Belief In A God?

[TheBluegrassSkeptic]

Evolution doesn't make sense to me; I don't understand how this amazingly complex universe could have developed from nothing, with no help. But I don't believe, as nice as the idea is, that there could be an all-powerful, omniscient deity who cares about us. So I'm a deist: God created the world, but unexplainably abandoned us.

Since they found building blocks of protiens in comet tails and on asteroids, the whole something from nothing idea is unapplicable. Imo.

[asanerman]

I chose "No" on your poll.

 

For me, a deity means an entity/being/presence/supernatural force that purposefully/inadvertently created life and does/does not give a shit now. So to me, deities are a mythological simply because the whole concept leaves way too much wiggle room to fit as a natural presence.

 

Some have argued to me that this would include the Universe in itself, but for me, the Universe is natural, filled with what we consider supernatural elements because we don't understand everything yet.

 

In a nutshell, anything that comes in to my life claiming or behaving like some kind of woo inspired or instinctually sensed super being, I won't think deity. I'm going to think alien. Whether from space, or a different dimension, or what have you. I have seen so much of our science fiction come to life, I can't begin to just leave the reality that there could be many beings we do not know of yet or are aware of being around us. Awareness is key here. There are many entities we are not aware of except by microscopic pictures or the occasional news program. Seriously, how could there NOT be beings that can manipulate the environments around us that we perceive as being unable to manipulate? I cannot grasp the awe, wonder, and mysticism given the mythology of idols.

 

But that's just my two cents.

 

Thanks zomberina!

 

I too vote no when

 

deity means an entity/being/presence/supernatural force that purposefully/inadvertently created life

 

Whether he/she/it gives a damn or not.

 

On my better days, when I let the whole "why something rather than nothing" debate alone and just wonder for no reason-- wonder for nothing, smell the fresh air, see the look of love that time has seasoned in the eyes of my lover, feel the soothing touch of my letting go of having to know why anything--what I do know is that I'm competent in living my life.

 

 

Since I had no say in my being born it stands to reason, at least it seems to me. that I do not exist to like or dislike life. Whether I approve or disprove of life, the universe is not move by what I think or feel. My likes (approval) or dislikes (disapproval) are functions of need and if they effect change it starts within myself.

 

When I want something from life that life does not supply I dislike that condition and call it uncaring.wrong. As long as I stuck at there I cannot appreciate without something in return.

 

Life as it already is has had no chance to be more than my neurotic existence, nothing of which I asked for, nothing of which I fill like I deserve, nothing of which I necessarily like or approve.

 

Most of my struggles have been about "why must I" rather that "how do I" become competent and worthy of the task of my living.

 

As a friend once asked "How do I make up my life, even though I haven't made up my mind?"

 

The great Unknown ---Why This And Not That. is just that, nice only for imaginings.

 

Lately life has laid so much on me that whether or not it was created, designed, planed, thought up or whatever, does not concern me. I'm weary of all that speculation that tries to put a face upon the energy of my life. I'm busy enough with what I know and what I need to know that will silence my sighing and being frightened and full of argument. At this juncture It's really pointless for me.

 

Now that I've experienced doing without "face painting" I find it difficult and painfully in continuing.There's no time for that. There is too much to know that I can use to continuing making up my life.

 

I weary of missing out on my life!

 

That's my wooden nickel worth.

[Serendipity Rose]

This is how I now frame this question. "What need have I of a god?

 

 

I'm with you, LivingLife.

 

I guess I can understand the desire to find something god-like because of the unknowns that still exist. But I'm ok with a little mystery. I don't need to "know" everything there is to know about life. Sure, I'd like to understand myself better. Why I do the things I do and why I don't do things I should or want to. And I might wonder the same about other people.

 

I'm ok with meditating to find my self that is there and always has been but have only been unaware of.

 

But I have no desire to attach words to that self that give it some kind of higher power than any other part of my being. Just because it is a mystery does not make it a more important part to my being than the being itself.

 

To me, becoming aware of that which I am unaware is a method of improving my being, not a search for something separate from my being. It IS my being.

 

Mystery is mystery, but to me it's not a mystery because it's so complicated, so complex, that it can't be understood. Perhaps it is a mystery only because we are standing in front of a mirror and are unable to see our backs because we are only looking at our fronts. Tools like meditation are just mirrors that show different angles of what has always been there. So it's only a mystery because we haven't yet looked for it. But why does "it" have to be any more important that anything that isn't so mysterious?

 

I guess I just can't relate to elevating the unknown to something higher than anything else.

[Serendipity Rose]

Science is deaf to all things subjective and it should be. That notion does not prevent my marveling

at the beauty of a rainbow or sunset or sunrise, obviously knowing exactly what optical mechanisms are at work.

 

Nor does it prevent my wondering why it needs to be that way. I know I shouldn't but it comes the the teritorry of being.

 

Why SHOULDN'T you wonder why it needs to be that way?

 

Just because some do not see a need to identify or give some kind of superior status to the unknown doesn't mean that others won't, or don't, need to. Wondering why is what got us to where we are today. Wondering why is what has brought us great artists, musicians, scientists, engineers, etc. We can't all be Leonardo's and no one can or should control how or when we ask "why".

 

Why might take one person to a great scientific discover and another person to create something beautiful to see or hear or taste, and yet another to the depths of despair!

