What do we really know about God?
Posted by daydreamer at 21:54, 21 Dec 2009I just thought this was a little interesting as a conversation piece.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18...
Obviously we have the revelational religions and cults that claim specific knowledge, though looking at believers within each branch we can still see differences being overlain onto the God idea.
I personally overlay an idea of apophatism, mixed with some deism, mixed with a 'Grand Mover', mixed with some natural findings and supernatural possibilites to imply characteristics. All in a light hearted way, with apophatism being the central idea, in any attempt to describe the possibility of a deity or deities.
This is only myself reflecting on the rather nebulous principle of 'God' though.
Do we really just pour ourselves onto it, each revealing ourselves instead of any real knowledge of 'God'?
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12 April 2007
1 hour 20 min
He, Wikipedia's entry on Apophasis is pretty lame, but I get the feeling that what you mean is that God is unknowable, or at least unmeasurable for the likes of finite beings like us. I agree with the sentiment.
Is it perhaps that what religious people think about God is what Freudians classify as the 'super-Ego'? could be.
For example, I was just thinking the other day that, contrary to my Christian upbringing, everything comes from God: both the good and the evil; and that making a judgement of which is which is a mere human need; and that judgement is heavily influenced by one's culture.
Let's look at that pebble sent by God that smote those poor dinos 65 million years ago. Now I'm pretty sure that for a T-Rex that event would have looked as a terrible evil, but from our mammalian perspective that impact was Heaven-sent (theologically as well as astronomically speaking) since the demise of the great lizards meant the uprising of our biological line and the chance to rise into consciousness.
Now, if that Apophis meteor does hit us the near future and sends our species to Kingdom come, I'm sure most people would look it in Apocalypthic terms; but I sometimes think that after things get settled many porpoises and whales will raise their head from the seas and clap their rubbery flippers in gratitude! :P
Would these ideas I amuse myself with show that I'm a moral relativist? Possibly; I'll let others decide that. ;)
However, I dig the idea of communing with the 'Logos' in such a personal manner; if we could just switch it so we focused on the God that is the 'other' (our neighbors); now THAT would be really neat.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
1 day 5 hours
Hi RPJ,
Yeah it means completely unknownable. Expressed perfectly it would be as per Gould's non-overlapping magisteria. Modern theology has captured aspects of NOMA, but uses it only in a functional manner, i.e to support christianity where it rubs against science by trying to imply philosophical boundaries where it suits them. My current thinking is that the mistake here is to try and use NOMA in support of [i]specfic[/i] ideologies, whereas applied properly it means that [i]no[/i] ideology can be supported with regard to God.
This is a big change from the revelational (trust of ancient texts) religions and the subjective (can have a personal relationship with God) religions.
Not being able to know God would literally mean that all these claimed avenues of knowledge are untrustworthy. It would, in effect, be admitting that after thousands of years of thought we know nothing on the subject - worse, or better, we cannot know anything (as opposed to simply beliving we do).
The advantage of this is that the NOMA principle provides complete freedom of enquiry into this physical world and no matter what it looks like any idea of God remains unknowable and untouched - hence removing political and theological issues, objections, and other problems.
Now i am not saying that this is what i believe, as i think a proper use of NOMA leaves nothing to actually believe in - how can it if there is no information. It does leave freedom though. It is in this sense that i can be an atheist with the freedom to accept what i see of how the world is put together. Looking around the world at all the different skirmishes between narratives and evidence it seems that so many people are not free to interact with the evidence and that they are forced into their prefered narrative and into the community defense of these. I do not really wish to be like that.
Rather than being something that opens the mind God seems so often to be something that closes it down. Now this is no doubt in part due to the defensive (of their claims to their continuing historical power) nature of the religious organisations as well as the texts, but i don't think it should work like this. We all seem to want grander meaning to our lives in one way or another and the God idea looms large in our history, philosophy and culture; large enough to impact on almost everything it touches. Declaring NOMA shouldnt just be about research and science, but about culture as well. This is where the educated theologians are picking and choosing where to use it.
Declaring NOMA leaves the hope, but it also creates the freedom. However it might not be surprising that this is the sort of intellectual compromise i would go for since it allows any understanding, even an apparently godless universe, without ever touching on the subject of God. The universe can look entirely material (granted peoples experience doesnt always look that way) when studying its function and it doesnt touch on the subject of God at all. Better still its use prevents the types of cultural feedback that exhibit the worst examples of the religions with regard to each other and to ideas that oppose their claims (even those put forward by theologians with regard to textual critisism, histioricity, archeology etc that would threaten the churches if the knowledge ever became widespread).
