[nivek]

Antlerman and Ruby Sera have asked for some Arena sand to discuss as header to this thread indicates.

I will make ONE demand, that is anyone who not a direct participant or necessary Staff/Mod stay the hell out of the Arena in which this discussion happens.
ANY post but directly dealing with subject by the participants will be nuked with no warning.

Will ask participants to please refrain from participating outside their Arena grounds in the Arena section (Peanut Gallery) while working on discussion.

Ruby and Antlerman sent this to me, seems reasonable, as this is a *discussion* and not a formal tit for tat formal debate.

Quote

There shall be no word limit. Response time may vary to accommodate other life commitments. One person shall make no more than two substantial posts before the other has made one. Substantial post is fifty words or more. A brief note of 50 words or less indicating a need for time before responding, or other such notice, does not count toward one's limit.

Peanutting Gallery opened for this one, all outside views and opinions to be kept here, or *gone private*. Please refrain from bitchy, dumbassed, biting remarks. if you've got something to say to an actor performing in Arena, take anything more than opinion of discussion private.

I like these deep discussions that are open to all to view, but are in essence a closed conversation between the persons involved. If these are to continue, then their sucess with these tests will give Staff and Owner an indication of participation and readership.

Thanks in advance for your participation in both the Arena floor and in the Galleries.

kFL

[R. S. Martin]

Introductory Post

Antlerman and I want to explore the idea of God's existence as evidenced in the human experience. I will argue for the Christian side that God is more than an imaginary friend and Antlerman will argue from an atheist's perspective.

This will be a rather informal debate along the lines of the discussion Antlerman and Alice had with BuddyFerris. There will not be a set program with a word limit per post. The formality we aim for is focus on the discussion and respect for each other despite disagreement.

Just to be clear and above board, I deconverted from Christianity just over a year ago because I disagree with the theology. My motivation for this debate is two-fold:

• I believe that there is legitimate reason for belief in God and that atheists need to be more aware of these reasons.
  
• I want to become more thoroughly familiar with the atheist arguments against these reasons. I have my own ideas but I want to hear the ideas from someone else.

Antleman kidded me to be careful not to get converted back to Christianity. We’ll see about that. I’ve been tempted many a time this past year to reconvert but it hasn’t happened yet. Nor do I see it happening.

In my next post I will present the opening statement.

[R. S. Martin]

Opening Statement

In considering the evidence for the existence of God I think we need to take into consideration that feelings are a legitimate part of the human psyche, and must therefore be reckoned with as a real force in human nature. This being the case, I consider it irrational to discount emotional input to religious belief. In other words, I think for an atheist to discount the religious person’s beliefs on grounds that “it’s all in the feelings” is irrational. The religious person feels—knows intuitively—deep down in the heart of hearts that God exists.

When atheists talk about the religious person’s “imaginary friend,” it seems like they must have never experienced these feelings, even though they say they used to be Christians. Their talk about an “imaginary friend” evokes images of a playmate--or another person outside of oneself, with whom one can talk, do business, and relate to. This is not how God is experienced. It is much deeper. It is much greater. It is much more pervasive. God’s Being fills the universe. Like the psalmist says in Ps. 139, NRSV:

7 Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

10 even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,”

12 even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

Rudolph Otto speaks about this in his book Idea of the Holy. He speaks of the feeling of awe the human feels when in the presence of something much larger than the self, such as a huge and ancient oak. It’s been a while since I read that book but it “spoke to my soul.” I was in a meditative mood one day while walking across campus. There were a lot of trees in the area, and also a conservation area with a lot of Canada geese. I happened to be walking in an open area at the moment. A batch of geese was circling overheard about twice the height of the treetops, honking away. The powerful sound of their voices along with their powerful wings—it was a holy moment, a kind of unity with nature, with God, with the universe, the kind of moment when one “feels God in the soul,” speaking through nature--in this case, the wild geese. As Paul says in Romans 8:16, NRSV “His Spirit bear[s] witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”


A word about my use of the Bible here. I don’t think that in this case I am “using the Bible to prove the Bible.” I am using the Bible to help express religious feelings because the Bible is good at doing this. Passages like Psalm 139 have probably been used by humans for thousands of years—perhaps for millennia before the Bible was written—to express their feelings of awe for the divine as they experienced the divine. The passage from Paul came much, much later and seems to be a fitting summary for this post. In other words, I have shown how one can feel that God fills the universe, and Paul’s passage shows how all of this is anchored within the heart of the individual. This is far more than an “imaginary friend.”

[Antlerman]

Thank you Ruby for this important topic for discussion. I hope to be able to share some thoughts that might help bridge gaps of understanding and offer a respect and appreciation for what is behind the idea of God from both sides of the aisle.


I’d like to qualify for the benefit of readers that I do not feel that I speak for atheists, as I don’t believe there are such things as “doctrines of atheism”. I am an atheist in that I don’t belief in the existence of a supernatural being that is historically called God. From that non-theistic view point I look at the world through a set of ideas that sees no real justification to try to incorporate the supernatural into it. To use the old phrase, I see “no apparent reason” to try to include God in understanding the world, outside of the human factor, which we are about to discuss.

To begin with I will never discount someone’s experience of what they call God. I will take them at their word that they experienced something profound, and many times I can be happy for them that they have such awareness’s. I myself have experienced what people call God on many occasions, and still do to this day as an atheist. In fact I would say more so now that I am not hindered by the definitions of religious doctrines. Some of these experiences of Life were of such depth and power to have dramatically changed the course of my entire life.

Many if not all humans have sensed that ineffableness of existence to some degree or another at various points in their lives. It typically comes at a time where we have allowed ourselves to be distracted; at a time of setting aside our thoughts of anxiety and opening ourselves to the universe; or breaking though of some deep life crisis of the heart and mind that opens one up beyond the world that they sense themselves trapped inside.

We see and experience the enormity of universe, are filled with a sense of reverent awe and wonder at the mystery of existence, and experience the very effulgence of life itself that permeates everything in the universe as it floods our consciousness mind. As we open ourselves to this, we move beyond the confines of our thoughts and recognize our place as a living, vital part of this living vital universe. We are part of it and it of us. There is no separation, except in the prison of our own worries and fears, to which we hold the keys.

As I became a Christian in pursuit of gaining knowledge of God and realizing a greater connection with that sense of the ineffable, I found myself falling further back from that desired goal, becoming more and more distracted with thoughts about God Himself as was taught to me from the Bible. Notions of sin and damnation, destruction and wrath, punishments for disobedience, etc all detracted from that ineffable quality of life I had become deeply aware of as a teen seeking for meaning to life itself.

In the midst of this conflict of doctrine and the spirit, I would try to block out those concerns and adopted the language of scripture where I saw it expressed those qualities of life that I had experienced. My favorite passages were from Psalm 19,

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

… and from Psalm 8

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”

Yet despite this, the overwhelming weight of a literalist understanding of God in scripture robbed me of that sense of the universe that my soul longed to know and make a part of me.

In the end, on an almost unconscious level being driven perhaps by that emotional desire, I set aside my personal investments in formal theological study and lay it all on the table for honest evaluation. I left them and sought a more middle ground approach to God hoping to find value in it. As that itself failed to offer substance, I slowly distanced myself further and further away to find my own space to have a blank slate on which to wait and see, so to speak.

Ironically, one day I had this realization I never imagined I would come to believe, that it wasn’t necessary to put the face of God on it, that I let go of that hope and found in that moment a sense of exhalation and connection to the universe that I had wished for. I was free, and felt alive in my heart and was again able to respond to the world with wonder and awe in my soul! Why was that?

That has led to all the thoughts you see me explore on the many pages of these threads on this site, and what I hope to explore here. What does it mean to be human in how we perceive the world, how we speak about it and define it for ourselves, and how we respond to it. And furthermore, how do we as a human community see past our boundaries of our tribal languages to recognize the value of all humans and all life as vital participants in existence.

What is God?

You referenced the German theologian Rudolf Otto who wrote the book The Idea of the Holy. He coined the term “numenous” to describe that sense of the transcendent, or the divine which he describes as “that which is wholly other.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous said:

The numinous is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that leads in different cases to belief in deities, the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent.

<snip>

In order to clarify the term in layman's language it may be viewed as "the intense feeling of unknowingly knowing that there is something which cannot be seen." And this knowing can "befall" or overcome a person at any time and in any place - in a cathedral; next to a silent stream; on a lonely road; early in the morning or in the face of a beautiful sunset.

<snip>

Mysterium tremendum et fascinans - Latin phrase also coined by Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy to name the awe-some (fascinating and full of awe) mystery that was the object common to all forms of religious experience.

<snip>

Mysterium tremendum is also mentioned in The Bible by Aldous Huxley:

"The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the Mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the in-compatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God."

Nostalgia for paradise was a term also used by Mircea Eliade to help bring understanding to the Numinous. This idea was based off the theory that person has a sort of longing for perfection or paradise and gives us a platform to experience the numinous.

On the great Sea of Memes we drift upon in this modern world, notions of an externalized Being are philosophical concepts that under gird how we perceive the world. In hearing what Rudolf Otto defines as “that which is wholly other”, I find myself not seeing things this way.

I have long felt that this “numinous” as he calls it, or this sense of ‘God’ or ‘sense of the divine’, has its ‘being’ or essence defined by the language we use to speak about it. It’s unavoidable that our conceptions about the universe are shaped by the philosophies inheriting through history and enforced by the language constructions we interpret things through. We create a face through the words of language to this particular sense. He expresses it as something “wholly other”.

It places it in the heavens, so to speak and us on the ground; or something outside us. It’s the language of dichotomy that creates this idea of here and there, and heaven and earth. It’s extremely difficult to conceive of ways of looking at things differently when language has such a huge influence on creating a framework for understanding concepts in the universe. It places God and man as separate “beings” and in this case it sees the ‘numinous’ as ‘wholly other’.

Usually at the end of a long explanation, I’ll typically conclude saying that ‘as we peer deeply into the divine, past the veil of the mystery into the realm of God, the face we will see staring back at us is our own. We are the God we seek. We are the divine.’ I feel that it is the terror of this subtle awareness that we look away to other gods to intermediate for us, to save us from that realization.

Now to explain that in words that might save me from being burned alive as a blasphemer! :grin:

Being part of this Sea of Memes, we are all influenced by ideas that are allowed to exist in a world free from religious oppression. As people are allowed to think outside the control of thought from within a closed system, perspectives of life that do not require a commitment to a theology bring new, fresh dimensions of understanding their own lives. Life is no longer walled in by the priests who read by candle light in dark rooms, interpreting acceptable thought through the lens of sanctioned doctrines. Otto was someone who was allowed to move beyond theologically, but still brought with him notions of his culture.

Even though someone may not be aware of any names associated with certain ways of looking at things, they all have some source of influence that went out into culture and communicated itself through art, literature, and popular media. I suppose my personal thoughts are more rooted in world views influenced by the ideas of philosophers like Heidegger.

http://en.wikipedia....artin_Heidegger said:

Heidegger claimed that Western philosophy has, since Plato, misunderstood what it means for something to be, tending to approach this question in terms of a being, rather than asking about being itself. In other words, Heidegger believed all investigations of being have historically focused on particular entities and their properties, or have treated being itself as an entity, or substance, with properties.

<snip>

Heidegger argues that Plato's fallacies resulted in two evolving but contradictory schools of thought, most readily observed during the Age of Reason as the division between British empiricism and German idealism, but traceable to every stage of Western thought. All that we understand, from the way we speak to our notions of "common sense," is susceptible to error, because it has evolved from Plato's fundamental mistakes about the nature of being. These mistakes filter into the terms through which being is articulated in the history of philosophy—reality, logic, God, consciousness, the present, et cetera. In his later philosophy, Heidegger argues that these errors have profoundly affected the way in which human beings relate to modern technology.

Philosophers are divided in their opinion of Heidegger: some regard him as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, while others view his writing as bombastic nonsense. Nonetheless, his work has exercised a deep influence on philosophy, theology and the humanities, being key to the development of existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, postmodernism, and continental philosophy in general. Heidegger's thought directly informs the works of major philosophers such as Karl Jaspers, Leo Strauss, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Lévinas, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.

(emphasis mine)

From this point I’ll be looking at how this sense of the divine, or ‘numinous’ as Otto called it, is following that fundamentally Western notion on the nature of being. When I speak of God, what is the first thought that comes to mind? ‘You here, and God there’? That’s what this means. This ‘numinous’ is following that same notion of something beyond and above us; something that exists in itself. This perspective of ‘being’ is a direct influence of the teaching of Western philosophy that is engrained into our perceptions of reality through the framework of languages.

I will stop here with this thought. ’God is not a Being. God is a realization.’

P.S. Sorry for the delay, as I’ve been ill and I’m home today laying low and listening to a classical radio station as I write this… so try to forgive any incoherency that may have slipped through. :grin:

I may also have some delays in response over the next two weeks due to schedules. Your patience is appreciated.

[R. S. Martin]

Antlerman, thank you for letting me see into your soul. You and I mean two different things when we talk about God. You latched onto Otto’s term “wholly other.” I have never been able to comprehend the meaning of that term, no matter how much my professors explained it. I could not identify the definitions with anything inside of me and it was just so much noise in my ears.

Nor have I ever been able to understand what people meant by God. God, as described in sermons and songs and the Psalms as being so full of love and mercy, and as being reflected in Nature, is to me what you describe as Life. Or Otto’s numinous. As I said in the Introductory Post, I deconverted just over a year ago. And the reason I decoverted was that I found another explanation that seemed more realistic than God for the feelings of Life, of mysterium tremendum, or the numinous, or whatever term one wishes to use.

