The Universe Is God

[Heavenslaughing]

 

I like the semantic shift, TheHammer, and this might be one case where changing words amounts to more than just semantics. I am fine with the use of "God" as a heavily loaded symbolic term, and for some, it's a more meaningful way to name what you and NG are describing. For others, the word's implications and history carry more baggage than it's worth, and great All carries some of the same sense of awe without as much anthropomorphization.

 

By the way, it looks as if you're very new, so from someone only slightly less new, welcome!

[Antlerman]

The strictly descriptive terms of science don't cut it for conveying the sense of magnitude and power of the universe or of humanity within it, and the language of myth and metaphor is the only human creation I know of which comes close. But does appreciating the universe in this way just mean feeling good? Neon G., I really like the idea of worship as material practice, with your example of protecting other kinds of life as worship making the point extremely well.

This is exactly where I have been heading in my thinking for quite some time. It's a pleasure to see it being expressed this way in your words. The impulses behind this are what are of great fascination to me, and for some time I've been hinting at this in the idea of an inherent beauty in the universe that drives all life, and the role of the aesthetic in the human experience as a means to both express that and to connect with it.

 

I want to quote some things I was reading about the philosopher Aurthur Schopenhauer recently under a section titled, "Aesthetic Perception as a Mode of Transcendence" you may find it helps to put some perspective to this. It really resonates with me from what I've been pondering for quite some time now:

 

Schopenhauer states that the highest purpose of art is to communicate Platonic Ideas (WWR, Section 50). As constituting art, he has in mind the traditional five fine arts minus music, namely, architecture, sculpture, painting, and poetry. These four arts he comprehends in relation to the Platonic Ideas — those universal objects of aesthetic awareness that are located at the objective pole of the universal subject-object distinction that is general root of the principle of sufficient reason. Schopenhauer's account of the visual and literary arts corresponds to the world as representation in its immediate objectification, namely, the field of Platonic Ideas as opposed to the field of spatio-temporal objects.

 

As a counterpart to his interpretation of the visual and literary arts, Schopenhauer develops an account of music that coordinates it with the subjective pole of the universal subject-object distinction. Separate from the other traditional arts,

Schopenhauer maintains that music is the most metaphysical art and is on a subjective, feeling-centered level with the Platonic Ideas themselves.

Just as the Platonic Ideas contain the patterns for the types of objects in the daily world, music formally duplicates the basic structure of the world as a whole: the bass notes are analogous to inorganic nature, the harmonies are analogous to the animal world, and the melodies are analogous to the human world. The sounding of the bass note produces more subtle sonic structures in its overtones; similarly, inanimate nature produces animate life.

 

In short, Schopenhauer discerns in the structure of music, a series of analogies to the structure of the physical world that allow him to claim that music is a copy of the Will itself. His view might seem extravagant upon first hearing, but underlying it is the thought that if one is to discern the truth of the world,

it might be advantageous to apprehend the world,

not exclusively in scientific, mechanical and causal terms, but rather in aesthetic, analogical, expressive and metaphorical terms

that require a sense of taste for their discernment. If the form of the world is best reflected in the form of music, then the most philosophical sensibility will be a musical sensibility.

This partially explains the positive attraction of Schopenhauer's theory of music to thinkers such as Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom combined musical and philosophical interests in their work.

 

The problem we have in todays world is a literalist mindset, likely due to our approach to knowledge and understanding using the tools of science and empirical research. It manifests itself in a religious literalism, as well as a philosophical materialistic literalism. Arguments that mythological systems are 'false' is an improper argument. What is false is taking them literally. The same goes for purely rationalistic approach to life. That everything should be approached rationally, is itself true irrationality. There are components to life that reason can not take you to, as you well stated above.

 

I honestly believe this line of stepping beyond literalism, either in interpreting myth as literal, or in believing that a literal interpretation of the world through rationality, and understanding everything as symbolic representation of something beyond it is the key to finding that reconciliation between faith and reason. It is a rational step, to step beyond rationality. The key to it is to see and hear what is represented, and I believe it will be through some sort of rationally understood leap of faith in an embrace of art, myth, and reason in a fully cognizant marriage of human truth. Finding God is finding ourselves, and humans are more than rational, as well may be the universe itself.

[Neon Genesis]

Do you feel that disconnected from the universe that you have to reshape it inside your head to fit to the concept of god?

or

Do you crave the concept of god so badly that you have to shape it to fit the universe?

I think that part of me does desire a god concept to believe in, but I don't really see it as shaping god to fit the universe or vice versa. I see it more as I'm looking at the universe through familiar feelings and beliefs. It's hard to explain. I just see it as being sort of like what AM has talked about in other threads better than I can of using religion as a language and gods as allegories though maybe not exactly the same. I don't know if that's exactly it, but it's sort of the basic idea I'm trying to explain. I've probably lost everyone now.

 

What makes you think that the universe "asks" that we don't destroy ourselves?

 

How is this idea of asking not applying intelligence and intent to the universe?

Perhaps "asking" was the wrong choice of word, which was one reason why I placed it in quotations. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like what I mentioned in my opening post about seeing protecting nature as a form of worship. It's like the universe goes on without a care in the world, but the more damage we cause to our own environment, the more problems we bring to ourselves, so when we reap what we sow, it's like the universe is "asking" us not to destroy it along with us in the process, but not in a literal sense of "asking." I'm probably not making sense at this point.

[Antlerman]

Do you feel that disconnected from the universe that you have to reshape it inside your head to fit to the concept of god?

or

Do you crave the concept of god so badly that you have to shape it to fit the universe?

I think that part of me does desire a god concept to believe in, but I don't really see it as shaping god to fit the universe or vice versa. I see it more as I'm looking at the universe through familiar feelings and beliefs. It's hard to explain. I just see it as being sort of like what AM has talked about in other threads better than I can of using religion as a language and gods as allegories though maybe not exactly the same. I don't know if that's exactly it, but it's sort of the basic idea I'm trying to explain. I've probably lost everyone now.

 

What makes you think that the universe "asks" that we don't destroy ourselves?

 

How is this idea of asking not applying intelligence and intent to the universe?

Perhaps "asking" was the wrong choice of word, which was one reason why I placed it in quotations. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like what I mentioned in my opening post about seeing protecting nature as a form of worship. It's like the universe goes on without a care in the world, but the more damage we cause to our own environment, the more problems we bring to ourselves, so when we reap what we sow, it's like the universe is "asking" us not to destroy it along with us in the process, but not in a literal sense of "asking." I'm probably not making sense at this point.

You make perfect sense to me. It is hard to put into words, and that's my struggle.

 

When I've said elsewhere that the language of gods describes this, bear in mind I'm saying they're symbolic expressions in metaphor of some greater "sense" of existence to us. Again, to argue about the factually of the signs is to not "hear" the voice that drives them.