Jeez, that was a spiel - sorry ;), moving on.
The Romanisisation of Physical Phenomena
I've even given this point a chapter heading!
Throughout history we have shown a strong tendancy as a species to romatasise nature. Thunder and lightening, volcanic erutptions, earthquakes, comets, eclipses, equinox's, you name it and it will have been given many romantic narratives of meaning.
We are made out of matter. Collections of atoms that through our nervous systems we can make move up, down, left or right. This is our freedom, it is limited to this and our freedom of choice in our bodies is limited to this. As amazing and romantic as the narratives we can create and as joyous as we can feel about this are, this is our material existence. Perhaps we can cast our energies into other dimensions, but for the sake of this earthly description consider our material form.
It might be spectacular the the universe is here, or that life got started, but once we have those things, a universe of x spatial dimensions, and life somewhere in it composed of atoms free to move within those dimensions, then we have the ingredients we need to explain away the moral dilemma. We are composed of atoms that have freedom of movement in 3 dimensions, so we get freedom of movement in the same 3 dimensions. It wouldnt matter if it was just in 2 though, any freedom of movement is enough.
If you can move your body from A to B or or move your arm up or down then it is simply a question of the consequences of this. Does your arm hit somebody, or a button to launch a bomb, or a food parcel etc. Does your foot step on a snail, or step over an unconscious person. Do you fetch food for someone.
The notion of freewill, good and evil etc are romantisisations that we place over the physical phenomena of freedom of movement. It is true that we have the dilemma or choice as to whether a movement causes harm or good, but the actual consequences of a movement are defined by physics and biology, not theology. In this way we move the question of good and evil from the theological realm (where they really havn't done very much with it) and into the physical and biological realm, where it becomes an obvious consequence of just being alive in the state we are in, i.e with freedom of movement.
Therefore it is not neccessary to describe the presence of good and evil, since the physical and biological world are what dictate consequences. Actions have consequences, there is no mystery to it other than what the universe is doing here in the first place. That would be my take on it - it is all down to freedom of movement. Evolve a body and neurological system complex enough to move it and there you have it, job done. Anything else is narrative placed over this - it is the same freedom that allows you to pick up a glass of water that allows you to cause suffering and as far as the atoms are concerned they may as well be the same thing, all you need is physics and evolution.
I think you are right with your dinosaur example. It can show how narrative driven morality is, especially here where we are the focus of the narrative.
Have you considered that moral relativism may be made worse by the input of narrative into morality? Since narrative is highly likely to change over time it results in increased moral relativity. Unlike pain response, which is biologically predetermined will change much more slowly, if at all - in the sense of it disappearing entirely. Do unto others is a great moral code as it is based on the biological principle of pain and empathy and hence is not very relative. Narrative input such as 'My God says this in this bit of my text' - 'well my version says this' only serves to increase moral flux over time. What is the real interaction between narrative and morality and to what extent is it moral to allow narrative to be a moral input?
1 May 2004
1 year 15 weeks
Yeah it means completely unknownable. Expressed perfectly it would be as per Gould's non-overlapping magisteria. Modern theology has captured aspects of NOMA, but uses it only in a functional manner, i.e to support christianity where it rubs against science by trying to imply philosophical boundaries where it suits them. My current thinking is that the mistake here is to try and use NOMA in support of [i]specfic[/i] ideologies, whereas applied properly it means that [i]no[/i] ideology can be supported with regard to God.
Very interesting.
I say that there is nothing unknowable but that the concept of god has insured that the unknowable would persist. That there is no mystery but that the mystery is perpetuated by ideology. And that in regards to the absolute there can be no ideology nor belief.
Groups of people create boundaries in order to have territories they may assign ownership to themselves. In doing so, they fragment reality and they make it impossible to make the synthesis of reality. The end result is that everybody can only be wrong.
12 April 2007
1 hour 20 min
Rather than being something that opens the mind God seems so often to be something that closes it down
Aaah. Mexican director Alejandro González Iñarritu made the same question in his segment that was part of the movie September 11 —"does the light of God illuminate us, or blind us?"
Maybe we shouldn't blame the light, but our own inability to adapt our eyes to it. Maybe the adaptation in itself is the reason we are here.