(I am reviewing exactly what my position is supposed to be in this discussion, re whether or not it is okay to bring in my deconverted status. Here is how I worded it: I will argue for the Christian side. I did not say that I will argue as a Christian. I’m glad because I don’t think I could do that with integrity. Perhaps I need to see myself as an advocator making a case for the Christians. As such, I hope it is permissible to draw on things I have learned since my deconversion, because I don’t think I can turn the clock back a year and unlearn everything I learned since September 2006.)

I took a few notes and wrote a few thoughts as I read through your post the first time. I will copy some of it here to illustrate the drastic difference this different view of God makes in our world view. I wonder if I am the only European descendent who sees/has seen God this way. I have to go to Aboriginal spirituality or wicca to find something with which I identify. This is so profound that I have wondered whether I have Native blood but don't know it. In the summer of 2000 I spent some time with Natives and they shared some stuff with me that they seldom share with pale faces. You definitely seem to be more in line with conventional Western thought and literature than I am. [This paragraph has been edited by RubySera. See Amendment in next post.]

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 12:46 PM, said:

To use the old phrase, I see “no apparent reason” to try to include God in understanding the world, outside of the human factor, which we are about to discuss.

Emphasis added.

I never used God to understand the world; I used the natural world to understand God. For example, the feeling of awe, or mysterium tremendum, would come over me as a result of observing powerful and beautiful elements of the natural world such as a mighty torrent of water, heavy thunder, a large tree, or a beautiful sunset. On the other hand, I would also feel soothed by the soft but steady sound of summer rain on the roof and grass. It felt like God cared for us as He sent the rain to refresh the parched earth. (Not that we here in lush Southern Ontario know what real drought is but we know when we need rain for our land to remain lush.)

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 12:46 PM, said:

As I became a Christian in pursuit of gaining knowledge of God and realizing a greater connection with that sense of the ineffable, I found myself falling further back from that desired goal, becoming more and more distracted with thoughts about God Himself as was taught to me from the Bible. Notions of sin and damnation, destruction and wrath, punishments for disobedience, etc all detracted from that ineffable quality of life I had become deeply aware of as a teen seeking for meaning to life itself.

My response to this is rather strong. Just prior to this paragraph you described Life, what to me is God. Here is my note of response to this paragraph: What in the world is happening to the poor boy!?!? The letter of the law became a barrier between him and Life. This is horrible!

Perhaps I should clarify how I dealt with this kind of God. I ruled him out of the picture. My mother explained that we lived in a different dispensation than people lived in the OT. And if we believe, as some Christians do, that God's grace covers all people and that there is no afterlife or hell, and that curse and blessing are but inner mental states, then "[n]otions of sin and damnation, destruction and wrath, punishments for disobedience, etc." do not apply to us today. If we accept that God works in mysterious ways, that "God's ways are so much higher than our ways, and God's thoughts so much higher than our thoughts, as the heavens are higher than the earth" (see Isaiah 55:9), then we trust that the Israelites understood God and likewise experienced the human-divine relationship as merciful and benevolent.

In fact, my Old Testament professor explained time and again exactly how the logic would have run and it was truly life-giving. I know the teachers at this school are in communication with Jewish rabbis and scholars so I trust this is based on more than speculation. The parameters of the lives of the ancient Hebrews by which their values were determined were so utterly different from ours and that is what makes the difference. I just can't recall what the critical ones were. I do remember that it made perfect sense and I feel confident that you would agree with the logic. Lines such as "His mercy endureth forever" are very common throughout the OT, esp. in the psalms. So we know that their poets felt that God was a merciful and just God.

Thus, when I read about Otto's numinous and understood that he believed that this was God, something inside of me clicked and I knew that what I felt was God and that I have known this God for a very long time. I just didn't know it was God because no one ever described God this way. Then when my OT prof described the OT passages this way I could see how it all hangs together. The same God existed for the ancient Israelites as existed for me. Actually, I'm only beginning to see some of Otto's connections now. He talked about the burning bush Moses saw. That was part of it.

So I guess we have come to an impasse. We were going to discuss the existence of God in the human experience, the evidence of the heart. And we discover that we are talking about two different things with reference to God. I would say we are talking about the same inner experiences otherwise but we give these experiences different labels. So where do we go now?

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 12:46 PM, said:

P.S. Sorry for the delay, as I’ve been ill and I’m home today laying low and listening to a classical radio station as I write this… so try to forgive any incoherency that may have slipped through. :grin:

I may also have some delays in response over the next two weeks due to schedules. Your patience is appreciated.

Not to worry about the delay. You pmed me about being sick and having a hectic schedule. It's written into the rules that response time may vary to accommodate other life commitments and Skip has approved this. I did not notice any incoherency. I think you did an excellent job of covering major amounts of information in a very coherent manner. I am amazed you could do this when you were sick. Hope you feel better soon. This is going to be very interesting.

(Apology: I had a few problems and lost a few things. So I had to go back in and add a few things, such as Scripture reference. I made it blue so people who already read the post could find it easier. The major change is recorded in the next post. Other parts just aren't as nice as I had hoped. Sorry for any confusion this has caused anyone, esp. for you Antlerman, my esteemed dialogue partner. I think I know what went wrong and hope to avoid it in future. RS)

[R. S. Martin]

A M M E N D M E N T

As I read over my post I see I lost something. The following paragraph (as originally posted):

I took a few notes and wrote a few thoughts as I read through your post the first time. I will copy some of it here to illustrate the drastic difference this different view of God makes in our world view. I wonder if I am the only person on earth who sees/has seen God this way. You definitely seem more in tune with conventional thought and literature than I am.

is supposed to say:

I took a few notes and wrote a few thoughts as I read through your post the first time. I will copy some of it here to illustrate the drastic difference this different view of God makes in our world view. I wonder if I am the only European descendent who sees/has seen God this way. I have to go to Aboriginal spirituality or wicca to find something with which I identify. This is so profound that I have wondered whether I have Native blood but don't know it. In the summer of 2000 I spent some time with Natives and they shared some stuff with me that they seldom share with pale faces. You definitely seem to be more in line with conventional Western thought and literature than I am.

(I will now change it in the actual post. I will leave this here for those who read it before it was changed. Hopefully this deals appropriately with the situation.)

[Antlerman]

RubySera, on Oct 29 2007, 05:01 PM, said:

(I am reviewing exactly what my position is supposed to be in this discussion, re whether or not it is okay to bring in my deconverted status. Here is how I worded it: I will argue for the Christian side. I did not say that I will argue as a Christian. I’m glad because I don’t think I could do that with integrity. Perhaps I need to see myself as an advocator making a case for the Christians. As such, I hope it is permissible to draw on things I have learned since my deconversion, because I don’t think I can turn the clock back a year and unlearn everything I learned since September 2006.)

Oh most certainly. I appreciate hearing your thoughts rather than role playing another. If you see some merit in the Christian point of view, then by all means explore your thoughts around that. I myself find value in some Christian language for multiple reasons. Why shouldn’t we? It’s the language of human beings seeking to express something about their response to life. It’s a framework of understanding, not the building itself.

RubySera, on Oct 29 2007, 05:01 PM, said:

You definitely seem to be more in line with conventional Western thought and literature than I am.

Sadly this is true. I am very much a product of Western culture and thought. But I think where the disconnect came in my response to you was where I began applying systematic logic to this issue. I took the reference to Otto and analyzed it in the light of Western philosophy. I was trying to use the language of Western thought to address concepts I thought you were bringing up. I don’t believe that addresses the question now.

In reality, I do exactly what you said here:

RubySera, on Oct 29 2007, 05:01 PM, said:

I never used God to understand the world; I used the natural world to understand God. For example, the feeling of awe, or mysterium tremendum, would come over me as a result of observing powerful and beautiful elements of the natural world such as a mighty torrent of water, heavy thunder, a large tree, or a beautiful sunset. On the other hand, I would also feel soothed by the soft but steady sound of summer rain on the roof and grass.

I think this is why for me I always felt a disconnect with Biblical theology. That anthropomorphized entity was unfamiliar to the God I knew from nature.

You know my entire album I wrote is all about this? It’s about the faces of nature that speak to me about “God” as I once used that word. That’s why my attraction the psalms about nature.

RubySera, on Oct 29 2007, 05:01 PM, said:

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 12:46 PM, said:

As I became a Christian in pursuit of gaining knowledge of God and realizing a greater connection with that sense of the ineffable, I found myself falling further back from that desired goal, becoming more and more distracted with thoughts about God Himself as was taught to me from the Bible. Notions of sin and damnation, destruction and wrath, punishments for disobedience, etc all detracted from that ineffable quality of life I had become deeply aware of as a teen seeking for meaning to life itself.

My response to this is rather strong. Just prior to this paragraph you described Life, what to me is God. Here is my note of response to this paragraph: What in the world is happening to the poor boy!?!? The letter of the law became a barrier between him and Life. This is horrible!

Yes, it was a tragedy. My desire to believe and to find answers led me to a church that promised the Truthâ„¢ and instead delivered Religion.

RubySera, on Oct 29 2007, 05:01 PM, said:

Perhaps I should clarify how I dealt with this kind of God. I ruled him out of the picture. My mother explained that we lived in a different dispensation than people lived in the OT. And if we believe, as some Christians do, that God's grace covers all people and that there is no afterlife or hell, and that curse and blessing are but inner mental states, then "[n]otions of sin and damnation, destruction and wrath, punishments for disobedience, etc." do not apply to us today. If we accept that God works in mysterious ways, that "God's ways are so much higher than our ways, and God's thoughts so much higher than our thoughts, as the heavens are higher than the earth," then we trust that the Israelites understood God and likewise experienced the human-relationship as merciful and benevolent.

In fact, my Old Testament professor explained time and again exactly how the logic would have run and it was truly life-giving. I know the teachers at this school are in communication with Jewish rabbis and scholars so I trust this is based on more than speculation. The parameters of the lives of the ancient Hebrews by which their values were determined were so utterly different from ours and that is what makes the difference. I just can't recall what the critical ones were. I do remember that it made perfect sense and I feel confident that you would agree with the logic. Lines such as "His mercy endureth forever" are very common throughout the OT, esp. in the psalms. So we know that their poets felt that God was a merciful and just God.


Thus, when I read about Otto's numinous and understood that he believed that this was God, something inside of me clicked and I knew that what I felt was God and that I have known this God for a very long time. I just didn't know it was God because no one ever described God this way. Then when my OT prof described the OT passages this way I could see how it all hangs together. The same God existed for the ancient Israelites as existed for me. Actually, I'm only beginning to see some of Otto's connections now. He talked about the burning bush Moses saw. That was part of it.

Now to challenge something here to keep this interesting. The problem I have with this is what I went down that road of analyzing philosophy to try to lay the ground work for. In short, it’s taking these experiences and sticking the name God on it, and using it as a justification for theology.

Who says this is God?

RubySera, on Oct 29 2007, 05:01 PM, said:

So I guess we have come to an impasse. We were going to discuss the existence of God in the human experience, the evidence of the heart. And we discover that we are talking about two different things with reference to God. I would say we are talking about the same inner experiences otherwise but we give these experiences different labels. So where do we go now?

I guess the question as I saw it asked, is this evidence of God? Is it?

That’s what I was trying to lay the ground work for in order to address more fully. That these experiences are human experiences. They are not about something ‘out there’, nor are they evidence of it as being some force of the universe. They are a response, a real and genuine response, but a response nonetheless. It begins in the human heart. As I said at the end of my last post, “God is not a being. God is a realization”.

Is this helping, or I am still missing the point? I’m trying to make sure I’m actually tracking with you.

[R. S. Martin]

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

“God is not a being. God is a realization”.

Is this helping, or I am still missing the point? I’m trying to make sure I’m actually tracking with you.

I love this! I don’t think you’re missing any points. Nor did I think so in your earlier posts. As I see it, so far we’re just mapping out the territory.

Sorry, I missed the importance of the part “God is a realization,” so maybe I'm the one who is missing points. That particular statement doesn’t speak to me at all. God is not a Being. Hmmm. Let’s go over some of the other things in your post. I’ll get back to this again later.

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

You know my entire album I wrote is all about this? It’s about the faces of nature that speak to me about “God” as I once used that word. That’s why my attraction the psalms about nature.

I don’t think I know about your album but according to the passages you quoted from the Psalms in your last post it seems you and I like the same kind of psalms. I learned a song about “the heavens declare the glory of God, the earth his wonderful power.”

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

That anthropomorphized entity was unfamiliar to the God I knew from nature.

This simple statement prompts me to do some further analysis. On exC I read a lot of references to an “old bearded man in the sky” when people talk about God; this differs dramatically from anything I ever heard where I came from. This discussion is making me aware that far more goes into a person’s perception of God than I ever realized, and that one’s perception of God has major and far-reaching implications beyond anything I ever dreamed of. I see three important distinctions that may have contributed to my very different concept of God than yours:

1. Theological Trends: The theology of my native community (church into which I was born) differs from that of the general membership on these forums. Aside from Roman Catholic and Lutheran, it seems most people on here are from mainline fundamentalist/evangelical churches, of which I assume you are one. With the help of local profs and fellow Mennonite students I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that my native community’s theology is a much older tradition, perhaps Pietism that originated with German Lutherans in the 1600s. Fundamentalism has its roots in the late 1800s and would therefore be based on different values and premises.