 

It's becoming my belief that it's our voice, and the voice of the universe through us that creates these ways of speaking about the world, and that we struggle with a sense of "separation" from that essential heart of life in the rise of consciousness and a language of society, and that's the whole drive of myths of the fall, and of the path back to God. They are all mythological representations of this basic sense of self in the face of awareness and divisions created by our systems of language which speaks in terms of opposites, creating a sense of dichotomy and separation, from others, from the world, and consequently from ourselves. "God" is representative of the universe we sense ourselves separated from.

 

It's my view that the expressions of human impulse or "spirit" through forms of art, literature, and poetry, and particularly music, that are more a direct channel to the pulses of that "heart" that beats in us, and by extension from the universe. It's all very representative, and the error occurs when one tries to understand it as speaking of something "external" to us (which fault our language programs our thinking towards), or something to be realized in human experience through the rationality of science. It's not some external mystical thing "out there", but something we are part of, or best put - we are. I believe in time we may come to see the world more in light like this.

 

So, whose posts seem the more confusing here? Actually, to me my thoughts are beginning to coalesce somewhat for me, finally.

 

P.S. It's really cool to see you exploring outside the lines.

[Evolution_beyond]

The problem we have in todays world is a literalist mindset, likely due to our approach to knowledge and understanding using the tools of science and empirical research. It manifests itself in a religious literalism, as well as a philosophical materialistic literalism. Arguments that mythological systems are 'false' is an improper argument. What is false is taking them literally. The same goes for purely rationalistic approach to life. That everything should be approached rationally, is itself true irrationality. There are components to life that reason can not take you to, as you well stated above.

 

Amen, brother!

[Heavenslaughing]

The problem we have in todays world is a literalist mindset, likely due to our approach to knowledge and understanding using the tools of science and empirical research. It manifests itself in a religious literalism, as well as a philosophical materialistic literalism. Arguments that mythological systems are 'false' is an improper argument. What is false is taking them literally. The same goes for purely rationalistic approach to life. That everything should be approached rationally, is itself true irrationality. There are components to life that reason can not take you to, as you well stated above.

 

You're proposing a truly fascinating and original relationship between science and an important component of religious fundamentalism here. An old-fashioned view of religious fundamentalism regarded it essentially as a holdover, a clinging remnant of a primitive mindset sure to fall away under the secularizing project of modernization. The swelling of fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism in the past several decades has left this perspective looking foolish. Although certain directions in religion have emerged earlier in history that we might call fundamentalism, contemporary fundamentalism emerged as a new phenomenon deeply entangled with the conflicts of the twentieth century. One common view in the social sciences today portrays fundamentalism as a reaction against "modernity" which makes use of modern tools (e.g. people feel frustrated by where late capitalism has left them, so they rally around a symbol in opposition to the secularist "moderns"). Another regards fundamentalism and secularist rationalism as dialectically engaged, with modernity creating the conditions for both.

 

What you've just proposed comes closest to this last, but you phrase it in a way that's slightly different from what I've seen. From how I've understood the above, philosophically materialistic literalism and scriptural literalism emerge from a common literalist mindset, which itself possibly resulted from the efforts of early positivist science to establish radical certainty. Most arguments focus so much on conflict between religion and science that they do not propose a commonality in this fashion. Conservative Christians have sometimes argued for commonality between religion and science as a rhetorical means to put them on equal footing, but the commonality you're suggesting operates differently. It limits both, but in different ways. Scientific, rationalist, or would-be objective discourse constantly makes use of metaphor, anthropomorphization, metonymy, and so forth in its rendering of observations of the universe into human language, but it attempts to ignore these properties of its own language and regards recognizably metaphoric speech as a lesser form of knowledge than the pure literalism it pretends to have. Fundamentalist discourse, on the other hand, takes a powerful and overtly metaphoric human creation and insists on its literal interpretation. We on this board have experienced the latter realization of literalism as more harmful, yet it is the more general literalist mindset which enables both problems.

 

I have no idea how well this hypothesis will stand up in comparison to others, but pointing out that it's novel and how some of its implications play out seemed worthwhile. It even belongs in this thread, since it establishes the metaphoric language advocated by yourself, Neon Genesis, and others in this thread as the synthesis which displaces the dueling opposites from the literalist dialectic.

 

That particular paragraph of yours certainly sparked quite a bit of thought, but I do want to respond to the rest. I had noticed the confluence in some of our thinking while reading your words elsewhere in the forums, and I very nearly began looking for some citation of yours when posting, but decided I would do better to find my own words for matters I've spent much time considering and little time before now discussing.

 

I enjoyed the quote concerning Schopenhauer, and in keeping with my habits, I would like to raise several issues worth problematizing in what I see as a good idea. If we apprehend the universe in expressive terms which require a sense of taste for their discernment, how do we deal with the association of taste with social class, and with the ability of the dominant society to define what is "good taste?" How, for that matter, do we deal with the possibility of problematic cultural assumptions embedded within the structure of those tastes? Susan McClary, for example, turned musicology upside-down with her argument that Western music contains implicit structures which establish alterity as a threat to be dominated. Classical music made these structures explicit when it termed the two main themes of a heroic composition the masculine and feminine, with the former designed to overpower and conquer the latter. When and how contemporary music adheres to this structure (e.g. the Indiana Jones theme song) and when it deviates (e.g. Madonna's "Like a Prayer") is of interest to her, and maybe to us if we are taking music to signify our aesthetic appreciation of the universe. I can't attempt to describe here the details of her argument, but I will say that once we begin asking how music signifies (why does this music sound heroic, that music sad, and that music inspiring), and once we begin thinking of music as "a copy of the Will itself," we open the door to a whole string of cultural associations, both positive and negative, within the kinds of music we hear and create. The musical philosophical sensibility compels us to think (and feel) critically about a long-standing component of religious signification whose symbolic content usually goes unremarked.

 

 

 

Perhaps "asking" was the wrong choice of word, which was one reason why I placed it in quotations. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like what I mentioned in my opening post about seeing protecting nature as a form of worship. It's like the universe goes on without a care in the world, but the more damage we cause to our own environment, the more problems we bring to ourselves, so when we reap what we sow, it's like the universe is "asking" us not to destroy it along with us in the process, but not in a literal sense of "asking." I'm probably not making sense at this point.

 

Makes sense to me. I'd wondered how you meant "asking," also, and I think you're phrasing yourself very clearly here. The "asking" is inherent in the nature of the universe. We can imagine a universe where destruction of our environment would hold no consequences for us, but this is not the universe we live in. The consequences to actions inherent in the physical laws of the universe suggest the ways we "should" and "should not" behave. If we describe this impersonal process in human terms, "asking" is not a bad way to describe it.

[Skankboy]

I don't know. I just try to make my beliefs coincide with reality as much as possible. When new evidence or ideas come up that refine and/or change that view, I try to bring my beliefs into accord.

 

But honestly, I just don't get this symbolic view of the universe. Maybe it's just a "different strokes for different folks" kind of deal, but it just doesn't work for me. I can be in awe of the physical universe, certainly. That gives me spiritual feeling, that awe. But I'm a little lost with the rest of it.