 

To me it is refreshing to hear other people asking their own "whys" and hearing the answers they come up with. Sometimes when I ask my own "whys" and I voice them out loud, it's also interesting to see the reaction to both my questions and the answers that my mind is entertaining. Even when the terminology sounds spiritual, I like to ask myself, or maybe whomever I am talking with, what their intentions are with choosing their terminology. Most often it is the case that the choice in words is limited.

 

That's the real mystery. Can you believe that we have been communicating as a species for this many years and we're still struggling so to explain ourselves? To explain that which we don't know?

[Antlerman]

I guess I can understand the desire to find something god-like because of the unknowns that still exist. But I'm ok with a little mystery. I don't need to "know" everything there is to know about life. Sure, I'd like to understand myself better. Why I do the things I do and why I don't do things I should or want to. And I might wonder the same about other people.

Not everyone who uses a God figure, in whatever form that might take, a deity, a cosmic good, the Universe, etc, is doing so with the intention of trying to explain the mysteries of the universe in order to satisfy their mind's 'not knowing' with some form of knowing. I think that tends to describe those still at a mythic stage of development, not those at more developed stages.

 

It was Wilber who first pointed out what he calls the 'pre/trans fallacy'. The understanding of a God-figure operating at a prerational stage of development will function at a completely different mental understanding than it will at a transrational stage. The fallacy is that both pre and transrational stages in these areas are touching into the non-rational world of experience, and the rational mind conflates the two together as prerational, simply because it is non-rational. It is the only stage they are aware of doing this, and they don't see or can't recognize anything else. However, they function entirely differently. It's like using the same word "love" for both a five-year old, and for a 50 year old. Same word applied to the same non-rational, but entirely different domains of understanding, significance, use of the symbol. The symbol is still used, even if someone calls it another word than love, or God, or whatever.

 

I'm ok with meditating to find my self that is there and always has been but have only been unaware of.

 

But I have no desire to attach words to that self that give it some kind of higher power than any other part of my being. Just because it is a mystery does not make it a more important part to my being than the being itself.

But those that do choose to attach that word (it is certainly no requirement than anyone does in the practice of meditation, but it can be a useful symbol for some), is not because it is a mystery to make it more important part of our being. I'm curious if you practice meditation and have entered into these altered states of consciousness what these deeper parts of our being open to us? I ask because it's easier for what I'm saying to make sense if you share that experience. As I said, I know several people who practice meditation as I do, and the same things open to them, but they put another name to it because they either don't relate to the God symbol in their lives because of their backgrounds, or they aren't comfortable with it because they are ex-Christians and there is too much baggage attached to it for them. That of course if perfectly fine, as the symbol is the symbol, not the Reality itself.

 

But, the point is it is not because we are trying to, "make it a more important part to my being than the being itself". That just doesn't apply. There is no 'making it more important'. It's hard to describe the experience of this, but it is encountering something, vastly, infinitely more than just what we envision and imagine within the constructs of our normal waking realities in our heads. It is in fact ultimately our very Being, it is not some deity external to us, or some energy, or some force that sits outside of us. But rather it is us beyond that small self, that little self we isolate inside this sake of skin and localize 'just in our heads'. When we encounter that experientially, it in fact appears to the mind 'outside it', simply by virtue of perspective from being 'just in our heads'. Through further knowledge of that within it, there comes a merging of ourselves with that, and it is no longer experienced, perceived, or related to as outside, higher, or greater than that small self 'just in our heads', but IS who we are, beyond the simple ego-identification. This sack of skin is not who we are, but a part of who we are. It does not define us, it contains us, so to speak.

 

This is vastly different than a prerational, mythic-level understanding of "God". Only very few Christians, save for those who go into these deep inner spaces, 'get this'. To them it is a God situated, fixed permanently outside themselves. It is a God that is there trying to answer the mysteries of the world to their curious young minds. It is seeing the clouds and imagining them people in the sky. And in then going beyond the next stage, a rational understanding of those same clouds as water molecules only, the transrational embraces all understandings and transcends them into understanding and experiencing all things as part of our true Self, all that is. That is not the myth-literal God, and is not coming from the same emotional needs. It is simply, a Realization.

 

To me, becoming aware of that which I am unaware is a method of improving my being, not a search for something separate from my being. It IS my being.

Yes. But a symbolic practice can act as a vehicle towards that end. And I tend to believe that exists, regardless of whether one puts the face of a deity on it. It seems it would naturally be experienced as 'outside ourselves' in that process of moving towards it, simply because we begin 'inside ourselves'. I could be wrong on this though. How do you experience that in meditation?

 

Mystery is mystery, but to me it's not a mystery because it's so complicated, so complex, that it can't be understood.

I would say what the experience of our Being is goes beyond matters of 'complexity' and attempting to grasp or understand it. It's simply categorically outside using rationality, though it includes rationality. Rationality cannot see or penetrate it. That "mystery' is the mind trying to grasp it. "Knowing" it, is to simply fall into it with your entire Being. It is a transrational knowledge. You do not know the Ocean by studying about it. You know it by falling into it and swimming within it with your being, not your reasoning faculties.