2. Invisible God: Whatever the case, my mother was very strict about God being invisible and that we cannot know what God looks like. She forbade us to visualize God. Thus, when I did see pictures of God, like in the large Bible she got from a peddler, I quickly turned the page and pretended not to see it--same as with pictures of Santa Claus. She taught that Santa Claus was not real, just an evil invention of the wicked worldly people and that decent people (meaning people like us) didn’t believe in Santa Claus. This left my brain blank as to a visual concept of God; but there was much emphasis on God’s love and care—items that translate into feelings. Feelings are very important to me and I am not about to change my position. However, it is quite okay with me if you identify a different part of the inner experience as God than I do. I am very much interested to discuss the issue from all angles. I want to understand why you feel and believe as you do.


3. Faith to be Seen not Heard: Talk about our faith was very strongly discouraged. Dress and hairstyle and other material items of home and lifestyle were closely observed and monitored by the church. To stay out of trouble, all one had to do was keep the rules to the letter and keep one’s mouth shut. I did that. This allowed for independent thinking and study so long as one did not express one’s thoughts, insights, and questions. There was no ban on readings, letter-writing, or any kind of communication with outsiders. The ban was on acquiring and disseminating strange doctrine. But nobody checked up on anyone so long as they kept the rules and did not do or say anything suspicious. In my search for a spirituality with which I could identify I came across some Aboriginal spirituality and also one or two Christian mediums. Even though I was in a modern Mennonite church by that time, I kept my mouth shut. My deconversion process was well under way, though I didn't know it.


Bottom Line: Coming from a religion where personal faith experience was not talked about, anthropomorphization of God was probably not as solidly accomplished in my mind as in yours. This allowed, and continues to allow, me to feel the awe and inspiration of natural elements and beauty and power of the natural world, and to think of it as the reflection of an Almighty Creator God of the Universe if I so desire. My Christian sister told me less than a year ago that she sees God in nature. So I guess I am not the only European descendent who does this. In addition, I am not the only Christian to have done this.

I am having an aha! moment. This extreme anthropomorphization of God by fundamentalists may be Enlightenment thinking, while the more holistic (not sure if that is the right word; I mean “whole as opposed to analytical”) approach I and my sister and the Aboriginals bring to bear on the matter may be pre-Enlightenment thinking. While no one living in the Western world in the 20^th or 21^st centuries can have totally escaped Enlightenment thinking, I am thinking that those groups who pre-existed the Enlightenement, and whose metaphysics have remained relatively untouched by academia, may have retained their pre-Enlightenment metaphysics relatively intact. The general history I know would support this theory but I would have to do much more research to be sure that these groups were not impacted.

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

You know my entire album I wrote is all about this? It’s about the faces of nature that speak to me about “God” as I once used that word. That’s why my attraction the psalms about nature.

I don’t think I know about your album but according to the passages you quoted from the Psalms in your last post it seems you and I like the same kind of psalms. I learned a song about “the heavens declare the glory of God, the earth his wonderful power.”

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

Now to challenge something here to keep this interesting. The problem I have with this is what I went down that road of analyzing philosophy to try to lay the ground work for. In short, it’s taking these experiences and sticking the name God on it, and using it as a justification for theology.

Who says this is God?

Emphasis added.


Exactly! I was wondering how we would get back on track. You brought us back. Thanks! To recap, here are the two main reasons I wanted this discussion:

• I believe that there is legitimate reason for belief in God and that atheists need to be more aware of these reasons.
  
• I want to become more thoroughly familiar with the atheist arguments against these reasons. I have my own ideas but I want to hear the ideas from someone else.

So it seems we have laid the ground work. In other words, we have established that there are common human experiences that we can talk about. That’s a major first step. We also know names or terms for these experiences drawn from the literature, which is equally crucial. Here you seem to be saying that the name God has been stuck onto phenomena that have other explanations. This leads to the next step.

I believe that there is a reason for these experiences of the numinous, or mysterium tremundum, etc. What do you think causes this feeling? Aboriginal peoples of many lands, also known as primitive religion, have had sacred geographical locations, or sacred trees or rocks, etc. In the Old Testament there is the story of Jacob’s Ladder (Gen. 28:10-18). I am sure you are familiar with it. Jacob was fleeing his jealous brother and found himself in the middle of nowhere when night came so he bedded down in the wilderness for the night with a stone for his pillow. He dreamed that there was a ladder from that spot to heaven and that angels went up and down the ladder. When he woke up he said, “Surely God is in this place and I did not know it.” He anointed the stone that he had used for his pillow and vowed that if this God would bring him back safely he would serve him. This story happened to have an extra-ordinarily happy ending and this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob continues to be worshiped to the present day, several thousand years later.

There is something about this story that has always seemed rather odd to me. I don’t read Hebrew and am not a biblical scholar, but I would not be in the least surprised if the original text would speak in terms of a god, rather than God or the LORD. That would be more in keeping with the idea of local gods as described above. The part that I find odd is Jacob’s exclamation that he did not know that God was in that place. He also concluded that this particular place must be the “house of God” and the “gate of heaven” (V. 17). These ideas do not jibe with the ideas of an omnipresent God who is equally present everywhere all the time as we are taught under monotheism.

Whether we approach this from a monotheistic or polytheistic perspective does not matter at the moment. My point is that the idea of god derives from a feeling that comes over a person, and my question to you is: If there is no god or supernatural entity, what do you think is the source of that feeling? Where does it come from? What causes it? Why does it feel as though there definitely is someone or something outside of us if there really isn’t? This is more real than imagination. You yourself said as much in Post 4. Let me quote a passage:

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 12:46 PM, said:

I myself have experienced what people call God on many occasions, and still do to this day as an atheist.….Some of these experiences of Life were of such depth and power to have dramatically changed the course of my entire life….It typically comes at a time where we have allowed ourselves to be distracted; at a time of setting aside our thoughts of anxiety and opening ourselves to the universe; or breaking though of some deep life crisis of the heart and mind that opens one up beyond the world that they sense themselves trapped inside.

Three points stand out for me:

• Religion is not a prerequisite for the experience.
  
• It has the power to prompt life-changing decisions.
  
• It is more likely to occur when one is in crisis or meditating, or in some way not in the regular routine of life.

I know Christians who, if presented with the above questions along with your testimony of these experiences, would shrug and say, “God works in mysterious ways.” What does the atheist say? Back to your last post.

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

That these experiences are human experiences. They are not about something ‘out there’, nor are they evidence of it as being some force of the universe. They are a response, a real and genuine response, but a response nonetheless. It begins in the human heart. As I said at the end of my last post, “God is not a being. God is a realization”.

That it is human experiences.

Yes, these are human experiences. But what is it that the human is experiencing? Let’s look at a real life experience. Last week one evening I went with a friend to a fund-raiser supper and it was at a church. Neither of us were Christian but they were serving saur kraut and pork, a cultural dish you can’t get just any day and he was hungry for it so we went. We were given numbers and had to wait in the sanctuary for our turn to eat so we sat in the back pew and chatted. At one point I felt a strong sensation of a presence very close behind me. I looked around and the mystery was solved. There was a person standing right up against the back of my pew, but not quite touching me.

This has happened to me before, and I know it happens quite commonly to others, too. We can sense when we are in close contact with—but not quite touching—another body, or when another set of eyes is watching us. It is not physical. What is it? I’m sure I could find Bible verses to answer the question but I’m not sure what purpose that would serve. I’m interested in your answer. You mention the heart. You also mention the mind. Which is it? Do you mean the physical organs that are known as the human heart and brain? Or are you speaking metaphorically? What I would like is an answer from science. How does science or psycho-physiology answer the above questions?

Re “God is not a being. God is a realization.” From the Christian perspective, this does not make sense. There is nothing in my experience that helps me understand what you might mean by this. I've worked it through as far as I can and I am no nearer understanding than I was at the beginning of this post. In my experience, it is sentient beings or entities such as humans or animals that can cause emotional responses in me. Since the natural world can do the same, it is logical to think that there must be a Being "out there." But a realization? I don't understand how you mean. Can you explain?

[R. S. Martin]

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

RubySera, on Oct 29 2007, 05:01 PM, said:

So I guess we have come to an impasse. We were going to discuss the existence of God in the human experience, the evidence of the heart. And we discover that we are talking about two different things with reference to God. I would say we are talking about the same inner experiences otherwise but we give these experiences different labels. So where do we go now?

I guess the question as I saw it asked, is this evidence of God? Is it?

Sorry, is this a question? Are you asking me whether what I said before the part you quoted is my understanding of God? If so, the answer is yes. As I understand Otto, the numinous, etc., is the religious person's God. In Post 4 you talk about ineffableness, Life, and existence. All of these are what I call God. So far as I can make out, this is what all religions have in common, though they might not admit it. For example, one of my sisters challenged me whether there could be a book so deep as the Bible without God.

I must say I don't know what she meant by deep. In another conversation I described some of these feelings and asked if she knew about such an understanding for God. She said she has read about it. Apparently it's not something she experiences. However, I believe that religion originates out of these deep experiences and that this is what keeps them going, even if not all members experience them the same way. Like I say, I don't know what my sister means by deep. Studies have been done on types of spirituality and there are various types. I'm not really into that.

You indicate this is human experience and talk about it being of the heart and mind. I address this in the post above. I just realized that I missed this question and wanted to address it because I think it's central and you may have been asking it for a few posts already. Sorry.

[Antlerman]

Thanks for the replies Ruby. There's a lot to discuss in them and I have a number of thoughts I'm anxious to dig into. I may not have time right away over the course of the next several days, but if I find time I'll devote it to this. Just to let you know I've caught up and 'am looking forward to offering a response.

[R. S. Martin]

Great! Not sure if I should acknowledge seeing this note, but this will give me time to finish off Darwin's Origin of the Species, which will help me understand the problems of Charles Hodge, father of fundamentalism. Maybe I'll get into Hodge's work, too. I'll see you when you get back.

[Antlerman]

pulls up his chair, prepared to resume the discussion. :grin:

Sorry for the long delay. I needed to break from things for a little while recovering from being sick and dealing with work, as you knew. In the mean time I had some discussions with others that I knew would bring value to our discussion when I returned with my mind refreshed. Hopefully, we'll see the value of that here.

RubySera, on Oct 30 2007, 02:52 PM, said:

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

Now to challenge something here to keep this interesting. The problem I have with this is what I went down that road of analyzing philosophy to try to lay the ground work for. In short, it’s taking these experiences and sticking the name God on it, and using it as a justification for theology.

Who says this is God?

Emphasis added.


Exactly! I was wondering how we would get back on track. You brought us back. Thanks! To recap, here are the two main reasons I wanted this discussion:

• I believe that there is legitimate reason for belief in God and that atheists need to be more aware of these reasons.
  
• I want to become more thoroughly familiar with the atheist arguments against these reasons. I have my own ideas but I want to hear the ideas from someone else.

So it seems we have laid the ground work. In other words, we have established that there are common human experiences that we can talk about. That’s a major first step. We also know names or terms for these experiences drawn from the literature, which is equally crucial. Here you seem to be saying that the name God has been stuck onto phenomena that have other explanations. This leads to the next step.

I believe that there is a reason for these experiences of the numinous, or mysterium tremundum, etc. What do you think causes this feeling? Aboriginal peoples of many lands, also known as primitive religion, have had sacred geographical locations, or sacred trees or rocks, etc. In the Old Testament there is the story of Jacob’s Ladder (Gen. 28:10-18). I am sure you are familiar with it. Jacob was fleeing his jealous brother and found himself in the middle of nowhere when night came so he bedded down in the wilderness for the night with a stone for his pillow. He dreamed that there was a ladder from that spot to heaven and that angels went up and down the ladder. When he woke up he said, “Surely God is in this place and I did not know it.”He anointed the stone that he had used for his pillow and vowed that if this God would bring him back safely he would serve him. This story happened to have an extra-ordinarily happy ending and this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob continues to be worshiped to the present day, several thousand years later.

There is something about this story that has always seemed rather odd to me. I don’t read Hebrew and am not a biblical scholar, but I would not be in the least surprised if the original text would speak in terms of a god, rather than God or the LORD. That would be more in keeping with the idea of local gods as described above. The part that I find odd is Jacob’s exclamation that he did not know that God was in that place. He also concluded that this particular place must be the “house of God” and the “gate of heaven”(V. 17). These ideas do not jibe with the ideas of an omnipresent God who is equally present everywhere all the time as we are taught under monotheism.

Whether we approach this from a monotheistic or polytheistic perspective does not matter at the moment. My point is that the idea of god derives from a feeling that comes over a person, and my question to you is: If there is no god or supernatural entity, what do you think is the source of that feeling? Where does it come from? What causes it? Why does it feel as though there definitely is someone or something outside of us if there really isn’t? This is more real than imagination. You yourself said as much in Post 4. Let me quote a passage:

Antlerman, on Oct 29 2007, 12:46 PM, said:

I myself have experienced what people call God on many occasions, and still do to this day as an atheist. Some of these experiences of Life were of such depth and power to have dramatically changed the course of my entire life. It typically comes at a time where we have allowed ourselves to be distracted; at a time of setting aside our thoughts of anxiety and opening ourselves to the universe; or breaking though of some deep life crisis of the heart and mind that opens one up beyond the world that they sense themselves trapped inside.

