Now Hawkeye and Seraphis,
IF you believe in an allmighty, all-knowing God, THEN you can't exclude the evil from God. No matter if God is outside God's creation, as Don says, or if God influences it. God let it happen and God created it that way.

Heisenberg:
Of course this "white room theory" is not really a theory. It's more a mythical picture of what we can't grasp. If something is totally one, it cannot suddenly decide to divide itself into two, because it wants to experience itself. For such a decision a separation must have had already happened. So, it's just a picture for what we can't really understand. I think finally Zen is the most appropriate way to deal with ourselves and the world.

Spooky

Hi Spooky,

thanks for your comments.The natural world is full of examples of things which appear to be separate but which at a higher level of understanding are better thought of as one.Two such examples could include electricity and magnetism which previously were thought of as separate forces have been shown by Maxwell as aspects of one field (elecromagnetic) as Einstein combined the seemingly separate energy and mass in his famous equation with atomic consequences.Modern physicists look at the zero energy state as the foundation of seemingly disparate forces.

In a way I think of us with our limited awareness trying to figure this stuff like a flatlander (2 dimensions) trying to visualise another dimension e.g height. If a flatlander was drawn on a piece of paper in pencil I could come along and rub him out.From the perspective of another flatlander his friend 'just disappeared'.From my 3d 'higher' perspective no mystery! In the same way I think many of our current paradoxes are only paradoxes from our 'lower' perspective.Perspective is all.

I agree with you that the 'white room' is not a theory (more a parable) as its not falsifiable but I think it may be a useful tool for understanding the non-understandable! All I can ask of myself is that I remain open and try and 'raise the bar' of my understanding. I think that things like meditation and afterlife exploration could be tools to this end.

D

Yes Seraphis, the talk about God is not an easy one. Because often standard statements are just repeated, but apparently not consequently thought through, from time to time I like to point out my concerns.
   Yes, Buddhist teachings often resemble a bit the mystic scripture of Christendom, which always was a thing of only very few people, and this is a way very different from mainstream Christian theology. There are ways of thinking and practices possible which I hardly find in Christian churches. Well, one likes this, the other that.

Heisenberg,
yes, theories about things can change, but this white-room-entity, or a totally undivided entity is a concept, and not a theory about a phaenomenon. But what's possible is a something like a manifold, which at the same time is one. For example our memory, or our self-consciousness. Or a musical triad. Or a landscape... Such things are common, it's only not so common to see it this way, in our western-modern-separating-science-world.

Now let's have a cup of tea. 

Spooky

This is funny, so will post it again

When it comes to (EDITED), big-time, major league (EDITED), you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. Religion easily has the greatest (EDITED) story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you
Credits to George Carlin