Two Different Divine Natures
Knowledge of Word states:
“Since the creation of the world [respecting the scientific view also], His [Name’s] invisible qualities, both His eternal power and divine nature [for atheists, divine refers to the nature of Life as source, beyond us], are clearly perceived, being understood through the things made.” Romans 1:20
“We ought not to consider the divine nature [of Name] to be like…the craft (techné, root of technology) and thought of humankind.” Acts 17:29
The phrase “divine nature” in these verses is translated from two different but related Greek words.1 The first case is used in relation to the creation, the second in contrast to it in regards to “the things made” by our technology and thought. Using AI as our example, we can understand the eternal power and the divine nature of Name, the first case, through AI as something made by the thought and technology of man. But we ought not to think that the divine nature of Name, the second case, is like it.
We are learning how the molecular structures work and have manipulated them to make AI. This has enabled us to understand Name’s eternal power and divine nature in the universe, but it has not enabled us to understand Name’s divine nature beyond the universe, beyond anything we can imagine with our technology or in our thought as humankind. (Is our real life organic?2 )
We can explain why this is so with two words, first with the word suneidesis. Pronounced soo-NAY-day-sis, it is a Greek word that joins our natural awareness with our sense of conscience. Inseparable as a single state, we can translate it co-conscientious awareness (of all things). The co- is translated from sun-, which here means collective. If I understand that my awareness of something as simple as a cup works from co-conscientiousness, I do not allow myself to get blinded by the cup alone but, in tandem with everyone in Word’s singularity, know it as part of creation at the hands of the Creator or the universe, depending on one’s beliefs.
When we consider AI, most of us have been trained to ignore the co-conscientious part of our awareness in order to clearly perceive and understand what has been made alone. We believe that it is not necessary or, worse, gets in the way as religious belief. And this brings in the second word, agapé, ah-GAH-pay, unconditional love. It is the highest state of co-conscientiousness, revealed as the divine nature itself outside the universe by knowledge of Word stating that Name is agapé.
The benefits of knowing AI with suneidesis working from agapé can take AI to higher and higher states of development — as we come to understand Name’s eternal power and divine nature in the universe better and better through it. But it also tells us what AI cannot do, for as humankind, we cannot know Name’s divine nature outside the universe through anything we make.
Specifically, we need to rediscover the divine nature of agapé to restore our awareness of it, blinded by misusing science to know it through the things we make. For this, we need to transform suneidesis of ourselves and realize that we are souls, or more precisely, names of light with physical bodies, not physical bodies with a soul, a common definition of humankind.
Word teaches us how to make this transformation in our awareness in order for us to realize that our true nature is agapé, partaking of Name’s agapé divine nature in Word. Thus, Word instructs us to use agapé to love our enemies so that we can be like Name. But we find ourselves in social disorder, where being kind to strangers or dying for our friends is the zenith of love.
Loving an enemy is a taboo subject because it is beyond our reasoning as human beings, made of molecules, DNA code that cannot allow us to die for enemies as Word did. This is proof that we are not organic. But we owe scientists for helping us recognize it.
“Yes, oxytocin promotes empathy and cooperation. But it does so selectively. It makes us more caring toward people we identify as part of our "tribe" while simultaneously making us more suspicious and hostile toward outsiders. It's not universally loving—it's tribally loving.”
Hans Jonsson, @cognitiveloon, The Universal Language of Human Connection: What a Poem Taught Me About Our Hardwired Empathy
Our technology and thought prove our limits as human beings, but they cannot free us from them. We insist on being these physical bodies because our suneidesis operates without agapé. Agapé is too complex for science, but we need science to help guide us with understanding of Name’s eternal power and divine nature working in the universe. This is while we use our nature as agapé in Word to break the addictions in democracy and restore unconditional love between us throughout the world.
Religion has crossed the line as well in confusing the two different divine natures. Compare science and religion doing this—science teaches that love is an interplay of dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin in the brain, and religion teaches that the universe was created 6,000 years ago. If we stay in our own lanes, we can accomplish so much together. Alan Turing3 used science to shortened WW2 considerably by inventing the computer. We blindly think today that political science is our best hope but have not come to realize that we are in a spiritual world war.
Spirituality will decide it by waking up the mind of our heart.
Suggested Articles:
The Eyes of Democracy (Introduction and Index of Articles)
Theiotés in Romans 1:20 is from theios in Acts 17:29. This makes theios the greater divine nature. They both come from theos, translated ‘God’, which is why they are both translated ‘divine’. Theiotés is used only once, here, whereas theios is used two other times besides here. “His divine (theios) power has granted to us everything…so that you might become partakers of the divine (theios) nature.” (2 Peter 1:3, 4)
We are not to attempt to partake of the theiotés divine nature of Name, which manifests the universe, as great as that is, including the advent of AI. We are to seek to partake of Name’s theios divine nature, which is greater, which is the nature of agapé.
When I hear arguments that boil down to life is from physics, I ask if it is reasonable to think that constructs from neurons in our brain would have and take the choice to cease to exist for the sake of another? When someone dies for another by choice, an act of unconditional love, do you think the brain has a choice in the matter? How else do we think if not through the biological brain? In spirituality, the mind is of the spirit. It is like a person operating a laptop. The brain is the laptop, without any ability to make living decisions. It is just does what it is programmed to do, even ai programming itself to a measure, by the living person of spirit enclothed in dust in front of it. Computer animation shows us flashy lights and the narrator tells us that this depicts the neural activity that forms constructs of consciousness. Conscientiousness is our reality, which only conscientiousness can know. That is between two living beings, nonorganic. Nothing other than us in all the universe is that reality.
While the goal of these articles is to teach how to love the enemies of conscience, discussions of this nature are relevant when beliefs prevent us from attaining this level of love.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
To paraphrase, "We are souls that currently happen to have physical bodies, not bodies that happen to have souls". This is a profound starting point for understanding so much else that otherwise seems devoid of 𝘴𝘶𝘯𝘦𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴.
Putting this life into perspective means recognizing that eternity didn't begin for us when we drew our first breath.
I have always known that one is a soul, not to have one. You have a body, a wife, a child, or a knife. That is why we are being, rather than becoming.