I'll pick this up from here. If you wish to come back to other points, by all means bring me back there. What do I feel causes these feelings? I'm going to bring in a post I made in another discussion while I was taking a short break from ours, where I responded to his recounting of an existential religious experience:

Antlerman, on Nov 1 2007, 06:04 AM, said:

I fully believe you experienced that. I've experienced something very similar. A point in my life of great crisis; an event that took me to the edge of death; a cry of desperation for help out into the utter darkness; white light suddenly appearing everywhere, in an instant driving everything else out that tormented me; a complete cessation of time; infinite peace, infinite love, infinite knowledge, infinite awareness, infinite power, infinite grace and compassion, all in only a sliver of an inconceivable infinity that lay beyond that; and then a gentle voice of infinite compassion and awareness speaking only my name, conveying my life's story before my eyes in an instant of utter timelessness with the knowledge spoken without words to my mind that I was never alone, that was loved beyond all knowledge. Shall I continue?

Rising from this vision I felt all the pain of my heart come gushing out of the deepest part of my soul in a torrent of tears, being both afraid and amazed at what had just happened. Two days later, I began what began my lifelong search for understanding of this. Being raised in a Christian culture, seeking out a minister seemed the most appropriate beginning. I openly shared my experience with wonder and puzzlement in my voice, to the stolid looks of the minister who gave little response. The following day I spoke to another, this time a Catholic priest, who likewise sat with a blank stare and his offering what I learned later to be the typical Catholic response of asking if I had anything to confess.

I left feeling discouraged, lost, and confused, yet with this knowledge in my heart. Suddenly, without any warning or indication, the entire Universe opened to me before my eyes, as if a great curtain opened in an instant. I suddenly saw for the first time in my life - color. The world was full of color, with vibrant greens and blues everywhere! The World was full of light and love and color, and permeated everything as a sort of living joy that surrounded me, moved through me, and began flowing out of the most unimaginably deepest part of my being out into the world in a sort of song, as can only be described as utter, living love.

I saw people walking by me, and rather than feeling darkness and shame in my heart and averting my eyes away as in my past, instead I felt pure love and joy. No thoughts of darkness were in me anywhere at that moment, and I felt truly alive for the first time in my life.

I then responded in a subsequent post to someone's being astounded that I would be an atheist and consider this as something other than God:

Antlerman, on Nov 1 2007, 06:55 AM, said:

Thank you for your comments. There are reasons why I am an atheist, and it's hard to really explain simply, but I'll try a little here which probably won't say much.

Essentially it has to do with the balance between the rational and the aesthetic nature of all humans. I have both pretty strongly in me, and I find that the aesthetic side (perceptions and experience of beauty) is expressed in languages that go beyond the language of commerce which we all share to deal with the mundane things of life. But the aesthetic, human's response to the world, takes on many forms. One of which is mythology; stories of super humans, gods, and mythical beings are languages of what is in the heart of humans, our ideals, hopes, aspirations, etc.

It goes beyond this, but to the short of it, the language of God in religion is out of place for me. Though it may have once inspired in its original cultures, it has becoming stained by the insistence of the religious on its factuality. Now my rational mind is in conflict with that particular language of myth used to express the aesthetic.

You see? I feel these experiences are a part of the human experience, and there's nothing wrong with using a language system to express that. But the language system that has the symbolism connected to the physical reality of this world, does both the language and human beings a great disservice. Rather than making modern humans free to appreciate transcendent beauty as part of their humanity, the religious are requiring a violation of the rational mind in order to use that language! To me the word "spiritual" means being whole. Being whole means fully experiencing both a rational view of the world, while appreciating its beauty with the heart.

When I hear you see God in my life, coming from you I appreciate it. It's your language of expressing what you feel in your heart. When I hear it from other people who have an agenda to convert, then I hear someone with ulterior motives who judges me as lost and in darkness. I hardly consider myself lost. I am always seeking to embrace a higher existence, and if I need to dump a language system that is broken for me, the real question should be what is it in the end am I serving? Is it what you call God? Then we are of the same heart, and there should be no divisions, or judgments of others. This is why I am repulsed by the evangelist who judges by exterior labels rather than deeds of the heart. They serve their religion, not "God".

Does that help?

And finally from the other thread I am including as it pertains directly to our discussion. In response to someone calling these things we are discussing as "tricks of the mind":

Antlerman, on Nov 3 2007, 10:03 AM, said:

Where I go from this point is to the next step as I see it. I don't care for the language of "trick of the mind" because, to me, it carries a dismissive tone to it and I feel that it's something that, however it occurs, can and does provide great insight. "Trick of the mind", to me sounds like it can just be dismissed and ignored. Instead what I would say is that there is a truth in the symbolism that bears consideration. These are "manifestations" from our deepest feelings taking symbolic form.

Think the peyote cultures of native tribes, sweat lodges, and other practices intended to bring about a hallucinatory experience (watch the movie Altered States). These are NOT recreational drug uses like kids on the street freaking their minds out. They are sacred experiences, because they are approached as a means to transcendent insights. They are an altered perception that casts new light on things of this world because they come from inside the mind of man.

These are not nonsense, and to simply dismiss them as “just a hallucination” totally misses the point of it in these cases, and with your experience and with mine. This is not some "getting high” nonsense. These are, strictly speaking, products of the mind, but they were created from the deepest parts of our psyche at a time of great crisis in our cases to provide, in the form of mythological symbolisms, the same thing that art provides for us, as Matthew Arnold put it, "to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us."

Mythology is a form of art and functions on the same level. I do not view anything in the universe or the human experience as supernatural. I am far away from a New Age follower. The best I could describe how I see things is from a more aesthetic philosophy, with atheistic existentialist thought. When I hear you speak of your experience, and when I hear Sojourner speak of her views of God, I see more a case of fellow humans in the same boat as all of us, using the structures of language and culture to talk to themselves to find their place in the world, as do I. This is not really mysticism, in the sense that it involves some “supernatural” force out there. It's about human perception and response to the world. It's a about the perception of beauty, and the anxiety caused when we consider the meaningless of our own existence.

It's a struggle to respond to life as it presents itself through our eyes as it offers life, through the lure of the beautiful in the form, and the terror at the prospect of life being pointless. We create art to hold up this ideal as a form to represent the voice of beauty experienced in the human heart. Mythology is a form of art, it's poetry, symbolic representations of beauty and consolation. Again, as Matthew Arnold put it, "the whole of the Christian doctrine is religious and efficacious only when it becomes poetry."

Here's a link I highly recommend you and especially Sojourner spending some time reading: http://www.dallasins...ext/fturner.htm It touches into where I go in thought about the religious in the human experience. I really think it's unfortunate when people are quickly dismissive of the religious thought, because they are overlooking the value of what drives it! It's the same thing that drives all of us. Religion is simply a language to talk about it if it remains symbolic, and not an institutionalized thing that fails its original function.

I apologize for the sudden dump of all that information here, but it’s far simpler for me not to have to compose those thoughts all over again to say what I hoped to bring into this discussion here. They were however being said at that time with an eye towards bringing them here into this discussion.

So to recap and hopefully begin to address your question, “If there is no god or supernatural entity, what do you think is the source of that feeling? Where does it come from? What causes it?” In a word it’s us. It’s our perceptions of the world; it’s a product of how we frame an understanding of the world; it’s our response to beauty and an attempt to touch it by putting a name to it; it’s as Freud would put, the Superego – the externalization of us. It’s seeing our face in the mirror and not recognizing it!

I’m not articulating this as well as I hope to at this moment, but I’m sure with further discussion I’ll hit my stride on this. Again, the critical thing I want to mention in this, is that understanding what something is, does not mean it has no value! That’s a mistake I feel atheists take things to when they say that religion is wrong in how it sees God. God is simply a word used to talk about these things. I just remove the word God from it, and call it what it is.

Just because a work of music isn’t being played by actual angels from heaven, and is instead is the work of humans, doesn’t make the music is worthless! In fact to me, it makes it even more precious.

RubySera, on Oct 30 2007, 02:52 PM, said:

Three points stand out for me:

• Religion is not a prerequisite for the experience.
  
• It has the power to prompt life-changing decisions.
  
• It is more likely to occur when one is in crisis or meditating, or in some way not in the regular routine of life.

I know Christians who, if presented with the above questions along with your testimony of these experiences, would shrug and say, “God works in mysterious ways.”What does the atheist say? Back to your last post.

As far as ‘God works in mysterious ways,”I would say that’s really more humans stuck with the symbol, rather than what it points to. It’s far simpler for them to say they need to try to see things in a new light with new information. That’s the problem with that saying. It says they aren’t willing to try to understand. God to them is a convenient escape from doing the hard work of trying to understand the world they are in. That’s sad, really. That’s not spirituality, in my view.

RubySera, on Oct 30 2007, 02:52 PM, said:

Yes, these are human experiences. But what is it that the human is experiencing? Let’s look at a real life experience. Last week one evening I went with a friend to a fund-raiser supper and it was at a church. Neither of us were Christian but they were serving saur kraut and pork, a cultural dish you can’t get just any day and he was hungry for it so we went. We were given numbers and had to wait in the sanctuary for our turn to eat so we sat in the back pew and chatted. At one point I felt a strong sensation of a presence very close behind me. I looked around and the mystery was solved. There was a person standing right up against the back of my pew, but not quite touching me.

This has happened to me before, and I know it happens quite commonly to others, too.

First they are related, sort of. There’s all sorts of research into these sorts of sensory perceptions, call them the Lizard Brain. Don’t forget we evolved from earlier stages of animal life. Things that seem extraordinary to us today who mostly use our sight and hearing, have somewhat lost the keener senses that most animals rely on in the world to survive being eaten. You are picking up something, a slight sound, a displacement of atmosphere nearby, etc. Even though your conscious mind doesn’t have it in its’ forethought, you are picking it up through your five senses somehow. It’s not an indication of spirit bodies talking to each other, as a mystic might try to embellish this ‘mystery’ with.

Now as far as the sense of the presence of God, so to speak, I’ll continue to flesh out my own thoughts on this in our discussion, but for now, as I’ve mentioned at various points though my included posts in this post, that there is something of a projecting of ourselves on the universe. We need to frame things in certain contexts in order for our brains to process them. We see patterns, we see shapes, we see faces in clouds. That could be the ‘image’ of God we see – that of Being. But that being is our own, an extension of us, another animal, so to speak. A representation.

What is that awe? What is that sense of Splendor? It is the aesthetic. We are wired to experience beauty! We are wired to respond to beauty. Everything we create, our songs, our dance, our rituals, our art, our dress, and our gods, are representations and extensions of that sense in ourselves. Life is tied to beauty. Beauty serves life. Our languages, our myths frame these things for us to process them, and for us to talk about them with others. They are pointers, and not the thing. God is not a Being; God is a realization of beauty.

RubySera, on Oct 30 2007, 02:52 PM, said:

You mention the heart. You also mention the mind. Which is it? Do you mean the physical organs that are known as the human heart and brain? Or are you speaking metaphorically? What I would like is an answer from science. How does science or psycho-physiology answer the above questions?

The way I use language may sometimes be confusing as I will move from a strict scientific use of the word, to the more cultural, poetic, or metaphorical use of the word. I’ll use God, spirit, and soul, along with things like ‘seeing with the heart; hearing with the heart’, etc as metaphorical expressions. Of course strictly speaking everything goes through the brain. But that lacks a certain emotional content than using ‘the heart’ does.

To answer from the scientific sense strictly, honestly fails to convey the nature of the content. Let me toss this in here from that other thread during my absence here:

Antlerman, on Nov 8 2007, 05:45 PM, said:

And now the word soul, as the word spirit, is a poetic word of romantic notions. They are no longer explanations for the "how" of things.

What the whole issue is, and I say this to Kratos as well, is that of languages. In the past religion provided the language of myth to speak to both human hopes and aspirations, and to explain the natural world. The two became tied together. Now science has proved to be a vastly more powerful tool of explanation and it has replaced religion as the language of the natural world.

Religion now is left with the difficulty of taking the language of myth that was tied into the natural world, and finding its power in human lives without running into scientific language. That’s the whole struggle we see happening. Likewise, science doesn't address the emotional perceptions that mythology does and cannot since it is simply a tool of discovery and not philosophy. Yet people are turning to it for answers to everything, since it has done so superbly at finding better answers about the natural world than religion could do.

So what you have essentially is displaced words, hoping to find a new identity and use. Spirit and soul are neither literally true, nor literally false. It depends how they’re being used, literally or poetically.

Scientifically these things can be analyzed through psychology. But here’s the huge difference, they cannot be understood or communicated experientially though tools of science. That’s the tool of language, poetry, art - the words of the human heart, not literal, but metaphorical. How does one convey the meaning of hope with an analysis of it?? You don’t. You can’t.

I hope I’ve shed some more light in this post. If not, certainly let’s pick the discussion up where you wish.

[R. S. Martin]

First of all, I did not see the threads in which you had posted those thoughts and visions. Thus it is all new material for me here and I have much to process. Secondly, I don’t see how I can retain a specifically Christian position anymore and continue this discussion constructively. The Christian arguments with which I am very familiar have been exhausted. And I am not familiar enough with liberal theology to use it in this discussion; I might misrepresent someone and that would not be okay in my book.

The arguments I used to understand “God” in the last years before my “official” deconvertion are Christian only if one pushes the very far left of liberal. I put the word “official” in quotes because I can never figure out if ever I was a real bona fide Christian. I questioned the central tenets of the Christian faith from the very first time I heard them. These are: How do we know God exists? And: How does Jesus’ death help us get to heaven, i.e. how does it work?