 

Believe me, I know language is a barrier. But, again to me, the use of symbolic/mythological descriptions just leave me flat. It's like poetry. To be honest, I just don't get most of it.

 

I guess I fall into the materalistic literalism category mentioned above. To me a tree is a tree. It can be beautiful, but that's just my opinion.

 

My issue with mythological/symbolic thinking is they are always rooted in the culture of the time. Thus the problem with biblical literalism. But I see the empirical system as being the only true way to overcome the language issue. We all experience the same universe (though we may subjectively see parts of it differently) but at least the empirical method gives you a common base that others can follow and arrive at the same place.

 

Show 3 people an abstract painting and I imagine you will get some very different (subjective) answers.

 

I know I'm rambling a bit here, but I guess my basic question is how can you interpret the universe from a mythical/symobolic perspective and expect to keep the message consistent for everyone?

 

IMOHO,

[gradstu09]

Believe me, I know language is a barrier. But, again to me, the use of symbolic/mythological descriptions just leave me flat. It's like poetry. To be honest, I just don't get most of it.

 

I guess I fall into the materalistic literalism category mentioned above. To me a tree is a tree. It can be beautiful, but that's just my opinion.

 

I know I said I wasn't going to get into it, but think of it this way--divorce myth from symbolism. Where else do you find symbols? In math. How is the universe and everything in it described? Also with math. A tree is a tree, but it also obeys the laws of physics and is composed of atoms that obey the laws of particle physics, and on a larger (and smaller) scale this is true of every single thing in the universe. All of it fits perfectly, even if we haven't come up with a unified theory to understand it yet. That to me means I'm a part of something bigger. I do have a place in the great mass/energy balance. My purpose is what I decide it to be, but my existence in the system is not up for debate. Like I said above, it's not a god, but it does give me that "big" feeling.

[Skankboy]

Hi Gradstu09,

 

Thanks for the response. I know what you mean by the "big" feeling. I've always tried to view myself as part of a larger continuum.

 

What I'm having an issue with is the symbol/mythic thing. I know you used math as an example. That's a good point, but in math the symbols have been consistent acrossed cultures for quite a while. A mathematician in South America should have no problem reading/understanding the mathematic symbols used by another in Russia. This is one of the reasons that, while symbolic, math can be considered an empirical study: it describes reality and gives you the same answer no matter who follows the directions.

 

The symbolism in myths are, I believe, very different. Each grows out of the needs of a specific culture at a specific time. It takes a lot of time and effort to learn about a culture to the point that you understand all of the symbolism they use. I watch a lot of asian movies and TV shows. I'm starting to have a small grasp of some of the symbolic language they use, but only just a bit and I have a lot of source material to draw from.

 

My point is, unless we are all using the same "symbolic toolbox", it is very easy to draw wildly different conclusions when describing reality from a mythic standpoint. Maybe that's OK. I don't know. I just don't understand the value added in describing the universe this way. Again, it seems to me that doing so is "adding" to something that is, by definition, complete.

 

IMOHO,

[Heavenslaughing]

What I'm having an issue with is the symbol/mythic thing. I know you used math as an example. That's a good point, but in math the symbols have been consistent acrossed cultures for quite a while. A mathematician in South America should have no problem reading/understanding the mathematic symbols used by another in Russia. This is one of the reasons that, while symbolic, math can be considered an empirical study: it describes reality and gives you the same answer no matter who follows the directions.

 

The symbolism in myths are, I believe, very different. Each grows out of the needs of a specific culture at a specific time. It takes a lot of time and effort to learn about a culture to the point that you understand all of the symbolism they use. I watch a lot of asian movies and TV shows. I'm starting to have a small grasp of some of the symbolic language they use, but only just a bit and I have a lot of source material to draw from.

 

My point is, unless we are all using the same "symbolic toolbox", it is very easy to draw wildly different conclusions when describing reality from a mythic standpoint. Maybe that's OK. I don't know. I just don't understand the value added in describing the universe this way. Again, it seems to me that doing so is "adding" to something that is, by definition, complete.

 

The wildly different conclusions possible with myth aren't just OK; they're desirable. Metaphors recognized for what they are do not need to compete with each other in terms of their truth value. Instead, they can instruct and inform each other. Different symbolic toolboxes can refine each other, mix tools, or create new inventions by their meeting. Select whichever tools best help you build.

 

By describing the universe in any way whatsoever, including mathematics, we add to it. You describe math entirely rightly when you say its symbols have been consistent across cultures for quite a while. Classrooms across the globe devote hours per week to teaching this symbol system, making modern mathematics a globally shared culture. That's a far cry from something universal, value-free, or neutral. You used none of these words, yet these are the attributes that mathematics would need to have (and which many suppose it does) in order to describe the world in a way that would not "add" to it. There are properties of the universe which run very consistently with our math, but these properties are not mathematics, which is a human and historically particular creation. The concept of zero, for example, works differently or does not appear in different mathematical systems, and an anthropologist by the name of Kath Weston has written a book tracing its cultural associations through history. The speakers of the Pirahan language provide an instance of human culture where even the concepts of counting and basic addition do not exist. I'm not knocking numbers; mathematics counts among the most powerful symbolic toolboxes invented, and we can intervene in the physical world in ways otherwise impossible through its use. I've met a few people who even respond emotionally to advanced mathematics, so I wouldn't even argue that they necessarily fall short in conveying meaning. Like every other symbolic system, they do. Meaning is always partial, culturally created, and subject to alternative interpretation, because meaning is always human.

[Antlerman]

Sorry in advance for the huge length of this post. See what Neon started?

 

The problem we have in today’s world is a literalist mindset, likely due to our approach to knowledge and understanding using the tools of science and empirical research. It manifests itself in a religious literalism, as well as a philosophical materialistic literalism. Arguments that mythological systems are 'false' is an improper argument. What is false is taking them literally. The same goes for purely rationalistic approach to life. That everything should be approached rationally, is itself true irrationality. There are components to life that reason can not take you to, as you well stated above.

 

You're proposing a truly fascinating and original relationship between science and an important component of religious fundamentalism here. An old-fashioned view of religious fundamentalism regarded it essentially as a holdover, a clinging remnant of a primitive mindset sure to fall away under the secularizing project of modernization. The swelling of fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism in the past several decades has left this perspective looking foolish. Although certain directions in religion have emerged earlier in history that we might call fundamentalism, contemporary fundamentalism emerged as a new phenomenon deeply entangled with the conflicts of the twentieth century. One common view in the social sciences today portrays fundamentalism as a reaction against "modernity" which makes use of modern tools (e.g. people feel frustrated by where late capitalism has left them, so they rally around a symbol in opposition to the secularist "moderns"). Another regards fundamentalism and secularist rationalism as dialectically engaged, with modernity creating the conditions for both.

