the logical result of everything that already happened. How could it be any other way? Say you try to exercise your "free will" by deliberately making a choice that's opposite of the one you'd normally choose (perhaps for the sake of this discussion). Even that decision is entirely explainable as the logical (and only) next step in a systematic sequence of thoughts leading up to it. Of course, thoughts don't exist in a vacuum but are heavily influenced by all kinds of external factors, many of which are out of our control. But the fact of the matter is--those events also came about by fully explainable, logical, predicable means. The way in which such external events ultimately end up interplaying with our thoughts and decisions is completely logical and predictable. It's true that we as humans do not have the capacity to absorb the sum total of everything that ever happened in order to make infallible predictions. But just because our brains do not have a prayer to ever do such predicting is irrelevant. Fact of the matter is, this is just like saying "Since "A" occurred, then "B" must occur, followed by "C" and then "D" --only a WHOLE lot more complex. (Whatever caused "A" to happen is another matter.)

The fact that our human brains are incapable of absorbing trillions of factors so that we can infallibly predict the future does not mean that determinism is false.

nor does the validity of determinism undermine the value of responsible conduct nor the need to punish criminals for wrong-doing even if they were "determined" to commit criminal acts. Obviously they were "determined", just as the execution of the punishment is "determined". Thus, determinism cannot be used to justify or excuse criminal or otherwise undesirable behavior

I am reminded of the words to an old song:

If a nest full of hornets were let loose in this room,
There'd be lots of confusion, I know.
This would not mean that you must leave the room,
But you'd certainly be willing to go.

THE PURPOSE OF PAIN
Perhaps this is the purpose for pain, suffering and death: unless one happens to be a psychopath, sociopath, masochist, sadist or necrophiliac, pain, suffering and death will motivate us to do something about it.

BTW, currently, I am counseling with a very-dysfunctional family made up of several people who who appear to want to stay in the mess they are in.

This is a difficult subject, is everything like science says, with things being action and then reaction? if so then are we doomed to simply follow out a series of reactions? what if we had no free will? would we ever be able to truely know? And if we do have free will, to what extent do we have it? can you loose or gain free will?

Maybe only the "enlightened" have free will (whatever that means). Certainly there is some folklore to support that idea.

Here is my reformulated thesis:

1. Time is not a physical dimension. That is, it has no existence as a thing in my ontology. However, time is useful to us as a mental construction (idea, Platonically speaking).

2. Human beings have the power to construct time as a part of the planning power of their reason (mental faculty).

3. This planning power, based on memory, reason, and projected future, plays a key role in free will.

4. If we did not have constructed time, that is, if we lived only in the now, then at each instant in the now there would only be one possible (fully determined) future instant, and the anti-free will argument would hold true.

5. However, due to constructed time, we lift ourselves mentally out of the determined instant, freeing ourselves.

What do you think?

Beautiful as Billy Holidays voice! You're a genious Rick.

This idea

is an idea which does not determine this idea..
Logically.... if there is only now there is no past and nothing has happened or happening.
Of course that would be subject to the minds (not brains) capacity to free itself of restrictions in definitions relative to natural laws which support a sphere of experience created through IDA or Idea-desire-action.


Actually that is the basis for duality which some believe inspired "Advaita Vedanta" or thought that is not dual, but it is more like sparks from a flame that have different levels of experience in manifest reality.
When the mind is stilled there is no cause and effect there is only isness and being, consciousness witnessiing itself in pure potential, in that pure state of being its nature is to move into activity but it is not forced by any rules or laws to move into a preconceived form or direction. It is all things at all times and it can and could move through infinite pathways of thought and manifestation at all times in no time at all.


"Our" being the dualistic nature of separation between consciousness and thought, ego identification of me and you.
When the mind is conceived only as the synaptic sparks of information and programs input into the fleshy matter between the ears belief prevails in the less than full potential of conscious thought and interaction between the unmanifest and the manifest. Determinism is then based on relative ideas and rules of engagement between those ideas which are substantiated at the current levels of belief.

When the world was thought of as flat and rotating around the sun, it did not affect the true reality of the earth being round and spinning amonst the other spheres in an orbit around the sun.


Absolutely, omniscience does not require containment of knowledge, it is more in being it.


Humans are the projection or image of God which is all and complete but not a contained item or collection or sum total of anything or things. Humans who fail to release themselves from the determined factors of reality cannot escape the sphere of existence which prevails as their reality in experieince, they are chained to reality by thought and belief.