In addition, I never sinned if sin=intentionally doing that which we know is wrong. And that is how sin was defined for me the one and only time I could get anyone to define it for me. Nor could I observe that anyone else did. When I really studied up on how to become a whole and happy human being (in an effort to find solutions for my own very serious problems through self-help books), I concluded that when all the psychological maladies were removed, humans were good deep down if only love could connect with that goodness. I have experienced this played out in real life, both for myself and for others. When, after decades of examining the evidence from all angles, I concluded to my satisfaction that humans really were essentially good and not in need of a saviour, I found myself faced with a moral dilemma. More on this below.


I had also at about the same time come to terms with a concept of “God” that I could live with. I was at the time attending a modern Mennonite church off and on. Also attending that church was a retired sociology professor who was really into taking leading roles for skits and dramas put on by the laity to depict highlights of Jesus life. In roughly the same period of my life I also took an anthropology course in which the class watched videos of the religious ceremonies of South Pacific Islanders. From an academic perspective, anthropology and sociology are very closely related. Maybe that is why this sociology prof became a sort of icon in my mind for this church and my spiritual journey—I really don’t know but he stood out in my mind.

Or maybe it is because he made sure that I read his book about his work among the Yanomami (sp?) in the Amazon jungles. I take it he was one of the very first Westerners to enter their territory. Or maybe it is because in one of my other anthropology courses we read another author who also studied these people. Whatever the case, this retired sociology professor at the modern Mennonite church became a sort of anthropological icon for me. I found myself watching the congregation doing it’s skits and dramas and sermons and hymn-singing with the same detachment my anthropology class watched the video of the South Pacific Islanders.

These Mennonite Christians served Jesus with the same devotion that the South Pacific Islanders served their god, whose name I have forgotten. Some of the human feats performed by the South Pacific Islanders demonstrated either that they tapped into a “higher power” of some sort, or another part of the brain, as suggested in the article you linked. Let me clarify. That article does not say a lot about the supernatural; it speaks about the creative elements of the right brain.

In your post you testify to some pretty marvelous experiences that challenge me to defy that humans can do pretty much anything that appears supernatural. In other words, the things you describe have in the past been understood as supernatural but you see them as natural. This suggests to me that perhaps everything else done by humans that has been understood as supernatural intervention is, in fact, natural. The amazing thing performed by the South Pacific Islanders included two little girls about age 7, each of whom stood on the shoulders of a young man during a ritual dance of some kind.


The young man crouched and the little girl, after being properly prepared by older women, was led to step onto his shoulders from behind. He then performed his dance, which included many varied and swift body movements. There were two little girls and two young men. The girls remained upright and motionless and totally expressionless as though in a trance. After the ritual was over, the young men crouched down and the girls were led off, and brought back again. There appeared to be no harm whatsoever to the children. The amazing thing was that they were able to remain upright as statues throughout the dance.

I am sure their own people believed it was the power of their god who did this, and the proper preparation of the children. As stated above, the article you linked mentions right brain activities, though it does not touch on “magic.” In answer to my question about how these things can be explained scientifically you say:

Quote

Scientifically these things can be analyzed through psychology. But here’s the huge difference, they cannot be understood or communicated experientially though tools of science. That’s the tool of language, poetry, art – the words of the human heart, not literal, but metaphorical. How does one convey the meaning of hope with an analysis of it?? You don’t. You can’t.

Okay, I think I get where you are coming from, given your experiences that you describe. My experiences are of a very different nature and actually demand a psychological or scientific explanation. At least, they do for me. They are not visually vivid like yours. Nor do they occur only at times of crisis, or outside my will. There is another major difference that I picked up in one of your first posts.

I found it near the end of Post 4. I had wanted to respond to it long ago but there were too many things. First, the concluding remark:

Quote

Now to explain that in words that might save me from being burned alive as a blasphemer!

:grin:

Not to worry! It’s not blasphemy in my book. The people who would burn you will tie me to the stake next to you. :)

Here’s what you said:

Quote

‘as we peer deeply into the divine, past the veil of the mystery into the realm of God, the face we will see staring back at us is our own. We are the God we seek. We are the divine.’ I feel that it is the terror of this subtle awareness that we look away to other gods to intermediate for us, to save us from that realization.

I include the quote so it’s clear what your comment refers to. I underline your comment because that is what I want to talk about. I may be the god I seek. I may be the divine. In fact, even the Bible says so. But I do not find this to be a terror for me, nor do I want to be saved from this realization. I most certainly don’t want an external god to mediate between me and the realization of who I am.

I am very comfortable with who I am and I am sure that any God worth his divinity understands that I am who I am and that this is the very best I am capable of being. Hence it is good enough. I don’t know if I’m right but I would hazard a guess that this concept of God or Self has been protected in the depth of my heart of hearts since I began being a sentient being before birth. The psycho-religious hell I was put through all but separated me from this Self/God.

I mentioned above that I had come to a concept of God that I was able to live with. This was it. Or some variation or version of it. The Universal Being kind of God. My anthropology courses were major contributors to this concept; the South Pacific Islanders were only one of many Aboriginal religions that I studied. Having at last confirmed in my own mind that “God” existed, and that Jesus was a myth, it would have been so nice to just silently fit into the Christian milieu and be like “everybody else.” If the South Pacific Islander religion was real then Christianity was real, too, right?


As stated above, this brought on a moral dilemma. Could I in good conscience say with Christians who really believed that Jesus was a historical figure that “I believe that I am saved through the shed blood of Christ, the only begotten Son of God?”

The answer was a resounding NO.

• I do not believe in the existence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who led the Israelites out of Egypt and begat Jesus by the Virgin Mary.
  
• I do not believe that humans sin.
  
• I do not believe that Jesus’ shed blood opened heaven’s gates so that humans can enter heaven when they die, even if God exists and humans sin.

Thus, if it is okay with you, I will continue this discussion as my real self rather than as a bona fide Christian. I think I should wait to continue until I know whether or not this change of position is okay with you. I responded to a few thoughts in your post, mainly by way of explaining my position and how I got to it. As I said above, there’s a LOT of material in your post that is totally new to me and I may need some time to process it. I don’t know how this sits with you, or what your schedule is like. If you have time and want to, it might help me process some of the material if you comment on or discuss some of the items I raise in this one. Somehow, I feel like I’m telling my therapist how to treat me. I think this was supposed to be a debate arena. ;)

Seriously, though, we are talking about things of the heart. Let me know where you stand.

[Antlerman]

RubySera, on Nov 10 2007, 09:43 PM, said:

Antlerman said:

Scientifically these things can be analyzed through psychology. But here’s the huge difference, they cannot be understood or communicated experientially though tools of science. That’s the tool of language, poetry, art – the words of the human heart, not literal, but metaphorical. How does one convey the meaning of hope with an analysis of it?? You don’t. You can’t.

Okay, I think I get where you are coming from, given your experiences that you describe. My experiences are of a very different nature and actually demand a psychological or scientific explanation. At least, they do for me. They are not visually vivid like yours. Nor do they occur only at times of crisis, or outside my will.

I had hoped I had clarified, that the experience I recounted was in response to another poster’s telling of his religious vision he had. I consider these to be Existential experiences, and though it manifests itself in a more extreme way, it is the same thing you are talking about. It comes from the same place – inside us. The sense of feeling a grand-overarching “presence” in the universe is fairly common place for me – sometime through conscious awareness, sometimes not. It’s really more reflective of someone’s way of percieving, than an indication of ‘something out there’.

The opening of the windows of heaven sort of thing is something that generally manifests itself during times of great crisis. It comes because we need it to. In a way, it’s driven by survival. But what you’re talking about, and what I am for the most part here is the more common place ‘witness of the heart’.

RubySera, on Nov 10 2007, 09:43 PM, said:

There is another major difference that I picked up in one of your first posts.

<snip>

Here’s what you said:

Quote

‘as we peer deeply into the divine, past the veil of the mystery into the realm of God, the face we will see staring back at us is our own. We are the God we seek. We are the divine.’ I feel that it is the terror of this subtle awareness that we look away to other gods to intermediate for us, to save us from that realization.

I include the quote so it’s clear what your comment refers to. I underline your comment because that is what I want to talk about. I may be the god I seek. I may be the divine. In fact, even the Bible says so. But I do not find this to be a terror for me, nor do I want to be saved from this realization. I most certainly don’t want an external god to mediate between me and the realization of who I am.

I’m going to need to expand on this and clarify. The terror is that we are alone. This is what drives the mythologies that try to place a grand over-arching purpose to existence. The terror is the sublime realization permeating everything that there is no purpose, and there is no meaning. We are alone, the universe is alone, there is no god, and everything we construct to create a sense of purpose and meaning are all an illusion. That’s the terror.

The terror is realizing that as we stare into that Void, hoping to see God, what we sense out there is our own face staring back! It’s a reflection of ourselves. We created God in the image of ourselves of what we hope is true! It’s the terror of confronting the Void to realize the only God is our self. Our salvation from it happens when we stare into and see ourselves and realize that we are God and that God is us. As we realize this, we are set free from the illusion and are free to consciously choose to act create a world with meaning. We alone are responsible for the existence of heaven or hell; the true nature of a God.

It's this whole anxiety over that realization that people escape from in creating God to mask that face from us.

RubySera, on Nov 10 2007, 09:43 PM, said:

Thus, if it is okay with you, I will continue this discussion as my real self rather than as a bona fide Christian. I think I should wait to continue until I know whether or not this change of position is okay with you. I responded to a few thoughts in your post, mainly by way of explaining my position and how I got to it. As I said above, there’s a LOT of material in your post that is totally new to me and I may need some time to process it. I don’t know how this sits with you, or what your schedule is like. If you have time and want to, it might help me process some of the material if you comment on or discuss some of the items I raise in this one. Somehow, I feel like I’m telling my therapist how to treat me. I think this was supposed to be a debate arena. ;)

Seriously, though, we are talking about things of the heart. Let me know where you stand.

Certainly you can speak as yourself. You have questions that many people raise, Christian or otherwise. It’s about an exchange of ideas, and hearing perspectives that I from an atheistic perspective have to offer (not that I speak for ALL atheists, of course).

I’ll try to flesh some of this out a little better in further discussions.

[R. S. Martin]

Antlerman, on Nov 12 2007, 05:20 PM, said:

Certainly you can speak as yourself. You have questions that many people raise, Christian or otherwise. It’s about an exchange of ideas, and hearing perspectives

Thank you!

Antlerman, on Nov 12 2007, 05:20 PM, said:

I’m going to need to expand on this and clarify. The terror is that we are alone….

The terror is realizing that as we stare into that Void, hoping to see God, what we sense out there is our own face staring back!.…We alone are responsible for the existence of heaven or hell; the true nature of a God.

It's this whole anxiety over that realization that people escape from in creating God to mask that face from us.

Has this been your personal experience or are you quoting someone? I ask because this sounds a lot like Paul Tillich in The Courage to Be. He talks a great deal about the “Terror of Non-Being.” For one of my courses I had to study this book. In addition, I had to do a special project on this particular chapter. I was seriously puzzled about the terror (or was it horror?) of non-being. I forget the details of my thought processes at the time but I could imagine absolutely nothing more horrifying than what I had lived through and survived. Finally, after much self-analysis, I concluded that the life my family and faith community forced on me was the existence of non-being. And they condemned me for not liking it, and for not thanking them for doing me the favour.

This is the utmost crime against humanity. To say I shudder at the thought is understating it. I cannot put the feeling into words. Many people seem to think that the lowest possible point a human being can reach is self-destruction. That’s wrong. A person can sink so low that he or she does not realize that he or she has a right to die. The day I realized that I had a right to feel hurt was a day of major enlightenment for me. Insight broke upon me like never before. If I had a right to feel hurt then I had been mistreated in major ways all through my life. And I had been made to feel guilty for not loving it. The rage this evokes at the injustice is too great; I have to block it out. I’m telling you these things to give you some perspective as to whom you are talking to.

I come out of the horror of non-being. I did not know that it was abnormal. I thought I just wasn’t made for that particular lifestyle. And when I finally allowed myself to be who I was—when I committed myself to be who I was, and put concrete plans into place to make it happen—I had a new birth experience to rival the best of the born-again stories of fundy churches (and my church preached against these experiences!). So powerful was it that it sent me into a spiritual tail-spin from which it took me seven years to emerge. By now I kind of wonder “What was all the fuss about,” but at the time I was in such a serious search for God and truth that it seriously upset EVERYTHING I knew and understood about reality.

The thing is, I did not know what else to call it except the new birth. Yet it happened exactly at the moment when I hung up the phone after making plans to leave the Old Order Mennonite church for a modern Mennonite church. Here was my conundrum:

• I had just turned my back on God and all I had been taught to hold sacred.
  
• The new birth can come only from God.
  
• If it was the new birth, God must exist.
  
• It could not be the new birth because people went to hell for leaving the church.
  
• If it was the new birth, then the church was wrong and that was plain stupid. There were too many Mennonite churches. If one Mennonite church was right, they were all right. If one was wrong, they were all wrong. Obviously, they were either all right or all wrong. I had lived too many decades with the stupid in-fighting and I was NOT going to judge.
  
• If God was real, then hell was real, too.
  
• There was no evidence for God except that I kept finding him in all the places my old church said he definitely was not, such as at university or in the modern Mennonite church.
  
• And then he showed up in the Lutheran seminary where the professors did not believe in hell. Hell, this was confusing!