 

What you've just proposed comes closest to this last, but you phrase it in a way that's slightly different from what I've seen. From how I've understood the above, philosophically materialistic literalism and scriptural literalism emerge from a common literalist mindset, which itself possibly resulted from the efforts of early positivist science to establish radical certainty.

Yes, that is correct. That is what I was proposing. I actually am working off the second view along with the third you listed that fundamentalism is a reaction to modernity, with the exception that they adopt the line of thinking that is evidentiary based. I view them as very much a child of the culture they wish to make religion a part of. Their solution is to make it factual, not metaphorical. They hear the language of science and reason, and try to make myth fit that, and themselves speak in that language.

 

Something I found from a professor of comparative religion here in the area I live in that I think also expresses this as well. I think there’s some value in what he says, and I’ll quote an expert here, highlighting points that stand out to me:

http://www.religion-online.org/showar....asp?title=1332[/url'>']The literalist mentality does not manifest itself only in conservative churches, private-school enclaves, television programs of the evangelical right, and a considerable amount of Christian bookstore material; one often finds a literalist understanding of Bible and faith being assumed by those who have no religious inclinations, or who are avowedly antireligious in sentiment. Even in educated circles the possibility of more sophisticated theologies of creation is easily obscured by burning straw effigies of biblical literalism.

 

But the problem is even more deep-rooted.

A literalist imagination -- or lack of imagination -- pervades contemporary culture

. One of the more dubious successes of modern science -- and of its attendant spirits technology, historiography and mathematics -- is the suffusion of intellectual life with a prosaic and pedantic mind-set.

One may observe this feature in almost any college classroom, not only in religious studies, but within the humanities in general. Students have difficulty in thinking, feeling and expressing themselves

symbolically

.

 

The problem is, no doubt, further amplified by the obviousness and banality of most of the television programming on which the present generation has been weaned and reared. Not only is imagination a strain; even to imagine what a symbolic world is like is difficult. Poetry is turned into prose, truth into statistics, understanding into facts, education into note-taking, art into criticism, symbols into signs, faith into beliefs. That which cannot be listed, out-lined, dated, keypunched, reduced to a formula, fed into a computer, or sold through commercials cannot be thought or experienced.

 

Our situation calls to mind a backstage interview with Anna Pavlova, the dancer. Following an illustrious and moving performance, she was asked the meaning of the dance. She replied, “If I could say it, do you think I should have danced it?” To give dance a literal meaning would be to reduce dancing to something else. It would lose its capacity to involve the whole person. And one would miss all the subtle nuances and delicate shadings and rich polyvalences of the dance itself.

 

The remark has its parallel in religion. The early ethnologist R. R. Marett is noted for his dictum that “religion is not so much thought out as danced out.” But even when thought out, religion is focused in the verbal equivalent of the dance: myth, symbol and metaphor. To insist on assigning to it a literal, one-dimensional meaning is to shrink and stifle and distort the significance. In the words of E. H. W. Meyer- stein, “Myth is my tongue, which means not that I cheat, but stagger in a light too great to bear.” Religious expression trembles with a sense of inexpressible mystery, a mystery which nevertheless addresses us in the totality of our being.

 

The literal imagination is univocal. Words mean one thing, and one thing only. They don’t bristle with meanings and possibilities; they are bald, clean-shaven.

Literal clarity and simplicity, to be sure, offer a kind of security in a world (or Bible) where otherwise issues seem incorrigibly complex, ambiguous and muddy. But it is a false security, a temporary bastion, maintained by dogmatism and misguided loyalty.

Literalism pays a high price for the hope of having firm and unbreakable handles attached to reality. The result is to move in the opposite direction from religious symbolism, emptying symbols of their amplitude of meaning and power, reducing the cosmic dance to a calibrated discussion.

 

One of the ironies of biblical literalism is that it shares so largely in the reductionist and literalist spirit of the age. It is not nearly as conservative as it supposes. It is

modernistic

, and it sells its symbolic birthright for a mess of tangible pottage. Biblical materials and affirmations -- in this case the symbolism of Creator and creation – are treated as though of the same order and the same literary genre as scientific and historical writing. “I believe in God the Father Almighty” becomes a chronological issue, and “Maker of heaven and earth” a technological problem.

I am also wanting to tie shifts in theology into this, where modern apologetics take this shift towards a rational basis for faith as opposed to Fideism, but I need to lay this out better in a time line I’ve been hoping to get around to. The point is, there is a shift in how people approached understanding and defending belief in God that I believe reaches back before the early 20th Century in response to the neo-orthodoxy that the philosophy of Kierkegaard gave rise to. It manifests itself as the professor says above, “

It is not nearly as conservative as it supposes. It is modernistic, and it sells its symbolic birthright for a mess of tangible pottage.”

 

I’ve been fairly occupied this week, and I’ve hoped to dig more deeply into this, but for now this is all I have to put out there that goes any further.

 

 

Most arguments focus so much on conflict between religion and science that they do not propose a commonality in this fashion. Conservative Christians have sometimes argued for commonality between religion and science as a rhetorical means to put them on equal footing, but the commonality you're suggesting operates differently. It limits both, but in different ways. Scientific, rationalist, or would-be objective discourse constantly makes use of metaphor, anthropomorphization, metonymy, and so forth in its rendering of observations of the universe into human language, but it attempts to ignore these properties of its own language and regards recognizably metaphoric speech as a lesser form of knowledge than the pure literalism it pretends to have. Fundamentalist discourse, on the other hand, takes a powerful and overtly metaphoric human creation and insists on its literal interpretation. We on this board have experienced the latter realization of literalism as more harmful, yet it is the more general literalist mindset which enables both problems.

I just had a conversation with my son last night, who happens to be a conservative Christian, trying to explain the problem with literalism and referred to the metaphorical and mythological symbolism of the Genesis account. After 45 minutes of exploring thought, explaining the power of metaphor and myth, in the end he says he understand what I’m saying but doesn’t agree. When asked to explain back to me what I was trying to say, he said “You said it’s all just a metaphor; that it really didn’t happen”.

 

He’s 25. But I also see he’s a product of our culture. I tried to tell him, “Actually, metaphor is more powerful than fact”. Yet, as the professor so wonderfully put it, we, our culture lacks imagination. I contend, that religion, especially the fundamentalist is a much as much a bed fellow philosophically with the hard-core rationalist materialist, both being products of an age of reason and a dearth of philosophical base. Positivism? Yes. That’s why you see me attracted to the Aesthetics. Both the rationalist and the religious fundamentalist are literalists, each approaching truth with the same religious confidence. I will definitely try to put together something that explores theological trends. It should be helpful in looking at this.

 

That particular paragraph of yours certainly sparked quite a bit of thought, but I do want to respond to the rest. I had noticed the confluence in some of our thinking while reading your words elsewhere in the forums, and I very nearly began looking for some citation of yours when posting, but decided I would do better to phrase it in my own words.

I have noticed a kindred spirit of thought here, and I’m more that happy to hear someone as yourself articulate similar thought in ways that I find myself intrigued by. Don’t go run away anytime soon!

