DayLight Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 The Bible talks about God being a plural Being. God said: "let us create man according to our image". Christians always believed that "we" represents one God, and yet he is plural. It sounds like a very weird idea to be plural and yet one. But since I've been thinking about a human and how a human functions, I see it as more normal now. I believe that a human mind/body system consists of many units, that a human is NOT one whole. And I believe that consciousness is possible because of this plurality. (Because consciousness is when one part of you replays the actions of another part, analyzes them, and thus, sees itself. Which is self awareness. If you were one whole, you could not see yourself from apart of yourself.) When a human speaks, one unit of himself is speaking at that time. This unit is acting as a representative of the whole mind/body system, but in reality the opinions are coming from this particular smaller unit. And other units within the body/mind system disagree sometimes with this unit’s opinions and that’s why a human experiences inner conflict. So whenever a human speaks, he could say “I” since he is representing many units at that moment, he is representing the collective of his body/mind system. The collective is responsible for the individual unit’s actions. But to be more detailed, a human should say “this part of me says this”. Or to show that a human consists of many sub-units, a human could say “we” when referring to himself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DayLight Posted December 6, 2014 Author Share Posted December 6, 2014 If anyone is interested to read the details about the above conclusion, it's at this link: http://www.conversationswithjq.com/a-mind-consisting-of-many-parts-a-modular-mind.html But basically, it is an attempt to explain why we have inner conflict and why we sometimes don't know why we did something and why we regret our own actions. Paul of the Bible also believes that there is more than 1 part of us. Although he just divides the body into 2 parts: YOU and SIN. (Romans 7) He says that sin lives in us and it's sin that is making us do things we don't want to do. So Paul is saying that our body is doing things WE don't want done. But who is doing them then? Who or what is this "sin" that makes us do what we don't want to do? Paul (in his time) didn't understand about plurality of the human, so this is the best he could come up at the time. But at least he is acknowledging that there is something more than one, otherwise there would be harmony: 1 unit would do what that 1 unit wants... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarflungWanderer Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 The Christian tradition puts the reason why God uses "we" because of the Holy Trinity. Quite frankly, it might have been a bad translation that no one ever corrected. That, or the Hebrews were into a plurality of gods that was later written out of the official record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 The Bible talks about God being a plural Being. God said: "let us create man according to our image". Christians always believed that "we" represents one God, and yet he is plural. It sounds like a very weird idea to be plural and yet one. But since I've been thinking about a human and how a human functions, I see it as more normal now. I believe that a human mind/body system consists of many units, that a human is NOT one whole. And I believe that consciousness is possible because of this plurality. (Because consciousness is when one part of you replays the actions of another part, analyzes them, and thus, sees itself. Which is self awareness. If you were one whole, you could not see yourself from apart of yourself.) When a human speaks, one unit of himself is speaking at that time. This unit is acting as a representative of the whole mind/body system, but in reality the opinions are coming from this particular smaller unit. And other units within the body/mind system disagree sometimes with this unit’s opinions and that’s why a human experiences inner conflict. So whenever a human speaks, he could say “I” since he is representing many units at that moment, he is representing the collective of his body/mind system. The collective is responsible for the individual unit’s actions. But to be more detailed, a human should say “this part of me says this”. Or to show that a human consists of many sub-units, a human could say “we” when referring to himself. DayLight, Please note that the use of 'we' and 'us' in the book of Genesis does not signify that God is a plural being. http://yhwhechad.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/elohim-and-the-majestic-plural/ http://www.gotquestions.org/majestic-plural.html http://en.allexperts.com/q/Orthodox-Judaism-952/Genesis-1-26-say.htm Thanks, BAA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ ficino ♦ Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 I thought that parts of the OT retain the polytheistic flavor out of which Judaic Yahweh-monotheism developed. Yahweh was a Canaanite war god. Only after much time did writings begin to depict Yahweh as the only god that truly exists. Some people maintain that the aspect of God that Moses interacted with in the Pillar of Fire was conceived of as separate in some way from the God whom no one could see. Later on, you get Philo's Logos idea, or Wisdom as in the Book of Sirach, which are presented as though somehow distinct from God but yet also God. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Joshpantera Posted December 7, 2014 Moderator Share Posted December 7, 2014 The Bible talks about God being a plural Being. God said: "let us create man according to our image". Christians always believed that "we" represents one God, and yet he is plural. It sounds like a very weird idea to be plural and yet one. But since I've been thinking about a human and how a human functions, I see it as more normal now. I believe that a human mind/body system consists of many units, that a human is NOT one whole. And I believe that consciousness is possible because of this plurality. (Because consciousness is when one part of you replays the actions of another part, analyzes them, and thus, sees itself. Which is self awareness. If you were one whole, you could not see yourself from apart of yourself.) When a human speaks, one unit of himself is speaking at that time. This unit is acting as a representative of the whole mind/body system, but in reality the opinions are coming from this particular smaller unit. And other units within the body/mind system disagree sometimes with this unit’s opinions and that’s why a human experiences inner conflict. So whenever a human speaks, he could say “I” since he is representing many units at that moment, he is representing the collective of his body/mind system. The collective is responsible for the individual unit’s actions. But to be more detailed, a human should say “this part of me says this”. Or to show that a human consists of many sub-units, a human could say “we” when referring to himself. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2013/02/polytheism-in-the-bible/ The above link is a good read to start investigating why God is plural in Genesis. It grains into what Ficino mentioned above. It's not saying that God is a plural being but rather that they believed in many Gods in their remote past. The plural being is the result of evolving to make the national God of Israel the only God, so the plurality of the OT is stressed to refer to YHWH and things like the doctrine of the trinity are more or less an apologetic assertion to account for the old polytheistic or henotheistic passages. But as for people being plural beings made up of many parts, spot on. Joseph Campbell once said that the conflicts in mythology may stem from an expression of the inner body conflicts that we experience on sub-conscious levels. It's always this thing against that, the good against the evil, etc. etc. And the idea of Gods turns into the idea of just one God. That could come from simply expressing the observation of many forces of nature all within the confines of one greater realm of existence containing it all. One realm, many forces of nature - one God, many sons of God. But oh, wait, the many gods are really just the one - but oh, wait, the many forces of nature are just the one universe. There are natural parallels to what religious writers were expressing. I think the experience of our surroundings and conditions goes in and what comes back out, in the past, came out as mythology and supernaturalizing. But essentially I think it all breaks down to observations of nature...... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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