The notion of freewill, good and evil etc are romantisisations that we place over the physical phenomena of freedom of movement. It is true that we have the dilemma or choice as to whether a movement causes harm or good, but the actual consequences of a movement are defined by physics and biology, not theology. In this way we move the question of good and evil from the theological realm (where they really havn't done very much with it) and into the physical and biological realm, where it becomes an obvious consequence of just being alive in the state we are in, i.e with freedom of movement.
It's a very interesting concept. You boil down all theologic queries into a matter of choice. All of us are a complex organization of matter, which can also be seen as an energetic manifestation that can interact within a tridimensional world. We cannot change the fundamental rules in which this world operates, so we can only hope to be able to rule the way we make use of that energy we're given for a limited amount of time.
But yes, I see the paradox you propose; how do we know we're making the right choice if we're basing our decisions to narrative?
I'm a designer. I see myself as a person with the capacity to imagine ways to bring into existence objects that don't exist yet in our world, except in my head —maybe they already exist somewhere else and I'm just a mediator that helps them to arrive to our plane?— I'm capable of finding ways to change the natural state of material forms in ways that suit my needs. My justification is that I'm trying to use my talent to bring beauty to this world; and in so doing, make a contribution to God's work with the gifts He/She has endowed me with.
But what if I'm wrong? What if every time I design a wooden table, and in so doing order the destruction of a living being (a tree), robbing it of something I could never restore (life) just for the raw materials of its body; so a rich bastard can have a posh dinner with some fancy $500/hour hookers or whatever... am I augmenting or decreasing the beauty of the world?
Hmph... I don't know where I'm going with this rambling ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
14 July 2008
6 days 3 hours
You got all the right ingredients... but forgot to mention preheating your oven to 350 and to poke with a fork after 30 minutes to assure proper doneness, lol!
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
21 February 2009
1 day 5 hours
That would need to be 350 billion degrees and the fork would need to be a negative energy fork, which i guess Douglas Adams would have appreciated, RIP, but i guess i did put together a quick recipe guide for my own deity, lol indeed.
Who's Paula Deen?
26 June 2005
3 days 50 min
Wouldn't you know it that only an atheist would seek to question the nature of God at precisely the time of year when the faithful are trying to re-establish their relationship with God. The BBC usually do the same thing by screening some Royal Society lecture on Darwin (or suchlike) just to give some cheer to the cold and joyless atheists feeling a bit left out of all the carol-singing, nativity plays and goodwill to all men happening around them.
You know very well, daydreamer, that I'm just having a little dig ... no malice intended. As a matter of fact, I'll be as far from a carol service as I can possibly manage too.
As to your subject (i.e. that of the article in that organ of materialist orthodoxy, the New Scientist), I doubt whether I have enough days off this holiday to do justice to a reply. Indeed, I was just about to leave on an errand but I couldn't resist have some little say in the matter.
It seems to me that both the religious and the atheistic fundamentalists have a similar concept of God: the Old Testament Jehova figure; the old man in the clouds. Moreover, I think that the atheists are happy to keep it that way because old Jehova is such an easy target. What amazes me is that these atheists think that they are being so radical and anti-authoritarian in debunking this simplistic Sunday School nonsense.
I'm clearly not an atheist because I do have a concept of God (if we are to insist on that word) but it would be no contradiction for me to insist that there is no old man in the sky. There is no personality sitting in judgement. There is no vengeful father figure sending floods and plagues when his children mis-behave.
In my view, there is nothing that is not God. That's it. It is a philosophy rather than a religion, an idea rather than a faith. We are all playing out the eternal drama in the mind of God but we are fooled by the illusion of separation. We are not external to God and God is not external to us. How the process works in detail is a mystery to me and, I suspect, beyond human understanding.
By illusion, I don't mean "not real". The material world is real. But, without going too much into the philosophical discussion, my understanding is that the material is a manifestation of something more fundamental. That we might call "mind". Again, if we must use the word: the mind of God.
Merry Christmas all.
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
1 May 2004
1 year 15 weeks
The material world is the manifestation, or the translation of the energy of what we could call an eternal.
What we could call or god's consciousness is something that lies way beyond that.
But god is a word and a human concept made for human incapacity to visit worlds that are fundamentally anti-material.
In that way, one could say that this god does not exist.