 

Perhaps it is a mystery only because we are standing in front of a mirror and are unable to see our backs because we are only looking at our fronts. Tools like meditation are just mirrors that show different angles of what has always been there. So it's only a mystery because we haven't yet looked for it. But why does "it" have to be any more important that anything that isn't so mysterious?

I'd say yes, if you're understanding this as I am. Yes, meditation is a tool to expose a greater perspective that breaks apart our conventional way of understanding truth and reality. Is it more important? Well, it depends what you are looking for in life. If all you care about is fitting in, feeling safe in a community of like-minded people, and just getting by, than no, it's not important. If you feel a deep desire to unite with yourself in your very Being, than yes it's important.

 

I guess I just can't relate to elevating the unknown to something higher than anything else.

Again though, it's not a rational understanding. It about experiencing our very Being, beyond the simple tool of rationality.

[Serendipity Rose]

Hi Antlerman,

 

No, I do not know meditation in the way that you do, with study of others who have done it and with disciplined practice. But what I am coming to recognize is that my entire life has been a meditation of sorts. I am an observer of all people, not just the masters who have shared their experiences. This observation has been necessary for me to survive and I have spent countless hours contemplating on life, mine and all those around me. I have contemplated God and found it to be god. I have contemplated rationality and spirituality. I have not found either to be true but have found truths in both.

 

For instance:

 

You do not know the Ocean by studying about it. You know it by falling into it and swimming within it with your being, not your reasoning faculties.

 

No, you do not know the ocean just by studying it. But you also don't know it just by falling into it. You use both your reasoning and senses to experience the feel and know that feeling it isn't enough, you must also use your reasoning abilities to know that you must do something--like swim!-- to prevent the "feeling" from taking over so that you don't drown. To me those are equal.

 

 

I'm not disagreeing with you. I think what I was trying to say is that your experience is yours. I'm not trying to say that I think you are searching for something higher than yourself, but perhaps in your search YOU found something that was worthy of capitalizing Self, Reality, and Being, etc.

 

I know several people who practice meditation as I do, and the same things open to them, but they put another name to it because they either don't relate to the God symbol in their lives because of their backgrounds, or they aren't comfortable with it because they are ex-Christians and there is too much baggage attached to it for them. That of course if perfectly fine, as the symbol is the symbol, not the Reality itself.

 

My question is, do they really? How can the same things open to them? I not only don't relate to the god symbol, I don't see it as necessary. It doesn't really matter to me that some might or not.

 

I said that I'm not disagreeing with you, but I guess I am about this part.

 

Yes, meditation is a tool to expose a greater perspective that breaks apart our conventional way of understanding truth and reality. Is it more important? Well, it depends what you are looking for in life. If all you care about is fitting in, feeling safe in a community of like-minded people, and just getting by, than no, it's not important. If you feel a deep desire to unite with yourself in your very Being, than yes it's important.

 

You could say that because I have not studied meditation as you have, or practiced as you have, that I cannot know or understand about God, or Self, or Reality, as you do. Yes, I agree with that but perhaps for a different reason than what you have suggested here. It's not because I haven't delved deep into my self in an effort to unite myself with my being. It's not that I minimize my being to lesser than a capital B-being. It's that my experience is different than yours because I am me, and you are you, and my experience, thus far, has not seen a need to describe what I have found as such.

 

Is it more important? Well, it depends what you are looking for in life.

 

Yes, it can depend on what you are looking for in life. But just because I have found something different than you doesn't mean that I ever will see the same thing as you. It also doesn't mean that I have limited myself to

 

If all you care about is fitting in, feeling safe in a community of like-minded people, and just getting by, than no, it's not important.

 

I respect what you have found in your meditation. But what you seem to be doing is attempting to invalidate the experience of those who have not had the same experience. I do not believe that your experience is better, or lesser, than my experience. I believe that your experience is yours. I do not believe that if I do the same things as you I will have the same experience. I believe that I have experienced meditation, but maybe in different ways than you have. To go back to the mirror analogy, when you look into the mirror at your front, you will see your front. When you look into the mirror that shows you another angle, you will see YOUR back, you will not see mine, nor will I see yours.

[Antlerman]

You do not know the Ocean by studying about it. You know it by falling into it and swimming within it with your being, not your reasoning faculties.

 

No, you do not know the ocean just by studying it. But you also don't know it just by falling into it. You use both your reasoning and senses to experience the feel and know that feeling it isn't enough, you must also use your reasoning abilities to know that you must do something--like swim!-- to prevent the "feeling" from taking over so that you don't drown. To me those are equal.

I think some clarification will help, which is really the sole intent of my previous post. You take from what I said an emotional emphasis in my saying you have to fall into the Ocean. I gather that from your saying that "feeling isn't enough". That's another of those misconceptions I hear people make. I've said this elsewhere but will say it here that emotions may or may not have any part of it. It is in its nature, awareness. That is that falling into the Ocean. It's a metaphorical expression that means you abandon trying to grasp it with the mind, or to seek any experience at all, which means emotional experience. The reason for that is because in seeking to 'get high', to 'feel good', to 'understand', works counter to what it actually is. What it is is simply beyond all of those things. And if you are seeking for it to give you those things, then the focus is on how you already perceive and experience the world and you are simply trying to add something more to that. That will have the effect of not finding it. It comes to you, and it comes in one simple word: release.