 

I enjoyed the quote concerning Schopenhauer, and in keeping with my habits, I would like to raise several issues worth problematizing in what I see as a good idea. If we apprehend the universe in expressive terms which require a sense of taste for their discernment, how do we deal with the association of taste with social class, and with the ability of the dominant society to define what is "good taste?" How, for that matter, do we deal with the possibility of problematic cultural assumptions embedded within the structure of those tastes? Susan McClary, for example, turned musicology upside-down with her argument that Western music contains implicit structures which establish alterity as a threat to be dominated. Classical music made these structures explicit when it termed the two main themes of a heroic composition the masculine and feminine, with the former designed to overpower and conquer the latter. When and how contemporary music adheres to this structure (e.g. the Indiana Jones theme song) and when it deviates (e.g. Madonna's "Like a Prayer") is of interest to her, and maybe to us if we are taking music to signify our aesthetic appreciation of the universe. I can't attempt to describe here the details of her argument, but I will say that once we begin asking how music signifies (why does this music sound heroic, that music sad, and that music inspiring), and once we begin thinking of music as "a copy of the Will itself," we open the door to a whole string of cultural associations, both positive and negative, within the kinds of music we hear and create. The musical philosophical sensibility compels us to think (and feel) critically about a long-standing component of religious signification whose symbolic content usually goes unremarked.

How much bandwidth do you want to consume discussing this?

First, I see a difference between popular musical forms (which are essentially music as entertainment or distraction) and those of the creative spirit driven by an angst to deliver a child into the world out of the depth of one’s soul. I am a musician, but not one who plays other’s music, but my own as a philosophical/spiritual expression which was born out of a time of a great opening of myself to the void, if you will. It had nowhere else to go, except death or life. It became life for me, and allowed something to happen that opened me to the world.

 

It was only very recently that I happened across Schopenhauer, and needless to say I found connection with his philosophies. As a half-related footnote, I too am a product of my culture, where something emotionally connected for me with expressions found in Romanticism in music form, which itself was born out of this philosophical outlook on music. Surprise of surprises that it came from somewhere!

(The exact same holds true with how people perceive the world literally. It wasn't born in a vacuum, nor is it some universally objective way of approaching knowledge/life. There are many, many ways to approach life, that’s just one, and it was born in some philosophy).

 

BTW if you’re curious to hear some of what I’ve explored musically these four links will let you hear some samples of the things that I’ve written:

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=10097

http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=24645

http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=24283

http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=24622

 

 

As far as cultural contexts, I’m sure there is this at play. Very much in the same way as myth takes on the flavor of its cultural. But like the Jungian archetypes, I think there is something universal to music, as Schopenhauer attempts to illustrate in the fundamental tones relating to inanimate matter, but something perhaps more fundamental than that. Something tied into the nature of the universe, as I touched on in mentioning a possible inherent aesthetic that drives the creation and sustaining of life itself.

 

From the

Rebirth of Value

by Fredrick Turner, as he addresses the question “what is the deepest tendency or theme of the universe?” In particular, in regards to music point #4:

 

1. Unity in multiplicity--the universe does seem to be one, though it is full of an enormous variety and quantity of things. Our best knowledge about its beginning, if it had one, is that everything in the universe was contracted into a single hot dense atom; or if it had no beginning, then it is bounded by a single space-time continuum out of which all forms of matter and energy emerge.

 

2. Complexity within simplicity: the universe is very complicated, yet it was generated by very simple physical laws, like the laws of thermodynamics.

 

3. Generativeness and creativity: the universe generates a new moment every moment, and each moment has genuine novelties. Its tendency or theme is that it should not just stop. As it has cooled, it produced all the laws of chemistry, all the new species of animals and plants, and finally ourselves and our history.

 

4. Rhythmicity: the universe can be described as a gigantic, self-nested scale of vibrations, from the highest-frequency particles, which oscillate with an energy of ten million trillion giga-electron volts, to the slowest conceivable frequency (or deepest of all notes), which vibrates over a period sufficient for a wave to cross the entire universe and return. Out of these vibrations, often in the most delicate and elaborate mixtures or harmonies of tone, everything is made.

 

5. Hierarchical organization: big pieces of the universe contain smaller pieces, and smaller pieces contain smaller pieces still, and so on. Relatively big pieces, such as planets and stars, control to some extent--through their collective gravitational and electromagnetic fields--the behavior of the smaller pieces of which they are composed, while the smaller pieces together determine what the larger pieces are to begin with. We see the same hierarchical organization, much more marvellously complex and precise, in the relationship of the smallest parts of the human body to the highest levels of its organization, from elementary particles through atoms, molecules, cells, organelles, and organs, to the neural synthesis that delegates its control down the chain. Consider also the elegant hierarchy of support, control, cooperation and dependency that one finds in the parts and whole of a Bach canon.

 

6. Self-similarity: related to the hierarchical property is a marvelous property now being investigated by chaos theorists and fractal mathematicians: the smaller parts of the universe often resemble in shape and structure the larger parts of which they are components, and those larger parts in turn resemble the still larger systems that contain them. Like Dante's Divine Comedy, in which the three-line stanza of its microcosm is echoed in the trinitarian theology of its middle-level organization and in the tripartite structure of the whole poem, so the universe tends to echo its themes at different scales. If you look at the branches of a tree--Yeats' chestnut tree, perhaps, that "great-rooted blossomer"--you can see how the length of a twig stands in the same relation to the length of the small branches as the small branches stand to the large branches, and the large branches to the trunk. You can find this pattern in all kinds of phenomena--electrical discharges, frost-flowers, the annual patterns of rise and decline in competing animal populations, stock market fluctuations, weather formations and clouds, the bronchi of lungs, corals, turbulent waters, and so on. And this harmonious relation of small to large is beautiful .

 

One other thing from there I wish to quote that I found descriptive and helpful in regard to this aesthetic that I’ve been finding over the many years in my search of meaning in life beyond religion or science:

 

What I want to suggest is that the experience of beauty is a recognition of the deepest tendency or theme of the universe as a whole. This may seem a very strange thing to say; but there is a gathering movement across many of the sciences that indicates that the universe does have a deep theme or tendency, a leitmotif which we can begin very tentatively to describe, if not fully understand.

 

Let us play with an idea of Kant's and see where we get if we treat the esthetic as something analogous to perception.10 Imagine dropping a rock on the floor. The rock reacts by bouncing and by making a noise, and perhaps undergoes some slight internal change; we would not imagine that it felt anything approaching a sensation.

 

Now imagine that you drop a worm on the floor; the impact might cause it to squirm, as well as merely to bounce and to produce a sound of impact. The worm, we would say, feels a sensation; but from the worm's point of view it is not a sensation of anything in particular; the worm does not construct, with its primitive nerve ganglia, anything as complex as an external world filled with objects like floors and experimenters.

