Is Spirit, and God, More Real than a Tree in Your Back Yard?

the Internet · #1 (**permalink**) 04-24-2009, 09:29 AM

I am but a casual reader in the physical sciences, so please forgive my inaccuracies in terms and structurals.

If you expand an atom to the size of a football ground, you still cannot see the handful of neutrons and electrons whizzing around. An atom is 99.999% the absence of anything known. I have no doubt that should we do the same to a neutron, it too would consist of 99.999% absence of anything known.

Thus an atom consists of almost nothing physical. We don’t really know what colour this atom might be except some vague notion of empty translucent greyness.

The human body consists of trillions of these atoms. Thus the human body is 99.999% nothingness, with no colour. It is only by virtue of the differences in valency and other relationships and forces acting between atoms/molecules that the idea of boundary and relative permeability is observed. Put another way it is because the density/permeability of a piece of steel [itself consisting of the same nothingness with a different structure] is differentiated from the density/permeability of the human body that the two when pushed together do not become one.

The ear. It is a physical apparatus that detects movement in the medium, and translates that vibration into electric signals with different waves that the brain interprets, and then makes the resulting ‘sound’ known to you.

The eye. It is a physical apparatus that collects refracted light waves, and with a combination of chemical and electrical stimuli, feed the brain again, to make the resulting ‘colours’ and ‘shapes’ known to you.

The end result of seeing and hearing occurs within a pitch black almost sound-proof environment. Yet you hear music of many shades, and you see beauty with many voices.

The point is that the body is bordering on non-existent, and within that body, external stimuli are collected and interpreted and made known to ‘you’. What is you?

Some argue that ‘you’ is the thing that collects all the data and translates it into whatever it is that the thing can deal with and continue to interact with the outside environment. This feels very shallow to me.

Another argument is that ‘you’ is a spirit. Without a spirit ‘you’ don’t exist except as a blob of grey nothingness. ‘You’ cannot be your brain because it is encased in ‘black’ and ‘you’ could not see anything.

Some suggest that this is a powerful argument to demonstrate that the spirit is much more a reality than what is perceived as reality – the body.

What do you [no pun intended] think? If some form of the above is validated and accepted as a better way of thinking about the world [both epistemologically and in particular ontologically], then can this logic be further extended to prove the existence of a spirit God? Not after the fashion of Augustine with his imagining of God, but rather, in the way of giving full credit to the existence of some immaterial thing that God has created to give a human body a ‘self’ … a ‘you’. An eternal thing that is not decayed by its host.

LawrenceU · #2 (**permalink**) 04-24-2009, 11:08 AM

I would say that spirit is more real than the material world. The material world will all be undone one day. The spirit will last forever.

Whitefield · #3 (**permalink**) 04-24-2009, 11:22 AM

It has been a long time since I read it, but I think C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce has some literary images concerning the difference of "realness" between the physical and spiritual.

a mere housewife · #4 (**permalink**) 04-24-2009, 11:24 AM

I think people who deny the existence of a spirit God in face of the 'material' of life you have described are blind -- and of course Scripture says that they are. I think it's a good argument for people who are really seeking to understand; but I think many prefer the 'shallow' explanation because they have a vested interest in not being awed by anything.

I used to be fascinated by atheistic logic: I find that now it almost bores me (I feel guilty for being so unkind! but it's true). You wonder how anyone professing to judge all things by reason can do so without reference to so many realities: how they can not find it deadly dull hiding themselves in a cardboard box from the splendour of the immaterial universe or the splendour of our very materiality as you have described it here. Nothing will convince people who want to deny the reality of God out of the universe until God smashes into their horribly shrunken universe Himself.

Theogenes · #5 (**permalink**) 04-26-2009, 09:51 PM

God is Spirit and He is the Final Reality. All that is material came forth from Him by divine fiat. All that is material will burn up in fire and God will bring forth a new Heavens/Earth. So, YES, that which is spirit is more real than the tree in your back yard, if one can say it that way.

OPC'n · #6 (**permalink**) 04-26-2009, 10:12 PM

He falls upon you harder than a tree would! He wipes you out, stripes you of all you hold dear, and then will give you more than you can imagine.

Turtle · #7 (**permalink**) 04-26-2009, 10:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the Internet

The point is ....What is you?
...

Thank you for your post about the spirit. If you are interested in a somewhat thorough paper on the subject of "spirit, body, and soul" you might read a short paper at the link below written by a Pastor Edward Crawford in Puyallup, WA. He completed his pastoral studies at Highland College in California and the Theological Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The paper is titled
"What are you? Just an accidental coagulation of molecules?

Were you taught in school that you’re nothing more than an accidental
coagulation of molecules? After all, that is the secularist’s premise.

The link is to a pdf that is about 15 pages long so it might take a brief time to open depending on your bandwidth.

timmopussycat · #8 (**permalink**) 04-27-2009, 12:36 AM

I think Chesterton had the right of it:

There once was a man who said, "God
must think it remarkably odd
that we think that this tree continues to be
when there's no-one about in the quod."

"Dear Sir: your astonishment's odd.
I am always about in the quod.
And that's why this tree
continues to be,
while observed by...
Yours faithfully,
God."

Scynne · #9 (**permalink**) 04-27-2009, 01:39 PM

As one who rather fancies Monistic Idealism (which states that there is no physical at all, but rather merely the perception of our consciousnesses), I would have to say that the Lord is far more real than anything in this 'physical' world. Of course, that was my worldview before being called to Christ, but I'm still not entirely convinced that matter really 'exists' per se.

