How important is religion in your life? What influence (if any) has it had on you? I don't mean to pry but I thought it may make for an interesting discussion. Religion has always been part and parcel of my life - it is embedded in my identity, which also means that I know only too well where it falls short. I would like to see whether religion does have a place in our lives, providing meaning to modern Australia or not?

Can religion be re-invigorated as a vital backdrop to contemporary Australian life?

"Religion" is a large category, but I take it to mean an institutionalised set of beliefs and practices associated on the face of it with "God" and a spiritual dimension to our lives. If we dig a little deeper we see that these institutions evolved with the socialisation of man to give authority to moral strictures and exert control over radical elements. Ideally, religion is the gluten in society.
In practice, though, this powerful control mechanism has been routinely abused, and religious institutions have historically been an influential means of mass-manipulation. The institutions have evolved symbiotically with governments to maintain the status quo, but their motivation, like any populist political party, is self-serving and preserving in perpetuity.
In the modern world, with the extraordinary rate and scope of change (so-called progressive development), conservative religious institutions are properly obsolete; unable to keep up or to offer plausible rationales for its continuing relevance. The kind of institutional ethics (a way of legitimising self-interest as a pseudo-universal) religions established presupposed cultural consummation: maturity and long-term stability.
Disintegrated post-modern society is gluten free.

Religion as a spiritual dimension to life, however, remains as a hangover for many the hapless individual. So I'm thinking now about the legitimacy of religion as an individualised component of modern life. Time permitting I'll post some thoughts on that later.

Lexi,
An interesting challenge, though I agree with Squeers that you perhaps should have explained what you understood by religion: there are many facets to this phenomenon and many definitions of the term emphasizing this or that facet. I tried to express this fact with my reference to the elephant and the blind men in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10496#174292.

Squeers provided one, albeit narrow, definition. His views on the topic are, I think, well known here, so you might be interested in my - being a hapless individual for whom the religious dimension to life remains as a hangover, to use his description - reaction to them, notably the quote from Toynbee in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10959#182998 and the sequel.

Lexi

I find myself in agreement with Squeers AND George.

Do you mean formal religion like, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism?

Or the more personal and individual spiritual feelings?

A quite brilliant insight, Squeers, I really like it.

>>Ideally, religion is the gluten in society.<<

Wikipedia describes gluten thusly:

"Gluten (from Latin gluten "glue") is a protein composite that appears in foods processed from wheat and related species, including barley and rye. It gives elasticity to dough, helping it to rise and to keep its shape, and often giving the final product a chewy texture."

I love the idea that religion gives society a "chewy texture", as well as allowing it to "rise and to keep its shape". Both are highly relevant images, with the "chewy texture" evident in the nature of different religions, and the internal tensions they create. And of course the rising and keeping in shape part is contained in the idea that religion is a form of social bonding that allows individuals to achieve more as members of an identifiable team.

But gluten, as we know, has another role. Many people experience gluten sensitivity, and in extreme cases, gluten intolerance.

At one end of this spectrum, there are people like myself who prefer to avoid religion because it makes them uncomfortable. In much the same way as I avoid wheat-based products, not because I have celiac disease, but because they give me indigestion. And I don't actually need bread, as I can get everything I need to support my life without subjecting myself to the inconvenience. Exactly as I can conduct myself with the same level of social cohesion, kindness to others and personal ethical behaviour, without the need to believe in the existence of a supreme being.

Then of course you have those who are pathologically allergic to religion - we all know who they are - and demonstrate the full range of intolerance symptoms.

Religion as society's gluten. Altogether, an almost perfect analogy, thank you Squeers.

Despite the fact that I'm an atheist, I'd have to say that Christianity is "embedded in my identity". It got there by osmosis, since I was born and raised in middle-class WASP Australian society in the 1950s, and it was therefore pretty well unavoidable, even though my parents were entirely non-religious. I went to Sunday School for a while because another kid's grandmother gave me money for doing so, but as soon as the bribery stopped I was out of there. But I can still remember the Lord's Prayer and essentially Christian values are undoubtedly implicated in many of my current implicit assumptions - once someone's enculturated it's very hard indeed to excise such influences, even if you might really want to.

On the other hand, notions of 'spirituality' are entirely alien to me. My life is not conducted by reference to imaginary gods or friends in the way that it is for religious people. That's not to say that I'm anti-religion - indeed, I think religious belief and practice perform numerous very positive social and individual functions.

So does sport. I have nothing against either except when they impinge uninvited upon my personal life. But it's a good topic for discussion, Lexi - I think that many problems derive from the fact that religious people have their faith so deeply embedded in their identities that they simply can't conceive of any other way of being. Should be interesting :)

religeon is next to nothing
god..[and thus his creations]..is eve-rything

religeon has yet affected me greatly
in preserving the words of the many messengers
[the holy texts words..alone validate 'religeon']

appart from that they got mostly god all wrong..
they dont got much right about the afterlife
they are too materialistic..
and not near spiritual enough

embed god in your id
religeon is just rite and ritual
[man made ritual]..

a left over from hoping magic words
are doing the magic...[lol]..in latin

its by our works/deeds
we will or we wont..
not fancy obscure/words

Dear Lexi,

Religion, the quest to re-unite with God, is the essence of life, in some more consciously so than in others. As our true identity is God, it is obvious to me that religion is embedded in my (or indeed anyone's) identity. I do however wonder whether this is also what you actually meant and unfortunately "which also means that I know only too well where it falls short" doesn't quite help me to understand your observation that "it is embedded in my identity" from YOUR point-of-view.

Religion in not supposed to give a meaning to "modern Australia" or the like. On the contrary if anything, it strips away the meaning from any materially-based quest. Some religious people say that the only meaningful thing is God, but I go further to say that Meaning is but an indulgence of the mind and as such it is not really necessary and often addictive too.

Can religion be re-invigorated as a vital backdrop to contemporary Australian life? To an extent, temporarily, but ultimately no one can serve two masters!

An interesting question. My response is much the same as Morganzola's: I'm an atheist but a cultural Christian. My ethics are basically derived from living in a Christian society, except that I'm also aware how much Protestant Christianity is also influenced by and contributed to 18th century rationalism etc.

I have been an atheist since I was about 5 or 6 (although of course I didn't know the word then). But I can date the first critical ideas I had about religion by where I lived at the time, and I was conscious throughout a youth of church and Sunday school (like Morganzola, also influenced by my grandmother!) of my underlying disbelief in what I was told, which resulted in a complete departure from church/Sunday school about age 15.

Starting as a teenager, I've read extensively in comparative religion and concluded that Christianity was a development of earlier religions and had no more claim to veracity than any other (just as Islam is a further development again). I studied biological science, moved into archaeology and history, work in heritage and write history. 'Heritage' is what is important to people, and is inherently about culture and cultural beliefs. I see the trajectory of my personal thinking and my work as underpinned by a curiosity and fascinated puzzlement about why the world is what it is, and why people act and believe the way they do.

To conclude, I have never believed there is a 'god' or 'gods', while I recognise that other people have always believed there is. This reality (some people believe, some don't) would suggest to me that there is some brain function controlling 'belief'. I think that religious belief is intrinsic to human cultures and was evolutionary advantageous. Probably doubt/criticism/disbelief is also intrinsic, to maintain checks and balance (ie to limit negative results of belief). So whether we believe or not, religion is embedded in humans.

PS I am rather fond of the Ngatyi (pronounced Nai-tchee), one version of the Rainbow Serpents of Aboriginal religions. I'd recommend 'Two Rainbow Serpents Travelling', by Beckett and Hercus, downloadable from ANU E-Books. The two Ngatyi don't specifically create the land they travel across, they 'name' it (by naming it they bring it into human reality cf parallels with Europeans appropriating land and giving it European names). And the Ngatyi have a sense of humour, which I have always thought was lacking in the Christian god. If we are made in 'god's image', where did we get our sense of humour from?

My apologies for not explaining what I meant by religion. I'm referring to relgion as a universal social institution - in my case
the Catholic Church into which I was Baptized and which has been a part and parcel of my life.

I shall write more later on - but I hope this helps.

lexi quote...""I'm referring to relgion
as a universal social institution""

uni-verse-all?

or do you mean planetary?
or more to the point...localised institution'$..

where the west is pre-dominantly
*for the various xtian based faith based institutes
and the mid east to the mahamoudian..far east buddist..[institutions]

instituted and constituted locally..
to exploit proffit or institute..local control over their local yokal/'followers'

in trying to get to the organised
of the instituted organs

religeons are clearly material realms
with physical penus envey...building ever bigger their mosks/cathedrals/temples..[ie physical stuff]

jesus NEVER neded a creed
only rarely preached in any temple
he came to reveal the learnings of the spirit
not turn followrs into rocks*..[corner stone*rs]

im trying to reply your questions...
quote..""How important is religion in your life?""

regardless of how 'important'
the real inportance is th.."how"..in your life's importancies

'"What influence(if any)has it had on you?""
again its not about us...but should be about you

""it is embedded in my identity,
which also means that I know only too well
..*where it falls short.""

THIS IS THE REAL QUESTION

you are more than your belief
what is more important..that you DO*

what you believe or do
isnt as important as your choice...[that you CHOSE to do]

just cause you 'doudt' your belief
IS NO REASON to doudt that you believe

[or even doudting...
your...dis*belief]

our individual choice is sacred
thus so the belief..that educates our choices

you are what you do*

not what you believe
or think..*you 'might'.."do"....
................................one day..

lol

""does religeon..have a place in our lives,""?

we NEED others...[man is not meant to belief anything
but man is meant..to try and live with others
live in this realm...and the next
AS WELL living..being happy
with/in ourselves..]

others are important
but not important enough
to do ANYTHING..against y*our beliefs


is religeon..""providing..meaning to modern Australia or not?""

of course..the govt minesters/judges..etc all swear oath
on their own instituted..local holy texts..

in this alone
religeon if only in part
provides reason/meaning..to..the institutional/district..called..*'australia'
[great south lands
Van Die Mens land
land downunder
OZzzzzzz
etc]

""Can religion be re-invigorated
as a vital backdrop
to contemporary Australian life?""

no we must respect our elders
keep the good...and respectfully
let the lies go gently to sleep..giving good for ill

belief cant be a back-drop
its a core..YOU ARE living your beliefs*

your works..speak for the 'real you'
not what you said..but what you did/do

religeon as we presently know it..is dead and gone

JESUS SAID..we can KNOW god...one to one..
[a personal living loving good]..god
emmanuel..[god within]

[good IS*..with*in us all]

we need to grow respect..for all*
[giving good..back to god..the only good]

teach kids..the vairious..'truths'
then let them chose..

nothing to 'win'
nothing to loose

if you got belief use it
prove your belief is right

be-LIEF*
be love love
love is more than a word
or a belief..if you relly love love
you would be loving the li-ving..[lo-ving]..you do*

have i told you i love you
how else...can i better prove it by works
yet all i got is words...[and i know talk is cheap]

That's a bit of a shame, Lexi.

>>I'm referring to relgion as a universal social institution - in my case the Catholic Church into which I was Baptized and which has been a part and parcel of my life.<<

It narrows the discussion to the impact on us of social institutions, rather than the need/willingess/predilection to believe in a supreme being.

For what it's worth, I'd say religion is as much "embedded" as your nationality. If you are born Australian, you are likely to consider that an "embedded" feature. Whether it means anything more to you than the name of the country on the cover of your passport, is a separate issue.

Some people - not very many, I suspect - actually take the trouble to shrug off the one (nationality/religion) and acquire another. That requires a level of dedication to an abstract concept that few people, I suspect, either have, or aspire to.

I have alway given this subject a lot of thought.
I take it as read any follower of any religion would have the same answer.
I was bought up in an active Christian house, and was Christian , then very active Christian until mid life.
It the boundary's to live by remains in my DNA but I no longer believe.
I do however very strongly,think those rules and boundary's are a positive for us all.
And that maybe a reason for current problems in our community include the lack of belief and hence the boundary's.
Firmly and forever a nonbeliever but it would not disappoint me if one united religion world wide for those who need want it formed the rules to live by would be of benefit.
I offer the late Rev Ted Noffs head of Sydney's home Church for the down and outs Wayside Chapel as a measure.
He said he was a Christian a Muslim and went on to name just about every religion, one thing he was is a force for good.

Pericles,

thanks for your amusing riff on gluten. I've just finished making a baker's cupboard and we're all into bread making (which has a certain spiritual dimension to it), so the metaphor sprang readily to mind.
The question is, do we want our society gluten free, or chewy? I'd say chewy, but I prefer Reformational ideology to Catholicism; it's a less dogmatic or mystical institution, and at it's best it offers a modest individualism that runs counter to the excesses and alienation of our gluten-free late-capitalist societies.
But institutions in general are conservative and might tend to bog us down at a time when agility in the face of a rapidly changing world would seem to be preferable. In any case I see all institutions as corrupt, more or less, the older they are the more so.
On the other hand the fabric (cathedrals and choirs) and traditions of institutions certainly add a corporeal richness to life.

George,
It's been too long.
My views on religion aren't quite so well-known as you might think, even to myself, as they continue to be reconsidered, and I remain open to debate on the subject. I am pretty much persuaded too that the human need for a spiritual or idealistic dimension to life is based on something real about us, that it's more than any of the competing materialist theories that would dismiss it as illusion.

@Squeers: Religion as a spiritual dimension to life, however, remains as a hangover for many the hapless individual.

Hangover, as in a something in our genes that we have no control of and can't get rid of type hangover. Rather life homosexuality. For some spirituality is not a choice.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity :

"contribution of genes to variation in religiosity (called heritability) increases from 12% to 44% and the contribution of shared (family) effects decreases from 56% to 18% between adolescence and adulthood."

I am not sure why am individual who is spirituality would be considered hapless. I am not spiritual, but there are things I envy in those who are. And things I don't, of course. The ledger seems at best even to me.

Religion is embedded in my identity to the point that I was born into and raised as a Catholic. Which means that whatever our religious beliefs may be, we usually learn them from other people through socialisation into a particular faith. My religious convictions were influenced by the social context in which I lived.

However, things began to change with university, travel, and living overseas. I began to question what organized religion had done to the world and I finally began to realise that true religion is internal, not external. Today, I'm probably not a very good Catholic. I don't go to church very often. But I still find the need to go sometimes. I find that life without a conscious awareness of God is difficult, and I go to church because that's theoretically where I will find Him. But I don't go back as the spiritually half-interested, complacent congregants that many of my relatives were when I was growing up. I go back with an interest in actually having a religious experience.
That probably doesn't make sense - but there it is. I may not have all the answers to the big questions in life - I'm still on my own journey of discovery. I question my own beliefs up to a certain point. I may no longer believe deeply in traditional religion, but so far I haven't found a satisfying substitute.

Lexy, thanks for the topic.

The word "religion" has both a psycho-spiritual and a social meaning. Much needless confusion and heat in discussions results from misunderstanding in which sense a person uses the word.

There is the sense in which you are using the word: an affiliation with an institution which purports to perpetuate certain theological beliefs. And there is the other meaning: a state of being tied to, or aiming to be tied to, a centre in one's inner life that may be called "God" or something else, or may even be unnamed. (These distinctions are in my own words.)

In the second sense religion has always been an active and essential component in my life. As an institutional attachment religion played little or no part until I was about ten years old and was introduced to church (Anglican). Until about fourteen years of age I was an active parishioner, and then divorced myself from Christianity. For decades I explored spirituality quite intensely in a number of ways outside of any institution. In my late forties, both the church and I having changed considerably, I decided I could develop spiritually within the church and joined a parish. For the last twenty years I have continued as a consistent worshipper, although there have been radical changes in my theological understanding and in my practices.

You ask whether the (institutional) religion be re-invigorated as a vital backdrop to contemporary Australian life. From my experience I must say it can and is being "re-invigorated" in different ways and to varying degrees in some quarters. What I call vigour, however, is the energy which the institution can help generate for each person's spiritual growth. The institution becomes moribund when it is preoccupied with fortifying its own structures and enforcing dogma that is meaningless to today's humanity.

No Lexi, is the short answer.

Lexi,
I think what you wanted to say was that being a Catholic is embedded in your identity, since some kind of religion, if suitably (e.g. psychologically) defined, is embedded in everybody’s identity.

I can see your point but from what I have read from you on this OLO I cannot agree that you were “probably not a very good Catholic”. The Church is a millennia old, not only institution but also cultural, intellectual and moral framework, consequently one has to look at it - and at our relation to it - from a historically detached perspective.

Was somebody, who happened to live e.g. between 1492 and 1503 but could not approve of Alexander VI, necessarily not a good Catholic? The Church survived for at least another five centuries not just in spite of Alexander VI but mainly because it did not let its “sub specie aeternitatis” vision get blinded by amoral leaders like him. Today it is the problem of not so much amoral as self-centered and shortsighted leaders. You don’t seem to have lost this vision. Maybe you are sometimes just a little bid like those first two little pigs - and there are many good Catholics like that - in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2909&page=0#66836.