 

Now imagine that you drop a guinea-pig. Clearly it would react, as the rock does, and also feel sensations, as the worm does. But we would say in addition that it perceives the floor, the large dangerous animal that has just released it, and the dark place under the table where it may be safe. Perception is as much beyond sensation as sensation is beyond mere physical reaction. Perception constructs a precise, individuated world of solid objects out there, endowed with color, shape, smell, and acoustic and tactile properties. It is generous to the outside world, giving it properties it did not necessarily possess until some advanced vertebrate was able, through its marvelously parsimonious cortical world-construction system, to provide them. Perception is both more global, more holistic, than sensation--because it takes into account an entire outside world--and more exact, more particular, because it recognizes individual objects and parts of objects.

 

Now if you were a dancer and the creature that you dropped were a human being, a yet more astonishing capacity comes into play. One could write a novel about how the dance-partners experience this drop, this gesture. Whole detailed worlds of implication, of past and future, of interpretive frames come into being; and the table and the dancing-floor do not lose any of the guinea-pig's reality, but instead take on richnesses, subtleties, significant details, held as they are within a context vaster and more clearly understood. What is this awareness, that is to perception what perception is to sensation, and sensation to reaction? The answer is: esthetic experience. Esthetic experience is as much more constructive, as much more generous to the outside world, as much more holistic, and as much more exact and particularizing than ordinary perception, as ordinary perception is than mere sensation. Thus by ratios we may ascend from the known to the very essence of the knower. Esthetic perception is not a vague and touchy-feely thing relative to ordinary perception; quite the reverse. This is why, given an infinite number of theories that will logically explain the facts, scientists will sensibly always choose the most beautiful theory. For good reason: this is the way the world works.

 

Very long read for a post, but I think, or I hope that there can be something there worth exploring in discussion. I would very much enjoy your thoughts to the other points I mentioned before as well.

[Neon Genesis]

Another thing to consider is that everyone uses the metaphorical language of religion in every day life to some degree. Think of all the famous sayings most people, including non-believers, use in their speech. Sayings like, "the apple of his eye", "Queen of Sheba", "man after his own heart", "Good Samaritan," "prodigal son" etc. The language of religion has practically become an integral part of our culture and most everyone uses it to a degree. Although I do think there are better expressions of spirituality than Christianity like AM's mentioning earlier in this thread about expressing oneself through art and music. Most of Christianity simply seems like a very stifling way of finding spirituality to me. Of course, it probably doesn't help that I simply don't like the myths of the bible, but that's just my personal tastes. Also, I think the bible is too unclear about spirituality that it doesn't have value for me. One example is where the bible speaks of the carnal mind vs the spiritual mind but the bible never clarifies what it means to think carnally or think spiritually. Even when it comes to the definition of the soul, the bible is completely vague about its meaning and just assumes that the reader already knows what it's talking about. On the other hand, I oddly find myself fascinated by other religions like Buddhism and paganism.

[Skankboy]

By describing the universe in any way whatsoever, including mathematics, we add to it.

 

I'd have to disagree with this. We aren't adding, we're describing (to the best of our ability) what already is.

 

I also have trouble seeing everyone coming out of mythic usage with different interpretations as a good thing. Where's the common ground? I understand about the Jungian archetypes, but I'm skeptical of their application with such a broad brush. Yes there are common experiences in human life (birth, death, hunger, etc.) but there are also aspects that are emminently linked to the culture/time.

 

Symbols can also mean completely contradictory things in different cultures (check out how the snake is viewed as symbol in the east vs. the west).

 

Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate that some people are more symbolically minded and this works for them, but I'm honestly a litte put off by the quotes above bascially saying people who don't think in this manner are somehow defficient. And the music thing is a little weird. I may be misunderstanding, but music (like the other symbols) is VERY dependant on the culture that produces them. That's why eastern music sounds so "off" to us, different scales, modals, etcs.

 

I think I kind of get the esthetic experience part, but I'm having trouble seeing the relevance. Even if the experience is somehow superior to the perceptive experience, I don't believe it can be conveyed in a way that is nearly as useful for our practical use. So it's really only superior for me - any attempt to externalize the experience will be lost "in translation". If it weren't, I would get it. And I don't (kind of like modern-dance).

 

I guess I'm still not getting it. Sorry...

[Antlerman]

I also have trouble seeing everyone coming out of mythic usage with different interpretations as a good thing. Where's the common ground? I understand about the Jungian archetypes, but I'm skeptical of their application with such a broad brush. Yes there are common experiences in human life (birth, death, hunger, etc.) but there are also aspects that are emminently linked to the culture/time.

And they are as much a part of the flavor and spice of the local cuisine, but under it all is it is food for the body.

 

I hear this underlying issue that people have with the language of myth, and it's trying to see how it's useful practically. If you can't agree on how to interpret it, how can it be useful? The answer is in the question what are you trying to do with it? If you're trying to construct an airplane, then you'd better use a language that is not rich with subtle overtones and harmonics understood on a subjective level. You'd better use a language that is practical, and as free from subjective meaning as possible. Hence why the language of mathematics is used in science.

 

But humans are more than pragmatic creatures. We are emotional, irrational, existential creatures as well. If we needed our perceptions to be always and ever centered around objective reality and our language to be as technically accurate as possible, then we will first need to divest ourselves of our personalities and become little more than calculating machines. But we aren't that. We perceive and process information in terms of archetypes. Our brains are not capable of understanding "objective" reality. If it were, when I saw you as a person I would instantaneously view you as trillions of details: each follicle of hair, each pore, each muscle, every detail of light, etc. Instead we categorize and create mental models because our brains cannot handle that level of information. We visually look at someone, we will see like this: a male, an Asian, black hair, middle class, well dressed, etc. Now add to this that because our brains can only hold detailed information of a maximum of 150 people, everyone outside that sphere is seen in more two-dimensional models, which even further removes them from "objective reality".

 

So all told, we see things in broad generalizations, even those we are "intimately" familiar with, and those forms are what shapes our perceptions of what we then "believe" to be reality. Reality cannot be the same thing for two people. Even with the more powerful tools of science, those perceptions are still widely interpreted subjectively. At best you can come closer to an agreed upon standard, or a type of theology about the natural world, to use that similar approach to standardizing religious thought. As heavenslaughing pointed out, people use mythological systems all the time in daily language and perception, but they just somehow have agreed (or at least certain groups agree) that this standard is reflective of reality. At best, it's an agreed upon standard of what humans interpret as reality, not reality itself. Additionally, they don't even recognize its use in how they actually do perceive reality. They somehow think they aren't, and to me that's the irony of those who extol the rightness of using the rational exclusively.

 

The question then is, is this a world best understood rationally, or subjectively? I answer it should be understood humanly which is rational and "spiritual", both on a representational level. Which is the right language to use? What are you trying to accomplish? What "truth" are you hoping to find? Who needs to understanding it, and how important are minute details?