Today I understand that the “new birth” I experienced was euphoria, pure and simple. And this can happen to anybody for any reason. I believe it can happen when a person finally resigns the fight and submits to the church, if one is the submitting type of personality. For me, it could not happen this way because I am not a submitting type of personality; I am an independent loner who feels most free and real when alone in the universe.

I cannot understand your terror of being alone. This is outside my experience of life and outside my comprehension. For me, being alone equals peace, calm, serenity. How would I feel if I knew I were the only person left alive on the planet? It depends a great deal in what condition the planet and I are left in. It would be hell not having anyone to share ideas with. Otherwise, I want to be alone.

Post 12

Now I will look again at your Post 12 of Nov. 10. Let me summarize the main points.

• The religious language that inspired earlier culture can no longer inspire today.
  
• To be whole, the human must incorporate the aesthetic and the rational.
  
• If we want to explore the human experience element of the religious we should not examine the findings from science or psychology.

I will address each point in order.

Religious Language and Inspiration

Antlerman, on Nov 10 2007, 12:56 PM, said:

Though it may have once inspired in its original cultures, it has becoming stained by the insistence of the religious on its factuality. Now my rational mind is in conflict with that particular language of myth used to express the aesthetic.

I challenge the implication that religious language cannot inspire today as it once did. I will flesh this out more as I go.

Antlerman, on Nov 10 2007, 12:56 PM, said:

You see? I feel these experiences are a part of the human experience, and there’s nothing wrong with using a language system to express that. But the language system that has the symbolism connected to the physical reality of this world, does both the language and human beings a great disservice. Rather than making modern humans free to appreciate transcendent beauty as part of their humanity, the religious are requiring a violation of the rational mind in order to use that language!

I object to your use of blanket statements here as though your particular experience of religious language necessarily applies to all modern humans by virtue of applying to your personal situation. I bold-faced the statements in question. I think we need formal studies to document our statements if we want to make statements about the general condition of humanity. I would refer you to the Keirsey Temperament Website for information on basis differences in what inspires human beings. Keirsey’s Temperaments have been tested by the best psychological tools available. More below on the value of science and psychology with regards to the human experience.

The Aesthetic and The Rational

Antlerman, on Nov 10 2007, 12:56 PM, said:

To me the word “spiritual” means being whole. Being whole means fully experiencing both a rational view of the world, while appreciating its beauty with the heart.

I understand this argument is being made to defend your being atheist despite your intense visions, visions that for many humans would suggest the existence of the supernatural. As it is stated, this argument can be overthrown quite easily.

I agree with your definition of being whole. I disagree with your implication that religious language cannot be redefined in one’s mind to indicate the aesthetic and the rational. Or, as in the above quote, to inspire. My question to you is: Why can you not redefine the God of the Bible to mean that which you experienced in your visions? What you describe is expressed in Christian language, though some eastern concepts may be latent in it. Given that Christianity originated from the East, this is not surprising. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I think you could take your concept of God into pretty much any fundamentalist, or non-fundamentalist, church and become a member in good standing.

Because you have had a deeper experience than most other parishioners, you will have a different definition of many of the religious terminology than the average parishioner. You do not have to share your deeper understanding. Let’s say a geologist with a PhD and a farmer with very little education went to look at a rock in the farmer’s field. All the farmer knows or cares is that there’s this rock in his field that he has to plow around because the rock cannot be moved. The geologists sees part of an extensive rock formation that may have major implications for the evolutionary history of the local area. He knows not to mention this to the farmer because the farmer and his friends would laugh him out of the county.

Are the farmer and the geologist not participating in the same reality? Are they not talking about the same bit of matter? I think they are. Both are sane and both can live in the same county and both can discuss the rock insofar as they have common experiences of it. These common experiences may include such properties as the rock’s colour, texture, and temperature under varying weather conditions. The regular parishioner is like the farmer; you are like the geologist. Common experiences of God that the two of you may share may include the feeling that God is rational, comprehensive, and beauty. (I base this on your description of the one vision.) Thus, if you keep your mouth shut and your pants on—in other words, keep private those things that should be kept private, you can be a Christian and believe the things you believe.

Mystery versus Science

Above I summarized the main points of your post. Here are Points 2 and 3:

• To be whole, the human must incorporate the aesthetic and the rational.
  
• If we want to explore the human experience element of the religious we should not examine the findings from science or psychology.

I see a very serious inconsistency between those two points. I think science and psychology belong in the rational category, which you admit is required for the human to be whole. Science anchors the mystery, if you will. I used my experience of sensing the presence of another human body close to my own as evidence that extra-sensual phenomena exists on which religious systems could be built. We use science to dispel the mystery and superstition. Many Christians today no longer believe that this particular experience is mystical. They understand the electro-magnetic charges that move between living bodies to inform one about the presence of another living body (forgive me if my scientific terms are stone-age or worse; I think you know what I am getting at).

Understanding the electro-magnetic science behind the experience in no way diminishes the experience. Likewise, understanding the science of the inner workings of the eye and brain that allow for vision in no way diminishes from the experience of the pure joy of seeing colour and line and symmetry. Likewise, Keirsey’s Temperament Sorter, a personality theory based on Myers-Briggs, provides the outlines of personalities. For the overlap or interface of the human experience and science, here are some discussions on Myers-Briggs. As you skim the index you will note that it’s basically dots to be joined, and that when joined, these dots produce a brief profile. This is then filled in by human experience. For an example of a real human being both of us know, here is an post by Amethyst of exC. She tells us her that Myers-Briggs type is INTJ. She also tells us how an INTJ experiences the work world.

You ask:

Antlerman, on Nov 10 2007, 12:56 PM, said:

Scientifically these things can be analyzed through psychology. But here’s the huge difference, they cannot be understood or communicated experientially though tools of science. That’s the tool of language, poetry, art – the words of the human heart, not literal, but metaphorical. How does one convey the meaning of hope with an analysis of it?? You don’t. You can’t.

I disagree. While the terms science and psychology may not be exact equivalents of the term logic, they fall in the same category of the rational. When I am emotionally crushed beyond hope, when life has lost all meaning and no hope remains that meaning can ever be regained, when the last spark of life has been extinguished and I feel unworthy even of death and hell, this is where cold logic can and does provide hope. Cold, hard, sterile, stainless steel logic tells me to take one more breath. Then one more. And one more. To keep on this way. Forever. This requires all the energy my body possesses. But logic tells me that this will carry my body through the crisis. And it does. The second attack does not last as long because logic reminds me that last time I survived.

It is true that I am using the poetic language of the heart and metaphor to communicate my experience. However, psychologists could communicate the same experience via their technological language just as efficiently. I don’t know that language so I can’t speak it. Possibly you don’t understand it so it would not be useful if I spoke it, even if I knew it. You mention communication. Common language is imperative for communication. Art and metaphor and music are culture specific on extremely sophisticated levels. It is totally impossible for me to communicate with members of mainstream culture (which includes you) via contemporary art and music because I don’t understand the “language”; they are meaningless—just so much sound and colour, a nuisance if you will.

I understand the more common metaphors because they are part of written language, and much of my interaction with mainstream society is via written language. But the more casual metaphor and slang of private messages—not to embarrass anyone, but I understood about half of one of your recent ones; the gist was evident from the context. Technological language, however, is different in that there is direct relationship and concrete consistency between the etymology of the word and the underlying concept of its definition.

I’m not sure how clearly my point is coming across. I’m trying to show that, no matter what the theoreticians say, in my personal experience it is quite common to extrapolate from the rational to the experiential or vice versa, that science and psychology go hand in hand with the communication of the aesthetic and life as it is experienced in the human heart. I’m saying the reason for this is that the language of science and psychology, while technical and somewhat difficult to learn, is specific and consistent whereas the “language of the heart” such as metaphor, music, and art is culture specific to such a degree as to be meaningless when communicating across cultures.

I am not sure what question to put forward at this point for further discussion but I am sure you will have some response to some part of other of this. I look forward to whatever it is.

[Antlerman]

This is wonderful. These are the sorts of challenges I’ve longed for in discussion. Thanks. :grin: To the post….

RubySera, on Nov 13 2007, 05:01 AM, said:

Antlerman, on Nov 12 2007, 05:20 PM, said:

I’m going to need to expand on this and clarify. The terror is that we are alone….

The terror is realizing that as we stare into that Void, hoping to see God, what we sense out there is our own face staring back!.…We alone are responsible for the existence of heaven or hell; the true nature of a God.

It's this whole anxiety over that realization that people escape from in creating God to mask that face from us.

Has this been your personal experience or are you quoting someone? I ask because this sounds a lot like Paul Tillich in The Courage to Be. He talks a great deal about the “Terror of Non-Being.” For one of my courses I had to study this book. In addition, I had to do a special project on this particular chapter. I was seriously puzzled about the terror (or was it horror?) of non-being. I forget the details of my thought processes at the time but I could imagine absolutely nothing more horrifying than what I had lived through and survived. Finally, after much self-analysis, I concluded that the life my family and faith community forced on me was the existence of non-being. And they condemned me for not liking it, and for not thanking them for doing me the favour.

As far as quoting someone, I am using terminology that comes to us in culture through various philosophies such as existentialism. I’m familiar with that term and its basic concept, and it seems appropriate to describe what I have seen as a core motivating factor in people’s lives. I actually thought it was a term of Sartre. I was mistaken. So I’m not really quoting anyone, but really more just being a product of a culture of ideas where certain ideas resonate with me more than others and come filtering through to me in the language. These terms permeate our culture.

As far as the terror of non-being may apply to your experience in a repressive culture, I’m not seeing that as exactly the same thing. It’s not that one’s life lacks meaning because of oppression, but it’s the rational conclusion that actual meaning doesn’t exist anywhere for anyone. You can’t leave a community, or change a lifestyle to go find it; it doesn’t exist. It’s a subtle terror of this that reverberates under the surface of all rational beings.

This is what I meant by being alone. Not having varying degrees of “space” between you and others (which I value immensely myself), but utter aloneness – you and the dark, confronting the ultimate non-meaning of everything, and particularly of your own existence. In the end, in the summation of life itself, it’s just you and the impersonal nothing, offering nothing. Everyone avoids this ultimate confrontation and attempt to put faces on it to disguise it to give the illusion of meaning, but many find that in confronting it and embracing it we become released from the terror of it and discover the ultimate freedom of choice.

This is the despair that Positivism creates, and what Irrationalism, Aestheticism, and Existentialism attempt to counter with by offering recognition of that other side of human experience – the irrational. Humans can’t live life feeling despair in the face of nothingness. We aren’t wired for that, yet our brains are so big we are able to realize it; hence the anxiety underlying everything human. We have to create meaning somehow in order to deal with that anxiety over the awareness of ultimate finality. (We really are a neurotic species!)

RubySera, on Nov 13 2007, 05:01 AM, said:

Post 12

Now I will look again at your Post 12 of Nov. 10. Let me summarize the main points.

• The religious language that inspired earlier culture can no longer inspire today.
  
• To be whole, the human must incorporate the aesthetic and the rational.
  
• If we want to explore the human experience element of the religious we should not examine the findings from science or psychology.

I will address each point in order.

Religious Language and Inspiration

Antlerman, on Nov 10 2007, 12:56 PM, said:

Though it may have once inspired in its original cultures, it has becoming stained by the insistence of the religious on its factuality. Now my rational mind is in conflict with that particular language of myth used to express the aesthetic.

I challenge the implication that religious language cannot inspire today as it once did. I will flesh this out more as I go.

Antlerman, on Nov 10 2007, 12:56 PM, said:

You see? I feel these experiences are a part of the human experience, and there’s nothing wrong with using a language system to express that. But the language system that has the symbolism connected to the physical reality of this world, does both the language and human beings a great disservice. Rather than making modern humans free to appreciate transcendent beauty as part of their humanity, the religious are requiring a violation of the rational mind in order to use that language!

I object to your use of blanket statements here as though your particular experience of religious language necessarily applies to all modern humans by virtue of applying to your personal situation. I bold-faced the statements in question. I think we need formal studies to document our statements if we want to make statements about the general condition of humanity. I would refer you to the Keirsey Temperament Website for information on basis differences in what inspires human beings. Keirsey’s Temperaments have been tested by the best psychological tools available. More below on the value of science and psychology with regards to the human experience.

Surprisingly I appear to have failed miserably to communicate my thoughts. I do not blanket dismiss the language of religion to speak to the human experience. Not at all. I’ve spoken of this concept in hundreds of posts here, and usually I feel I am being clear, but perhaps I was omitting some key words in what I wrote, perhaps because they’re always assumed in my mind.

To restate it with perhaps more clarity,

“Though it may have once inspired in its original cultures, it has become stained by the insistence of the religious [who insist] on its factuality. Now my rational mind is in conflict with that particular language of myth used to express the aesthetic.”

My following comments above are best understood in this context. I am not speaking of modernity in religion, but the literalist, the fundamentalist, or the traditionalist. They do not understand the underlying human principle inherent in language of myth. Literalists miss the whole message of the sign, and worship the symbols rather than what they point to. Religious fundamentalism was born as a reaction to modernity in the church which was in fact modifying the language to be more compatible with modern knowledge, if you will.

My complaint is against those who insist on myth and metaphor being literal, factual stories of the real world. In so doing, they take mythical ideas and bring them to earth and they lose their value, setting themselves up against reason, instead of enhancing it with emotional language.