 

So where does reasoning come into this? Certainly not in apprehending it! Most definitely not. But I do agree with you that it is important. How it is important is because as we are exposed to this sort of awareness, to have some sort of reasonable context, which includes rationality, in order to be able to ground it in practical and meaningful ways in our lives we have to have some reasonable framework to hang it upon. Believing that supernatural forces control the world in the form of various deities, literally, was an appropriate framework for an earlier time in human history, but not now. Having a rational, intellectual understanding of the humanities, social sciences, psychology, anthropology, biology, aesthetics, natural sciences, etc, are all vitally important towards ground the whole person. But... they are not a substitute for the sort of insight gained through the inner journey.

 

I can tell you in my own words, that as much knowledge as I have in many areas that I can cite and make strong cases in support of, none of can come close to touching what is opened to you by "falling into that Ocean". None of them can penetrate it. But, none of them are therefore dispensable. Not at all. They are important too, but as a complement, not a substitute.

 

I know several people who practice meditation as I do, and the same things open to them, but they put another name to it because they either don't relate to the God symbol in their lives because of their backgrounds, or they aren't comfortable with it because they are ex-Christians and there is too much baggage attached to it for them. That of course if perfectly fine, as the symbol is the symbol, not the Reality itself.

 

My question is, do they really? How can the same things open to them? I not only don't relate to the god symbol, I don't see it as necessary. It doesn't really matter to me that some might or not.

Because we all share a common Ground? The experiences are the same, but each is expressed through the uniqueness of the individual. The underlying, overarching theme is the same in mystics the world over. I was just reading some Meister Eckhart, who is a 14th Century Christian mystic. Even though he uses Christian language to express it, what he is saying is exactly the same thing I experience, others I know experience, and mystics the world over experience. Rumi was a Muslim, but his words say the same thing. Mystics have always run the risk of being burned at the stake in their own religious traditions because at a certain point, all those symbols break down and there is only one Reality. You point that out to the keepers of that tradition, and you threaten the entire structure to them in their eyes.

 

How I express it for myself is to say, I am all religions; I am none.

 

I said that I'm not disagreeing with you, but I guess I am about this part.

At a certain point for you at some time, perhaps you won't.

 

Yes, meditation is a tool to expose a greater perspective that breaks apart our conventional way of understanding truth and reality. Is it more important? Well, it depends what you are looking for in life. If all you care about is fitting in, feeling safe in a community of like-minded people, and just getting by, than no, it's not important. If you feel a deep desire to unite with yourself in your very Being, than yes it's important.

 

You could say that because I have not studied meditation as you have, or practiced as you have, that I cannot know or understand about God, or Self, or Reality, as you do. Yes, I agree with that but perhaps for a different reason than what you have suggested here. It's not because I haven't delved deep into my self in an effort to unite myself with my being. It's not that I minimize my being to lesser than a capital B-being. It's that my experience is different than yours because I am me, and you are you, and my experience, thus far, has not seen a need to describe what I have found as such.

Granted. And by no means am I trying to rate you or compare myself to you. We are each on our own paths. This is where I am now. There was nothing inferior to where I was before. All things are necessary.

 

Is it more important? Well, it depends what you are looking for in life.

 

Yes, it can depend on what you are looking for in life. But just because I have found something different than you doesn't mean that I ever will see the same thing as you. It also doesn't mean that I have limited myself to

Goodness no, I don't sense in you apathy. I was referring to your average person who sits in a pew, simply believing for convenience sake, or never tries to think of any of the larger questions of life. You don't impress me that way at all!

[Antlerman]

Continued....

 

 

I respect what you have found in your meditation. But what you seem to be doing is attempting to invalidate the experience of those who have not had the same experience.

Absolutely not. My only intention was to take what I have been hearing people say which I see as that "pre/trans fallacy", and demonstrate that is an error of understanding. What people say about those who do what I do, as the same thing as your mythic believer, that its for the same reasons, the same mindset, etc, is completely wrong. That does not mean where you are at is invalid. It simply means that understanding applied across the board is in error.

 

I do not believe that your experience is better, or lesser, than my experience. I believe that your experience is yours. I do not believe that if I do the same things as you I will have the same experience.

I do. Not in every nuance of course. It obviously will be surrounding you, and you are unique. But it's no different than saying if you experience the joy of a child in your life, that that will be utterly removed from others experiences! Of course not. You're a human. So if you move into those deep spaces I'm speaking of, what you will encounter will in fact taste the same. You're a human. You're not a dragonfly.

 

As far as 'better', well, there is no value judgment. I can say from my experience, and from everyone else who goes here, that it is fuller, richer, deeper, and more. And that makes sense it would be, because it takes everything else and adds more to it, on top of it.

 

I believe that I have experienced meditation, but maybe in different ways than you have.

Here's a link that talks about the different stages of meditation that will help for continuing discussions. These are common descriptions, and I most definitely see myself in those. http://integrallife.com/integral-post/stages-meditation

 

To go back to the mirror analogy, when you look into the mirror at your front, you will see your front. When you look into the mirror that shows you another angle, you will see YOUR back, you will not see mine, nor will I see yours.

If we are looking at ourselves, yes. My path of inner awareness to myself that way is mine alone. But there is also Life we see, that is also us, that is common to us. I will there then see you, as you me.

[asanerman]

You do not know the Ocean by studying about it. You know it by falling into it and swimming within it with your being, not your reasoning faculties.