"A" is "B" is "C" is "D"is..etc.etc. Precognitive abilities shown by those who tap into the mindset and direction of thought are able to see where choice is leading because the underlying desire is surrounded by factors of beliefs that are locked into patterns of belief that "A" leads to "B" which leads to "C" which eventually leads to the goal.
Relative structures of universal laws are contained only by the identification of reality being something or nothing. Consciousness does not live by rules nor is God democratic.


No, one idea does not make or break any other idea. Ideas are ideas based on a platform of a cognitive ability to see the world around you. If you stand in a valley you see what surrounds you but you do not see past the objects set before you in recognition and awareness, if you stand only in front of what the senses are trained to perceive.
If you stand on a mountain top you see far beyond what the eyes saw while surrounded by the objects of perception in the valley but still the mountain top is limited to its height and the sensory limitations of perception in range of awareness. There is always much more to perception when it is limited to rules of engagement.


Responsibility lies in the conscious awareness of the receiver/knower.
"I am that" means that there is no "thing" beyond the perception of the knower that is not intimately connected.

There is a statement to the affect of will in the Upanishads that says will is of the divine. One can be conscious of it or unconscious and fight it. You are of divine will and you can flow with the necessity of what needs to happen or react to a lesser understanding of it based on perception of the divine.

This reality is you, and there is no separation. What each part of you does in conjuction to your own thoughts and actions are intimately connected.
If your finger is broken there is no hostile reaction only an intent to mend it. If the body develops a cancer the untrained mind attacks it as something evil and invasive, separate to ones own actions.
Medical science using this belief might treat an illnesses as separate from the reality of a standard point of reference attemting to treat the symptoms but not the cause...... Maybe it's the genetic makeup of the human organism. Maybe the genetic makeup is influenced by will...

What is within each human organism are the memories of our great great anncestors cellular memories of every plague and illness ever experienced. It is only our beliefs that separate us and our abilities to build our bodies according to will. The thoughts we entertain greatly influence our healing abilities.

Criminals are treated through fear and as such are never connected to the perpetuated realities of competition based on levels of worth, intellectual and physical capabilities.
Adults program their children with the beliefs that worthiness is gained by mental and physical measurements. Money, intellect, physical appearance and abilities segregate children at early ages to find cliques which support a niche they can identify with. In the frustration created by the notion that one can never be any better than what their genes have determined them to be they rebel to tear down the rules that are created around them which say you can never be any better than this so get over any idea that you can be anything other than what you are.
The human spirit cannot be contained in such a way as to determine its destiny or worth without it exploding out of its containment.
Criminals and all ills of society and body are self created, created through misunderstanding and the labeling of objects, people and will.
You can believe all you want that you yourself are contained in a predetermined measured device of a mind that is separate from you but it will not last. That thought creates ripples on the surface, creating a tension in the surface reality of things that are forcibley restricted from living in their natural state of being.

There are no restrictions to the human condition that are not self imposed.
The healing of humanity begins with the healing of the self. There is no cure at the level in which the disease was created, One must rise above it to see a better way of thinking and in living.
That, is just a choice, something the human has freedom to achieve and or move toward.


The cure is always to elevate awareness of duality into Union

If they want to stay in the mess and you believe suffering is the motivator to change do you need to intervene in a necessary process they are creating to see a greater choice?
Sometimes you have to let a child burn themselves so they know what it is rather than explaining it to them from your point of view.


God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

I ran across this once and saved it

THE SENILITY PRAYER : Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

Is there a difference to the serenity prayer and the senility prayer?

I say no...My choice is they are the same

Thanks, Code.

From REINHOLD NIEBUHR
(1892 - 1971) who was a theologian at Union Theological Seminary who helped Bill Wilson and Others start the AA movement.

http://www.newgenevacenter.org/biography/niebuhr2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr

From Wikipedia on Reinhold Niebuhr:

"... he wrote concerning the need for a form of democracy that would empower people and rid the world of the human sin of lording power over others."

That sounds like a value the Democratic Party of the USA to me. Very anti-Republican.

I guess so, Rick. When I was a university and theological student, in the late forties and the early fifties, Niebuhr was required reading.

A FEATHERS APPROACH
Looking back, I look on what he wrote as advocating what I call a "feathers" approach to the political economy. Feathers serve to cover the whole body of the bird, including both wings.

Keep in mind that, wings--no matter how powerful one or the other might be--on their own, without the humble tail feathers, they would be useless.

ONE HUMBLE AND FEATHERS-KIND OF SUGGESTION
Here's and idea which could possibly help make the US system work: Let's have a three-party system. This could be done by designating the leaders of the NGO's, including the media--in a special congress of same--as holding the balance of power between the left wingers and the right wingers. May then we could have a possible democracy.