Nevertheless:
>>But I don't go back as the spiritually half-interested, complacent congregants that many of my relatives were when I was growing up. I go back with an interest in actually having a religious experience.<<

This somehow reminds me of:
“God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” (Luke 18:11-12)

Thanks Lexi.

I have a similar background to both Morganzola and Cossomby, attended Sunday School as was expected in a small country town. Parents not particularly religious. Rejected the bible at age 12 for reasons ranging from outright contradictions to the paternalistic tone. Do not require a "subsitute" religion as I find the surrounding world, universe and everything of great awe and satisfaction.

Have had some experiences for which I cannot find sufficient explanation, but none of them provided evidence of any of the world's religions, just that there is always more to be learned.

Pericles

Thanks for the great gluten report.

George, it's good to have you with us again. Thank you for your reminder of the Toynbee perspective on the "true mission" of religions. Squeers' aversion to the mystical probably led him to reject that view at the time.

Squeers, in that interchange about Toynbee between you and George (on the other thread to which he has linked us)you seem to take "higher religion" to be more subservient to the state or prevailing culture. I would suggest that Toynbee was meaning exactly the opposite: the concern of higher religion "is the relation between each individual human being and the trans-human presence of which the higher religions offer a new vision.” I would suggest that your current focus on religion as an "individualised component of modern life" is perhaps starting to roughly align with Toynbee's.

George's elephant analogy seems pertinent once again. Maybe, despite our denials, we're all sitting in the same room with this "presence" looming as large as an elephant. And yet, because every human being is unique in perceptual and cognitive qualities, we cannot all completely agree on a definition of it.

Thank You so much for all your inputs. They've been varied and I value each and everyone of them. I think that one of the positive signs in contemporary society is the interest in meditation and spirituality. Some of the most widely read and well-known spiritual writers today are people such as American monk Thomas Merton, the
English Benedictine, Bede Griffiths, who lived on a Christian ashram or hermitage in India, and Thomas Moore the American author of the best selling book, "Care of the Soul," (1992). I used to believe that only nuns, brothers and priests were able to be "spiritual," and that this was typical of religious orders, especially contemplative orders, and that ordinary people such as myself were not privy to "spirituality." I felt this way, until I went on my first "retreat." It was a week-end of prayer with an emphasis on
silence and contemplation. In those gardens of solitude, the experience for me proved to be a turning point - that has stayed with me every since. Through prayer I have found a peace that is not of this world.

Thanks for the thread, Lexi.

I think it's interesting to contemplate the varying degrees of identification gleaned from religion when comparing the experience of modern secular man with his medieval counterpart.

From an essay by William Barrett titled "The Decline of Religion":

"The decline of religion in modern times means simply that religion is no longer the uncontested centre and ruler of man's life, and that the church is no longer the final and unquestioned home and asylum of his being....The waning of religion is a much more concrete and complex fact than a mere change in conscious outlook; it penetrates the deepest strata of man's total psychic life....Religion to medieval man was not so much a theological system as a solid psychological matrix surrounding the individual's life from birth to death, sanctifying and enclosing all its ordinary and extraordinary occasions in sacrament and ritual. The loss of the church was the loss of a whole system of symbols, images, dogmas and rites which had the psychological validity of immediate experience....In losing religion, man lost the concrete connection with a transcendent realm of being; he was set free to deal with the world in all its brute objectivity. But he was bound to feel homeless in such a world which no longer answered the needs of his spirit...To lose one's psychic container is to be cast adrift, to become a wanderer on the face of the earth. Henceforth, in seeking his own human completeness man would have to do for himself what he once had done for him, unconsciously, by the church, through the medium of its sacramental life...."

Poirot,
Thanks for the interesting quote. Of course, "man" here has to be read as "Western man" (and woman).

Lexi,
Your last post confirms my impression that you are more of a genuine Christian (of the Catholic kind) than most of us can claim to be. Especially your last sentence would indicate that your experience of spirituality is “genuine” in the sense that it is not seen as emanating solely from this, material, world as is the case with many Buddhists and even some atheists (“secular spirituality”, c.f. http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/features/finding-the-sacred-in-the-secular).

Dear George,

I also commend Lexi for her genuine spirituality.

"your experience of spirituality is “genuine” in the sense that it is not seen as emanating solely from this, material, world as is the case with many Buddhists and even some atheists"

I read Martin's article, but he did not mention Buddhists at all. Just because some Buddhists do not believe in God does not imply that they consider spirituality to emanate from the material world. Many Buddhists actually consider spirituality to emanate from Shunyata, the void.

Another mix-up is that the article is named "Finding the sacred in the secular", but SACRED and SPIRITUAL are not identical: many atheists, including Buddhists, consider material aspects to be sacred, but in contrast, I suspect, very few would consider the spirit to be emanating from the material (the later would be more descriptive of primitive/pagan tribes).

Dear Yuyutsu,
>>I read Martin's article, but he did not mention Buddhists at all.<<

Yes, “secular spirituality”, for me a new term until recently, is being used only in connection with atheists, and I gave the link just to explain this. As for Buddhists, maybe instead of “many” I should have written “some Buddhists”, since, of course, not all Buddhists see their spirituality reducible to its material carrier. Some certainly do, at least our atheist friends claim so, and I don’t think it is just a wishful thinking on their part. In my opinion, classical Buddhism, like e.g. pre-Enlightenment Christianity, could not distinguish strictly what was and what was not "material", i.e. accessible through science.

TODAY one can understand what I called Sagan’s maxim (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9389#150883), and agree or disagree with it. In the second case that extra realm can be called the Divine, the Holy Other (Rudolf Oto), the spiritual realm etc. Or Shunyata, if you like. At this level Christians and some Buddhists believe the same thing about the irreducibility (to the material) of this Reality, only model it differently.

One can make only a posteriori statements about what was and should and what should not be considered material in the original, pre-scientific, context. Dalai Lama in his “The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality” (Morgan, 2005) says

“if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims”.

Well, a contemporary Christian scholar would never make a similar statement about Christianity. Not because it is not true, but because it would be void. [Like my grandfather’s joke, “when St Michael hears the church bells he kneels and prays” (St Michael was a statue). Of course, this implication is not wrong only void.]

Nevertheless I'd appreciate your opinion whether Dalai Lama can or cannot be counted among those who “consider spirituality to emanate from the material world”. (ctd)

(ctd)

I agree with you that there is some confusion with the words “spiritual” and “sacred”. See for instance http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/06/17/137219683/science-sacred-spiritual-what-is-in-a-word that you might also be interested in. I do not agree with the contention of this article - and I presume neither would you - but I think we cannot ignore these attempts by some atheists/materialists to appropriate the concept of “spirituality” or (Otto’s and Eliade’s concepts of) “the Sacred”. And I do not think this is necessarily regrettable.

As for myself, this article reminds me of the old joke about the missionary and cannibals (The cannibals valued the missionary’s ability to forecast the weather, until they found out that this was due to his rheumatic leg. So they killed and ate him, except for that leg that they used as a barometer.)

one must be carefull..[re meditation]
i have met many unfunctional buddists

see how the issue is to reach nothingness
to make your mind consiously go silent
[well thats ok if your mind is filled with negativity
but a truelly silent mind cant judge good from vile]

dont think that they are all wrong
for some mind silence is a blessing
but for many numb minded 'others'...
their true problem is getting the thing going

sorry bout going off topic
but spirituality..is an important thing..[being able to visualise perfection or even beyond the mundane..seeing the nothingness..is as bad or worse than believing after dead is nothing

we are spirits..[energy]
sciene tells us energy cant be created
nor destroyed...[but life proves energy can be moved
going from one living sperm into one living eggs...in a living body]

life is all energy
our senses...trigger activate awareness
thats too big a thing to trust to materialistic athiest's

science is and can yet be wrong
as i have proved at many topics

i was born into science
found after living half..my life god free
that there is a living loving good[god/energy]

evolution is a theory
full of flaws

much of the other stuff/evolving fluff
specificly taught as gospil science truth..is in error as well
but that lie..is embedded into our ignorances..cause were too lazey to filter lies from truth

ie ask those with opinions..
to prove their 'belief'

but..*cause were too dumb to test the science
or too numb to test the good of belief in god
we clearly get as we were given

[rubbish in...rubbish out]

thats why jesus said
by their works...will we know them
if they have good fruits..the tree of their life is good

let the tares live with the wheat
till harvest time..[where our fruit/works...get their just returning]

to save one...[not just u]..is the key..in the next realm
so wether you believe it or not....more shall be given*
your not making a contract..you made a choice

god has grace/mercy..love
for even the least of the living
look at some of the vile..he yet sustains to live
[knowing in time we all get into love/grace and mercy..to others

as well as ourselves]

Dear George,

Thank you for introducing me to Sagan's Maxim. There are however more than two possible presuppositions and I'm afraid that I subscribe to neither of those two options that Sagan presented (nor to the third, that of sitting on the fence).

Your quote from the Dalai Lama is very interesting, but I'm afraid that I cannot pass judgment on him without reading the whole book. My wild guess though, is that the Dalai Lama did not consider the possibility of science contradicting the very essence of Buddhism, such as the Four Noble Truths, but rather considered it technically possible for science to contradict some of Buddhism's subsidiary teachings (for example, what happens to our spirits after we die).

Atheists long for God just as anyone else, it's only that they feel nauseated by the CONCEPT of God, as propagated by religious establishments, so they search for equivalent concepts which they can live with. There is nothing wrong with them intuiting a sense of sacredness in nature just as Christians may find sacredness in gospel images, symbols, sculptures and buildings.

A point to remember is that "sacred" attributes physical objects (including locations and eras) whereas nothing "spiritual" can be found in the universe, or accessed objectively by science or such. While there are no spiritual objects, material objects are made sacred by the fact that people dedicate them as pointers to the spirit. God, for example, is not sacred, but God's name is!

Dear Yuyutsu,
Thank you for a considered and inspiring reply. However, some misunderstandings should be cleared.

It is I who called Sagan’s statement “the Cosmos is all that there is” (representing in a nutshell his world-view) “Sagan’s Maxim”, and in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9389#150883 I just presented this together with its logical negation, i.e. A and nonA (though I am aware that the clarity of this depends on the clarity of the definition of what Sagan calls Cosmos and what I, and many others, call “the material world accessible through science and mathematics”). So please explain what you mean by subscribing to, as it stands, neither A nor nonA.

Neither do I understand how could “science … contradict … Buddhism’s subsidiary teachings (on), what happens to our spirits after we die” if spirits are not part of the material world science has access to. (Christians believe in the soul surviving after death, however neither “soul” nor “after” in this context - as these abstractions are understood in our 21st century - are concepts available to natural science to make statements about: they are part of the model of non-material reality). So again, please explain whether or not you think “our spirits” are available to natural science to make statements about. (ctd)

(ctd)
>>they feel nauseated by the CONCEPT of God, as propagated by religious establishments<<
By religious you apparently mean mainly Christian. Again, I can understand that atheists do not accept the “supernatural” realm (Shunyata?), and Buddhists the model of it that includes the concept of God seen as a “loving father” you can communicate with. However, it is really seldom that Buddhists, even atheists, would refer to the idea of a loving father as nauseating.

Years ago I read D. T. Suzuki’s classical ”Outlines of Mahayana Budhism” (Schocken Books, 1973), so I know that some Buddhists could be rather confrontational towards Christianity. Today the majority are not: I had a friend - ethnically Chinese - who went through being a Buddhist monk, converted to Catholicism, even studied theology in Rome but decided to marry instead. He was very much convinced that Catholicism and Buddhism have a lot to offer each other. He made me understand the Buddhist perspective much better than Suzuki’s confrontational book.

I agree with your last paragraph, however I think you are confusing the adjective “sacred” as popularly understood, with the concept of “The Sacred” in the sense of e.g. Rudolf Otto’s “The Holy Other”.

Dear George,

Obviously I only related to what I read in your article, since this is the first time that I come across Sagan's Maxim.

I have no idea whether or not "the material world accessible through science and mathematics" is all that there is, or in other words whether science can potentially answer each and every material question. However, while this may indeed be an intriguing question for some, I consider it merely a material issue with no spiritual significance.

Coming back to what you wrote there (which I took to be called "Sagan's Maxim"), I reject (1) on the grounds that the material world is unreal, an illusion (so if it's all there is, then nothing is), and I reject (2) on the grounds that God is not a "something".

Relating to "spirits in the after-life", my answer is quite simple: Certain Buddhist schools (as well as other religions) discuss with detail the journey of the soul/spirit once it leaves the body (take for example the Tibetan book of the dead). I don't claim to be an expert in that matter as I retained no personal out-of-body memories, but if those descriptions are true, then it is all about some subtler realms, it's about us having subtler bodies which do remain even once our gross body dies. Such bodies would still be material - yes, of a subtler matter, but still of a matter, and therefore I cannot exclude the possibility that science will one day be able to research it.

Some atheists, BTW, do believe in the supernatural.

Atheists and Buddhists may refer to the idea of God as nauseating for totally different reasons:
Atheists- because it reminds of them of the [Judeo-]Christian establishment.
Buddhists- because it feeds and gratifies the mind with abstract ideas, which are a hindrance to Nirvana.

Buddha himself was [deliberately] ambiguous on the issue of God and gave conflicting answers, depending on whom he was talking with at the time.

I am convinced that Jesus and Buddha were in total agreement. It's only the fallible organizations of their followers which occasionally clash.

Lexi, I believe that we are all born with a clean plate as far as religion and spirituality is concerned.

The younger we are when first 'taught' about whatever God our parents believe in, the harder it is to think about what is really true, and what is essentially fairytales.

Luckily, most of us these days grow up and start thinking for ourselves, and make up our own minds about how 'spiritual' we are, and what is real and what is not.

Having been brought up with a strict Catholic Mother and a strict Catholic education from years one to twelve, I had the Christian God rammed down my throat on almost a daily basis.

Once I left home, I went out into the real world and really started thinking about what was absolute rubbish in the Bible, and what parts of it I could use to better myself with.

I believe you can never really get religion out of your identity if you grow up with it, but most of us eventually think for ourselves.

Dear Yuyutsu,
>>I have no idea whether or not "the material world accessible through science and mathematics" is all that there is <<
In other words you are :sitting on the fence: as described it in your earlier post. Fair enough, I can understand and accept that.

>> or in other words whether science can potentially answer each and every material question.<<
No “or” here: whether science can or cannot potentially answer every question about the world it investigates is UNRELATED to the question whether or not you believe in the EXISTENCE of a world beyond its realm of investigation.

>> I reject (1) on the grounds that the material world is unreal, an illusion (so if it's all there is, then nothing is),<<
I can understand when Dawkins says that belief in God as a delusion (though I disagree with him), however I cannot understand what a 21st century man means by calling the OBJECT OF SCIENCE'S INVESTIGATION an illusion. Perhaps you meant to say that what scientists investigate are only phenomena, or only APPEARANCES of reality, but that reality as such (Kant’s Ding-an-sich) is directly inaccessible. That touches upon some nuances in the philosophy of science. This is different from the absurd assumption that what science investigates does not exist at all (except in the mind of the investigator - this at least is how Dawkins understands his delusion).

I know that Buddhists speak of the material world as an illusion, however that is a language that in modern times - when so much more is know about science -needs an appropriate interpretation (like e.g. the biblical creation in six days). (ctd)

(ctd)
>> and I reject (2) on the grounds that God is not a “something”<<
Neither my (1) nor (2) contains the word God, and the Something there stands for the extra realm that can be called the Divine, the Holy Other (Rudolf Otto), the spiritual realm or Shunyata if you like, as I stated in a previous post. The concept of God is an ADDITIONAL extra when modelling this Realm (where Christians and Buddhist part ways) as explained in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9389#150883.

>>Some atheists, BTW, do believe in the supernatural.<<
That must depend on your definition of “atheist” and/or “supernatural”, otherwise it is a contradictio in se.

I know of many Christians, Buddhists and atheists who would never use the word “nauseating” in this context for whatever reason. You obviously wouldn't be one of them.

Please excuse my capitals, I did not mean to shout; it is just unfortunate that OLO does not accept italics or underlines.

Crabsy,

with reference to your post of Saturday, 9 July 2011 12:41:26 PM, and apologies for the delayed response; I've been having computer problems.

To begin with, I don't have an "aversion for mysticism". Though possibly I can't claim to have been absolutely consistent on the subject over time, I have an aversion for credulous or presumptuous rationalisations of mystical experience. I respect the human capacity for such experience but am sceptical of the headlong and rapt propensity to assign causes. Moreover I argue that the material should take priority over the mystical, whereas to prefer the latter over the former (excluding genuine asceticism) is either the indulgence of privilege, conceit, neglect of responsibility, or combinations thereof.