 

No, you do not know the ocean just by studying it. But you also don't know it just by falling into it. You use both your reasoning and senses to experience the feel and know that feeling it isn't enough, you must also use your reasoning abilities to know that you must do something--like swim!-- to prevent the "feeling" from taking over so that you don't drown. To me those are equal.

 

I think some clarification will help, which is really the sole intent of my previous post. You take from what I said an emotional emphasis in my saying you have to fall into the Ocean. I gather that from your saying that "feeling isn't enough". That's another of those misconceptions I hear people make. I've said this elsewhere but will say it here that emotions may or may not have any part of it. It is in its nature, awareness. That is that falling into the Ocean. It's a metaphorical expression that means you abandon trying to grasp it with the mind, or to seek any experience at all, which means emotional experience. The reason for that is because in seeking to 'get high', to 'feel good', to 'understand', works counter to what it actually is. What it is is simply beyond all of those things. And if you are seeking for it to give you those things, then the focus is on how you already perceive and experience the world and you are simply trying to add something more to that. That will have the effect of not finding it. It comes to you, and it comes in one simple word: release.

 

So where does reasoning come into this? Certainly not in apprehending it! Most definitely not. But I do agree with you that it is important. How it is important is because as we are exposed to this sort of awareness, to have some sort of reasonable context, which includes rationality, in order to be able to ground it in practical and meaningful ways in our lives we have to have some reasonable framework to hang it upon. Believing that supernatural forces control the world in the form of various deities, literally, was an appropriate framework for an earlier time in human history, but not now. Having a rational, intellectual understanding of the humanities, social sciences, psychology, anthropology, biology, aesthetics, natural sciences, etc, are all vitally important towards ground the whole person. But... they are not a substitute for the sort of insight gained through the inner journey.

 

I can tell you in my own words, that as much knowledge as I have in many areas that I can cite and make strong cases in support of, none of can come close to touching what is opened to you by "falling into that Ocean". None of them can penetrate it. But, none of them are therefore dispensable. Not at all. They are important too, but as a complement, not a substitute.

 

 

Nicely stated Antlerman!

 

I've had one hell of a time with what you've covered here. In that it's a common hurdle that the Western mind set has "fits" getting past.

 

My particular problem was that the matrix shift from concrete (literal) thinking to increasingly abstract think came rather late for me, at least when it came to spirituality.

 

You allude to a major element of it in the following excerpt.

 

that "pre/trans fallacy"... that is an error of understanding. What people say about those who do what I do, as the same thing as your mythic believer, that its for the same reasons, the same mindset, etc, is completely wrong. That does not mean where you are at is invalid. It simply means that understanding applied across the board is in error.

 

Here is how I understand the "pre/post fallacy" or "per/trans fallacy" and how that understanding was helpful concerning traditional religion as a "framework for an earlier time in human history, but not now. "

 

In any [human] developmental sequence--

pre-rational to rational to trans-rational;

or subconscious, to self-conscious to super-conscious;

or pre-verbal to trans-verbal;

or pre-personal to personal to trans-personal--

--the "pre' and "trans" components are often confused and that confusion goes in both ways.

 

Once they are confused, some researchers take all trans-rational realities and try to reduce them to pee-rational infantilisms (e.g., Freud), while others take some of the pee-rational infantile elements and elevate them to trans-rational glory (e.g., Jung). Both that reductionism and that evolutionism follow from the same pre/post fallacy.

~Ken Wilber

Integral Spirituality

pp 51-52 [brackets are mine]

 

Thus your statement;

What people say about those who do what I do, as the same thing as your mythic believer, that its for the same reasons, the same mindset, etc, is completely wrong. That does not mean where you are at is invalid. It simply means that understanding applied across the board is in error.

 

 

Under the same heading (Hori-Zone 2: The Scientific Study of The Interiors) from which the above quote of Wilber comes, Wilber untangles pre/post fallacy or the pre/trans fallacy by sighting a question a research student (Carol Gilligan) of Lawrence Kohlberg ask a group of women, "Does a woman have a right to an abortion?"

 

Gilligan found that they gave three different answers to that question: Yes, No, and Yes.

 

The first type of answer was pre-conventional, "Yes, she has a right to an abortion, because I say it is right, and fuck you." That is, "Fuck you nobody tells me what to do!"

 

The second type of answer was conventional, "No she does not have a right to an abortion, because that is against the law/the Bible/my society, and so that would be horrible."

 

The third type was post-conventional, "Yes, under certain circumstances she can do so, because you have to weigh the overall impact on everybody, and sometimes an abortion is a lesser evil."

 

Notice that the pre-conventional (egocentric) and the post-conventional (world-centric) are both Yes.

 

"Both pre-conventional and post-conventional are both non-conventional, so they look alike to the untutored eye." ibid

 

Again your statement;

 

What people say about those who do what I do, as the same thing as your mythic believer, that its for the same reasons, the same mindset, etc, is completely wrong. That does not mean where you are at is invalid. It simply means that understanding applied across the board is in error.

 

That is exactly what stump me when I turned my interests toward spirit. It is an error to apply what seems to be similar to something that is not.

 

One more point I think to be of the greatest importance, that being that the interiors of introspection, meditation or contemplation cannot spot the realities of the above described.