But the god of religions as we know those deist religions, monotheistic or polytheistic, that god would be the one who was known as Lucifer. Not god but an eternal.
But all that does not really matter.
12 April 2007
1 hour 20 min
God is a human concept, as limited and imperfect as we are. It's like the Mathematical symbol of infinite; the symbol does not really encompass an infinity of numbers, but it helps to wrap our mind around such a concept —as much as we possibly can.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
1 May 2004
1 year 15 weeks
Hello Red,
Infinity also is a human concept.
12 April 2007
1 hour 20 min
Indeed it is. To an infinite creature, the concept would be incomprehensible —like that movie Cocoon, remember? ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
1 May 2004
1 year 15 weeks
It was pretty good too.
What I mean is that they may be no such thing as infinity.
Thinking about time and being clueless about time, because of course there is nothing to be known from thinking, man was given a concept of infinity, a concept that pretty much took upon itself to validate anything that would be outside of his field of experience.
And to infinity was paired a concept of god, another concept brought about by thought forms that in themselves represent the boundary of incarnated consciousness, the limit of what can be reflected upon.
The day that infinity is put to death is the day that god dies as a concept.
It is also the day that reflection and thoughts are replaced with access to information and verb that translates information.
The problem is not with god and concepts but with the psychological values assigned to those categories.
Therefore, the problem is that an experimental consciousness is the product of a mechanism of reflection upon the memory of the experience.
This is why everything on this planet is experimental, including science, even though nothing can be fundamentally known this way.
And the unknown is so much vaster than the known that we need a concept of infinity to position ourselves relative to the universe(s).
What link do you make with the movie Cocoon?
12 April 2007
1 hour 20 min
Oh, it was s silly link. The part where the leader of the aliens invite the old folks to go and live with them. One of the old-timers ask "forever?", and the leader replies "we don't know what forever means".
Back to your comment: as I've read what you've written over the years in several discussions, what little is clear to me is that you are inviting us to forego reasoning, experience and thought, in search for a more direct and instantaneous way of knowing things. I don't know if I'm interpreting this correctly, and I'm certainly don't know how we could go around doing that.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
1 May 2004
2 days 7 hours
by the time a child reaches 5 they have no memory of being 3 months old. This could be because the memory is not recorded as there is no pattern or understanding of what they are experiencing. The words eternity and god are labels we use for concepts we have no understanding of. We can imagine only what we can compare with as a pattern of understanding. Our mind works in visual metaphore. Without the stockpile of images and experience to draw on, we can not imagine these concepts.
"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.
1 May 2004
1 year 15 weeks
You see rightly.
Its a chicken an egg situation.
What comes first, thought or consciousness?
Anyone can answer that question without thinking about it.
Anyone can see that before thought happen consciousness is.
The problem is not with thoughts but with the vibration level of consciousness.
Thoughts always adjust to that level and reinforce the limit that that level creates.
So, if someone is to know something, it cannot be from thoughts since they represent the limit of what one thinks he knows.
But what he knows that he does not know he knows are with consciousness.
And consciousness has the ability to fetch information as the vibration level allows.
Because consciousness connects with worlds that are in their origin the source of the laws of intelligence.
Here on this planet intelligence is considered to be the ability to reflect upon and sort, categorize memory in an efficient manner. This is what we call the intellectual process.
There is an obvious limit to this process.
What I say is that were a person freed from the fear of being wrong, of being judged, of making a mistake, of creating pain and so on, he would allow himself to talk without allowing the thought process to filter and limit what he could say.
And he would then start learning himself from his own words.
He would then start creating forms that are beyond the memorial baggage that is encapsulated by the wall unto which he reflects.
The verb is the only process that man has today that allows breaking through the wall upon which he reflects and that thought forms reinforce.
And by exercising his verb an individual automatically starts increasing the vibration rate of his consciousness, a vibration rate that has been slowed to match that of an animal consciousness and left on its own to experiment a link between the spirit, what we call life, and a construction that is cellular consciousness and that represent the science of energy and its annals in action, a science that must be integrated for future use in new evolution models.
We can't just remain intelligent animals forever. At one point we will have to puncture the veil that maintained this experimental condition and see that everything other than the vibration of consciousness is part of that veil.
This includes the personality, the cultural background, the values, the urge of belonging and to associate, the preferences, all beliefs, everything that is considered human and all its virtues. All those things that were praised by philosophers and schools of thoughts.
A man does not need to be schooled in thinking. He must be the great adjuster of his own verb and start talking from what is nothing in appearance but that contains universal archives instead of being the parrot of what others would have him say.
Its like universities where the initial idiot posited this or that ridiculous idea upon which generation of people based their thesis, analyzing the dogma and dissecting it this and that way to reformulate it in an ever increasing manner of complexity but never realizing that they were simply and only building up on a lie.
The individual must at one point stop that process for himself because all he does until then is reflect and philosophize on the great lie that is the source of his own limit, praising it and calling it truth.
We will never learn anything with truth.
But we can use the intellectual process in the mean time to examine without prejudice all aspects of thought patterns and conventions upon which we used to base our conclusions and eliminate them one by one.
This can only be done once a person has truly lost all fears of losing this false sense of self, this self that really only amounts to a program, a conditioning that allowed philosophers, mystics and scientists to say that we were simply the result of our environment and of the influences of the petri dish in with we were brought out.
Therefore, the how lies not so much in what can be done but in what must cease being done.
The vibration is there but cannot occupy the same space that is occupied by the program.
The effect of this a a vibration that is muted instead of being vibrant. The result is a consciousness that sucks in from the outside instead of radiating. A consciousness that seeks to learn from the outside instead of learning from itself.
The result is then a consciousness that cannot create itself the form that results form its will and intelligence but that results from influences.
The result is a mind polarized by values and tore in internal conflicts between what must be done and what is wished for.
The result is powerlessness and slavery.
12 April 2007
1 hour 20 min
I will ponder upon this —I mean, what else *can* I do, right? :)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
12 April 2007
1 hour 20 min
Very nice concepts proposed there. Yes, it's rather amusing how modern activist atheist are very much entrenched with the Abrahmannic concept of a deity, whereas they are not able to propose something different aside from a rejection.
We are not external to God and God is not external to us. How the process works in detail is a mystery to me and, I suspect, beyond human understanding.
Niice! :)
It's so interesting how to some people John Lenon's 'Imagine' is an atheist ode, whereas one can see it as deeply religious.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
11 December 2008
1 year 34 weeks
Hello All,
I just thought I would offer this bit of reading material to anyone who has become frustrated/unsatisfied with the religious/spiritual material generally available to the population: "A Course in Miracles" by the "Foundation for Inner Peace".
(NOTE: Beware! Similarly titled books are now being sold by various publishers that are not the same as the original. And little variations in wording and message mean a lot with ACIM!)
This Course is composed of three separate books: 1. Text, 2. Workbook for Students, 3. Manual for Teachers. It is difficult for most people to read and understand. It requires patience and perseverance. But I have found, for myself, that all the real riddles of life are answered in it's pages/philosophy. It explains why this world is so fvcked up, why we are here in the first place, and how to "get out".
I was raised Catholic, but walked away from that after I left home at 18. After 7 years of no spiritual life (other than college, women, and drinking), I started on a spiritual path that started with "Illusions" by Richard Bach and "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck. In 1993 I added Edgar Cayce, Ruth Montgomery, Gordon Michael Scallion, Mary Summer Rain, and a host of New Age authors. In 2003 I committed myself seriously to ACIM and have never looked back.
ACIM is very challenging, but considering that the whole human race, for longer than recorded history, have pursued these answers, you wouldn't expect it to be too easy, would you?
Roll on 2010! (I'm sure its going to be a WILD RIDE!)
1 Solo Adventurer
P.S.: I worked 11+ years as an award-winning Phyical Scientist for the US Government, and that career meant nothing to me relative to ACIM. I didn't give up the career for ACIM, but who would trade a lump of clay for REAL FREEDOM?
1 May 2004
2 days 7 hours
I am pleased you have found a slot that has your answers.
But I would say to you that the path is very easy. Indeed many over a milemium have sort these answers only to find them vailed in lies and deciet. But the true understanding has been known for as long. It is really so simple that people miss it completely. Jesus taught it, budha spoke it, toaists lived it and most all through the ages knew it, but it has been perverted and used as a means of control to channel power and wealth to a small few.
The true fight against light and dark is, and has always been the understanding of this simple knowledge. YOU are devine and a creator. Simply put, we co-create with simple rules of love and appreciation for all living creatures.
The power of the EGO with it's greed and power hungry motives are the handbrake to our spiritual evolution.
Overcome the EGO and then you are truely free.
"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.