Theognome · #10 (**permalink**) 04-27-2009, 01:58 PM

Admittedly, this thread has been answered with a resounding, "The Spirit is the greater reality", which is a true statement. However, such a comparative does not answer the question of particular perception, since mankind does contain both components. Which reality are we perceiving through those electrical impulses you speak of? Of what is the ether that prevents the juxtaposition of flesh and steel?

If we assume that there is a progressive order in the Genesis 1 creation narrative, then it must be assumed that the Spiritual realm precedes the particular- as it states plainly that God created both the heavenly and earthly realm with the heavenly receiving precedent; though the specific process of heavenly creation was not described. Thus it can be argued that all of particular nature exists within the realm of the spiritual; and the nothingness of which you speak is the heavenly containment in which it finds reality- an 'emptiness' that is full of life. Thus I would dare suggest that the space of which you speak is stuff of life itself... always moving, active and energetic; and to which man, in his fallen nature, is blind to.

Theognome

steven-nemes · #11 (**permalink**) 04-27-2009, 04:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by timmopussycat

I think Chesterton had the right of it:

There once was a man who said, "God
must think it remarkably odd
that we think that this tree continues to be
when there's no-one about in the quod."

"Dear Sir: your astonishment's odd.
I am always about in the quod.
And that's why this tree
continues to be,
while observed by...
Yours faithfully,
God."

That was not Chesterton though; that was Berkley.

-edit

Ach! Excuse me, it was Ronald Knox (

Bishop_Berkeley

)

the Internet · #12 (**permalink**) 04-29-2009, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theognome

Admittedly, this thread has been answered with a resounding, "The Spirit is the greater reality", which is a true statement. However, such a comparative does not answer the question of particular perception, since mankind does contain both components. Which reality are we perceiving through those electrical impulses you speak of? Of what is the ether that prevents the juxtaposition of flesh and steel?

If we assume that there is a progressive order in the Genesis 1 creation narrative, then it must be assumed that the Spiritual realm precedes the particular- as it states plainly that God created both the heavenly and earthly realm with the heavenly receiving precedent; though the specific process of heavenly creation was not described. Thus it can be argued that all of particular nature exists within the realm of the spiritual; and the nothingness of which you speak is the heavenly containment in which it finds reality- an 'emptiness' that is full of life. Thus I would dare suggest that the space of which you speak is stuff of life itself... always moving, active and energetic; and to which man, in his fallen nature, is blind to.

Theognome

Bill, I agree with your surmising in principle. From nothing to the Universe is a quantum leap … that is the nature of our God. But the pre-existing nothing must have been much more fabulous than the post. On to the meat of my topic then.

The big question ontological studies seek to answer is that of what can we know of our environment. If we start with the premise that the physical is the basis, then we deconstruct the physical until what are believe to be absolutes are found. This never happens, except at the most fundamental level [probably in the field of mathematics] because of the Popperian styled revisions to knowledge. In other words starting with the physical does not solve or truly address the question.

‘Paradigm’ has become common language to the point where its meaning has been lost. It originally implied the big philosophical perspective in a domain of interest – kind of like the Weltenschauung – how we perceive the world. If we radically disrupt the prevailing paradigm such that we start with the spiritual, and upon this basis, we develop concepts of the physical, the approach to what we can know about our universe/world is turned on its head. My question then becomes:

What are the tools of thinking and conceptualisation that would drive such a model of inquiry? Put another way, the current epistemological approaches to how we can learn about our world must suffer a similar dramatic upheaval. How does this different paradigm affect our intercourse with current knowledge?

***toddpedlar*** · #13 (**permalink**) 04-29-2009, 08:52 AM

I'm not sure the implications of the 'spirit' being somehow "more real" than the physical makes Biblical sense, or sits well with the Confessions, either.

Christ's humanity is no less "real" than His Divinity - and His humanity is physical and spiritual - BOTH are real, and BOTH are joined in His person forever. It cannot be said that physical is NECESSARILY temporal - for we will have a spiritual AND a physical existence forever, those of us who are in Christ. Those who are NOT in Christ will ALSO have a spiritual and a physical existence forever. Yes, this present heavens and Earth will pass away and be replaced by a new heavens and Earth... and they will last forever, at least as I understand the passages in the Revelation which speak to it.

To call spirit "more real" than the "physical" is to do injustice, I think, to the hypostatic union, and to our being created as we are. We are created as both spirit and body - and will forever have that new and glorified physical body that is ours at the 2nd coming of Christ. Surely I *am* the soul who is in me, but I *am* equally well the physical being that is typing this message. Both are necessary to define who I am, and the separation of soul from body is NOT a good thing according to the Scriptures, for the two are reunited when Christ comes, to be forever rejoined again in our glorified state. To call the 'spirit' real and the physical 'unreal' is at the heart of gnosticism - and should be at all costs avoided, imo. It just doesn't square with Scripture.

the Internet · #14 (**permalink**) 04-29-2009, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by toddpedlar

I'm not sure the implications of the 'spirit' being somehow "more real" than the physical makes Biblical sense, or sits well with the Confessions, either.

To call the 'spirit' real and the physical 'unreal' is at the heart of gnosticism - and should be at all costs avoided, imo. It just doesn't square with Scripture.

I think my intent may be misunderstood. I am simply teasing out the discussion around the starting point. What came first ... the spiritual of course, since Genesis starts at that very point.

Science continues to inquire under the model that the physical reality is not only the objective reality, but that the spiritual does not exist.

What if science was prefaced on the pre-existence of the spiritual ... how does this affect what we can know about the world, and how would we then proceed to acquire knowledge about that world?

The question is not one of superiority but rather one of ordering and systematising rational thought.