 

My introspection, meditation or contemplation can amount to my "intensification of my irresponsibility" or my disowned/split off self.

 

As you say

 

Having a rational, intellectual understanding of the humanities, social sciences, psychology, anthropology, biology, aesthetics, natural sciences, etc, are all vitally important towards ground the whole person. But... they are not a substitute for the sort of insight gained through the inner journey.

 

As David P. Brown points out, there isn't just meditative experience per se, that simply does not exist. There is meditative experience plus the interpretation you give it. So we should choose our interpretations, views and framework very carefully.

 

Meditation can just as easily facilitate egocentricity and/or egocentricity as it does a world-centric and/or illumined mind.

[asanerman]

Oops, I double posted!

[Akheia]

I love it, I am seriously the only for really reals polytheist in this thread (in that I believe in literal, individual deities).

 

I IS SOOPER SPESHUL.

You're not the only hard-polytheist on the thread now.... but even if you're not the sole combo breaker, you will always be sooper speshul to me.

[TheBluegrassSkeptic]

Wow, I just realized all the seeding commentary and discussion is gone. That stinks. :o/

[Joshpantera]

...Our true Self, as the Hindus put it. It is a symbolic process towards Self Realization. All is God, and we are That. How else do we come to accept that except relationally withing our normal dualistic framework toward that Nondual Realization?

 

Okay, so how many followed that? One hand, maybe two?

If you're referring to the 'close in doctrine' of the forest philosophers referred to as "tat tvam asi" (thou art that), then yes, I read you loud and clear. That's one of my favorite Campbell books actually. The Advaita Vedanta philosophy is compelling in certain ways.

 

I'm rather fond of Alan Watt's "Out of Mind" series as well. He cut's loose at one point and says, "...what you are, basically, deep, deep down, way, way in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself." The Upanishadic forest philosopher's realized that they did not need the sacrifices of the priestly class playing middle man between the people and the God because the Brahman energy is already within you. You are it!

 

But I'm still atheist with respect to lacking belief in the literal existence of any given mythological deity. Symbols, ok. A metaphor for the human and cosmic mystery, sure. An actual supernatural being up in the sky (heaven) with a strangely suspect human sense of love and hate, jealousy and rage, not at all.

[Antlerman]

...Our true Self, as the Hindus put it. It is a symbolic process towards Self Realization. All is God, and we are That. How else do we come to accept that except relationally withing our normal dualistic framework toward that Nondual Realization?

 

Okay, so how many followed that? One hand, maybe two?

If you're referring to the 'close in doctrine' of the forest philosophers referred to as "tat tvam asi" (thou art that), then yes, I read you loud and clear. That's one of my favorite Campbell books actually. The Advaita Vedanta philosophy is compelling in certain ways.

 

I'm rather fond of Alan Watt's "Out of Mind" series as well. He cut's loose at one point and says, "...what you are, basically, deep, deep down, way, way in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself." The Upanishadic forest philosopher's realized that they did not need the sacrifices of the priestly class playing middle man between the people and the God because the Brahman energy is already within you. You are it!

Yes to all of this. That is what I'm talking about. Gives a better understanding of "I and my Father are one", doesn't it?

 

But I'm still atheist with respect to lacking belief in the literal existence of any given mythological deity. Symbols, ok. A metaphor for the human and cosmic mystery, sure. An actual supernatural being up in the sky (heaven) with a strangely suspect human sense of love and hate, jealousy and rage, not at all.

And this is why technically I am an atheist as well, in that atheism is typically defined in our culture as disbelief in God defined in those terms, that anthropomorphic sky-parent. But since that is such a narrow understanding of God, I don't consider the term atheist worthwhile as it is stuck on a God that looks like that. It says in effect, 'This is God. That God is irrational. Therefore God doesn't exist'. It's goes from one definition as all definitions and concludes illogically. It should say rather, 'God defined this way isn't scientifically rational'. That I would agree with.

 

I find I relate to God in a more panentheistic view, but with an understanding that it is a face we put upon the Absolute. Relating oneself to that face, to that deity form is to evoke within us what that face represents. Eventually that form drops away and you awaken as That.

 

Since you quoted Allan Watts, I'll quote Ken Wilber which I think expresses well how I see the role of God in a theistic spiritual practice:

 

"But this is not God as an ontological other, set apart from the cosmos, from humans, and from creation at large. Rather, it is God as an archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness. ... By visualizing that identification 'we actually do become the deity. The subject is identified with the object of faith. The worship, the worshiper, and the worshiped, those three are not separate'. At its peak, the soul becomes one, literally one, with the deity-form, with the dhyani-buddha, with (choose whatever term one prefers) God. One dissolves into Deity, as Deity - that Deity which, from the beginning, has been one's own Self or highest Archetype."

 

Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye, pg. 85

[Joshpantera]

Excellent quote.

 

I also like this exchange from "The Heros Journey"

Tarnas: The Christian tradition compared to the Buddhist tradition seems to lack a certain understanding of mythic symbols. Now I'm wondering whether that would be true only of orthodox institutional Christianity, and whether there's in Christianity itself some sort of core of mythic understanding that is just as valid as in Hinduism or Buddhism.

