Can Science Deal With God? (Mika Kaku)
http://www.closertotruth.com/video-p...hio-Kaku-/1132

If we define a cosmological argument as one proceeding from observable reality to a deity, I’d have to say that Kaku makes a pretty damn good argument. He's basically arguing against reductionism and for Spinozism through the eyes of an M-theorist.

This was a good post.

I see no one has commented, so I thought I'd just drop in to give you a +1. I think people are more vain than truly scientific in their reasoning, so a little "star power" for the scientists who endorse God side of things, is good.

Does he endorse the God of Mary Queen of Scots or is it more of Spinoza's? I haven't read his argument, just wondering.

All you need to do to create a god is to believe in it.

Hmm, interesting word choices.

He seems to meld Spinoza's with a personal God in an odd way. Its a pretty short video, you should just watch it. (well maybe there was more, but thats all I did at the link)

I mean, its not too methodical. Just a brief overview.

The thing is, merely believing in God is still so far away (imo) from whats required....It's just a nice quick reference for debate application I suppose.

Depends on how much, or how little, you read into the former:

Thou shalt not use a blow dryer whilst taking a shower or thou shalt be surely smitten by God.

OK, watched it. Disappointingly trivial and rather predictable. I suspected a) childhood exposure and b) Spinoza-like issues could well be involved.

Hofstadter does a good job of bringing reductionism and holism together for a lay person for those that wonder what Kaku is tripping over.

I'm being kind because it is just a short PR clip for an uninformed audience and it'd be unfair to Katu to read too much into it, but some of it is pretty bad comparisons and analogies. let it pass.

Meh, it does what I claimed it did. Star power + debate tool.

Never underestimate the power of a mob, especially when theres no one (God - by your own position) to save you.

Well, sometimes poets can find in a verse what analysts lose in a tome.

with you on that one. that's one spin on Hofstadter's excellent handling of holistic vs reductionist.
That science deals via reductionism is a strawman of course, even though it uses it a lot. But I mustn't let you drag me into commentary on Kaku on a few minute PR clip.

No. Nothing can deal with god.

Whatever it is that people are trying to prove is necessarily not god. God can't be proven because the source (god) from which the thought about provability originates is 'prior to' any sort of form or expression. What you are (god) is prior to true/false. It doesn't make any sense and it's not supposed to make any. It's a pointer towards the source.

About the interview with Kaku. Whether the universe is harmonious or not, I don't know. To think that the question matters when we're talking about god is the result of a confusion. God is most certainly not harmonious, not chaotic, not anything in between.

Luckyme hit the nail on the head... "Disappointingly trivial and rather predictable"

Deeper into Christian Mysticism is the concept of the Godhead, which is distinguishable from God in the sense that if nothing were to exist then God would not exist, yet the Godhead would remain. The Godhead as the 13th Century Dominican Meister Eckhart put it:

Thus, Godhead in itself, identically the, All-inclusive, is comprehensible by nothing other than itself, that is, Divine Knowledge. Neither speech nor thought can ever attain it, and this explains why no man can fathom or describe it. It transcends all that is known distinctively and all that is not. It is beyond all individuality, one with undifferentiated isness in itself, which is the affirmation of its unrestricted knowledge. It is that which is not manifested but by which speech and thought and everything else is manifested. It is not that which is considered as this individual Being or that distinctive Being, but God in himself - wholly undifferentiated and without distinction.

Unfortunately, even though Eckhart was considered a theological successor to Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas in his time, The Church accused him of heresy and his influence on future Christian thought was pretty much lost. I think what did him in was claiming that The Son is The Word (ground of being/awareness) in all of us; hence by implication, Divine Knowledge is directly available to all without The Church as an intermediary.

Sounds good. Maybe it's worth pointing out that divine knowledge is always already a fact. The issue is with the mind-machine. When mind gets the memo about who is running the show then that is called enlightenment.

Divine Knowledge as Eckhart describes it is the state where the distinction between the knower and the known dissolves, a state he calls entering ‘the silence’. I can sometimes get there in meditation, but it’s not permanent. In the latter vein, I’ve been reading some stuff from your avatar (Maharshi), but can’t say doing so is helping me to gain permanence of that state, at least in any marked degree. It's like I know it cognitively, but outside of meditation I don’t know it experientially.

The distinction ceases when mind stops. The best method I know is to just remain focused on direct experience throughout the day as much as possible.