 

What is the role of myth, the role of art, and music? Reality as experienced in the human heart. That is as much a part of the reality of our humanity as is our rational side. I am not an advocate of abandonment of perceiving reality through science, nor am I an advocate of an abandonment of the perceiving reality through human imagination. The language of science cannot take you into the depths of the inner self on that plane as easily as modes of expression elevating these aforementioned models to a place of transcendence, a place of ideals.

 

As an experiment, try to describe how you feel when you look up at the night sky? I'm curious what words you run to to do this with. What words are more expressive? Which symbols, what languages expresses this best?

 

Symbols can also mean completely contradictory things in different cultures (check out how the snake is viewed as symbol in the east vs. the west).

The same holds true with spoken languages when used in science. That's why they try to use mathematics instead.

 

Does the fact the snake have a different connotation in a different culture reduce its role as symbol? No. Does it make it ineffective? Again, back to your audience and what you are trying to accomplish. Really, this is true in secular symbols as well. The firm hand shake in this country is a sign of politeness, and is effective in communicating to those in this culture, whereas in Japan it is taken as aggressive and impolite. But in both cases it is symbolic communication.

 

Try having a discussion about the night sky using the language of cosmology to an aboriginal in the Outback. That doesn't work effectively either.

 

What is the universal language then? I would say everyone understands being human, no matter their level of head knowledge. That's where the language of metaphor and myth work, on the level of the heart. Languages of rationality, are actually the more specialized and therefore culturally limited. Empirical thinking does not define humanity. That's a recent approach to understanding the world. Which is more ancient, which is more inbred into our makeup as humans?

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate that some people are more symbolically minded and this works for them, but I'm honestly a litte put off by the quotes above bascially saying people who don't think in this manner are somehow defficient. And the music thing is a little weird. I may be misunderstanding, but music (like the other symbols) is VERY dependant on the culture that produces them. That's why eastern music sounds so "off" to us, different scales, modals, etcs.

How it's used may carry different flavors, but not the fact it is used to accomplish the same thing. If I speak Turkish, and you speak English, are they not both language being used for the same thing, despite the differences in sound?

 

Are people deficient if they experience only linear thought? I'm deficient in many things in my that I wish I had. If I lived with nature, watching the cycle of life each season, experiencing the land and the knowledge of cooperation with the environment, rather than living in a metropolitan area where technology removes me from my mother - the planet, I'm absolutely certain I would gain an inner awareness of the world that would enhance me. Without this, something is removed from me. There is a difference in meaning between being deficient, or lacking something, and being "defective." I personally believe that something is being lost in our culture, much in the same way as I described about living separated from nature. Our humanness is tied to it. How can it not affect us?

 

I think I kind of get the esthetic experience part, but I'm having trouble seeing the relevance. Even if the experience is somehow superior to the perceptive experience, I don't believe it can be conveyed in a way that is nearly as useful for our practical use. So it's really only superior for me - any attempt to externalize the experience will be lost "in translation". If it weren't, I would get it. And I don't (kind of like modern-dance).

 

I guess I'm still not getting it. Sorry...

Again it's back to use. Let's say it is "superior" for you. What's the effect? You have connected to something in you, through connecting to the world around you through the vehicle of a language that allows a greater perception/experience. You walk away from that with a gain in perception that you didn't have before, one that chances are brings you into a fuller sense of yourself, and through that, you interact with others and convey the meaning of that experience to you, to others - not just in words, but ultimately the highest form of communication, actions. Thus, that language has led to communication of the sublime, or even the "transcendent", if you will. Transcendent, in the sense of it breaking out of the limitations of rational thought placed upon it through the use of restrictive languages.

 

I've focused in on language for a very long time now as I see it's power. This is how it can manifest itself. It is the creator of limits, or the freer of the imagination into our perceptions and experience of our world.

[Ouroboros]

I saw in one of the issues of New Scientist, an article about how Fiction does improve peoples social skills. Myths are a form of fiction, so maybe they do serve a purpose?

 

Because of copyright issues, I can only provide the first paragraph from their website:

 

The science of fiction

 

* 25 June 2008

* Keith Oatley

* Magazine issue 2662

 

THE Victorians thought that reading Greek and Latin classics, including the stories of Homer, Sophocles and Virgil, would equip them for life. In the 20th century, great novels were considered to be improving. These days, with all the competing attractions of video games, the internet and movies, parents may be happy if their children read anything at all, while adults who enjoy fiction are more likely to view it as purely pleasurable rather than educative or life-enhancing. That is ironic, because for the first time in history there is now scientific evidence that reading fiction really does have psychological benefits.

 

The findings come from a small group at the University of Toronto in Canada, including Maja Djikic, Raymond Mar and myself. Our research starts with the idea that a piece of fiction should not be thought of as a set of questionable observations and biased opinions. Instead, I have proposed ...

[Legion]

...I guess my basic question is how can you interpret the universe from a mythical/symobolic perspective and expect to keep the message consistent for everyone?

 

Man, it's big, mysterious, and terrifyingly beautiful. I can see why some would be tempted to worship it. And I don't believe consistency really matters here so long as awe is conveyed.

[Heavenslaughing]

By describing the universe in any way whatsoever, including mathematics, we add to it.

 

I'd have to disagree with this. We aren't adding, we're describing (to the best of our ability) what already is.

 

 

Indeed we are describing to the best of our ability what we perceive. What we perceive is already different from what there is, and when a human being describes, that description signifies. This includes description using math. Human signification always comes fraught with meaning, always happens as some kind of social action, and thus always "adds" to what is. If I see a red apple, and I tell someone, "I see a red apple," I have added to what is, thanks to all the connotations of the apple, and all the social contexts of my saying that. Am I looking in the fridge, telling someone who's hungry? Is this part of a magician's trick, or maybe an exercise in probability involving different colored apples? The statement conveys a different meaning and never exists context-free. Modern math also carries meaning, at least when humans practice it (a calculator might be argued to use math, but it does not comprehend what it does). It's in many regards our most precise tool for describing the universe. Use of this symbol system is no less subject to connotation and context, however.

 

Mythmaking also describes what is (or at any rate, again, what we perceive). It does so through means less precise in some regards, and frequently more to the point in others. Stories train us to think about the world in particular ways. Your average Hollywood blockbuster encourages thinking of the world in a very simplistic fashion. Other stories do a better job.

 

I also have trouble seeing everyone coming out of mythic usage with different interpretations as a good thing. Where's the common ground? I understand about the Jungian archetypes, but I'm skeptical of their application with such a broad brush. Yes there are common experiences in human life (birth, death, hunger, etc.) but there are also aspects that are emminently linked to the culture/time.

 

Symbols can also mean completely contradictory things in different cultures (check out how the snake is viewed as symbol in the east vs. the west).

 

Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate that some people are more symbolically minded and this works for them, but I'm honestly a litte put off by the quotes above bascially saying people who don't think in this manner are somehow defficient. And the music thing is a little weird. I may be misunderstanding, but music (like the other symbols) is VERY dependant on the culture that produces them. That's why eastern music sounds so "off" to us, different scales, modals, etcs.