 

Campbell: The problem here is that in Hinduism or Buddhism the historical interpretation of the symbols is quite secondary. The accent in Hinduism and Buddhism is the relevance of the symbolic forms to your own life. You understand these references inward to yourself. For instance, most the Buddhas had no historical existence at all; nobody thinks they ever had. To the Chinese, Kuan-yin, or to the Japenese, Kannon, the great Bodhisattva of inexhaustible compassion, is a purely mythic figure but represents something.

 

Whereas in the Christian traditions the accent is on the historical understanding of the terms, of the images. If you say to a Christian, Jesus did not resurrect from the dead physically, did not ascend to Heaven, that's a challenge to what he regards as important in his faith.

 

With the Jews, if you begin to question the whole thing of the Exodus and Moses going on the mountain, coming back with the law, and then breaking it, and going back for a second edition; if you express doubt about all this, this is a direct hit.

 

The importance for the Hindu would be not what happened two thousand or three thousand years ago somewhere else, but what's happening to you know. What is the symbol doing to you now?

 

Now since both Judaism and Christianity are mythologically structured orders of symbol, they are susceptible to the other kind of reading. And that comes breaking through every now and then with a prophet or mystic, when he suddenly sees the symbol as saying something totally different. And it's something that has to do with an immediate attitude of you to life.

 

For instance with the Crucifixion, if you think of this as a calamity that is the result of your sins and Adam's sin and all that, that Jesus had to come down, the Son of the Father, give himself up on the cross for death, and look sad there - thats one reading.

 

But you can read it another way: as the zeal of eternity for incarnation in time, which involves the breaking up of the one into the many and the acceptance of the suffering of the will as part of the organic delights, the Wisdom Sheath and rapture, the bliss - he is in bliss. St. Augustine says this somewhere, where he says, "Jesus went to the Cross as the bridegroom to the bride." That's a total transformation of the idea.

 

Another one: the idea of the end of time. The end of time as a historical event. That's nonsense! And what does it matter? The importance of the end of time is a psychological event. Then you have to render it and experience it that way.

 

When you have seen the radiance of eternity through all the forms of time, and it's the function of art to make that visible to you, then you have really ended life in the world as it is lived by those who think only in the historical terms. This is the function of mythology; thats a mythological reading of what was otherwise a theological statement.

 

Tarnas: So in some ways the Christian institutional religion has erred on the side of historical concretism?

 

Campbell: Radically...

 

...What I know is that all of these mythic images are metaphors. And they're metaphors for what? A metaphor has a connotation and the mythic metaphors have connotations of the spiritual powers within the individual. And when one is preaching religion, if you're not preaching the connotation of the metaphor, you're preaching pseudo-history or sociology or something of that kind. So there's very little TRUE RELIGION in the world.

 

Ain't that the truth.

 

Here's a rant I offered apologists some years ago after taking in and understanding where this is leading:

 

Campbell clearly stated:

 

"The Christ idea and Buddha idea are perfectly equivalent mythological symbols. Two ways of saying the very same thing: that a transcendent energy consciousness informs the whole world and informs you."

 

To the apologists,

 

Now that the "Suns of God" has been written long after Campbell's death, the obvious correspondences between these two mythic hero's (Christ and Buddha) has only increased greatly. This isn't a matter of maybe the two symbols are the same, this is obvious to the point of fact! Just as people are supposed to find the Buddha 'within', and know that it's completely symbolic while doing it, so too are people supposed to find the 'Christ within' and know that it's completely symbolic while doing it.

 

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a literal humanoid figure from ancient Israel that looks alot like a Middle Ages European guy, that has been traveling through space for thousands of years, is going to appear up in the clouds with his feet never touching the ground and all of the dead bodies in the earth and oceans are going to go flying upward to meet him in the clouds after four literal Horse men fly around the earth's atmosphere on horse back causing havoc and destroying things because angels have blown there trumpets and unleashed the fury.

 

You people need to finally grow up and start studying comparative world mythology and religion! You need to be more accepting and understanding of biblical criticism and it's implications. You need to finally grasp that what you have considered as being "spiritual", is in all actuality the denotative 'non-spiritual format' of presenting these ancient religious METAPHORS. You've been duped by your religious leaders and its about time that you come to terms with this hard fact. And if you are a literalizing religious leader reading through this post then you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself for what you've been doing to everyone in order to make a nice living. For you, here's a passage from the editors forward of "Thou Art That: transforming religious metaphor":

 

"Many of the elements of the bible seem lifeless and unbelievable because they have been regarded as HISTORICAL FACTS instead of metaphorical representations of SPIRITUAL realities. They have been applied in a concrete way to great figures, such as Moses and John the baptist, as if they were real-time accounts of their actions. That this heavy emphasis on the HISTORICAL rather than the SPIRITUAL should have continued into the twenty-first century illustrates the lag-time that the leaders of institutional religions have allowed to open up between their static ideas and the rapidly developing understandings of SOLID SCHOLARSHIP.

 

There is little evident progress in formal religious teaching - it fails to incorporate or even to acknowledge the advances in research that allow us to read with renewed understanding the great documents and traditions of the dominant Western religions. The spiritual needs of people are neglected by religious leaders who insist on reasserting the HISTORICAL-FACTUAL character of religious METAPHORS, thereby DISTORTING and DEBASING their meaning...the tragic consequences that follow when, for the best of intentions and the worst of reasons, men battle against truth to defend their outdated belief's. Thus institutional religious leaders unnecessarily embrace a frail caricature of religion which is easily demolished by popular lecturers, totally out of their depths in theology, such as the late astronomer Carl Sagan.