As for the thread George alludes to, I've argued elsewhere that Jesus' teachings were fundamentally anti-institutional: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12082#208177 and, same thread, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12082#208232
If I understand Toynbee to be promoting "higher" or "universal" religion, for its own sake "and" as the dynamic of history, then I take issue on both counts, though more strongly with the latter than the former. I'm half persuaded that a universal morality "would" conduce to a more peaceful world, if it was "religiously" observed rather than abused (and this was Toynbee's position, I take it). But I'm bemused should anyone profess that such has ever been actually realised. History is witness that such institutions, Catholicism being a prime example, comprise centuries of corruption and intellectual and bloody tyranny, up to this day.
On the more important point, for me, I don't believe that ideology (religion) is the prime dynamic force in history. Marx's means of production seems much more plausibly the prime-mover, though unlike Marx I do suspect ideology is a powerful influence that harasses "progress". I also think humans have an innate potential for goodness and greatness, that alas is easily thwarted.
In answer to your original question then, Lexi, since institutionalised religion has been hitherto corrupt and parochial (despite Toynbee's hopes), it's lamentable that it has and continues to exert such influence on so many hapless individuals (gladly excluding George).

Thank You so much for your continued inputs - please keep them coming.
As I've written in the past - what some have done in the name of religion, projecing their neuroses, even perpetrating evil on the world, does not make religion as a mystical phenomenon invalid. It is unfortunate that our religious institutions have far too often become handmaidens of the status quo, while the genuine religious experience is anything but that. I suppose it is simplistic to think that some
Australians turned away from organised religion and now are coming back, as though that's the whole story. I turned away from religion, found that life without a conscious awareness of God is difficult, and now I'm back to religion because that is, theoretically, where to find Him. But I'm back with an interest in actually having a religious experience. I feel that organised religion will not be the same. It will have to step up to bat, or it will wither away. Organised religious institutions hopefully are in for a huge transformation, for the simple reason that people have become genuinely religious in spite of them.

Dear George,

I don't know whether or not there is/are world(s) beyond science's realm of investigation. Nevertheless, I consider this a material question, not a question about God (or anything spiritual for that matter). I do reject as ridiculous and logically-inconsistent any such notion of an extra "spiritual" realm such as Cloud #9 where God sits on a throne, listens to angelic music, eats ambrosia and drinks nectar.

I certainly do not feel nauseated by God - I LOVE God and my love of Him is most central to my life. Sadly though, I know many people who do feel nauseated upon hearing the word "God", and the most common reason is that they identify "God" with the false ideas propagated about Him by organized "religion" (such as my neighbours telling me as a child who grew up in the Jewish tradition, that if I switched on the light [in the common stairway] on the Sabbath, then God would kill my mum).

Science investigates the objective reality, the material, that which exists, and so it must: objective reality could consist of a single realm or 20 realms or an infinite number of realms, but what's common between them is existence - which is an illusion.

The Truth beyond the illusion of existence, is God - there is nothing but God, yet God does not exist, He is not an object and cannot be observed by science, by our senses or by our mind. What we truly are, is God and I believe that we can come to know Him directly, as our true nature, once we shed our attachments to the illusion.

Dear Squeers,

Asceticism does not happen overnight. We need to begin where we are and yes, we need to perform our duties in this world and we won't get closer to God by neglecting our responsibilities. Yet if we are wise, we would lean towards gradually minimizing our worldly duties rather than endlessly taking up new ones.

lexie..QUOTE..""back to religion
because that is,..theoretically, where to find Him.""

lexie..the theory is missleading
peoples main comforts..is in its companionship
its best achievement..is preserving the words of its many mess-angers

those who leave...in the main leave..because they expected too much from a material institution..[or rather xtians..doing un/christ-ian ]things..

as jesus put it
'honouring god with their lips'
ie not their works

jesus pointed out that 'who shall lead you..WILL serve you"
[will be a good tree..that bears many good fruits]

recall the parable of the unfaithfull/servant
some we saved[the gift]..and saved many others
one burried his 'being saved'..and saved only himself

think...about his teachings
not stoning an adulteror..by writing in the dirt
'thou shalt not kill''...

or the insanity of those claiming to be his own..
yet..drinking his blood...eating his flesh...
and putting gods son..BEFORE GOD

""an interest in actually having a religious experience.""

life..*is this experience
[think...know..science cant make life
life can only come from life]

yes science has decieved recently that IT*..'made' life
but check that claim..thety scoopped the dna..OUT of..a LIVING cell
inserted a shiort string of dna...and the bateria lives]

that only proves..one..they first needed gods bacteria
and two that life is REALLY amasing..cause it not only STILL lives

without its dna...
it actualy replicates the fake..dna as well

your religious experience is realisation
that you live...that life lives
because good[god lives]

and we got no clue...as to how come
nor how he did it..but got the best minds testing THEORES*

till them..KNOW...god dont judge
till we give up ..judging others...

BY judging others
we push ourselves AWAY from GOOD

he lets us
because he knows

we all 'get it'..in the end*

[ie be humble...]
faith charity love[grace mercy]

ie

[give back to god..
that only god can give..:life
life sustained by the light into love
via logic grace m3rcy..generosity..deeds works]

..i agree...
""organised religion will not be the same.""

we can only hope..
or we can take is as a given
and love this oppertuinity..to help others

[trusting god created us
clever enough to resist the ignorant..
who think to take god..out of the picture COMPLETLY..with theories that conflict the science/fact..and give theory like evolution..*as fact]

""It will have to step up to bat""
your doing just fine,...

try to think..who needs you to feel guilt...
who seks to lord it over you..via your guilt/fear..hopelessness?

""or it will wither away."'

god dont make rules..!
men do..[assume this or that is a law
a constant..yet the only constant..is god sustained life
right up to when you began living..you passed it on
he sustains us ALL..each our every breath
sustains our heart to beat every heart

[as long as life...'lives'..
then we know god lives
but not how]

""Organised religious institutions hopefully
are in for a huge transformation,""

again i agree

but recall they are being attacked materially
as well as spiritually...from outside and within
this prevents them..from thinking of others...

as well as casting doudt..about the deeds of SOME
which dont serve good [of god]..with good fruit
[but recall..tares and wheat..TILL harvest]

ie dont judge them
they will in time reveal[judge]..themselves
by their FRUIT..ie their deeds..their works reveal what they are

and there is no shame
no guilt...no blame

god made EACH of us to tell the full story

think is the story [education]..complets by removing the truth
[it cant be the WHOLE* truth...couldnt wouldnt be holy

""people have become genuinely religious
in spite of them.""-selves?

no they dont
if we dont want to know..
then god gives us a different 'body'
and lo we dont even think of it..[how deep is a bacteria's mind]
can it write shhhakespear?..never that needs a human incarnation

we as human
as at the highest evolution
we each earned EVERY STEP...have now reached the peak
chose what we next become..[before god just gave us bodies to suit our natures]

[recall that king that grazed 8 years..as a beast of the field...
or eve's talking serphant?]..

mate thats re=incarnation
giving each as they wish

hell is hell..because not everyone
*wants to be 'in' heaven

thus they CHOSE to reject the light...
CHOSE to live in hell

rejecting the goods of love and light..
ALLOWED to chose to love hate
allowed to be a beast

its about freewill
god dont use force/threat or fear..etc

its no use telling them hell's horrors..isnt real
that only good..from god is real
cause they think[wrongly]
or nat at all*

why does god *allow evil...
or why dont god fix it
cause adults chose what they need

se the fear/lies..thats clearly not good
nor is the delusion of the life giver judging others
or that god will judge them...

when thats all demonic in-spirated..
or simoply born of ignorance/fear

if its lot love/grace/mercy
if its NOT fully good
its not of* god..

meaning we chose
to make..that wrong..fear
*seem real..

seem important..
seem all powerfull

chose to hang on-to past hurt...
chose to hate/fear..
*chose...greed...
*chose..envey
etc

instead..*chose to see god [good]..in every living thing
because just in living...loving..'other'..
you are getting the real deal...

[loving god..
by loving neighbour]

your allready there dear

Dear OUG, (Johan),

Beautifully expressed as always. Thank You.
You write from the heart.

I realise that religious institutions, as such, are not the only
arbiters of religious experience. They are consultants and frameworks, but they are not God Himself. As I've quoted in the past,
we should not confuse the path with the destination.

Mr Twackum, a character in Henry Fielding's novel, "Tom Jones," declares, "When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant relgion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England." Most people are like Mr Twackum when they mention religion, they have their own in mind.

Whatever our religious beliefs may be, we usually learn them from other people through socialisation into a particular faith. The religious conivctions that anyone holds are therefore influenced by the historical and social context in which that person happens to live. I am not concerned with the truth or falsity of any religion and I have no wish to investigate the supernatural or to play umpire between competing faiths. Some members are convinced that theirs is the one true faith and that all others are misguided, superstitious, even wicked. I'm not one of those people. I believe what I believe, and I respect the right of others to do the same (as long as it does no harm to anyone else).

cont'd...

cont'd ...

It was Emile Durkheim, one of the first sociologists who studied religion who believed that the origins of religion were social, not supernatural. He pointed out that, whatever their source, the rituals enacted in any religion enhanced the solidarity of the community as well as its faith. Religious rituals such as baptism, bar mitzvah, weddings, Sabbath services, Christmas mass, and funerals. Rituals like these serve to bring people together, to remind them of their common membership; to reaffirm their traditional values; to maintain prohibitions and taboos; to offer comfort in times of crisis; and in general to help transmit the cultural heritage from one generation to the next.

In fact Durkheim argued, shared religious beliefs and the rituals that go with them are so important that every society needs a religion, or at least some belief system that serves the same functions.

i envey how you and our others
know all these names...and remember what they said

i was born an evolutionist
my dad said he read the whole book three times
said i didnt need to know anything to do with 'relgeon'
[so i rejected god religeon..and digested the facts..'science']

by a combination of events...i was led to read the darn book
[ie was told to swear on the king james bible in court]
then while in jail had to read the darn book

[i loved reading..but found i needed to read it
the same way as i read the science texts

[ie looking up every darn word i couldnt 'get']
[as in visualising words..as a true 'thing'..[noun]
naming thing..plus its role purpose/function [adjective's]

just like i read darwin and levies the pigeon
just as i read oliver wendel[mendaklism]..j

just like i learned species then genus then families in science
testing/tasting..selecting that good true..from that untrue or even a lie..

but i digress,,you said..QUOTE..'"that the origins of religion were social,not supernatural...the rituals enacted in any religion enhanced the solidarity of the community as well as its faith.""

yes
making faith by FEAR*
must also be included

""Religious rituals such as baptism,bar mitzvah,
weddings,Sabbath services,Christmas mass,and funerals.""

again yes
see how jesus condemmed ritual..!
ritual is the reasoning..behind sitting those who couldnt eat
oppisite each other..[so they watched each other follow the rite
of handwashing before eating]

ie the teaching isnt that a few fish
can fed 4/5 thousand..but that EVEN..with the messiah
they couldnt break the materialistic rituals of the high priests

sadly..his followers didnt know of the handwash ritual
[as witnessed by the eating of the shew bread[with unclean hands]

see humans think we are dirty
spirits say we stink

[the holy men clearly picked up on the stink think
and thought washing your hands..makes us clean]

ie holy clean like the messengers/angels
they smell so good

thus the baptism..
and burning of smelly incence
to cover over the huh-man...*stink..

trying their best to be true
lived into the mess-age
they lived in

continud

we must begin by believing the holy men
who wrote the holy texts..we good..and true

thus the severe insult of him saying
its not my time...[fed them from your filthy unholy handwash jars]for all i care

he said its not what a man puts in
bvut that which issues forth from him[that makes him unclean]

""Rituals like these serve to bring people together,
to remind them of their common membership;""

""to reaffirm their traditional MATERIAL values;""

""to maintain prohibitions and taboos;""

to be the expert
its about absolute control
in this life [plus the next]

TILL WE WANT to be free
we will be bound...by falicies[ritual]

its role SHOULD be.."to offer comfort in times of crisis;
and in general to help transmit the cultural heritage from one generation to the next.""

also important is keping the family together
by believing the same truths/lies as true
[so they end up in the 'same' heaven or ]hell']

rituals are important
but not more important than..the message
or the messenger...or god..the topic of the message

other system's
serve the same functions....

espiri de core
or the party line
or the news paper

anything that requires followers and leaders
[masters and slaves]..dupers and duped

but man wasnt meant to be duped alone
we only dupe ourselves

if it sounds too clever by half
it likely is

but its important to live being the love
to forgive others..as we would hope to be forgiven..for our own foolishness

were all doiing the best we can with what we got
simply loving is fool proof..those who hate god...hate love
[rather simply...love to hate...who dares tell them to love is wrong]

they are still loving
thats the first step

Yuyutsu:

<Asceticism does not happen overnight. We need to begin where we are and yes, we need to perform our duties in this world and we won't get closer to God by neglecting our responsibilities. Yet if we are wise, we would lean towards gradually minimizing our worldly duties rather than endlessly taking up new ones>

When I say "the material should take priority over the mystical, whereas to prefer the latter over the former (excluding genuine asceticism) is either the indulgence of privilege, conceit, neglect of responsibility, or combinations thereof".
what I mean is, humans necessarily prioritise material needs, otherwise we wouldn't survive. To pay disproportionate attention to the mystical is the "indulgence of privilege", of catered lives, because our circumstances in the West are generally accommodating. For those whose material needs are harder to secure, mysticism and naval-gazing generally are exorbitant. Indeed, among less secure cultures, whose denizens live more hand to mouth, religion and mysticism is inseparable from materialism. Conversely, in the West we may indulge our vanity and make a fetish of whatever mysticism appeals, while we take our material provisions for granted. Can you see how comparatively unreal religious indulgence in the West is, unbalanced as it is by the material complement that partners mysticism to form the union of experience from which religion derives? Religion in the privileged West, for people divorced from nature, is just another form of consumption, of cultural capital--for the "well-rounded" individual who must incorporate spirituality to be wholly admirable. This is a shocking charge that most such "devout" individuals shall recoil from aghast, but true nonetheless, and verifiable if they are capable of just a little reflexivity. A little religion may be good for the soul, but to overindulge and fancy oneself wise or pious, or worse, to despise the material (an ascetic dandy rather than genuine) is to delude oneself, at worst to neglect a material reality that cannot be take for granted.

One other point, Yuyutsu and OUG, or whoever claims to "know"; how is it that you have such assured knowledge of God and his universe?

Dear Squeers,

There is nothing wrong in being blessed by being born into, or by otherwise attaining, favourable circumstances. If anything, it would be wrong to waste God's gifts by spending one's life in the pursuit of material vanities. One should also not take those gifts for granted, but thank God every moment for what we have.

Certainly it is wrong to boast what we are not and to gain social advantages thereby, but what's wrong with saying: "By God's grace I am now wiser than I was a year ago, I am more pious than I was then and somewhat less materialistic than I was last year"?

"How is it that you have such assured knowledge of God and his universe?"

My knowledge of the universe is actually quite limited.

As for God, it is a combination of my own direct experiences, the use of logic, and reading and reflecting on scriptures.

Dear Squeers,

Have you ever been to any poor countries? We were in Mexico quite a few years ago - in the poorest of villages - I was amazed to see the most beautiful churches with the most ornate altars in the middle of nowhere. At the time I couldn't help thinking - that the ornamentation on one of those altars would pay to irrigate the entire village. To me it seemed like such a waste at that time. Today, I'm not sure whether I would look at things in the same way. Also, talking to the villagers, I gained a different insight into their way of thinking, and the tremendous sense of pride that they took in their churches. It somehow made their life bearable. And I couldn't argue with that. Sometimes one has to think from a different mind-set,
and try to see things from the others point of view, not just our own.

On the subject of unity between the spiritual and the material realms, this passage by Prince Charles in his book "Harmony" examines a break in thought that occurred around the thirteenth century.

"....Aquinas operated within a traditional view of the universe. If you were to read his work you would find something he calls the "Eternal Law". What he means is that this is the law that exists in the mind of God. Aquinas saw no separation between creation and God and he taught that we should experience the world very much from the inside out. In other words, the prevailing attitude, certainly as Aquinas began his studies, was that the Creator was not separate from His Creation. Instead, divinity was considered to be innate in the world and in us....Bearing all this in mind, then, what I found particularly intriguing....was what appeared to have happened to that prevailing mood of thought during the thirteenth century. For a variety of complicated theological and political reasons, a different definition of God began to emerge. Slowly but surely God began to be defined as something that lay outside of creation and was separate from Nature and, as that happened, so Nature itself came to be seen more and more as an unpredictable force....Clearly this was a highly significant shift in the collective perception of Western thought. In time it framed the outlook that allowed science to make its clean break from religion and forge ahead towards modernity. It effectively shattered the organic unity of reality...."

Yuyutsu:

"There is nothing wrong in being blessed by being born into, or by otherwise attaining, favourable circumstances. If anything, it would be wrong to waste God's gifts by spending one's life in the pursuit of material vanities. One should also not take those gifts for granted, but thank God every moment for what we have".

in our system, "God's gifts" is an anachronism, and our material security is born of various deliberate and unconscionable practices. God's gifts, on one side, are funded by his miserliness on the other. He takes from the poor to give to the rich. Those "gifts" do not fall from heaven, but are squeezed and abstracted on Earth. If ever there was an instance of, albeit time-honoured, specious reasoning, it's the equating of "God's gifts" with materialism.

Lexi:
"Have you ever been to any poor countries?"

yes I have, many years ago, I saw the detritus of apartheid South Africa, for instance, and a few other places, but my experience is minimal.

But I don't understand your point.. Your story about the Mexican village bears out exactly what I was saying.
Perhaps you don't understand my point..

"Sometimes one has to think from a different mind-set,
and try to see things from the others point of view, not just our own".

This is good advice, in fact it's been my constant refrain on OLO.

Is it not curious the way the pro side of this debate conduces so comfortably with the prevailing distribution of God's one-sided largess.

Dear Squeers,

"in our system"

I was, perhaps wrongly, under the impression that I am talking with a person, an individual, not with a system. You also failed to disclose who is this "our" (or "us") group which you spoke for. As I'm probably not included in that mysterious group of yours or adhere to its particular system, all that is left for me to do is to accept your claims at face value: As you claim that "our group believes such-and-such; our system tells such-and-such" - then I also agree with you that so does your group believe and so does your system tell.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post, is that one of God's best gifts, is death. Without that gift we could have been wandering endlessly in this world, getting ever deeper entangled in materialism and ever more anxious about either obtaining more things or retaining what we already have. That could be closely described as "hell", but fortunately, God's mercy does not allow this to happen. Fortunately, all matter eventually comes to an end, the human-experience eventually comes to an end, societies eventually come to an end, humanity eventually comes to an end, nothing of what we ever did will last forever, so none of that is truly worth being stuck in the mud for.

Fortunately also, Death, as the last line of defense, ensures that no material security be possible. Had it been, then poor souls would have remained stuck forever, stagnant in their illusion of existence rather than pursuing religion to re-unite with God.

I suppose that your system considers death as an anachronism too": Good luck and Memento Mori!

Yuyutsu,

I'm open to all sorts of notions about our situation here in earthly materiality - even to the notion that it may be that we are not humans that have occasional spiritual experiences, but spirits that have occasional human experiences.
I'm curious though as to why all the bother. If, as you say, God is so merciful as to allow us the gift of death to escape our wanderings through materiality, why then does he put us here in the first place?

And, stuck as we are for the time being in material reality, why is it necessary to clamour towards religion when, as you say, Death reunites us with the whole?

Dear Poirot,

Good questions indeed!

We are in this world not because God placed us here, but because we wanted to, we desired this experience. I am aware that this answer is incomplete because you could still in a sense "blame" God for it, as in essence we are not separate from Him! Nevertheless, so long as you are unconscious of your unity with God, you can experience your subjective desire to be in the world as solidly yours (and if you were conscious of your unity with God, then you wouldn't think that you are a human in this world to begin with).

According to some teachings, which I take seriously though I have no direct evidence/memory of, death does not solve anything because the seeds of desire for the world are still there to re-germinate. It is only by burning those seeds, so to speak, by overcoming our attachment to the world while we are in it, that we no longer need to come here again.

Another reason to seek to unite with God while the body is still alive is that from this state it is possible to teach and help others achieve the same, thus cease their suffering. Had I been in this state, I could have answered your questions more authoritatively, fully and accurately.

Yuyutsu:

<"in our system"

I was, perhaps wrongly, under the impression that I am talking with a person, an individual, not with a system. You also failed to disclose who is this "our" (or "us") group...>

despite politically conservative and religious protestations which insist on the category of the "individual", the "person", the "self", the "soul", these are all highly dubious designations and there is no hard evidence such entities exist. A much more plausible explanation is that these are social constructs, "interpellated" representations, earnest affectations, conjured credulously into discrete being when we are first called to the stage.
Such is not an item of faith for me, but a compelling view that contends with the politically conservative and religiously naive and flattering view that the individual is somehow self-sufficient and independent of the group mentality. As much as it affronts our "beliefs" and precious sense of self, that we are cultural constructs is only logical, and there are many unholy texts you ought to read before you dismiss the idea--that is if enlightenment is the goal rather, than continued self-deception. Even the Buddha warned that sense of self was the last and highest hurdle.

However, when I say "in our system", I don't only allude to our acculturated "thought" and "collective" beliefs, but in fact mainly to our material conditions within the "hive" (I deliberately use these "pejorative" terms because despite conservative dogma they accurately depict the native conditions conservatives affect to despise. Ah, the delicious ironies of life!). Just as the individual has little or no integrity in himself, so materially too the illusion of independence, to enjoy "God's gifts", is nothing more than a cultural conceit, bestowed on the hapless individual who may revel in his consummate spiritual/material self-affirmation.
"Our system" is thus the one that created you and me in mind and body, and continues to sustain us in high station at the expense of others. You may rationalise this as "God's gifts", as you've been acculturated by "the system" to do, if you like, but to the extent that I demur, I'm an individual!

Dear Yuyutsu,
Sincerely, I thought you were either a (westernized) Buddhist or apologist of (some classical form of) Buddhism. Silly me, but in a sense I am glad because it made me try to formulate my understanding of Buddhism as limited as it is.

Now I know better, and in particular I would endorse almost every word you wrote in your polemic with Squeers. We are certainly much closer in our positions on these matters than I originally thought (never mind our different tastes concerning the word “nauseating”).

>>I do reject as ridiculous … where God … eats ambrosia and drinks nectar.<<
This is rather obvious, as if Sagan (or anybody) wrote that he was rejecting the notion of the Cosmos being a plate supported by four or eight elephants (from Indian mythology). I do not see how this is relevant to the question whether everything that exists - and if you believe in God, including Him - is reducible to the material i.e. can be investigated by science. The fact that some people or societies could understand only naive, mythological models of reality - be it God or Cosmos - has no bearing on the existence or not of those.

Please note that in fact I never claimed God was PART of that “extra”, i.e. completely outside the material realm, only that He was not REDUCIBLE to what science can investigate and seek evidence for. (ctd)

(ctd)
>> I LOVE God and my love of Him is most central to my life.<<
I appreciate this, however it would make sense also if God was just a delusion as Dawkins and his apostles claim. So here as well, I have to add that I do not believe God is REDUCIBLE to the mental, but neither is he completely outside the mental. (Compare with a mathematician's feeling that he/she both CREATES mathematics in his/her head and DISCOVERS mathematical truths outside his/her head at the same time.)

My own formulation, repeated on this OLO many times, is that the biblical “God created man to His image” and Feuerbach’s “man created God to his image” (or something like that) are just two sides of the same coin. Not unlike “being corpuscular” and “being wavelike” are, according to QM, two descriptions of the same part of physical reality, though to common sense the two properties seem to contradict each other.

In this sense I prefer to speak about mythological, biblical, metaphysical etc MODELS of God: they can be primitive, naive, like your example above, or metaphysical (our atheist friends like to call them "mental gymnastics"); formally in agreement or disagreement with the teaching of this or that religion; acceptable or not to this or that individual with positive or negative experience with this or that organised religion, etc.

The relations among existing models of “spirtitual” reality (that Includes the notion of God) is much more varied, complicated and controversial, and culture-determined than the relations among different models (theories) of some particular feature of physical reality.

Yuyutsu,

Squeers has a point. For what are we without our immersion in the symbolic order - or our culture? We cease to exist as an "individual" without the "other". The "logic" you employ to rationalise the existence of God is derived from this state of being.

Could it be that individuals crave a return to a womb-like state or that of a newborn - a time before separation, when they were everything and everything was them?

Is this why man insists on a spiritual plane where everything is united into One?

asqeers quote..""despite politically conservative and religious protestations..which insist..on the category of the "individual", the "person",the "self",the "soul",these are all highly dubious designations and there is no hard evidence such entities exist.""

clearly you are not a group
to wit..you ARE an individual

clearly you think your a person
[i know that a legal 'person'..is a fiction
to wit legally corperations are called persons]
se how dead corperations lord it over the living?

have subverted human rights upon persons
IM NOT A PERSON...are you?

im my self...ie a material body
sustained to live by my spirit
when this meat dies all that i am is a soul
the collective..of my material eaerthly being...still living thanks to the wholly spirit

i fail to see what you call dubious

""these are social constructs,
"interpellated" representations,..earnest affectations,
conjured credulously into discrete being
when we are first called to the stage.""

life is not a calling
its a granting of a physical need]

life isnt a stage
its a school

where beasts lEARN how to become man

so much more we need to reply..[teach to each other]

god allows life its excess..so we chose to reject the materialism
reject the individuality..learn to see beyond our self

by loving god
by loving neighbour
thinking of other..knowing each living is our other

its the love you give
more than the life you live

see beyond this material speck in the aether

see in it..is you...
yet within you..is the rest of it

>> Could it be that individuals crave a return to a womb-like state or that of a newborn - a time before separation, when they were everything and everything was them?

Is this why man insists on a spiritual plane where everything is united into One? <<

Day to day living was and can still be perilous, I think Poirot has made a significant point of the longing for peace, the cessation of pain, no responsibilities, no consequences such as the living must do in order to keep a roof over one's head.

Making a living is so mundane as to be rejected by the most pious who rely upon donations from people who labour. Monks across the world from a variety of religions rely upon maintaining the ideal of worship, else they starve and have nowhere awe-inspiring in which to live. The vast majority of religious clergy do not opt for caves, and even more rarely remain in said caves permanently.

One only has to look at the Catholic Pope to see an excess of materialism that only compares to the excess of corporatists such Murdoch or massive business monopolies where the key to the executive bathroom is as fanatically pursued as the promotion to Cardinal, Bishop or Lama.

OUG,

"clearly you are not a group
to wit you ARE an individual"

The "individual" can only rationalise his existence in relation to everything else. A human child could NOT conceive his existence as a human individual without interaction with other humans. Everything depends on this relationship.

"Severely autistic" humans do not make the transition from one state to the other. They do not conceive themselves as anything in particular because they are unable to make the necessary connection with other humans.

No man is an island.

Dear Poirot,

"Squeers has a point. For what are we without our immersion in the symbolic order - or our culture? We cease to exist as an "individual" without the "other"."

We are what we are, God, regardless of being temporarily immersed in the human condition or any of its manifestations, including culture. Words can never describe what we are, but as they must be used here, I use "individual" to point to the fact that we are responsible for our own spiritual progress, that we cannot rely on others to do it for us. If OTOH, I was addressing someone who's full or pride, then I would rather use "other" to remind them to discard their false identity.

"The "logic" you employ to rationalise the existence of God is derived from this state of being."

Perhaps so, had I actually been attempting to rationalize the existence of God, but would it matter? would it change the truth in any way?
But I didn't: if I claimed that God exists, that would seem to reduce Him to the state of a material object.

"Could it be that individuals crave a return to a womb-like state or that of a newborn - a time before separation, when they were everything and everything was them?"

Certainly, individuals can crave for all sorts of things.

"Is this why man insists on a spiritual plane where everything is united into One?"

A spiritual plane? I haven't seen any! I think we have enough trouble with the material plane to want to add an extra one.

Since you mentioned cultural constructs and rationalizations, let me remind you that "One" is also among them. Claiming that "God is one" is an attempt to reduce Him to a comfortable mental construct, which in effect leads us into being lost in the mind. What we are does not depend on our rationalizations, I urge to you to experience this directly rather than by using your mind to try to understand.

"No man is an island."

Nor are you a man (or a woman as the case may be)!

Yuyutsu,

If we "are" God, why do we have to work as individuals on our spiritual progress? If it's all beyond the material plane or rationalisation, why do we employ logic or read scriptures or take note of our experiences to form a conclusion? (as you say you do)

Progress to what or where?

And why do you imagine that you "know"?

Dear George,

Thank you for your kind remarks.

As there are so many ways to slice a melon, and as no words can describe the Reality of God, then perhaps rather than asking which description is the most accurate one, we should be asking which of the multitude of descriptions will benefit the listener most.

In classical/primitive/wild materialistic societies (or with people who still operate on this level), I would find it most beneficial from a religious point of view, to stress our common ground, our inter-relatedness, the need to care for each other, etc.

But in today's disempowered and spiritually-subdued western society, I find it best to stress our individuality, our personal responsibility for our welfare - materially and spiritually, independently of what others do around us.

Western society, for example, is poisoned by the idea of equality. Of course we are equal in essence: since there is nothing but God then we all equal Him, and of course we should be compassionate towards each other once we understand that the Other is like me, God!
As humans, however, we are in every aspect anything but equal, so the false idea of equality promotes a bland society based on the lowest common denominator, where the spiritually-advanced struggle to survive and the rest are left without guidance.

Again, should the scales ever tip and society becomes arrogant/machoist/physically-cruel yet again, then yet again I would speak of equality and oneness.

Dear Poirot,

"If we "are" God, why do we have to work as individuals on our spiritual progress?"

We don't have to!

Eventually, we tend to suffer enough and become sick and tired of our sufferings, so we want to progress. Knowing in theory that we are God is not comforting enough, we want the actual direct experience.

"If it's all beyond the material plane or rationalisation, why do we employ logic or read scriptures or take note of our experiences to form a conclusion? (as you say you do)"

To encourage us on our path!

"Progress to what or where?"

From darkness to light,
from ignorance to awareness,
from falsehood to truth,
from unconsciousness to consciousness,
from the unreal to the real,
from death to immortality,
from fear to trust,
from suspicion to love,
from suffering to non-suffering.

And why do you imagine that you "know"?

I don't.

Dear Squeers,

Perhaps I didn't explain the point about the Mexican villages properly. When people don't have material things - religion is often
what they turn to. I was looking at things as a
"Westerner" from the material point of view. To the villagers - they were proud of what they had achieved with the churches. That was more important to them then irrigating their villages. They felt that without their religion they had nothing at all - in this way they were able to point at something they believed in and had achieved. You may not agree with it - I didn't at that time - but as I said - I wasn't looking at things from their perspective. I was judging the people from my set of values - not theirs.

Lexi

Looking at the issue on a global basis, human culture has managed to destroy our environment as a result of the disassociation between human beings and the natural environment.

A self-sustaining system of irrigation ensuring water for crops and animals is something to be prouder of than a church. Our relationship with the material world has been disrupted by religion, Mexico is no different than many other countries in this respect.

cont'd ...

As one of the villagers tried to explain to me - "fill your mind with the meaningless stimuli of a world pre-occupied with meaningless things, and it will not be easy to feel peace in your heart."

It was only much later in life that I understood what he meant.

Many of us become seekres over the period of our lives. To be a seeker
implies that there is a road to be found. After several years of searching, many people find their roads, some kind of spiritual path.
At a ceretain point, the seeker becomes a pilgrim. We're no longer looking for the road, we're on the road. The pilgrimage is a process by which we change what we think and transform who we are. Prayer is the pilgrim's walking stick. I pray for the capacity to see the innocence and good in people. I pray to be a better person. I pray that the purpose of my life is to cause a better world . But I won't go on - because I don't want to make anyone cringe. It's a private matter - and I suppose should remain that way. I'm not trying to convert anyone - It simply works for me

Dear Ammonite,

The material world wasn't what concerned these people.
Rightly or wrongly - I didn't feel that I was in any
position to judge them. I was merely a visitor to their
world - and whatever judgements I made at that time
were extremely superficial ones. I would have had to
"walk in their shoes," for quite some time before I
could even begin to comprehend anything at all.

Lexi

I don't even know where to begin here. I am not judging Mexicans
in particular, but the impact of religion on all of us.

One thing most religions have in common is the elevation of humans above the rest of the world. Not so long ago we believed the earth was the centre of the universe.

Placing a real or imagined creator above maintaining its creation (our world) has led us to where we are today - in danger of destroying it. This is what religion has embedded in many of us, to our loss. There is greater majesty in a tree, than anything we have built. For example, look at the death of the eco-system that was Easter Island when its people took to placing worship above all else.

The forest is my cathedral, yet because I am an atheist, religious people declare me to be materialistic in a selfish sense. I find this to be hypocritical. I understand that many people find solace in their religious worship and I would have no problem with this except for the havoc its causes both people who do not share a particular religion and on the environment in general.

Dear Ammonite,

So let me get this straight. You're blaming the destruction of the environment on religion? Interesting theory.

Lexi

No, not entirely. But I don't see how placing humans above nature has helped. Clearly greed and exploitation has played a part.

I can't believe you are treating my opinions in such a simplistic manner. I do not see everything in terms of black and white, but I do see where SOME religions have been complicit in SOME of the worst excesses of human behaviour.

George W's belief in a war on terror in the name of the Christian god springs to mind, preceded as it was by the destruction of the twin towers due to another religion.

Dear Lexi,

Yours is a path of love. I suspect that Ammonite is writing from a place of fear: s/he is genuinely afraid of what might happen to our environment if we fail to invest enough of our energy into making it sustainable.

Indeed, sooner or later there will come a time when no amount of human effort will be sufficient to save our environment, till then it's an uphill battle.

Ammonite is correct in observing that "Our relationship with the material world has been disrupted by religion", but that's how it should be, for our current relationship with the material world is based on attachment, and ultimately no one can serve two masters.

An allegory to the human condition can be found in the story of Indra as pig. The easiest version (though abridged) I could find online is in http://askbaba.helloyou.ch/saibabagita/saigita157.html and a funny play on it is in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzU7mtasg4A .

Dear Ammonite,

Just saw your reply:

Obviously you do not belong to any organized religion or share their beliefs, and I fully understand why. That does not make you any less spiritual, more materialistic or more selfish than those who do.

God bless you both.

Oh good grief!
When gurus start to wax lyrical with their pious platitudes like this, it's time to take to my heels!
Thanks Poirot and Ammonite for your excellent contributions.
Catch you somewhere else!

Dear Ammonite,

I understand what you're saying.

As I've written in the past, so many times. I used to think that I wasn't religious, and perhaps I wasn't. I didn't like what organized religion had done to the world. I still don't. However, I've come to see that true religion is internal not external. The spirit within us cannot be blamed for the blasphemies carried out in its name. Organized religions have become in many cases as calcified as other institutions that form the structure of our modern world. Experience of the spirit breaks through illusions of our guilt and separateness. It is radically committed to the natural goodness and inherent oneness that lies at the center of who we really are.

In the last twenty years, I have been sincerely working on myself, however inconsistently. I'm not so much trying to make a place for myself in the world; I'm trying to make a place in myself for the world. I'm not striving to do something new, to replace external structures that no longer work. Rather I'm striving to be something new, to replace internal energies that were not working.

Dear Squeers,

Please stay - you write so beautifully - and I value your opinion
so very much. This is only a discussion after all.
And you practice the art of reasoned, intelligent debate. Anyway, it's up to you but you shall be missed. Thank You for all your inputs.

Thanks for the compliment, Lexi, but I think my contributions are mostly out of place here. I've also spent my life working on myself, which has mainly been a process of undeceiving myself.
Peace be with you.

Dear Squeers,

And also with you.

Take care.

Lexi

You must know that I hold the utmost respect for you. And you know, from thoughtful contributions to my discussion thread: "Where does the buck stop?" that I do not place all the blame for our exploitation of the environment entirely at the feet of formal religion.

We have a a false dichotomy with regards to 'balance'. If evolution is taught so must be creation, if 90% of scientific opinion is that the sky is blue, 10% who claim it is green must be reported, if discussion takes place that religion should be taught through religious institutions equal time must be given for its place in part of the public school system - and parents have to opt their children out. We have perverted the concept of fair choice and religion has played its part, along with political and commercial interests.

As a species that considers itself so intelligent, we are all to blame.

Yuyutsu

Fearful people hate, I do not hate and find your judgment of me an example of the self-righteousness that is the mark of religious dogma. I love this world, all life it contains, people and other animals amaze me every day. For this reason we must take up the responsibilities our actions have wrought.

Squeers

I am feeling completely at odds with so much that is expressed here at OLO and the current antipathy by so many Australians towards any changes. Carbon tax is not perfect, doing nothing is worse. The anti-science agenda that is supported by primitive creationist views is a part of our problems.

I read widely and try to apply as much critical thinking as I am capable of, my life journey has been to select from a variety of beliefs and philosophies - rejecting the clearly judgementally pious and open to reflection and balance. I often get it wrong, nor would I expect anyone to follow my beliefs, rather they find their way, but if we can hold hands along the way, there is no harm in that.

Dear Ammonite,

Thank You for your kind words and for explaining your thoughts to me. For me personally - my religion is important - this doesn't mean that I think the church is perfect or that parts of it won't wither away and die, or that it won't make mistakes. As you know I cringe at what Cardinal Pell has said in the past. I trust however that the church will not betray Christ or lose the sense of his message completely. I have a wonderful parish with a great priest who has total commitment and great ministerial energy. What Catholics do require is genuine local leadership and a willingness to confront both the difficulties and opportunities that the church faces.

I understand and respect your views. Each of us can only do what we feel is right for us. I have seriously evaluated the role of faith in my life and I believe that my church is worth my best renewed effort.
Anyway, as you know my philosophy has always been - live and let live.
To each his own. I do not believe in imposing my views on any one else. We chose our own paths to follow. If I only could, I would remove each and every pebble from your life's path. I value your friendship very much.

Dear Lexi

It is the pebbles that help guide us, and some turn out to be quite valuable. All we can ask of each other is to give a helping hand if one of us stumbles, that is what I have learned from religion, philosophy and hard experience.

Love to you.

Dear Ammonite,

Don't get me wrong - There are many issues that I still question. The issues of power and wealth, just as an example. And of course there is the current church leadership in Australia. To me some of the actions of Cardinal Pell are the antithesis of Jesus. I am referring to his treatment of gays. Pell is probably acting on behalf of the Vatican, however he is not supported by the majority of Australian Catholics. In this respect the church at times appears to not be God's church, but the church of ambitious and ruthless men. Many people have left the church because of the church's lack of respect for freedom of conscience, the sometimes bullying or discourteous behaviour of particular bishops and priests, its controlling approach to the community and the inability of its leadership to come to grips with a fast-changing society. Many people left the church behind as they adapted to contemporary reality, particularly in the sphere of personal morality.

Anyway, I'd again like to Thank You and everyone who contributed for their inputs. I'll see you on another thread.

Love to all.

Dear Yuyutsu,
Thank you too for a stimulating discussion

>>if I claimed that God exists, that would seem to reduce Him to the state of a material object.?<<
At first sight, this makes sense only if you redefine the verb “exists” to be a ”property“ of only material objects. Whether or not God exists depends not only on what you understand by “God” but also on what you understand by “exists”. These are not simple questions, so no wonder that people decide one way or another more on psychological and emotional than philosophical reasons.

At second sight, you are possibly hinting at the philosopher-theologian Tillich’s “God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him”. If you are interested, here on OLO I had a relatively extensive discussion with relda on Tillich’s approach in http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9564#157122 and the posts surrounding it.

>>A spiritual plane? I haven't seen any! I think we have enough trouble with the material plane to want to add an extra one.<<
This confuses me. How can you accept God if you BOTH do not want to “reduce Him to the state of material object” (see above), AND at the same time dismiss the “spiritual plane”? Without this extra-material dimension God would indeed be reduced to “the state of a material object” entity or being. In the latter case it is, of course, legitimate to demand (scientific) evidence for His existence, and in the absence of such evidence to place the idea of God at the same level as that of Santa or Tooth Fairy, as some of our atheist friends like to claim.

Your last post addressed to me does not contain anything I could disagree with, (although it neither confirms nor contradicts what I wrote in my post preceding it).

Anyhow, I think we have deviated too much from the original topic of this thread.

Dear George,

I was happy with your previous post, just had no particular comments to make on it. Sorry I did not make this clear.

I am quite unversed in western philosophy, so it is nice to learn that Tillich, a leading philosopher, reached similar conclusions as mine. Let me assure you that I reached this conclusion that "to argue that God exists is to deny him" not out of psychological or emotional reasons (on the contrary, I would be so much happier with a God that I can touch or at least prove), but out of cold logic. It was not a pleasant conclusion.

However, I learned that my love of God need not depend on material conditions such as existence.

Without knowing too much about Tillich (except some of what you discussed on the other thread), it seems that I went one step further than him. You quoted Tillich saying "He is being-itself beyond essence and existence", which is nice and warm, but sadly I must dismiss this too: even the claim about God that "He is beyond" places a limitation, a qualification upon God... but oops, this drops us back into denying Him.

Had I claimed that "God is not here - He's in the spiritual plane", then I would have had to fall in the same pit and deny Him.

If I understood correctly, then Tillich believed in the need of symbols to know God. Symbols can be helpful and valuable along the way and I respect them, but knowing God through symbols is not knowing Him directly (or in more brutal words, not knowing Him at all).

In fact, it is impossible to know God, because knowledge requires two: the knower and the known, but how can this be where there is no gap? You ARE Him!

I do however believe that it is possible to directly experience God, but not by adding new knowledge - by subtracting false knowledge, by shedding off the veil of illusion. The spiritual is therefore not an additional plane, but the absence, the subtraction of the material plane.

Yuyutsu,

You state that you employ logic and experience as well as scripture reading to help your own spiritual progress.
However,now you say that to reduce the notion of God to the symbolic is not knowing him at all (although it's helpful)...how can you dismiss the use of logic in defining the notion of God to yourself? I put it to you that without symbolism, you would be unable to mentally formulate any ideas, let alone one concerning your idea of God.

A "spiritual plane" is a way of describing a non-material realm of consciousness...it's not new knowledge at all, but simply a way to distinguish that realm from the material one.

puro..quote,..""..A "spiritual plane"
is a way of describing a non-material realm of consciousness...""

like the mind?
or like the dream state?
or like imagining..things that nver were[in this realm]

""it's not new knowledge at all,""

what is new 'knowledge'
the non-material realm'..of dreams/imagination
how can a 'new' invention..not be new knowledge?
its not as if we saw a computa then...found new knowledge

your saying a nwew book..[a new arrangment of wordd]..
is..""simply a way to distinguish..that realm from the material one."

somehow im more comforted that 'more shall be given''
this is how i have found life so far
and expect much more in the next life

""that without symbolism,
you would be unable to mentally formulate any ideas,""

your likely talking specificly
about the inner mind imagry
the vision..

that comes before the invention

[anyhow that comes from them other realms...
although in time IT MIGHT be made 'real'..
into this material realm..if the one that had the vision has the nessesary skills to make the visioning 'materially-real'

""let alone one concerning your idea of God.""

god is perfectly get-able[comprehensable]..without symbols
symbols have long been corrupted with materialistic meaning and value

its told us that children can grasp the goods of god
symbols is a destraction...

[i go further..if symbols..is all you got..
your never going to 'get'..god

OUG,

"If" one is here as a human being, then one is indoctrinated into the symbolic order - that's the way it is.

Whatever the essence of "God" really is, we can only form notions by using our mental capacities. this may be completely separate from the "essence" or "energy" that is God, but one has to have the ability to define an idea to oneself.

If we are God, then in our present state of material being we have been given an awareness of that materiality and we employ symbolism to deal with it.

My question is, if you dispose of symbolism in your quest to define God, what is the use of logic to help one along the road of individual spiritual progress? Shouldn't we just "be"?

I can't resist.
OUG,
you miss the point.
Poirot's point, I think, is that symbols (language--our symbolic order) precede all conception, including sense perception, and translates reality (real or imagined sensory experience) into the given symbolic order, i.e. that cultural system of symbolic meaning which always already precedes the individual's advent in the world. You are not master of your conceptions or your imaginings, or your epiphanies, or even your merely sense perception of this stupid, flat, objective reality (so the theory goes). All these "mediated" phenomena are made sense of via the symbolic order into which you are indoctrinated. Whoever cares to scoff at the the idea are welcome to offer a cogent rebuttal--but please no more arcane "knowledge"!
We are culturally constructed, mind, body and soul. This is merely logical.

Dear Poirot,

There is no need to reduce the notion of God to the symbolic because it already IS symbolic.

Having a notion of God can help to purify one's mind, one's heart, one's speech and one's actions, but it does not amount to knowing God.

You are very right to say that "without symbolism, you would be unable to mentally formulate any ideas, let alone one concerning your idea of God", but I am not after idea(s) ABOUT God, I am after union WITH God. No idea, as brilliant as it may be, can bring an end to our suffering.

"A "spiritual plane" is a way of describing a non-material realm of consciousness...it's not new knowledge at all, but simply a way to distinguish that realm from the material one."

The realm of consciousness is but a division within the physical/material plane. Science, at least psychology (being under dispute whether it is a true science or not), is dealing with it. I have nothing against scientific dissection of the universe, but that's irrelevant to our discussion of God and religion.

Yuyutsu,

"I am not after idea(s) ABOUT God, I am after union WITH God."

...but according to you, you ARE God. So what is there to unify, except perhaps an incongruity between your reason and your "spirituality"?

Dear Poirot,

It is one experience to have a recipe for a cake, knowing that a cake is possible, yet a completely different experience to actually eat it.

Yuyutsu,

As Squeers so eloquently pointed out above, the concept, the recipe and its ingestion are "all" made sense of via our immersion in the symbolic order

It's impossible to extricate yourself from this human experience while you are bound within its constraints.

Your experience of spiritually "eating the cake" is dependent on you first "intellectually" ascertaining that there is a cake to be eaten.

Yuyutsu

Are you a Christian? If so you are more likely to see images of Jesus in a piece of toast than say a Buddhist - such is religious embedding.

Then there is mass hysteria where many people claim to see the same event and make the same interpretation - this interpretation or claim of a miracle is likely to be influenced by their religious embedding. A Hindu is unlikely to see Jesus, but they may believe they have observed Ganesh.

So it goes...

Dear Poirot,

"As Squeers so eloquently pointed out above, the concept, the recipe and its ingestion are "all" made sense of via our immersion in the symbolic order"

Squeers is correct to say that in order for something to make sense you need some sort of a symbolic order. The concept, or the recipe, can make sense, even the concept of ingestion can make sense, but not the ingestion itself, which simply cannot make sense (with or without a symbolic order).

Obviously, each analogy has its limits. You do sense a cake, but with your tongue, not with your mind and this is made possible because you and the cake are separate. God, however, cannot be sensed even by the tongue (what a lovely idea if that were possible...).

"It's impossible to extricate yourself from this human experience while you are bound within its constraints."

Oh, don't give up: just because something is difficult, even extremely difficult, doesn't make it impossible. Being bound by the constraints of a human experience is not an external imposition, it is a result of your choice, so you can also choose to release yourself from it.

"Your experience of spiritually "eating the cake" is dependent on you first "intellectually" ascertaining that there is a cake to be eaten."

No. Ascertaining that there is a cake to be eaten can motivate me to find that cake, but some people may occasionally just stumble upon a good cake and eat it without prior ideas.

Dear Ammonite,

"If so you are more likely to see images of Jesus in a piece of toast"

What a waste of a good toast: a toast is meant to be eaten, not to be viewed.

No, I do not belong to any specific religious order, but I can and do benefit from worshiping from time to time within the framework of any of them (except perhaps Judaism, which left me scarred, and a few bad cults).

Poirot, Yuyutsu, Squeers, George, and anyone else:

This is indeed a very stimulating discussion and I thank you for your well-expressed and civilised contributions.

I want to make a few points arising from recent posts.

1 Squeers says: << We are culturally constructed, mind, body and soul. This is merely logical. >> This seems misleading. I (ego) am not simply a passive entity; will is my origin. Through exercise of will, both consciously and unconsciously, I have adopted or rejected various stories, told in various ways by others, about who and what I am. I have also taken events and perceptions from my own life and formed them into stories, both conscious and unconscious, that further construct my identity. Furthermore, I have inherited archetypal material which from birth (or maybe before that) has lived in my unconscious and continually informs my understanding of who and what I am. The ego is constructed by more than culture.

2 Yuyutsu says: << I am not after idea(s) ABOUT God, I am after union WITH God. >> I wonder if we could elaborate this as follows. The birth of the ego occurred as a seed of will from the “ground of being” (Tillich’s description of God). The normal development of the ego is towards a sense of its own viability as an individual in the world, but there is always an urge (usually unconscious) to restore the link with its origin. This primal urge is not intellectual, though we may try to couch it in intellectual terms.

3 Poirot writes: << As Squeers so eloquently pointed out above, the concept, the recipe and its ingestion are "all" made sense of via our immersion in the symbolic order. >> You seem to be taking the “symbolic order” as synonymous with language. If so, then following from my preceding point I suggest that both the urge to ingest and the ego’s awareness of that urge can operate outside of the “symbolic order”. This would apply to both biological and spiritual ingestion.

I'm doing this in a bit of a rush, so I hope it's clear.

>> What a waste of a good toast: a toast is meant to be eaten, not to be viewed. <<

Thanks for nothing, Yuyutsu. I see trying to make a point about how religion influences what we see as well as what we may believe is completely lost on you.

pureo/..""If we are God,""

this might be this symbolic symbiology to symbulls
to which you refer..but simply speaking we arnt god
anymore than my computer can claim to be electrick spirit
[which dosnt refute that it need's electicity to make it function]

symbols are like nouns
when gods essence/wholly spirit
is a facilitator..[add verb]..that makes the moun an adjective
a mexchanism that sustains reality to be precieved..as if being real

""then in our present state of material being
we have been given an awareness of that materiality
and we employ symbolism to deal with it.""

we love having symbols..[maybe im missing things looking for signs]
thus missing the ammasment..that live is able to 'live'

i suppose is we must deal with real;ity with symbols
then the un-reality will need its symbols as well

[or maybe im missing the relitive symbology..
that makes a living good into a symbolic vile
or the living essence into a symbol or a sign]

""My question is,
if you dispose of symbolism in your quest to define God
,what is the use of logic..to help one along the road of individual spiritual progress?""

we arnt here to progress
we are here to learn awarness[outside of our selves]

think of us
only knowing our own inner good
and missing the rest of all that good[god]..is

""Shouldn't we just "be"?""

there is no shouldnt or should with god

we can chose to be and let be
or chose to not be..and not let others 'be'

but either way...without god animating life to living
we are missing the cause of all causes...
judging sin as sign
or sign as sin

depending on the meaning we have given to the symbol
or accorded value to a mere sign[symptom]
beyond cause

""Poirot's point,I think,
is that symbols(language-""
words/signs abstracted values
that have been accorded relevance/meaning

Thanks Crabsy, - will get back to you later.

Ammonite,
You make a perceptive point in that what is embedded in our cultural experience of reality plays itself out in our dreams and visions.
I remember seeing a drawing of someone's idea of "UFO's" executed centuries ago - and there, sailing through the skies were galleons.

""-our symbolic order)precede all conception""

so the symbols ..ccorded to god
preceeds all conceptions..of god?

the cross...dont represent..god
it represents the christ..[the highest human incantation]
sorry..incarnation,..

but even the christ..is hardly unique
as having died..on the cross

[it only symbilises god's messengers sufferance]
as in..the xtian verson of god's will
[ie a man made replacement]..symbolised into obsurity

a fish/sign..symbolises a fish
to say a fish means god..is to get lost
in symbolic obsessive fixed definitives..[fixated absolutes.].where/as the true good..is omnipresent..infinite..*

in all..for all
not..*of all

""inner..sensory experience)
into the given..symbolic order,

i.e...that cultural system*..of symbolic meaning
which always already precedes..the individual's advent in the world.""

GOD PRECEEDS ALL

""You are not master of your conceptions
or your imaginings,or your epiphanies,""

we dont even 'create them
only chose..to give them reality..[or not]

""or even your..merely sense/perception
of this stupid,flat,objective reality so the theory goes).""

every naming thing[noun ]
has in our minds..got assosiated with it
our life experiences and mind memories of it

[ie the smell's taste's/look feel/meaning..of the 'thing'

these might be
these symbols to which your refering..
but they are hardly flat..or stupid..or objective...
or even fully subjective..

""All these "mediated" phenomena"'

i prefer meditated...[digested...conditional ceertainties]
that help define the qualities..we are symbolising

""are made sense of..via the symbolic order
into which you..are indoctrinated.""

god isnt able..to be symbolised
he is all in all..

not yesterday..not tomorrow
as much as the reality..he sustains to be..right here/now

""Whoever cares to scoff..at the the idea
are welcome to offer a cogent rebuttal-""

think of it like a quark
in two places..at the same moment
thus not specificly...a definitive one..[ie one valid quark]

""-but please no more arcane "knowledge"!

and explain the symbolism..of what symbol
symbolises egsactly/definitivly..specificly what...?

[egsactly/consistantly/definitivly]

""We are culturally constructed,
mind,body and soul...This is merely logical.""

sure
but culture obsesses..at symbolic..as hidden/secret...
but god has no secret..he is..what he allways was

[meanings accorded to symbols can change]

god is unchangably perfect..as pure/good/loving,..today
as he will be tomorrow..

as he was yesterday

[but yet even more
miss understood..by being more than any sign/symbol]

I would begin by saying that I'm personally not convinced that "We are culturally constructed, mind, body and soul", consciousness does indeed remain an enigma that no materialist theory has yet satisfactorily explained. Indeed modern science and analytical philosophy begin with the "assumption" that phenomenal reality is all there is, but this assumption is more like a prejudice than a stable premise.
However, I think a good way to answer some of the objections to what Poirot and I appear to be arguing in unison is to defer to Derrida, perhaps the pre-eminent philosopher of this poststructuralism. The following link gives his idea of the problematic of the text. Scroll down to the heading "Of Grammatology".

Crabsy, Jung's archetypes are also not outside the symbolic order. Interestingly, Lacan (the pre-eminent theorist of the symbolic order) was a disciple of Freud, and of course Freud and Jung (former friends) fell out over their antagonistic theories.

Dear Ammonite,

"I see trying to make a point about how religion influences what we see as well as what we may believe is completely lost on you."

And I was under the impression that your main point was to ask me whether I was Christian.

As for your comment about the influences of religions (i.e. organized religions) on human perception, well that's a well-documented phenomena, not much to say about it and since I found no obvious connection between this phenomena and anything else that I wrote here, all I was left to comment about was that poor toast.

Dear Crabsy,

I love Tillich's description. Thanks. I also agree with your following exposition of his words. Unfortunately, we have no option but to present such ideas in relative language, which doesn't do them enough justice. I understand what you wrote, but I'm afraid that others may not. When you mention for example "to restore its link with its origin", others who perceive themselves as separate from God may perhaps imagine a chain or a rubber band of a sort.

Sorry, here's the link to Derrida:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

Here is a man who has chosen to embed his religion in his identity. Well his drivers licence anyway, and that is an id, right?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14135523

Thank you rstuart for that link. It’s provided a refreshing bit of reality to this otherwise ridiculous discussion that could only be described as wishful thinking and mere assertions and pure unfounded speculation at best.

My favourite line from the article: “After receiving his application the Austrian authorities had required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.”

A lot of progress has been made in the last decade or so but the fact that some here are not too ashamed to admit that something like religion is embedded into their identity, along with the fact that someone who is simply trying to make an important point can have their mental health questioned when yet not an eyelid is batted when those who hold such equally absurd beliefs are given a free pass, just goes to show how far we still have to go.

The strength-in-numbers/peer-group aspect of religious belief is the only reason we wouldn’t psychologically assess theists. If one person alone believed half the nonsense uttered on this thread, we’d question their fitness to function and go unmonitored in a civilised society.

Actually, one other point I forgot to make...

I don't think any of you theists realise just how much better life can be when you deal with reality on reality's terms.

Rstuart,

Niko's story reminds me of a Jewish joke:

--- here goes: ---

New immigrants to Israel are allowed to bring along all their household goods and electrical appliances free of duties, so Mr. Kohen arrives with 5 new refrigerators, claiming they are part of his kitchen.

So the custom officials ask him: "Sir, why do you need 5 refrigerators?"

- "Well", he says, "I am a religious Jew, so I need to separate the milk from the meat".

"Okay", they ask: "that makes two, what about the other three?"

- "but of course", says Kohen, "I am so religious that I need a clean set of refrigerators for passover, which had strictly never any contact with traces of bread-crumbs"

"Fine", asked the officials, "that makes four - but what about the fifth?"

"Don't you understand", says Kohen, "what if I sometimes feel like eating pork?"

--- conclusion: ---

Niko Alm's real test of faith is not in the police's registration office...
His real test would be when his beloved sweetheart tells him: "it's the sieve or I"!

Dear Yuyutsu,

Neither can I follow everything Tillich wrote. His reference to existence and essence - a distinction so prominent in philosophy, in particular medieval - would indicate that his understanding is more subtle than what one understands by it in everyday language. As mentioned above, I had the impression that you understood the term existence (e.g. if applied to God) only in the sense of existing in the “state of a material object”, in which case I naturally agree that to claim His existence would be to deny Him.

As you might know, my “rational orientation” is that of a mathematician (so I feel uneasy when people use the word logical in very loose sense), and it is not just a joke that mathematicians FIRST define concepts (with the exception of very few primitive, undefined concepts like set, relation etc) and THEN discuss them, whereas social scientists, philosophers, like to discuss concepts BEFORE “defining” them. Quotation marks, because “in everyday life” there are no basic concepts (that need not to be defined) on which other definitions can be built, as is the case in mathematics.

This applies also to the alternatives “God exists” and “God does not exist”: only by trying to understand arguments in favour of the one or the other can one “guess” what the author means by “God” and “exists”; often disagreement is based only on different implicit meanings (“definitions”) attached to these basic concepts by participants in the dispute.

So with this qualification I can say I agree with you, provided I correctly guessed the meaning you attach to the words God and exist.

>>The spiritual is therefore not an additional plane, but the absence, the subtraction of the material plane.<<
I agree: The Spiritual (or the other names given to it) is everything that cannot be reduced to the material world, Sagan’s Cosmos. It can be spoken of ONLY in symbols within some culturally constructed (mythological, biblical or more sophisticated) models. Like contemporary physics can speak of Sagan’s Cosmos only within “mathematically constructed” physical theories. No need to mention planes, whatever that would mean.

Okay a few more thoughts...

Crabsy,

It seems to me that the ego is utilised to assist the individual in his material undertakings. I'm more inclined to believe that in order to grasp a sense of the spiritual that one is required to subdue the ego in favour of detachment.
Perhaps both biological "and" spiritual ingestion are basic drives. Perhaps our yearning to return to the state before we were indoctrinated into the symbolic order is what we call our "spiritual" yearning. (to repeat an earlier point I made) The "symbolic order" in this sense is the cognitive apparatus around which we construct meaning in our world. Therefore, our search for the source of our yearning requires us to employ our intellect and its handy toolbox of symbolic references.

George and Yuyutsu,

Seems that semantics always comes into play when trying to define the concept of God or the spiritual. One tries to make oneself understood, and my original reference to a spiritual plane was to differentiate that realm from the material plane - but, of course, Yuyutsu knew that and decided to duck the question.

So, how about some basic questions? How would either of you define God...What is God? Is everything God, as in everything is energy?

poirot..quote..""How would either of you define God""

im used to being the invisable man
and this invisability has helped me comprehend god

as to wether he egsists..[or as a previopus topic asked does he insist]...
its missing the true essence..
[of what god does]..

just as we are
*our works

what god 'does'..for a tree...
sustains even a simple tree to 'be'

[god's goft..that defines what..'it' is]
is lost in only vieuing the forrest..or just the tree
saying are you god..no know god is in me..yet im not god

""What is God?""

the collective of all that is
the body animated by spirit..
that creates the essence..[the soul]
who's works define its fun-ction..via gnosis logic

""Is everything God,""

all flesh is a gift of god
all material is of god
all possable is god
all not possable is made possable
because god is not judging what is
only giving/sustaining.. its right to live/egsist/be

while im not god
i yet have the gifts..of gods good
that allows me to chose to be me..

knowing that 'he' is that which sustains me my every breath
[indeed sustains us..each our very every lifes breath]

from the best..
to the most vile
god alone sustains us our ALL our life
and by sustaining all of us our life's..possabilities
also thus..sustains the totality..of lifes living..lived by Brr'other'

[think of gods essence
as being all that so called dark matter..science cant find
plus all that seen/unse..felt unfelt..known unknown..yin/yang

and gods reality..all that seen and material..
as much spirit...as that unseen and semingly immaterial]

the key to grasping god
is found in the words atonemeant
[at one meant]...to love god is as simple..as loving other

for we are teqniclly all containing within us
his holy spirit..the same holy host wether its hosting a clever beaast[man]..or a dumb bacteria..its the same wholy spiritus

[im using words..chosen from my mind
by imagry..in-spired from outside my mind
so see the image..in-flux[in-spi-ration]..rather than the words chosen

god.."as in everything is energy?"

energy is one of those words
that has become subverted by e=mc2

[look at the equalisation of E[energy]..to equal mass TIMES the speed of light..times the speed of light..[clearly its a buzz-word designed to make weight times speed..to somehow become a joule]

god is the nexus
where the possable has infinate possability
where the impossable is a right..to become possable
[just as spirit has the right to chase after[in-spire]..those with like minds]

ie the devil claim his own
[except there are many demons
of infinite lust...seeking voice/expression..onto this realm

think of realms as being much like red light being invisable
except to those who only see in the red spectrum

that this spectrum..can see from within..outside light
yet the spirit realm sees only by the light within

where the logus dosnt come close to being the gnosis
but you can chjose by that realms logic

where logic is both sustained and refuted..by what is..
having the right to be..by virtue of god helping it to 'be'..

how could..say a bacteria
hope to have the right words/meanings
to describe the qualities..realities of its lifesustaining host...

or say a drop of rain
envision an ocean

is it..the rain drop
that did the bad thing
or the ocean?

i guess my problem is
words give meaning to symbols

but mental images/feelings/emotions..give rise to words
[emotion>>words>>imagry>>symbols]

when we start at the end..[symbols]
we dont know..how to get back to the other end..emotion

[where the true begining..[good]
now has somehow become..the end..[god]

Note to self don't ask a person's religion when leading into further points.

Thanks to Poirot, Squeers, Crabsy and others who are seriously looking at the topic. It is an interesting question, I cannot say the extent to which my Sunday school classes have influenced me as a person. I can precisely note the time I lost patience with formal religious dogma (from any religion) it was on September 11, 2001. I had been an atheist for many years prior, had I been older perhaps the holocaust in Germany would've been my point of no return in taking the religions of man, written by men for men with any seriousness.

I understand Squeers with his comments:

>> I'm personally not convinced that "We are culturally constructed, mind, body and soul", consciousness does indeed remain an enigma that no materialist theory has yet satisfactorily explained. Indeed modern science and analytical philosophy begin with the "assumption" that phenomenal reality is all there is, but this assumption is more like a prejudice than a stable premise. <<

And share his opinion, however that does not prove any of the world's religions to be true, egalitarian, inclusive, tolerant or suitable for every person, let alone the existence of gods or a god.

Thanks OUG,

"[I'm using words, chosen from my mind
by imagry..in-spi-spired from outside my mind
so see the image..in-flux(in-spi-ration)..rather
than the words chosen"

Well there you have it. In order for you to communicate with us, you translate your understanding through language. It signifies and gives rise an image in our minds. However, it is necessary for you first to consult the symbolic references in your own mind, before you even think about dissemination to anyone outside...that is immersion in materiality and the symbolic order.

Ammonite,

Yep, the "enigma" of consciousness or awareness is what we struggle with. We inquire and sift and attempt to come to terms with an innate suspicion that our biological senses and intellect can't tell us the whole story - and may even obscure it.

Dear George,

You made me interested in Tillich, I would like to read his books, one day.

Just to clarify my use of "existence", yes, it must imply a material object. I must however add that my concept of "material" is broad and includes, besides apples, chairs and electricity, also things which others often delegate to other realms, including psychological phenomenas, dreams, delusions, wishes and superstitions. Not only are these material, but there is even a science (or a pseudo-science as some claim) that researches the above. Note the use of the word "things": whatever it applies to, then for the purpose of this discussion I consider the thing as material.

I hope you would agree with me that God is not a thing.

Dear Poirot,

"So, how about some basic questions? How would either of you define God...What is God? Is everything God, as in everything is energy?"

As I just wrote to George, God is not a thing. Since only things can be defined, there is no chance I could ever define God.

The Tao Te Ching begins with:

If you can talk about it,
it ain't Tao.
If it has a name,
it's just another thing.
Tao doesn't have a name.
Names are for ordinary things.

Another translation:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

(more translations in http://www.duhtao.com/translations.html)

So sorry I cannot help you there, but if it can be of any help, there are three things I can say:

1) While it is impossible to say what God is, it is easy to state what God is not:

God is not ... {you may fill in the blank yourself}.

2) There is nothing but God.

3) It is possible to experience God directly.

(we already experience God all the time, for there is nothing besides Him, but we normally do it through something. By "directly" I mean without any via, such as the senses or the mind)

Yuyutsu,

Yes, I'm familiar with the Tao.

...and the Tao takes its wisdom from the machinations of the material world - applies them so that we may understand the nature of physical and spiritual reality.

Hence our yearning to be (re)united...

They may flourish abundantly,
But each turns and goes home to the root
of which it came.
Home to the root, home, I affirm, to the stillness,
This means to turn back is destiny,
And the destiny of turning back, I affirm, can never be changed.

The spiritual mirrors the material.

toa...[the way]
of course the way..cannot be named
for all paths have different beginnings and endings
but it can be defined...as being in between here and there

or betwixt then and now
its the axctive of moving between known knowns

knowing that anything you can name..isnt the journey..[the way]
its yet another ending or beginning..[yeah ok i just made that up]
but it explains my minds imagry...not a symbol

but i didnt say this
poiroh did...

quote..""However,..it is necessary
for you first to consult the symbolic references in your own mind,""

no
know im seeing a chair...when i think of a chair

infact am invisioning all the chairs..i have ever seen/felt/smelt..ie..by senses..not symbol

see all that i ever recognised
labled/named..chose..as being chair..[like]..[etc]

ie im not seeing a symbol
of a generic 'chair'

""before you even think about dissemination to anyone outside""

you must know...the known known's name
ie see a 'thing'..not a symbol of a thing

its the seeing/knowing/recognition..
of the thing..""...that is""..

the result of..
""immersion in materiality""

ie my life has taught me
a chair is a thing
not a symbol..

and im no closer to getting the sign
""and the symbolic order""...

of anything but chairs

chairs might have a..generic symbol

and so too might a clock..

but life again has taught me
to tell the time without a clock..
and sit..without a chair

while time might be..named..as symbolic measure..
or a symbol..for movement..between the NOT tao
it is not..nor can ever be
the symbol of..''the way'

yin/yang..dont symbolise..'the way'

they as such are opposing parts in balance
as symbolised,..for what they are symbiolising
only what...they are said to symbolise..to you..[or me]

movement maybe..
but not THE way*
not tao

OUG,

Sorry to split (c)hairs, but the mental picture of a chair in your mind is not in fact "a chair" - it's a symbol of a chair. The same as if I sat down beside you and drew a chair on paper. The drawing is not a chair, it is a symbolic representation thereof.

Symbols - ya can't operate without 'em.

Dear Poirot,

"The spiritual mirrors the material."

It seems that you still think of the spiritual as of a different plane of existence.

Or is it possible, perhaps, that you actually meant "psychic", mixing it up with "spiritual"? These are not the same.

There are no spiritual objects. "Spiritual" is an adjective describing that (person, path, interest, aversion, belief, tendency, effort, group, company, practice, instruction, teaching, book, film, song, poem, image, view, realization, atmosphere, guide, master, life, etc.) which pertains to the negation of the material illusion.

---
Just saw your latest post:

The mental picture of a chair in your mind is neither a chair nor a symbol. It is simply... a mental image!

Still enjoying this discussion, and still finding it poses questions worth pondering. Let me just reply to a few of you for the moment.

Lexi: Congratulations! Your topic has opened up some excellent discussion. It may appear sometimes that we have wandered way off your topic, but actually it is all about identity and the relationship it has with religion.

Squeers: <<Jung's archetypes are also not outside the symbolic order. Interestingly, Lacan (the pre-eminent theorist of the symbolic order) was a disciple of Freud, and of course Freud and Jung (former friends) fell out over their antagonistic theories.>> Thanks, but I can't accept Lacan's proposition that the unconscious has a structure similar to that of language. The conscious has a structure, the unconscious does not. I would suggest that an aspect of human being is an innate urge to create such a structure, and that this manifests in an effort to bring more and more of the unconscious into consciousness.

Poirot:<<It seems to me that the ego is utilised to assist the individual in his material undertakings. I'm more inclined to believe that in order to grasp a sense of the spiritual that one is required to subdue the ego in favour of detachment.>> Thanks for your response. "The ego" is a term I use in accordance with its origin in the psychodynamic school (Freud, Jung, Adler etc.) It comprises will, memory, perception, language, thought, learning, etc. It is the "self" that in everyday awareness we consider ourselves to be. The ego DOES the undertaking mentioned in your statement above. It is the agent, not an instrument. (It is often, however, despite its assertions to the contrary, manipulated by urges from the unconscious.) Concerning your second sentence, "one" cannot subdue the ego because "one" IS ego. Detaching is "letting go", sometimes called the Via Negativa. Your probing thoughts here lead us to a very important matter, but I"ll have to leave it for another context. Sorry.

Yuyutsu: It has been good to engage with you. We seem to have some perceptions and understandings in common.

Please keep up this discussion. I am enjoying reading all of your posts tremendously. This discussion has far exceeded my expectations and I am very grateful to you all. It's gone in directions that I had not expected - but I am delighted that it has. So many questions have arisen. I can't wait for the next series of inputs.

I find it interesting reading the various theodicies, that explain human problems in many ways. For example, the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation deals with suffering and evil by extending the life span indefinitely: one's present existence becomes merely a tiny link in the endless chain, in which death and misery seem only temporary and insignificant. The mysticism of Buddhism or Taoism offers the believer salvation at a spiritual level, where earthly cares become unimportant. Christian theodicy holds out the hope of eternal salvation in heaven in recompense for ordeals on earth. The Zoroastrian theodicy sees the universe as a battleground between the evenly balanced forces of good and evil, with the misfortunes of humans stemming from their failure to throw their weight on the side of good. In Shintoism, which focuses on ancestor worship, one's sorrows and the idea of death are made more tolerable by the knowledge that one's life will be remembered and celebrated by one's descendants forever.

It's these theodicies that imply that religion has some function in social life, and, in fact, this perspective offers many insights into the role of religion in society.

More later.

sorry to dig in with symbology
but poirot/quote..""the mental picture of a chair
in your mind is not in fact "a chair" -it's a symbol of a chair.""

i will agree with yuyutso..that its image rather than symbol

in egsamining your reply..""The same as if I sat down beside you
and drew a chair on paper.""

when i said god looks like an engorged nipple
i conveyed an image by a word..[not a symbol]

your drawing a c[hair]..[loved that one]
means you symbolised a chair..that before wasnt in here
[as in within my minds imagry]..but now i seen your picture
i hold the image of your hair quite clear...

i can accord meaning to the image
but its still an image

just like...""The drawing is not a chair,""
but put wheels on it..you got an image..[that means wheel chair acces/freindly..[or whatever]..the key seems to be that a symbol convey's a specific meaning..dependant on its situation or context

but my image of hair
only means a c/hair that isnt really there
the image cant have meaning...till i first get that it is a chair

a symbol should be self evident..[like road signs]
where the meaning is more than the mere image

but lets simply agree to disagree
a sign may reveal a meaning by symbol
but is a symbol a sure sign..
of pre-judging..

[pre determining..
[pre destination..
[cant find the ad verb]
a sure sign of pre-ciousness

pre judging a symbolic meaning
...so as to miss the sign
by wrongly reasoning

a sign as a pre-egsistant constant...
symbolised meaning...making..the past more relivant than the present

the tree of life..could be a symbol
[it does have symbolic meaning]

but how to tell 'it'
the symbol...
from any other sym*bolised...tree

symbols are by and large a destraction
that the master..confers as meaning full..upon a stu-dent[or novice/child..

spirit...dosnt need to talk in symbols
it talks in imagry*/emotion/sense/senses/experiences/feeling

OUG and Yuyutsu,

Perhaps we should replace the word "symbol" with "sign".

Ferdeinand de Saussure's theory postulates a "signifier" (sound) and the "signified" (thought - mental picture) as being components of a sign in language.

http://www.criticism.com/md/the_sign.html

Emile Durkheim, one of the first sociologists to study religion, pointed out that a single feature is common to all religions: a sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane. The sacred is anything that is regarded as part of the supernatural rather than the ordinary world; as such it inspires awe, reverence, and deep respect.
Anything can be considered sacred: a god, a rock, the moon, a king, a symbol such as a cross. On the other hand, the profane is anything that is regarded as part of the ordinary rather than the supernatural world; as such it may be considered familiar, mundane. Of course, the profane, too, may be embodied by a rock, the moon, a king, or a symbol.

Something becomes either sacred or profane only when it is socially defined as such by a community of believers. A religious community always approaches the sacred through a ritual, a formal stylized procedure, such as prayer, incantation, or ceremonial cleansing. Ritual therefore is a necessary part of religion because the sacred has extraordinary qualities, and according to Durkheim must be approached in a carefully, prescribed, reverential manner. He states that religion is a system of communally shared beliefs and rituals that are oriented towards some sacred, supernatural realm.

Seeing as this phenomenon is of such universal social importance -
I would like someone to discuss the functions of religion. Why is
religion universal in human society?

Poirot, Yuyutsu, Lexi, OUG, Squeers, et al.

Poirot's suggestion is very pertinent. The nature of symbol as opposed to sign is a matter I intended to raise earlier but overlooked.

A sign is based on a one-to-one correspondence with its referent.

A symbol, on the other hand, can stand for a number of things simultaneously, although they may be inter-related. Thus symbols are commonly employed in poetry and other arts as a way of presenting layers of meaning and multiple viewpoints and possibilities. Furthermore, different people may espouse different meanings for the same symbol. The national flag is a good example.

Another quick example. In mathematics the numeral 1 is a sign, corresponding to the number (concept) 1. However, thinking as an artist, poet or numerologist I may see 1 as a symbol representing such things as "a beginning", "leadership", "egotism" or many other possibilities.

Another topic worth discussing in much more depth! But again I must leave it for another time...

Lexi <"...discuss the functions of religion.
Why is religion universal in human society?"

An interesting question Lexi.

I believe that religion originated in ancient times, soon after humans evolved well enough to walk upright on the Earth. The forces of nature at the time were difficult to understand without imagining that some 'good' and 'bad' beings, usually to do with nature, like Sun Gods, Earth Mothers, Sea Gods etc, were responsible for the good and bad things that happened to them back then.

Thus, it would follow that they would think that if they offered 'gifts' to these 'gods' then maybe floods, droughts, earthquakes etc wouldn't happen. Eventually, offering gifts changed to offering words, or prayers, in some societies.

Like the monarchy, religion was probably necessary in the past.
It was used by 'brighter' or more educated people to control the masses, and obtain riches from them, in order to ensure their souls were not damned etc.
It kept them in line so there wasn't anarchy and chaos.

These days however, more people are educated, and many more people in more societies know right from wrong, and thus don't need religious leaders to 'guide' them anymore.

Many more people are able to think through the issues of life all by themselves now, so religion is less important in our modern world.

crabsy et al,

I was treating "symbol" and "sign" as synonymous, indicating language broadly so as not to overcomplicate the point.

Saussure's structuralism was superseded (acquiring its "post") by the realisation that the sign has no "one-to-one correspondence with its referent", rather the signified is the unstable and "intertextual" nebulae, or aporia, of usage, be it philosophical, theological, or a shopping list. All linguistic systems, with which we think, are riddled with contradiction and ambiguity; what Derrida called "Différance": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#Diff.C3.A9rance.
Moreover all experience, sensual or psychical, is given to the subject in that same ambiguous and culturally negotiated, or current, confusion. Meaning (signification) can be likened to a neural pathway that's currently favoured (by usage) among the aporia of possibilities. That is why "knowledge", history, aesthetics, justice, ethics etc., however compelling are perennially unstable; of a period or culture, and subject to revision.
Regardless of naive affirmations about how things are in themselves, or what constitutes "truth", or "meaning", or God, these are aporetic concepts in the matrix of the intertext, and inaccessible (what Lacan called the "Real") otherwise. "There is nothing outside of the the text"--"for us".
The question for many is whether there is ontological experience apart from the historicised "meaning" that is sedimented in the present and in the subject.
This indicates the value of meditation, if indeed it is possible to clear the mind sufficiently of verbiage to see beyond the complex illusion we habituate. The atheist will insist there is nothing "beyond"; the agnostic, that even if there is, it cannot be apprehended (my position, which is why I insist we should concentrate on the here and now, and "human" ethics and universals). The theist often treats the beyond with all the familiarity of his own backyard, shamelessly rendering his credulity in the very aporetic language, indeed the cliches and platitudes and rationalisations and institutionalised wishful-thinking s/he's inherited/concocted.

If you want to get at the "truth", forget everything you know!

Poirot,
>>How would either of you define God...What is God? Is everything God, as in everything is energy?<<
"Everything is God" is called pantheism, usually considered a kind of atheism. However, as I wrote, in distinction to mathematics, there are no basic concepts (that need not to be defined, because everybody agrees on their meaning, like sets, relations, mappings etc) on which other definitions can be built. This applies especially to any attempts to “define” God in a way that everybody would understand the same way, as, say the definition of a compact topological space.

Of course, there are “definitions”, e.g. in my dictionary: “(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.” which makes sense only to those who accept without defining the terms involved. If you try to define them - for instance, what is a supreme being, you soon end up with circular definitions.

Yuyutsu,
My I suggest you do not start with studying the three volumes of Tillich’s classical “Systematic Theology”, but rather look at his much more concise “The Courage to Be” (Collins, The Fontana library, 1983) discussed by relda, me and others in the above link.

I agree that one needs to clarify what one means by the material world. I described it as everything that can be investigated by science; I do not call it a definition, for reasons explained above. So, of course, this needs further explanation of what knowledge does investigation by science convey.

However, in distinction to God, The Spiritual etc. everybody - theists, atheists, even Buddhist if they don’t ignore science - agrees that it “exists”, although how can science “know it” is a more complicated question of philosophy of science, notably contemporary physics (QM), where it is of secondary importance whether or not you believe that "it is all there is", as Sagan put it. (Presently, I am struggling to understand what Van Fraassen understands by “constructive empiricism” - in distinction to “scientific realism” - since his conclusions, that even a philosophical dilettante like me can understand, are close to mine.)

Also, I should stress that by science I always mean natural science as I think is implicit in English; so I was also surprised, to find the Department of Psychology (but not Sociology) belong to the Faculty of Science in my Australian University.

>>The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” etc.
Compare with the Western ““What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent” (Ludwig Wittgenstein) or “Ein begriffener Gott ist kein Gott”, something like “A conceptualized God is no God” (Gerhard Tersteegen, an 18th century German protestant mystic). Maybe your rejection of God as what you call a “thing” is not unlike Tersteegen’s rejection of God as “conceptualized”.

I agree with Lexi that this has become a very interesting discussion, even if - as I suspect, though it cannot be helped - we often speak past each other.

the crux of the current issue is that george is right
""we often speak past each other.""

so lets agree that this difference..isnt as important as that with which we agree[i was going to write conqure]..but words with big numbers of letters..to often have a narrow definition..[of exclusive and often tribal signification..in trying to avoid over comlication

this brings us back to sign or symbol

[the image in my mind mow is mary;symbol/image or sign
yet under it all just..another huh?-man mother
[most certainly..NOT the mother of god]

i was going to point out that the 'a course in miracles'
channeled by an athiest jewess...from jesus himself
spends much time with L-earning..not naming things

[not prejudging...'things'..
by according them..with a name]

i coverd that in depth..years ago
further here..[at olo]

as well as here..[where it begun]
http://www.celestinevision.com/celestine/forum/viewforum.php?f=29&sid=0081426e00b9c1b956d85b8e1ccf0a19

or rather here
http://www.celestinevision.com/celestine/forum/viewtopic.php?t=784

but as im banned for life...there
im doing it here/now...but over trying to start all over again

people will believe as they believe
religion is embedded..within your id
right in the place..god is meant to be..for too many
as well as dead dying or dormant..

where others refuse to see
the one god..for the forrests of religeons..

[all religeon are like many well's..
[all drawing the same waters from the one water source]
the one..*source of ALL life..sustaining the living with*in us all*

ahhhh...men
know what you are being
is the first step to finding out who is doing it

Squeers,

Thank you for your exposition. You have a knack for clarifying points that are hard to explain.

OUG,

Interesting point - let's take your mental picture of Mary, Mother of Jesus...just to toss an idea into the ring.

In one respect she is an archetypal symbol of "mother and nurture" - or as a sign one might relate it distinctly to her being the mother of Jesus.
However, if we look at the word "Mary", we will associate it with whatever each of us subjectively relates it to. So it might be the mother of Jesus or it might be your auntie or your best friend. The signification of the word "Mary" is unstable. The signification of the mental picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus is also unstable if you are not familiar with the Christian narrative.
Your cognition and application of either the word or the mental image is entirely dependent on the catalogue of cultural text (your software) in your mind - it is impossible to operate beyond its constraints.

Here's an exercise - try and imagine "another colour" - one that is not a combination of all those available on the spectrum. You will be able to imagine the "concept" of another colour, but you won't be able to form a mental picture of it.

Dear Suze,

Thanks for your response to my question. Emile Durkheim was one of the first sociologist to study religion in a systematic way. His study, "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life," was first published in 1912 and has since become a classic. Many of Durkheim's contemporaries saw religion as nothing more than a primitive relic that would disappear in the more sophisticated modern world. It hasn't. Perhaps the answer is that religion has a vital function in maintaining the social system as a whole. Or perhaps, although, "the old gods are growing old or are already dead, the others are not yet born." For many years it was widely felt that as science progressively provided rational explanations for the mysteries of the universe, religion would have less and less of a role to play and would eventually disappear, unmasked as nothing more than superstition. But there are still gaps in our understanding that science can never fill. On the ultimately important questions - of the meaning and purpose of life and the nature of morality - science is utterly silent and, by its very natire, always will be. Few people of modern societies would utterly deny the possibility of some higher power in the universe, some supernatural, transcendental realm that lies beyond the coundaries of ordinary experience, and in this fundamental sense religion is probably here to stay.

cont'd...

cont'd ...

Dear Suze,

Religion functions as a form of social "cement." It united the believers by regularly bringing them together to enact various rituals, and by providing them with a shared values and beliefs that bind them into a community. An outstanding example of this function is the way the Jewish people, scattered for centuries across various cultures, have maintained their identity and cohesion simply through their religious commitment. Of course the question can be asked that although a society requires some shared set of beliefs to ensure its cohesion do these beliefs have to be religious? Many other belief systems have been suggested as functional equivalents of religion, including humanism. These and other belief systems fulfill the functions of religion so well that they can actually be regarded as "religions." The essential difference between such belief systems and religions is, that though the former serve some of the same functions as religion, they are not oriented toward the supernatural.

it pains me what we have done
to the image[symbol]..of mary

to suggest that she is the mother of god
egsemplifies..how symbols lead us astray

not many have heard of pope joan
the only femail pope ever[and even better the only sitting pope to ever have given birth...]..and yes it was a boy..

[it is her image..with her son..
that has im many places subverted mary]
and also she is the source of the traditional ritual

where each contestant...for popehood..
must sit 'exposed'..on 'the chair'..[with a hole in the seat]..
from which the authenticity of the 'tackle'..is accertained..by feel as well as the angle of the dangle..

our his-story is replete..with ritual
even in jesus time...rite was held ABOUVE god

its an acromoney...[an athema?]..
that the very messenger sent to correct it
has now become the biggest division..in uniting the children of good back to god..

[to wit the most holy christs..'church'..
is as devided as the rest of the 'other' belief syastems]..

[religions]..who hold their creed...as absolute/sacred
who hold their rituals..as being sacred/sacrosanct
missing the very teachings jesus revealed as being errant[in error]

take the ritual of feeding the 4/5000
note the seating order[oppisite each other]
watching each other with creed filled judgmental eyes

each knowing the SACRED rite of the handwashing ritual
was essential..to be called holy..to be called to that 'clean place'

of course each ate...'as much as they desired'
because none desired to eat...WITH DIRTY HANDS*

recall the dirty handwash/jars..of canna
and again with the shewbread/priests

but i have tried so many times..
to explain the real meaning
of what..*he DID..

[not what man/men..say
about..the thing*s..he REPORTEDLY said]

imagry is as danger/filled..as ritual
in that if filterd..by a faulty filter/measure

gives vile fruits..not good fruit..
yet if we filter out all the bad
and focus only on the good...we by loving/serving/leading..
to the good sooner..re-connect with the ultimate good..[god]

however we might percieve him..[to be]
hold fast..to that known known..god is

*GOOD*
ie grace/love mercy
charity/life...
*GOD*

*[its all good*][god]

if you learn to ignore..the wrong
by not judging it...Neither good..NOR bad*

Dear OUG,

The religious convictions that anyone holds are influenced by the historical and social context in which that person happens to live.
Someone born in ancient Rome would probably have believed that Jupiter is father of the gods; at any rate, he or she would certainly not have been a Southern Baptist or a Hindu. Similarly, if your parents are Catholic, you are probably Catholic; if they are Mormon, you too are probably Mormon. We are not the passive prisoners of our upbringing, of course, but even people who decide to convert from one religion to another almost inevitably select their new faith from the unique range of options that their particular culture happens to offer at a particular point in its history.

The fact that a religious doctrine is culturally learned does not necessarily put its "truth" in question. What this cultural variation does mean is that there are a large number of religions, many of whose members are convinced that theirs is the one true faith. Religions reflect the cultural concerns of the socieites in which they arise. War-prone societies tend to have gods of war. Agricultural societies, gods of fertility. Societies that accord much greater power and prestige to men likewise tend to have male gods and religions dominated by male officials. It's therefore not surprising that priests, rabbis, and other clergy have been exclusively male in the past, or that this situation is gradually changing as gender roles become more flexible in other areas of society. Another example is that most Western Christians, being white, tend to think of both God and Jesus and his mother Mary as white. The idea of a black God is almost unimaginable to them and portraits of Jesus and Mary frequently present them as blond Caucasians rather than as people with Semitic features they no doubt were. In many African churches, on the other hand, statues and portraits of Jesus and his mother show them with dark negroid features.

Lexi,

I think your last is very well and fairly put, and I expect we can all agree on it.
The actual religious/spiritual/transcendental experience remains the true mystery, and one which I do not “bah humbug”, or dismiss in general as self-deception. I don't think there's any doubt that a great deal of mystical experience is one kind of fancy or another, but I'm persuaded that some such experience is genuine and outside the symbolic order; undefinable, or unsignifiable, but experiential nonetheless. Indeed we need not struggle too much with this apparent human capacity for mystical experience, we need go no further than our infatuation with meaning. Did anyone listen to last week's Science Show?
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/scienceshow&d=rn/scienceshow/audio&r=ssw-2011-07-09.ram&w=ssw-2011-07-09.asx&t=Saturday 09 July 2011&p=1
Richard Dawkins (the second speaker) avers with breathtaking éclat that no less than the “riddle of life” was solved in 1859, by Darwin, and at one point talks about our "illusion of meaning".
Without having any “beliefs” as to whence our fascination for meaning springs, I cannot dismiss its diverse manifestations in the world as the elaboratations of the same universal illusion, and I consider Dawkins small, indeed mean-minded to do so himself. The fact that Man is so hopelessly addicted to his/her “illusions”, of spirituality, beauty, love, angst, “meaning”, in a word, and regardless of cultural context, tells me the “stimulus” is real, however it is bastardised. Even the belief that a capacity for meaning has obstinately “evolved” in an apparently meaningless universe, is stupendously meaningful! And who knows where that evolution might, or “has” ended? We base our beliefs and disbeliefs on a ridiculously tiny and problematic perspective.
It’s worth noting too that Derrida does not throw out the “meaningfulness” of our “illusion” in the process of deconstructing its elaborate linguistic trappings. Derrida was an agnostic and so am I.

Dear Squeers,

Thank You for your comments. I think that in the future there will
undoubtedly be a growing religious diversity reflecting our individualism. Particularly in times of uncertainty and rapid social change, people may look, as they have in the past to religious values to stabilize and revitalize their culture. It may well be the case in fact, that the need for religion will eventually reassert itself more powerfully in precisely those societies that have become the most industrialized, rationalized and materialistic. Who knows? I certainly don't. As I stated earlier - to each his own. Whatever floats your boat and gets you through the night. Thank You for your Derrida reference. Fascinating. I'm now going to try to get hold of a
biography of Jacques Derrida. I want to learn more about his life and what was it that drove a man from a Sephardic Jewish family to become
an agnostic.

Lexi and Squeers,

Regarding the "stimulus" - the philosopher, William James spoke of religious impulse being a natural phenomenon.
I think most us feel an inclination or "pull" to search for a higher truth or meaning.

Will Durant wrote on James:
"Now the persistence of belief in God is the best proof of its almost universal vital and moral value. James was amazed and attracted by the endless variety of religious experience and belief....He saw some truth in every one of them, and demanded an open mind toward every new hope....In the end, James was convinced of the reality of another - a spiritual - world."

Durant quotes James:
"I truly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing rooms and our libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history, the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangent to the wider life of things."

[Lexi, I believe he's referring to "private" household libraries :)]

Thanks George,

I ordered "The courage to be", it is now on my reading queue.

I don't doubt that the material exists, I just point out that existence itself is an illusion. In other words, it is an illusion to believe or perceive that there is, or ever could be, anything but God.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't know whether or not all that exists can be investigated by science, so I suppose that in Sagan's terms I am sitting on the fence. What probably distinguishes me from Sagan is that this question does not bother me, nor does the question whether psychology is a real or a pseudo science. I am equally open to both possibilities because for one who trusts in God, the light of science is like the light of the moon in the middle of the day.

As I wrote to Poirot, a mental picture of a chair is... a mental image. Similarly, a concept of God is... a concept. Now as there is no current shortage of concepts, they sell very cheap.

Poirot & Crabsy,

Both symbols and signs are mental constructs (excluding the physical component, such as a wooden cross, aluminum road-signs or the number "1" written with ink on paper). As such, when talking about God I compare them to the light of the moon in the middle of the day.

Since our addiction to mental constructs obscures the reality of God, the question is which mental constructs are more helpful in eliminating our dependence on mental constructs altogether. I am not suggesting that any mental construct can defeat itself, but if we allow mental constructs to fight against each other in our minds, resulting in a smaller number of them still with a grip on us, then by the grace of God we have a better chance of eliminating the hold on us of the remaining constructs as well.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. ~Abraham Lincoln

Yuyutsu,

If you were unable to represent your thoughts to yourself as mental images, might I suggest that it would render you merely a shell who would not be able to participate as a human in any active capacity. who might be "nothing but God", but who wouldn't be aware of it...or anything else, for that matter.

....and another thing, Yuyutsu,

"Similarly, a concept of God...is a concept."

Precisely!....and that is what you have presented to us - merely "your concept" of God.

In order for you to tell us of your "concept", you had to first construct mental images in your mind...and in order to comprehend the meaning of your words, we had to do the same in ours. Do you not see this?

Whether existence is an illusion or not, this is the way humans make sense of the material realm.

so much to con-sieve
what to believe

when i dared god to make me blind
by staring at the sun..he presented me with a vision
the after image of which was a circle within a circle
that my mind percieved[concieved]..as resembling a nipple
that my mind then decided was a cell and nuclious..

the end must join the beginning
thus the uniqueness of one big bang
becomes but a breathing out..and collapsing in
of many 'big bangs'

much like a breath...where the general imputus..flow
inertia..of a big bang...eventually dissipitates..into stasis
that in time gathers together[again]..where a final change of state
reverses the ionversion back with a bang...into the next expantion..

pre big bang..there was the circle..
[the size of a full stop{.}]
in time there would be the beginning[.]
and the outer limit[O]

the [.]...within..the [O]
or the nipple that god gave me
now the [O]...might be symbolic
or it might be a sign..

or it might simply be an after image
but why arnt i blind

[my theory is that i looked at gods sun..
with expanded pupil's...and physio-logicly
simply hadnt focused my eyes lens narrow enough
to burn the recepters..in the back of my eye

i love that [for me]..god
looks like an engorged blue nipple
even if i saw only the 'sun'..not the father of the son

the sun yet sustains every bit of living
the talk is heaven is filled with light
and hell in rejecting the light..creates its own 'darkness'

we each have ben gifted our life being
to chose to walk OUR OWN path..but no where
can life be recognised
but by other life

science has proven
life comes only from life
so even in the beginning..there must have been life
just as life must be....'after life'

[even if only spirit
survives the big collapse]
it returns again with a big bang
time and again...and again..and a GAIN

Dear Poirot,

An old Arab who is unaware of jet planes may claim:
"How is it possible to travel from Cairo to Amman without a camel?".

So does the ordinary human believe that it is impossible to live and function without the mind.

"Whether existence is an illusion or not, this is the way humans make sense of the material realm."

Indeed, but whence this insatiable urge to make sense?
A jet pilot may occasionally hire a camel for recreation, but s/he can also do without it.

"Precisely!....and that is what you have presented to us - merely "your concept" of God."

In fact, I have only presented you with keyboard strokes and electric impulses.

Yuyutsu,

Why would you bother to type out the words if you were not intent on passing on information to other humans? (you were "making sense" of your words and actions at the time, and driven by an insatiable urge to make yourself understood to us - to make sense)

Yes, you provided the keyboard strokes, and electric impulses carried them to us. We then decoded them utilising the signifiers you provided to form mental images (the signified) - only then did your (approximate) message/transmission reach other minds...we made "sense" of your thoughts.

"So does the ordinary human believe that it is impossible to live and function without the mind."

I'm intrigued - perhaps you can enlighten us as to how we would go about functioning as humans without our minds?
(This doesn't preclude recourse to irrational or random concepts - outside the square, so to speak).

Poirot:
<Precisely!....and that is what you [Yuyutsu] have presented to us - merely "your concept" of God>

Indeed, not even Yuyutsu's concept, but a cultural concept, a derivatve concoction.

I enjoyed your Durant and James quotes btw, Poirot. Having read most of James's "Varieties of Religious Experience" I can attest that he had a remarkably open, yet rigorous, mind on the subject.
His brother, Henry James, is also of course a splendidly psychological novelist.

Dear Poirot,

Why indeed should I bother passing on information to other humans?

Perhaps because I care, perhaps because I feel it is my duty to do so, perhaps because writing helps me clarify my own ideas to myself. Ideally, this should not be a bother but a call from God to serve others in this way and ideally, my mind should not interpose itself in my writing. I do pray to keep my mind's interpositions to the minimum.

"I'm intrigued - perhaps you can enlighten us as to how we would go about functioning as humans without our minds?"

I wrote that you could function without your mind, not that you would function as a human. However, you could still function among humans, and probably even better than you ever did as a human. All you need for this is a [human] body and a [human] brain, you don't need to waste your energies minding about it.

Yuyutsu,

"Duty and care" can only be conceived by using your mind. You have "made sense" of the concepts of duty and care.

It seems you are saying that one can utilise one's human body and brain to act among humans, but "not" as a human - how so?

Wouldn't the absence of mind (cognition) reduce one to a vacuous human-shaped entity?

You mind's "interpositions" are all encompassing. You are (for the present) ensconced within materiality - everything you've uttered is referenced from and predicated on your human cognition, condition and experience, even as you deny it.

Dear Poirot,

"everything you've uttered is referenced from and predicated on your human cognition, condition and experience, even as you deny it."

I do have my shortcomings, but I do hope that at least some of what I have written is God-inspired and not human-inspired. At least I am making an effort: I review what I write before posting, and if I find a word, a sentence or a paragraph which seems to have originated in my mind, I delete them.

"It seems you are saying that one can utilise one's human body and brain to act among humans, but "not" as a human - how so?"

A human consists of a body, a brain and a mind. Without the mind you may no longer call it a human. Once the mind is out of the way, it is no longer "me" (the ego, which is a part of the mind) that operate my body and brain. Once the mind stops interfering, my body and brain can then be used directly by God.

"Wouldn't the absence of mind (cognition) reduce one to a vacuous human-shaped entity?"

Your mind believes that it is absolutely necessary, that you cannot survive or function without it, so it screams: "emptiness, vacuum, help!", but in fact you are not your mind, not even your body and brain. You are God.

It is common to believe that losing one's mind is terrible and painful, but that's only because the term "losing one's mind" is usually used misleadingly to refer to brain-damage, not to the loss of mind. Just imagine, no more worries, no more fears, no more anxiety, no more delusions, no more suffering: loss of mind is a grand relief!

Yuyutsu,

I appreciate your sincere replies.

If you believe that it is possible for you to function without using your mind - so be it.

...although...."If I find a word, a sentence or a paragraph which seems to have originated in my mind, I delete them."

If you were to delete everything that originates in your mind, you would never post a word.

The recognition of "inspiration" is a function of mind.

dont end this topic
nor end this one either
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4556&page=0

see the key is we often start things
but then never finnish WHAT we started

we capture the moment of glory
with our peers..then when the hard yards..begin
move on to the next social power play..on our path to glory

often via that rightfully gore..[gorey]
oh the glory of gore

we killed the least[the beast]

hated the most..

because thats all we could see
in our blind ibnorances..it truelly was the blind leading the blinder

we all wear blinders
we wernt born that way
we were TAUGHT..it...as true
when patently in hindsight..it was all lies

but even thats just an opinion
[like bum holes..we all got one]

till we fear changing our opinion
then we run away and hide

hum ya chantra folks

me....ohmmm
me....ohhh mmmm

mmmmmeeee

mmmmmmmmeeeeeeee
me me me me

meme*

ok topic has moved on
this seems a good topic
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4579&page=0

mainly because we are allowed to diss-cuss freely
oh well this topic is dead..long live the next topic
that in its turn too wil die

ya just gotta love the reset
death gives us all

regardless of what others
embedded into your mind

love you all
thanks for the topic lexi

OUG:
<ya just gotta love the reset
death gives us all>

I agree OUG, death gets a lot of bad press, but it's great to know there's one thing we can be sure of. A toast to death, the consummation of life.

Dear Squeers,

All men are cremated equal.
(Sorry couldn't resist).

0000ps you did it again lexie
opened a spiritual can of worms

[oh really ....how johan
i hear you ask]

glad to try to explain lex

""All men are cremated equal.""

sadly this isnt the case
we still make absurd monuments for the 'body'
people go and weep for the dead...[at their grave]

MAKING THINGS MUCH WORSE
for the spirits..[still alive in spirit]
who are unable to comfort them..by proving themselves NOT DEAD

the living suffer so much
it retards the spirit progressing

imagine if you will
we grieve belly...but say belly cant post
but hears us bemoaning speculating about him
[that moaning/grief..dosnt fix the reason belly cant post]

[i was aiming for a present 'egsample'
but vision it as it is..][not belly
but someone say..who is really passed over[passed on]
not just not posting

that OTHER..dead person..
is still attatched to the physical...body
simply by the focus of spirit..UPON..the body..

suicides in particularilly..
[who's life SENTANCE..wasnt served in full]
accident victims poisening murder etc

are KNOWN to remain attatched physiclly..
to the material flesh..till its final..disolution..back into dust

the advice from the spirit realms
is we remove..[minimise] the spirits duress
by cremation as soon as possable..following 'death'

[you might note many faiths
try to bury tgheir dead within one day
or by the time the sun sets..etc..and while they 'got' the right idea
bodies can deteriorate slowly..even in the grave]

we compound the PROBLEM..by adding that stuff
preservative...to 'preserve' the body..

BUT in preserveing the body
often bind the spirit..
[attatched to being 'the body'
it remains attatched...to the body]

[in some cases..ie athiests..
who fail to realise they are spirit..NOT JUST BODY]

those who have too much ego...etc

anyhow govts should mandate cremation
its a small thing..but lets make it 'law'

or at least explain it to spirit..
via PROPER fun-eral services
that advise EVERYONE..
about what is next

if your body is dead
burn it

anyhow
you made the joke
i rememberd the point

(Sorry couldn't resist).

Dear OUG, (Johan),

I'll put it another way:

Don't take life too seriously.
You will never get out of it alive.

Or

Life is not a journey to the grave with
the intention of arriving safely in a
pretty well-preserved body, but rather
to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up,
totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming,
"WOW - What a Ride!"