Using the story of J.R.R Tolkein’s criticism of those who saw the mythical characters in the ancient poem Beowulf as “primitive or childish”,

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/11/20/beowulf/index1.html said:

… Tolkien compared the author of "Beowulf" to a man who, inheriting a field full of ancient stones, used them to build a tower. His friends, recognizing that the stones had belonged to a more ancient building, tore down the tower "in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions." What they did not realize, Tolkien ends, was that "from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea."

I see the fundamentalist as one who sees myth as either literally true, or literally false and meaningless as in the critics of Beowulf. I see fundamentalist as being those who don’t see that the stones are not what it’s about, but what vantage point using the stones can offer. They see the stones as being what the structure is about. They’re instance that these things can be validated as scientifically and historically factual, ruins the power of the symbols. It deconstructs the tower of ancient stones.

RubySera, on Nov 13 2007, 05:01 AM, said:

The Aesthetic and The Rational

Antlerman, on Nov 10 2007, 12:56 PM, said:

To me the word “spiritual” means being whole. Being whole means fully experiencing both a rational view of the world, while appreciating its beauty with the heart.

I understand this argument is being made to defend your being atheist despite your intense visions, visions that for many humans would suggest the existence of the supernatural. As it is stated, this argument can be overthrown quite easily.

I agree with your definition of being whole. I disagree with your implication that religious language cannot be redefined in one’s mind to indicate the aesthetic and the rational. Or, as in the above quote, to inspire. My question to you is: Why can you not redefine the God of the Bible to mean that which you experienced in your visions? What you describe is expressed in Christian language, though some eastern concepts may be latent in it. Given that Christianity originated from the East, this is not surprising. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I think you could take your concept of God into pretty much any fundamentalist, or non-fundamentalist, church and become a member in good standing.

Well it actually can’t be overthrown that easily, since I didn’t mean it as you took it. I agree that religious language can be redefined in one’s mind to indicate the aesthetic and the rational. However, the only way I see that working is as I stated it here in another thread where I was asked, “what if anything would enable me to go to a liberal church”:

Antlerman, on Nov 19 2007, 08:00 AM, said:

Yikes. That's an interesting question. Again, this is somewhat complicated. The answer would have to do with the aesthetic side of humanity. It has to do with language, and it has to do with existentialism.

The only real validity for Christianity as I see it would be to move into a true Existential Leap of Faith. A “leap of faith” is not one that flies against the face of reason in order to prop up a belief, essentially twisting rationality into irrationality. Rather it would be a faith that openly acknowledged that it has no support in rational thought whatsoever but is believed simply for the sake of belief itself. In other words it leaps beyond rationality for the sake of experience. That to me would be the only intellectually honest approach to faith, where it simply embraces irrationality as it is for the benefits of faith.

It’s sort of like the joy of belief that a child has about Santa that comes from faith. In adults of course this would be called a delusion, yet in a child it’s called an active imagination. But in theater and stories, adults suspend disbelief all the time for the sake of experience. When the adult walks away from that and are back in the real world, something of that experience comes with them. It’s added to their whole person. “Tell me the story again…” The images evoked become part of the experience of that person about themselves.

Now to the question of what it would take for me to be able to go to a liberal church. I think we are much more alike in this regard that the language of Christian mythology has become so entwined with literalism in our experiences that it would be difficult to extricate them and embrace them as vehicles of imagination. They were told to us they were facts. We approached them as facts, and when they failed to live up to the standard of rational thought applied to anything and everything claiming to be factual, they were expelled as non-fact. The only way they could continue to be accepted under that standard would be to shift over into emotional and intellectual dishonesty, which entirely defeated any benefits whatsoever that could come from embracing a good myth.

I suppose for me personally, if I were able to sufficiently embrace the myth as a language of spiritual expression where I would neither feel a need to defend it as fact to either myself or others that would be the first step. Beyond that, I would at this point in my life with exposure to so many other forms of this expression I’ve found, need to see where that would give me something more than what I have. I suppose that could be possible, since it is the language of myth I grew up with and am most familiar with.

Again beyond that, I would need to find a community that was of like mind, so all sorts of assumptions about me weren’t being made because I called myself a Christian. In other words, it would need to be a case where it didn’t create conflict in me or others. Then beyond that, I would need to feel it was beneficial to the system as a whole to be part of moving it forward into the future, away from the exclusivist views of its past. In other words, would it be better to not add myself to its ranks if it only made the negative stronger, or would I do it good as a voice of change from within?

I’m sure there are lots of other factors too that I’d have to weigh, but all in all it seems a long hurdle to overcome without a lot of impetus driving me to see the value in it.

RubySera, on Nov 13 2007, 05:01 AM, said:

Because you have had a deeper experience than most other parishioners, you will have a different definition of many of the religious terminology than the average parishioner. You do not have to share your deeper understanding. Let’s say a geologist with a PhD and a farmer with very little education went to look at a rock in the farmer’s field. All the farmer knows or cares is that there’s this rock in his field that he has to plow around because the rock cannot be moved. The geologists sees part of an extensive rock formation that may have major implications for the evolutionary history of the local area. He knows not to mention this to the farmer because the farmer and his friends would laugh him out of the county.

Are the farmer and the geologist not participating in the same reality? Are they not talking about the same bit of matter? I think they are. Both are sane and both can live in the same county and both can discuss the rock insofar as they have common experiences of it. These common experiences may include such properties as the rock’s colour, texture, and temperature under varying weather conditions. The regular parishioner is like the farmer; you are like the geologist. Common experiences of God that the two of you may share may include the feeling that God is rational, comprehensive, and beauty. (I base this on your description of the one vision.) Thus, if you keep your mouth shut and your pants on—in other words, keep private those things that should be kept private, you can be a Christian and believe the things you believe.

I see your point, but I think in practical application in order for me to make us of that language as meaningful, it would have to be with others I can associate with on an equal level. I can listen to others speak about God, in more quaint terms, and I can hear what they’re trying to say beneath the surface of the words, but for me to in turn use those words to them, I’m not communicated what I mean and I get no personal fulfillment from them, which is what an important part of their purpose is for.

If I have to keep my deeper thoughts private, then that’s what I’m already doing by not engaging with them at all. If using those words in a social context, i.e. a church, and they take my words to mean some quaint ideas about a Sky God looking down on us, or worse still assuming I share a bunch of other political ideologies to the symbols that I absolutely don’t share then it serves no purpose. At best, I could use the symbols as a private language, if it suited me better than anything else.

But the real question is, is Christian myth the best suited language to accomplish this in today’s world, or can it be modified sufficiently to work for people who are unwilling to do violence to reason in order to make the myth rational? Can Christianity evolve enough to be useable in a modern world?

I’m going to post this for now, and continue my response in a separate post shortly.

This post has been edited by Antlerman: 21 November 2007 - 05:15 PM

[R. S. Martin]

Antlerman, thank you for participating in this discussion. I have learned a lot. My aim was to show that based on the human experience it is logical to believe in God or deity. I think this has been amply demonstrated both from the literature and from personal experience, esp. from your visions. (By the way, your visions correspond with what the famous Christian writer William James writes on inspiration--I'm not sure of the topic or title.) The "card" I have been holding back is information I found in a collection of articles on Atheist Empire under the title God and the Brain: Is Belief a Psychological Condition?

There are several articles on this page. Scientists have found that when this "God Spot" or "God Module"is electrically stimulated, a person tends to experience religious feelings such as an out-of-the-body experience, a Presence in the room, or a mystical experience, etc. What does this tell us about religion?

In their words:

Synopsis: Findings seem to point to a region of the brain commonly referred to as the 'God Spot' or 'God Module', that when stimulated creates hallucinations that are interpreted as mystical or spiritual experiences. This 'spot' is stimulated during meditation and prayer and is affected by electromagnetic fields and epilepsy. The resulting hallucinations may be the cause of mystical, spiritual and paranormal experiences as they can give feelings such as a presence in the room or an out of body experience. In the case of epileptics, this may be the reason for many of them becoming obsessed with religion. For those who experience the stimulation it is explained related to their own personal beliefs; a visit from an angel or lost loved one, an extraterrestrial encounter, a higher plane of consciousness or a visit from God.

For me, the abstractions of philosophy and propositions of theology are just so much guesswork of the human intellect. The bottom line for me is the human experience. I go into some detail on my argument here. That is why I asked whether your statements about the terror of being alone in the universe was based on your experience or if you were quoting someone. I gather that you were basing it on philosophical thought. For me, that is just as dogmatic as theological propositions; I am equally unable to identify with either.

Perhaps the original speaker based it on personal experience; perhaps not. Also, if he did base it on personal experience, we might ask whether the experience came out of a unified and integrated whole Self or out of mental illness. Some philosophers have been suspected of mental illness. The same has been suspected of the Biblical writers and figures. At times when mental illness was not understood it was often taken as the word of the supernatural, either of demons or deities. In the secular realm it was taken as wisdom, none the less, when spoken by intellectual elites.

Long story short, I am unable to identify with the "terror" theory, and I am likewise only vaguely able to connect with your theme of myth and language, which you emphasize a lot in your last post. The reports from psychology do speak to me because they make logical sense. In addition, they describe personal experience with which I can identify--that is, they describe phenomenon experienced by real people, not on the theoretical level, but in the real flesh and blood situation. They tell me that there is--or may be--a scientific explanation for the spiritual experiences of God, visions, and other "other-worldly" experiences humans encounter in this life on this planet.

I had already through many years of seeking (as described in posts above) come very close to the conclusion that there must be a scientific or natural explanation for the seemingly supernatural phenomenon. When I read those articles I felt convinced that I was justified in thinking like that. It was approximately a year ago when I found these articles. I had already deconverted. These articles more or less moved me to atheism; it was an explanation for the experiences of deity that did not obligate me to relate to anything outside my own psyche. That let me rest from my labors, so to speak; I no longer had to seek for the evasive deity that caused the sensations I experienced on occassion. It began and ended in my own psyche.

And with this I think I have more or less said what I set out to say in this discussion. I understand you have more to say. Feel free to say what you wish to say. Since this closure on my part is rather sudden and unannounced, I feel obligated to respond with at least one more post if you have something specific you wish for me to address. Otherwise, I will consider my part of this discussion ended. Thanks again for your participation.

[Antlerman]

RubySera, on Nov 22 2007, 09:57 AM, said:

Antlerman, thank you for participating in this discussion. I have learned a lot. My aim was to show that based on the human experience it is logical to believe in God or deity. I think this has been amply demonstrated both from the literature and from personal experience, esp. from your visions. (By the way, your visions correspond with what the famous Christian writer William James writes on inspiration--I'm not sure of the topic or title.) The "card" I have been holding back is information I found in a collection of articles on Atheist Empire under the title God and the Brain: Is Belief a Psychological Condition?

There are several articles on this page. Scientists have found that when this "God Spot" or "God Module"is electrically stimulated, a person tends to experience religious feelings such as an out-of-the-body experience, a Presence in the room, or a mystical experience, etc. What does this tell us about religion?

In their words:

Synopsis: Findings seem to point to a region of the brain commonly referred to as the 'God Spot' or 'God Module', that when stimulated creates hallucinations that are interpreted as mystical or spiritual experiences. This 'spot' is stimulated during meditation and prayer and is affected by electromagnetic fields and epilepsy. The resulting hallucinations may be the cause of mystical, spiritual and paranormal experiences as they can give feelings such as a presence in the room or an out of body experience. In the case of epileptics, this may be the reason for many of them becoming obsessed with religion. For those who experience the stimulation it is explained related to their own personal beliefs; a visit from an angel or lost loved one, an extraterrestrial encounter, a higher plane of consciousness or a visit from God.

This all confirms what my position has been throughout this. These experiences do not point to a god. They point to the human mind.

RubySera, on Nov 22 2007, 09:57 AM, said:

For me, the abstractions of philosophy and propositions of theology are just so much guesswork of the human intellect. The bottom line for me is the human experience. I go into some detail on my argument here. That is why I asked whether your statements about the terror of being alone in the universe was based on your experience or if you were quoting someone. I gather that you were basing it on philosophical thought. For me, that is just as dogmatic as theological propositions; I am equally unable to identify with either.

Well that’s offensive. No, my experience of “terror” is denied as you defined it, that’s all. But it was the experience of the terror of nothingness that indeed evoked the “vision” I had. You must have missed this in your reading of what I wrote. I have come to understand what happened, after the fact using this language to best describe what it was to me. It’s the language I found that best describes it, and I can see it being behind all religious belief. That’s what I hoped to communicate in this.

Perhaps I went into too much detail and the point was missed by you in all the explanations I went into. But to call me dogmatic is really insulting and just plain ignorant on your part. You assume way too much here.

RubySera, on Nov 22 2007, 09:57 AM, said:

Long story short, I am unable to identify with the "terror" theory, and I am likewise only vaguely able to connect with your theme of myth and language, which you emphasize a lot in your last post. The reports from psychology do speak to me because they make logical sense. In addition, they describe personal experience with which I can identify--that is, they describe phenomenon experienced by real people, not on the theoretical level, but in the real flesh and blood situation. They tell me that there is--or may be--a scientific explanation for the spiritual experiences of God, visions, and other "other-worldly" experiences humans encounter in this life on this planet.

Yes of course. I’m with you on this one, except for this. They don’t indicate God. They indicate what happens to man to give him experiences he calls God. That’s my argument.

Is God out there, or is he created by us? This is my whole point. Yes psychology can explain why people believe, and I think that’s of tremendous value. But what I see it point to is human beings, not God. My point in all of this.