The trouble with that is that the major media are now dominated by corporate powers. That's one of the reasons why the corporate powers now dominate our entire government.

For all the die-hards in the free will argument, kindly allow me to draw your attention to a proof of free will:

http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/fwill.htm

It basically says the fact that we are arguing about it proves we have it.

Rick, keep in mind that I am not nominating the corporate media, exclusively. There is certainly more that one kind of media.For better or force worse we must include the media as part of the mix, don't you think?

And surely, it is we--as voters and consumers, because of whom we vote into office and because of the things we purchase--who allow the corporations and their messengers to set the agenda. Therefore, it is we who have to accept the blame, not them. Surely, what we choose to buy, or not to buy, it seems to me, determines the power of the corporations and the media which serves them, and us. In the final analysis, isn't it up to us, as voters and consumers, get the kind of government and products we deserve?

Yes, indeed. We are to blame. So sad.

Thanks. I am glad to see that you argee that all of us share a mutual guilt. My next question to myself is: What can I do about all this, other than just lament about it?

BTW, are you aware that Canada does have a third party--provincially and federally? It is called the New Democratic Party (NDP).
http://www.ndp.ca/
The current leader is Jack Layton. BTW, he happens to be a member of the United Church of Canada, which is known for nudging politicians to have a social conscience.

The NDP grew out of the CCF (Canadian Commonwealth Confederation)--the prarie provinces. http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/election/en/index.htm The current provincial government of Saskatchewan is NDP. The premier is a UCC minister.

The CCF/NDP gave Canadians Old Age Pensions, Unemployment Insurance and our one-payer national health care system. With all its shortcomings, it is one of the best systems in the world.

I am not a member of the NDP. But I support many of its major policies, many of which have been adopted by the Conservatives (republicans?) and the Liberals (democrats?)

I just never could bite on the picture of a God feeling guilty for creating anything?

God loves stupid people too.

"He" does? I would very much welcome if "He" came on line and stopped speaking only through the popes of the world. I want to talk to the boss, okay?

"He" is listening...are you?

Hark the herald angels sing! Funny, I don't hear a thing!!!!
Joe, let's get serious: How many crazy people have heard the voice of "God" telling them to kill, KILL! KILL!!!
BTW, in which religion were you raised?

No kidding...


We're not on the same page with the voice.


Interestingly enough my mother was of a mind to not indoctrinate us into any religious belief system so that we might determine on our own which spiritual thought would appeal to our own choice of reality.
She took us to a lutheran church once.. Easter 1968, my stepdad drew pictures on the back of the pamphlets that were next to the hymn books, my brothers and I talked about how bored we were and my mother promised to never do that to us again....

Thanks for the clarification, Joe. This bit of dialogue certainly shows the importance of transparency and continuing to dialogue until real communication takes place.

Too often we speak in riddles and metaphors. I fed back to you what I felt that I "heard" you say. So tell me: What page are you on? Be transparent. In plain American/Canadian/English, what points are you trying to get are you trying to get across?

TRANSPARENCY AND COMMUNICATION--would it have saved lives?
There is a story--I am not sure of how true it is--that the Japanese authorities could have avoided the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had they responded, clearly, to the ultimatum made by the Allies. I am sure it is also true that the Allies were not transparent about what the nature of the atom bomb and what it was capable of doing. Who knows whether or not they had to keep it a secret.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Conference
http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Potsdam_Declaration

My childhood experience was quite the opposite. I found church, and the school run by the church, interesting, helpful and often fun. http://www.united-church.ca/

All the churches--Roman Catholic, Anglican, United, and Salvation Army--on our island of over 10,000 people, were the focal points of most of the social activities, sports events, movies, dances and school concerts. The one other focal point of local culture were the beer parlors.
One beer parlor was famous for the fact that it was the place to go if you wanted to see a "good" fight--at least once a week.

The local police...I think we just had two...handled most of these fights in a very smart way. They would wait for the fights to finish. Then they went and picked up the pieces. The perpetrators were allowed to punish each other. This saved the police a lot of trouble. There were no charges, no lawyers, and no big bills for the people to pay. The owner made the fighters pay for any broken tables and chairs, or else he would not let them in, to drink and fight with their friends, next week--talk about punishment enough. Most learned their lesson without having to be sent to jail.

I have found that no matter how clearly one speaks, the receptive ear filters what it hears through the past experiences and through individual association to belief and internal programs, then hears what they are willing to accept
i.e.


You responded to something I wrote earlier about being receptive as a student and you replied:
I think you might consider that waiting for what you are expecting may distract you from actually hearing what is being said.

How many times does someone stand facing the sky saying, "show me a sign God and I'll believe" or "Tell me what to do God"

There is a story about a small town where the floodwaters are creeping in and around the homes of the people living there.
The radio and television had been broadcasting for 24 hours of the coming flood, warning everyone to get to high ground.
As the people are leaving town there sits a man on his front porch watching the crowd of people.
A man on a motorcyle stops and offers the man a ride out of town saying he better get going before the rising water prevents him from leaving. The man calmly replies, "Have no fear young man for I have Faith that God will take care of me."
Several hours later when the water surrounds his house and is rising to the level of his front porch a boat comes by and offers him a ride out of the flooding town, and he replies, "Have no fear for I have Faith that God will take care of me."
Hours later as he is sitting on his roof clinging to the chimney a helicoptor flies over head and stops to rescue the man, but he tells them, "Have no fear for I have Faith that God will take care of me."

After drowning the man comes face to face with God and he says to God, "God all my life I have put my faith in you and during the flood that took my life I was adamant that you would take care of me, what happened?"
God replies, "I sent you a motorcycle, a boat, and finally a helicoptor....I don't know how I could have been more clear.?


Jesus spoke in a way that some claim to be parables. Those who have been trained as the shepherds/priests are supposed to be able to translate the parables for the common folk because it has been believed that only a few are privileged to hear the word of God.
The fact is anyone can hear the voice of god but one has to attune their ear to hear it. That means taking the mind inward beyond programs of belief that are founded in separation.
The clergy have been faking it, assuming they are making it for years which is why there is more hope and faith in religion than resonance with it.
New churches with new ideas hoping to generate a following are popping up everywhere seeking to anchor themselves in resonance rather than to continue to plague the masses with the same old promises waiting to hear what they are expecting to hear in the promised next coming.

There are some who believe the second coming is the coming or rising of conscious awareness within the masses so that they will rise to meet the Christ rather than having someone come and save them from themselves.
If humanity seeks to remain stupid until someone comes along to save them then I think God if he was invested in any kind of way would say to himself, "Why is it that I must do it for them, they have been given the ability to rise up on their own being created and imbued with all my abilities, (as Jesus said "these things I do, you will also do, and greater things.") What are they waiting for?"....

Humanity makes itself by what it believes itself to be as does it make God something according to what it believes God to be. That is the freedom it has, to hold before it what it wants to see or to see what is real.
God does not force one to see illusions, and illusions do not have anything behind them other than the truth of the unmanifest and the power of the Consciousness that creates it. All is equal in its essence and there is no predisposed plan to see only the surface of things and experience the surface only.
humanity has the ability to experience both and know both.

The idea that one must experience something other than what they are is preposterous.
The idea that God experiences itself in the illusions of projection is preposterous.
God experiences itself in the flow of conscious movement and yet the human mind can only accept that what is, is the experience one is having and the identities that are drawn from those experiences.
In separation of God and being, humanity would rather believe it has no choice and is limited by design than admit it is making a choice to fail in expanding itself beyond beliefs and limitations.

Blah!

there's some food for thought, anthropomorphisms aside.

Joe and shawn, I know the old story, well. Years ago, I heard a comedian use it, on the Johnny Carson Show.

It is a great joke, with a good lesson. And I used it, more than once, in my sermons, to illustrate the point, which I make, here, in every post with my signature: GØD works in and through us, not as a separate, anthropomorphic and personal god who wills, does, thinks, speaks, acts separately and apart from us.

Interestingly, when I first heard the joke, the commedian depicted the main character as talking to, St. Peter, not God. Keep in mind that the main character failed to heed the warnings, in the first place, because of anthropomorphic fundamentalism which, probably, had been fed to him in Sunday school and church.

BTW, Joe, now that I know a bit more about your pattern of thinking, I will understand better the points you are trying to make. What were you saying about my not being willing to learn?

I think that the killer of the theory of free will is the word 'free.'

Nothing exists freely and independently in the universe - at least we haven't identified anything that does. Therefore the theory of free will remains unproven and IMO is highly unlikely.

There is observable will power though it is distinct from an individual's subjective perception of their own will power and it is dependent on many variables - the interaction of genes with environment - what other factor is there?

Even subjectively - does anyone here feel or believe that they are not bound or limited by any variables? Let's put the theory of free will to death.