 

The common ground does come from human experience, not from Jungian archetypes, at least by my reckoning. The commonality in experience becomes possible thanks to our common wetware, complete with whatever inherent commonalities exist in our brains, though studying cultural difference has trained me to expect a range of difference less tethered to universals than Jung would have expected. I wouldn't just expect symbols to mean different things, nor even just different archetypes; I expect whole different means of reasoning symbolically. Exploring differences in symbolic reasoning enables an understanding of differences and commonalities in human experience. When I read or see or hear some new portrayal of the world, I respond, "I hadn't thought of that in that way!" Thus my perception of what-is becomes broadened. For this reason, the multiplicity of myth is desirable.

 

I don't regard people who do not reason in my manner as deficient; as said, I regard difference as valuable. Check this post and my last for my admiration of mathematical meaning. What I find problematic is the claim that any language represents what-is in a way that somehow escapes the properties of human symbolism. By doing this, both a mathematician and a biblical literalist close off important components of their language. The point for me is not that symbolic speech is better than literal speech (better for what?), but that all human representation is symbolic, and different kinds of symbolism serve different purposes and speak to people in different ways.

 

If I want to build a house, I'll use geometry.

If I want to represent morality, sacred relationships among ideals, or philosophy... I might use geometry, too. Plato did (even more in person than in writing, we're told), and so did the Brahmins I lived with out in Rajasthan.

 

Is this starting to make sense? Human communication always adds to what-is; it's a matter of how we choose to do it.

 

I resisted the temptation to read Antlerman's response to your post in hopes that our different ways of getting across mostly similar points might add rather than detract from clarity. I'm still working up to a response to his thoughts on music...

[Ouroboros]

If I want to represent morality, sacred relationships among ideals, or philosophy... I might use geometry, too. Plato did (even more in person than in writing, we're told), and so did the Brahmins I lived with out in Rajasthan.

And Game Theory, i.e. Math.

[Antlerman]

I resisted the temptation to read Antlerman's response to your post in hopes that our different ways of getting across mostly similar points might add rather than detract from clarity. I'm still working up to a response to his thoughts on music...

I'm glad you did, considering when I read this below how it mirrored my words:

If I want to build a house, I'll use geometry.

If I want to represent morality, sacred relationships among ideals, or philosophy... I might use geometry, too. Plato did (even more in person than in writing, we're told), and so did the Brahmins I lived with out in Rajasthan.

Where I said:

I hear this underlying issue that people have with the language of myth, and it's trying to see how it's useful practically. If you can't agree on how to interpret it, how can it be useful? The answer is in the question what are you trying to do with it? If you're trying to construct an airplane, then you'd better use a language that is not rich with subtle overtones and harmonics understood on a subjective level. You'd better use a language that is practical, and as free from subjective meaning as possible. Hence why the language of mathematics is used in science.

 

<snip>

 

The question then is, is this a world best understood rationally, or subjectively? I answer it should be understood humanly which is rational and "spiritual", both on a representational level. Which is the right language to use? What are you trying to accomplish? What "truth" are you hoping to find? Who needs to understanding it, and how important are minute details?

There's variance in some other areas with what you've said above, and that is helping shape my thoughts better. I look forward to your feedback. There's a lot a posted in the last few posts. I hope this continues to yield inspiration to keeping going with this to where it may go.

[Heavenslaughing]

If I want to represent morality, sacred relationships among ideals, or philosophy... I might use geometry, too. Plato did (even more in person than in writing, we're told), and so did the Brahmins I lived with out in Rajasthan.

And Game Theory, i.e. Math.

 

The trouble with most Game Theory applications is the assumption of "rational," material self-interest as the driving and universal force behind human action. It's for this reason, not because it's mathematical, that its representation of relationships becomes so dreary.

 

 

I find the points of convergence and divergence informative as well. Creation of music is one of relatively few human universals. In all cultures, everywhere, there is music. The same is not even true of visual art, at least not as a culturally recognized category. I have a friend at Harvard who explores cross-cultural differences in music; so far she's worked mainly with rhythm, and how Westerners without significant training mostly cannot even hear complex rhythms used in other musical traditions. As for differences in musical signification, that's a field that's still wide open.

 

When I have the chance to write more, I think that exploring the idea of archetypes may provide a useful entry point into our discussion on the entanglements of universals (Universe-als?) and culture. I'm boarding a plane in a few hours to see my grandfather off. He lasted as long as he could. I shan't have internet access at the old family house, so more of a response may wait for some time.

[Antlerman]

 

I find the points of convergence and divergence informative as well. Creation of music is one of relatively few human universals. In all cultures, everywhere, there is music. The same is not even true of visual art, at least not as a culturally recognized category. I have a friend at Harvard who explores cross-cultural differences in music; so far she's worked mainly with rhythm, and how Westerners without significant training mostly cannot even hear complex rhythms used in other musical traditions. As for differences in musical signification, that's a field that's still wide open.

 

When I have the chance to write more, I think that exploring the idea of archetypes may provide a useful entry point into our discussion on the entanglements of universals (Universe-als?) and culture. I'm boarding a plane in a few hours to see my grandfather off. He lasted as long as he could. I shan't have internet access at the old family house, so more of a response may wait for some time.

*bump bump* Since the site's back up now...

[FirstInTheDance]

So far, Scientific Pantheism is the closest thing I've found to describe my thoughts and feelings on God/dess.

http://www.pantheism.net/paul/index.htm

[Guest Zenobia]

So far, Scientific Pantheism is the closest thing I've found to describe my thoughts and feelings on God/dess.

http://www.pantheism.net/paul/index.htm

 

Thanks! I really "grokked" that site.

[LastKing]

New guy here, and actully I agree with you vary much. When I see the great world religons, Judaism,Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism, Islam and (yes, I dare say,) Even Christainty I feel in one snences they were all talking about the same thing witch is respecting the universe. From what I have seen (and for many of the reason why I stop being a Christain) vary literal ideas and thing going on during the time period will kill what I felt was a simply message.

[Guest open eyes]

Wow, I haven't posted in a long time, but yes I consider myself a "sexed up" atheist as well. I often post on an atheist website, but a lot of the atheists on there are not exactly as new agey as me. I consider myself a scientific pantheist, which is a spiritual form of atheism which sounds like what you are describing. If you google pantheism, you will get a few different websites that come up. Recently I have just been calling myself an agnostic atheist, but labels don't seem to encompass it all. Nature is wonderous and magnificent, and the universe is much too vast and complicated for us to ever understand. Science is the key to unlocking the mysteries. Anyone hear about the atom smasher experiment in Switzerland that is going to happen this fall? Maybe some secrets will be revealed then, and some people are concerned the earth will get swallowed up into a black hole. It sounds really interesting. They say they may uncover other dimensions quite possibly....I guess my "sexed up" version of atheism happens to be a bit sci-fi too...lol.