RubySera, on Nov 22 2007, 09:57 AM, said:

I had already through many years of seeking (as described in posts above) come very close to the conclusion that there must be a scientific or natural explanation for the seemingly supernatural phenomenon. When I read those articles I felt convinced that I was justified in thinking like that. It was approximately a year ago when I found these articles. I had already deconverted. These articles more or less moved me to atheism; it was an explanation for the experiences of deity that did not obligate me to relate to anything outside my own psyche. That let me rest from my labors, so to speak; I no longer had to seek for the evasive deity that caused the sensations I experienced on occassion. It began and ended in my own psyche.

Ok, so what are you really saying? It sounds to me like you’re saying exactly what I am. What was the point of this exercise?


P.S. I never finished my response before you closed this out (which is fine, since my time and energy level hasn’t been what it needed to be for this). There’s a brief section I wish to post here since it goes a little more into what you called my “dogma”. Nevertheless, these are genuinely my thoughts, for what they may be worth to you.

RubySera, on Nov 13 2007, 05:01 AM, said:

Antlerman, on Nov 10 2007, 12:56 PM, said:

Scientifically these things can be analyzed through psychology. But here’s the huge difference, they cannot be understood or communicated experientially though tools of science. That’s the tool of language, poetry, art – the words of the human heart, not literal, but metaphorical. How does one convey the meaning of hope with an analysis of it?? You don’t. You can’t.

I disagree. While the terms science and psychology may not be exact equivalents of the term logic, they fall in the same category of the rational. When I am emotionally crushed beyond hope, when life has lost all meaning and no hope remains that meaning can ever be regained, when the last spark of life has been extinguished and I feel unworthy even of death and hell, this is where cold logic can and does provide hope. Cold, hard, sterile, stainless steel logic tells me to take one more breath. Then one more. And one more. To keep on this way. Forever. This requires all the energy my body possesses. But logic tells me that this will carry my body through the crisis. And it does. The second attack does not last as long because logic reminds me that last time I survived.

I guess I had said before what I just said here again. Ok, I disagree in part with what some of what you have just said. It is not logic that tells you take one more breath, it’s the will to live, and the will to live transcends conscious thought. You may see this as the rational mind telling to take one more breath, but it’s not rationality that drives this. It’s that irrational side of humanity that tells it to find reason to believe because it wants to live, because it doesn’t want to die! It tells your rational mind to argue with that part of your mind that has persuaded you logically that no hope exists.

This comes back full circle to my whole thoughts about the terror of nothingness I talked about. We are driven irrationally to find meaning, to find hope in the face of despair. Our brains are too big. When we reason about life, the logical end is that it is inherently meaningless. Yet we are driven by irrationality to live. It’s our big brain that creates this despair. If we were less smart, we’d just live. But we have to think about our existence, and when we’re done reasoning about it, when we’ve taken away all the masks of God, what we see is nothingness. It’s our own faces staring right back at us from the void!

So what religion tries to do is jump in to offer ways to look at existence that divert our thoughts away from this conclusion. It creates stories of hope that we can tell ourselves, over, and over, and over again that it all really does matter. But I see this as a placebo, not a cure. Personally, I think the best way is to be fully aware with eyes wide open about it and rationally conclude it is meaningless and embrace that. At that moment we are freed from the anxiety about it underlying everything in our lives, then we are free to rationally choose to ‘leap’ into the irrational part of life and just live for life’s sake. We choose to make the meaningless meaningful to make life livable. And it’s in that freedom of choice that we gain power over our lives. We are free to act, not react. It’s in this action of choice that we become God.

We see God in our human experiences because we need to. It’s all driven by our psychology reacting to our awareness of our own existence in the face of the universe. God is inside us. God comes from us. The experiences are real. They are about us. We are God.

Thanks for this discussion. I apologize I haven’t had the energy and time to devote to this as I had hoped to. It may have helped to have been making more regular posts so these sort of assumptions could have been avoided. I hope it’s been at least of some benefit.

This post has been edited by Antlerman: 23 November 2007 - 01:25 AM

[R. S. Martin]

I think perhaps you hope for a response. At the very least, I will try to clear up a few misunderstandings.

Antlerman, on Nov 22 2007, 10:48 PM, said:

RubySera, on Nov 22 2007, 09:57 AM, said:

For me, the abstractions of philosophy and propositions of theology are just so much guesswork of the human intellect. The bottom line for me is the human experience. I go into some detail on my argument here. That is why I asked whether your statements about the terror of being alone in the universe was based on your experience or if you were quoting someone. I gather that you were basing it on philosophical thought. For me, that is just as dogmatic as theological propositions; I am equally unable to identify with either.

Well that’s offensive. No, my experience of “terror” is denied as you defined it, that’s all. But it was the experience of the terror of nothingness that indeed evoked the “vision” I had. You must have missed this in your reading of what I wrote. I have come to understand what happened, after the fact using this language to best describe what it was to me. It’s the language I found that best describes it, and I can see it being behind all religious belief. That’s what I hoped to communicate in this.

I definitely missed that. In no way did I mean to offend or downplay your experience and I sincerely apologize for coming across that way. It sounds like you and I are indeed saying the same thing.

Quote

RubySera, on Nov 22 2007, 09:57 AM, said:

Long story short, I am unable to identify with the "terror" theory, and I am likewise only vaguely able to connect with your theme of myth and language, which you emphasize a lot in your last post. The reports from psychology do speak to me because they make logical sense. In addition, they describe personal experience with which I can identify--that is, they describe phenomenon experienced by real people, not on the theoretical level, but in the real flesh and blood situation. They tell me that there is--or may be--a scientific explanation for the spiritual experiences of God, visions, and other "other-worldly" experiences humans encounter in this life on this planet.

Yes of course. I’m with you on this one, except for this. They don’t indicate God. They indicate what happens to man to give him experiences he calls God. That’s my argument.

Exactly. And I needed to know how it is possible for humans to have these experiences if there really is "nothing more" "out there." That is where the reports from pscyhology is important for me. I notice that these articles are ten years old and I would be interested to know if more recent work has been done to verify, support, or negate what these articles report.

Quote

Is God out there, or is he created by us? This is my whole point. Yes psychology can explain why people believe, and I think that’s of tremendous value. But what I see it point to is human beings, not God. My point in all of this.

My point is, if it can be proven that "God" begins and ends in the human psyche, then obviously "god" is created by humans. So long as we don't know for sure that there is a psychological basis--or other natural explanation--for "god" we don't know for sure. My other point was that some humans do experience "god." It seems, however, that the vast majority of humans do not experience "god" beyond the numinous as produced by worship or ritual as described in earlier posts. Mythra said something that provided a lot of insight for me. He said:

Myrtha said:

In Christian circles, the term "belief" takes on some mystical, magical, proportions - being the most important element in a person's life.

Ultimately, it's just a term to describe what you think is true.

That is taken from Post 9 in Illogical Reasons for Faith.

Quote

Thanks for this discussion. I apologize I haven’t had the energy and time to devote to this as I had hoped to. It may have helped to have been making more regular posts so these sort of assumptions could have been avoided. I hope it’s been at least of some benefit.

You're welcome. I learned a lot from this exercise. That is what I hoped to get out of it for myself. Also, I think we proved via personal experience and the literature that the human psyche includes the potential to give people the impression that "god" exists. I think the open-minded skeptic is obligated to accept that this is more than an "imaginary" friend; it is real in the same sense that I really felt the presence of that person when I was sitting in the back pew. Our bodies did not quite touch but I could sense the presence. Likewise, the human psyche produces sensations of an "other" that is invisible and otherwise imperceptible. When I was sitting in the back pew, all I had to do to prove the existence of the other was turn around and look. Yet this "Other" in the Universe, a.k.a. God, has never been found, no matter how much time and resources have been spent throughout the centuries looking for him/her/it.

The problem, as I see it, is that humans have no real way to determine that it is their own psyches that produce the impression. Thus, for them it is concrete evidence that God exists. The best way to prove that the human psyche produces the impression, at least for my understanding, is to isolate the experience from religion. If you read the articles, you will see that this is what those scientists did. They did their electro-magnetic experiment with at least one nonreligious person. I forget some of the details; perhaps they also used religious subjects. I think this proves that the human psyche produces the impression of God and that nonreligious people who wish to help anyone deconvert must respect this. Hopefully, this discussion provides a few tools for people who wish to understand their "god" experiences in a natural context, or who wish to help others deconvert.

I think that covers the questions and issues you raised in your last post. If I missed something, feel free to let me know. Thanks again for your participation.

[Antlerman]

RubySera, on Nov 23 2007, 12:59 PM, said:

I definitely missed that. In no way did I mean to offend or downplay your experience and I sincerely apologize for coming across that way. It sounds like you and I are indeed saying the same thing.

Ok fine. Thank you. I appreciate your saying so.

RubySera, on Nov 23 2007, 12:59 PM, said:

Quote

Thanks for this discussion. I apologize I haven’t had the energy and time to devote to this as I had hoped to. It may have helped to have been making more regular posts so these sort of assumptions could have been avoided. I hope it’s been at least of some benefit.

You're welcome. I learned a lot from this exercise. That is what I hoped to get out of it for myself. Also, I think we proved via personal experience and the literature that the human psyche includes the potential to give people the impression that "god" exists. I think the open-minded skeptic is obligated to accept that this is more than an "imaginary" friend; it is real in the same sense that I really felt the presence of that person when I was sitting in the back pew. Our bodies did not quite touch but I could sense the presence. Likewise, the human psyche produces sensations of an "other" that is invisible and otherwise imperceptible. When I was sitting in the back pew, all I had to do to prove the existence of the other was turn around and look. Yet this "Other" in the Universe, a.k.a. God, has never been found, no matter how much time and resources have been spent throughout the centuries looking for him/her/it.

The problem, as I see it, is that humans have no real way to determine that it is their own psyches that produce the impression. Thus, for them it is concrete evidence that God exists. The best way to prove that the human psyche produces the impression, at least for my understanding, is to isolate the experience from religion. If you read the articles, you will see that this is what those scientists did. They did their electro-magnetic experiment with at least one nonreligious person. I forget some of the details; perhaps they also used religious subjects. I think this proves that the human psyche produces the impression of God and that nonreligious people who wish to help anyone deconvert must respect this. Hopefully, this discussion provides a few tools for people who wish to understand their "god" experiences in a natural context, or who wish to help others deconvert.

Ok, oddly so, now that I have time and you’re less than interested, I see this conversation taking off. If you wish to continue fine, but I’ll run with what I see here since I feel somewhat inspired at the moment with a break from my world of work.

Yes, I agree that people see this as evidence for God. But in my opinion it doesn’t add up sufficiently to truly satisfy the craving for meaning. That’s important to how I see all this. I completely agree, in fact quite vehemently so, that all this is significantly more than just the “imaginary friend”. I can’t stress that enough. To minimize this is to overlook something important to what makes us human.

This is why I tried to spend some time on the philosophical ideas of the “numinous”, and on things like the ancient notion of “being” (one of my first posts), and in delving into the existentialist ideas of freedom, choice, being and nothingness. All these things come from humans. They are important because they come out of who we are, and they are so prevalent as to be more than simply insignificant. To call them ridiculous and absurd and simply scrape them into the trash is to be quite irresponsible and as biased as the worst of the religious who have some doctrine of Truth™ to defend.

For a long time now I have been impressed with the impact of language on our perceptions of the world, and how it shapes our notions of what is real. God has been a part of that vocabulary of humans, in no small measure, and to me it betrays something significant about us. Of course the “big” dilemma is how absurd it is to take these signs as literal truths, and rightly so for those who do so are entirely missing the significance of the vocabulary themselves. They are equal missing the point as those who swipe it away as so much ignorant, primitive nonsense. To me they are a road map to the mystery of what lays inside the heart of a human being.

This is where we are in agreement. We see the tools of science, psychology, anthropology, and sociology as tools to gain insights into our own humanity. Along with this and my emphasis in this conversation and others is how our forms of art, music, literature, and in our mythologies provide a light to shine into what inspires us to live and sentient beings! To throw this out as so much absurdity is to poke one’s own eye out. This comes back to my mention of the power of signs in the Beowulf poem that Tolkien was so keen to draw our attention towards.

Religious symbolism has significance. But the important, more vital question is are the ones we have effective in this world we live in today? I think the answer is obvious they are struggling in the extreme, especially in the G8 Industrialized nations where education has brought far greater exposure to other philosophies and cultures. This is in my opinion the struggle that most of us here has had and are experiencing. We find ourselves eschewing this language system of symbols that once tapped into those aspects of the human experience we have been trying to discuss, because it has fallen behind the vocabulary of the science and knowledge of a modern world we find ourselves in. So the question comes to what you were bringing up in finding inspiration in the language of science, and what I was trying to address in speaking of art and poetry, what will speak to us today in the world we live?

I see this as the real heart behind all these questions which comes back to finding a language of meaning. We experience something profound when we are able to allow ourselves to see beyond the next kill for food. We can experience a connection to the world beyond us if we look, or even if we caught unawares and are drawn into a response of the beautiful in nature. All these things beg a language of understanding, both for ourselves to talk to ourselves about it, and to communicate and share with others what we have found. This is our struggle which we find ourselves pushing against tradition to find. Truly, our struggle is humanity growing.

Ok, I’ll leave it there. If you wish to pick this up, just go with it and I’ll respond as the energy to do so is there. It’s amazing what four days away from work can do for you! :grin: