Mike

The spirits I had in mind were the Holy Spirit and his angels, plus the devil. New ideas come from the spiritual realm. Most of neuroscience has come around to agree with the Bible on man's self aggrandizement of his own consciousness. Humans hype their intelligence. "I Thought the Brain Was the Most Important Organ Until I Realized What Was Telling Me That." (Emo Philips)

Actually, I was educating you NOT on calculus, theory of relativity, and wave theory, but on how supposedly original ideas are put together from pieces that are in the wind. The calculus, theory of relativity, and wave theory stuff that I mentioned is trivial and can be found in any history of science text, no expertise needed. You are too formal about background credentials, and you deny yourself good knowledge knocking at your door.

The classic example of a new invention being merely the assembly of fragments floating around in the air comes with the invention of calculus about 400 years ago. Both Newton and Leibniz were exposed to these pieces and fragments of ideas, and both of them assembled them together into calculus, just using slightly different nomenclature to describe their ideas. They both invented a new thing, calculus, but they invented it by putting together pieces that were floating around and a lot of people had in their head. Similar thing happened with Einstein and his special relativity theory on space and time being relative and not absolute. Lorentz and Fitzgerald had put together similar ideas a few years before Einstein, but Einstein put together the pieces in a better way, more elegantly. The same thing happened in the 1920s with Heisenberg’s matrix theory on quantum mechanics and Schrodinger’s totally different wave theory both coming up with good answers, and then later being shown to be mathematically equivalent. They simply put together the same ideas but in a different way.

You're off into un-serious questioning, and not discussing things. You'd do well as a heckler at the Comedy Store. Considering a career change?

You are not keeping track of the details of this discussion. We were talking about God having "difficulty" talking to spiritless humans. In 1942 VPW had spirit, but did not know how to use it well. God had something to work with.

I agree. There is a great need for new ideas. But putting 2 + 2 together and coming up with 4 is not so new. The two 2s have to be in there to come up with the semi-new idea of 4. My inclination is to believe we don't generate truly new ideas, but that we get them from other people, and going back far enough, from spirits. We can do things that look like new idea generation by fitting together the right pieces. This is not so much from scripture, but more from my study of the brain.

I thought I answered that. They come from piecing together fragments of previously taught thoughts. Here's a repeat of what I wrote before: Most see only complete thoughts in this storehouse of "what you've been taught." What I see are those items, PLUS many fragmented, incomplete thoughts. Later on, these fragmented, incomplete thoughts can be fitted together to make whole, sound, and useful thoughts. It's a matter of somewhat teaching oneself, using the pieces that came from "what you've been taught." So in this case it would look, at first glance, like going beyond the whole thoughts that were taught, but it is still not going beyond the pieces that were also "taught in" there.

Sorry. For a minute there I thought you were a student in my class.

I used to meditate on this long ago, but haven't discussed it much here. Is there a thread on it? This topic is somewhat related to my copyright stands, in that I don't believe anyone really has any original thoughts. I think many miss some of the meaning of this part of PFAL teaching, "You can't go beyond what you've been taught," because they don't fully know what the phrase "what you've been taught" means. Most see only complete thoughts in this storehouse of "what you've been taught." What I see are those items, PLUS many fragmented, incomplete thoughts. Later on, these fragmented, incomplete thoughts can be fitted together to make whole, sound, and useful thoughts. It's a matter of somewhat teaching oneself, using the pieces that came from "what you've been taught." So in this case it would look, at first glance, like going beyond the whole thoughts that were taught, but it is still not going beyond the pieces that were also "taught in" there. If there is a thread on this, maybe this thought could be a new addition.

See my answer to OldSkool immediately above this one.

LoL. That was my whole point: SINCE our senses brain only understands physical mechanics and cannot understand spiritual mechanics, NOT ONE BIT AT ALL, all we can do is accept what the scriptures say about it. It is pretty clear from the OT scriptures that with "spirit upon" more things could happen. How that works is spiritual and beyond us. That was my point: we can't know spiritual mechanics. When it comes to the brain, even the physical mechanics are VERY difficult for science at this very moment, but the spiritual mechanics is WAY beyond human comprehension.

Yeah! And whatever happened to the Topic Police when you really need them ?

You are trying to make spiritual mechanics work like physical mechanics. The fact that spirit is needed on our side is simply scriptural, and is like a Postulate that must be accepted, and then you look for understanding elsewhere. By inserting the word "REALLY" into the process, I think it makes WORKABLE sense. I have been pondering this idea for over 35 years, and I think you gave it less than 35 seconds, before your knee-jerk, "it looks too much like vpw for me to stomach," clouds your understanding. Give it some time, please. WHY would VPW say such a thing in the class that "God cannot...."? That is an attention getter. It CANNOT be true to fact and must be a figure of speech that VPW was using there. In my cat&dog analogy, we can see a similar situation. Our pets are missing something that they ALMOST have, especially dogs. They have likes and dislikes and they try to communicate with us, but only get through rough, short ideas. Similarly with us getting complex information down to their level. It is not a lack on our part that prevents us from communicating RICHLY with animals. It is not a lack on God's part that prevents Him from communicating RICHLY with spiritless humans. So, please give the idea a little time to simmer.

I think the simple answer to this is like in the class where we were taught "No man can REALLY say Jesus is Lord but by holy spirit." The expanded version is: God is Spirit, and can only REALLY communicate with that which He is-which is Spirit God can communicate in less efficient ways, like with phenomena, but it is crude and limited. It's far from a face-to-face conversation. Think of God being limited in how well He can communicate with natural men, the same way we are limited in how well we can communicate with our pets.... compared with our communication with people.

You missed my answer to Nathan_Jr Those are the two most pertinent to this topic: Seeking the author's intent, versus not seeking it.

Those are the two most pertinent to this topic. Seeking the author's intent, versus not seeking it.

I know that and can handle it. I can still get my message out and discuss it with some people. I can ignore the toying.

I have not written much on this topic, so I was feeling it out a little. The Bible interpreting itself occupies nearly 80 pages in the PFAL book, so I may have to review that to clarify my posting better.

How can I know, except some man should teach me? Then, after that teaching, it is a lot of working it in Receive, Retain, Release, and walking in love.

Good words, Twinky. I like them all. The clarity I was seeking was in how clearly I post ideas.

OFF TOPIC, but I am interested anyway. I have been working on this part of PFAL, of God needing spirit to communicate. Is there a thread on it here?

The foreknowledge God had at that time with the donkey, was that at a short time later, Balaam would get get a good prophecy perfectly.

Thanks for the background. I'm still trying to clarify my idea. Jesus had to be SURE he was on the right path, and that his Father really would raise him from the dead. God demonstrated His ability and willingness to Jesus as he followed the written and direct revelations available to him. Jesus knew that what went on in his Father's mind was worth more than what went on, unassisted, in his own mind. Following Jesus with this attitude, I value God's intended meanings in the Book of Ephesians more than I value my own, unassisted, opinions. I want to know the author's intended meaning, like in reading a Physics text by Einstein explaining E=mc2. I don't want my own interpretation of what he writes. I want to hammer my interpretations of each of Einstein's sentences and equations to exactly match his, as much as possible. There are two major attitudes a reader can take while reading anything: (1) I want to get the author's exactly intended meanings, in spite of how they make me feel, and (2) I want to embrace whatever feeling I get from reading this piece.

What you described there was an impotent god with no foreknowledge. When the True God gives a revelation to a man, that man GETS IT RIGHT, or otherwise God would be wasting His time. God then sticks around to help readers get the right interpretation if they are willing to do the necessary work.