 

Men mount expensive expeditions to locate the remains of Noah's ark on Mt. Ararat but, of course, they never find it. They believe that they have just missed it for the ark must have literally existed. The ark, however, can be found easily and without travel by those who understand that it is a mythological vessel in an extraordinary story whose point is not historical documentation but spiritual enlightenment. To appreciate Genesis as myth is not to destroy that book but to discover again its spiritual vitality and relevance." (Eugene Kennedy, Ph.D.)

 

I was all fired up about it as a former literalist and YECist having moved on and finally realizing just exactly where everything went wrong and how to possibly go about trying to get back on course. I could appreciate God again after having touched based with the eastern enlightenment doctrines and seeing how they may help and assist the fallen west. But God was now something very different. God was a metaphor for the mystery of existence itself, the very fabric and structure of existence itself as Watts pointed out which is basis of everything in existence - "All is God belief." Thus began my acknowledging myself as not only atheist but now Pantheist as well. The very notion of suggesting otherwise about God, something less than the "All," began to seem so dark, so deceptive, and quite frankly something of an evil act on society on the part of those who preach such a false doctrine.

 

Thou Art That: transforming religious metaphor

 

"A Mythology may be understood as an organization of metaphorical figures connotative of states of mind that are not finally of this or that location or historical period, even though the figures themselves seem on their surface to suggest such a concrete localization. The metaphorical languages of both mythology and metaphysics are not denotative of actual worlds or gods, but rather connote levels and entities within the person touched by them. Metaphors only seem to describe the outer world of time and place. Their real universe is the spiritual realm of the inner life. The Kingdom of God is within you.

 

The problem, as have noted many times, is that these metaphors, which concern that which cannot in any other way be told, are misread prosaically as referring to tangible facts and historical occurrences. The denotation - that is, the reference in time and space: a particular Virgin Birth, the End of the World - is taken as the message, and the connotation, the rich aura of the metaphor in which its spiritual significance may be detected, is ignored altogether. The result is that we are left with the particular "ethnic" inflection of the metaphor, the historical vesture, rather than the living spiritual core.

 

Inevitably, therefore, the popular understanding is focused on the rituals and legends of the local system, and the sense of the symbols is reduced to the concrete goals of a particular political system of socialization. When the language of metaphor is misunderstood and its surface structures become brittle, it evokes merely the current time-and-place-bound order of things and its spiritual signal, if transmitted at all, becomes ever fainter.

 

It has puzzled me greatly that the emphasis in the professional exegesis of the entire Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology has been on the denotative rather than on the connotative meaning of the metaphoric imagery that it is active language. The Virgin Birth, as I have mentioned, has been presented as an historical fact, fashioned into a concrete article of faith over which theologians have argued for hundreds of years, often with grave and disruptive consequences. Practically every mythology in the world has used the "elementary" or co-natural idea of a virgin birth to refer to a spiritual rather than historical reality. The same, as I have suggested, is true of the metaphor of the promised land, which in its denotation plots nothing but a piece of geography to be taken by force. Its connotation - that is, its real meaning - however, is of a spiritual place in the heart that can only be entered by contemplation.

 

There can be no real progress in understanding how myths function until we understand and allow metaphoric symbols to address, in their own unmodified way, the inner levels of our consciousness. The continuing confusion about the nature and function of metaphor is one of the major obstacles - often placed in our path by ORGANIZED RELIGIONS that focus shortsightedly on concrete times and places - to our capacity to experience mystery. A system of mythological symbols only works if it operates in the field of a community of people who have essentially analogous experiences, or to put it another way, if they share the same realm of life experience.

 

 

How in the contemporary period, can we evoke the imagery that communicates the most profound and most richly developed sense of experiencing life? These images must point past themselves to that ultimate truth which must be told: that life does not have any one absolutely fixed meaning. These images must point past all meanings given, beyond all definitions and relationships, to the really ineffable mystery that is just the EXISTENCE, the being of ourselves and of our world. If we give that mystery an exact meaning we diminish the experience of its real 'depth'. But when a poet carries the mind into a context of meanings and then pitches it past those, one knows that marvelous rapture that comes from going past all categories of definition. Here we sense the function of metaphor that allows us to make a journey we could not otherwise make, past all categories of definition." (Joseph Campbell)

 

After learning all of this, coincidentally I ran into the mythicist works knowing all too well the precise problems with historicity and it's degradation of the spiritual dimension of mythological symbolism. The orthodox historical readings in this sense are opposing spirituality more so than enhancing it. And so why not let the bull dozers roll and let the biblical criticism and deconstructionism work its natural course on the psuedo-history of these mythologies in full public view? The historical readings are loosing serious ground due to archaeology and everything else. Some people are like, "wait, that's not fair, you're destroying peoples faith." To the contrary, the ground work is being laid for the revival of a much better approach to God and spirituality, something that has nothing to fear from the secular sciences....

[Reptillian]

Ignostic apatheist. That's all you need to know. Whether I believe in a god depends on definition used.

[Joshpantera]

That's a good way of going about it.

 

"Is he or is he not, neither is nor is not."

[Guest Xtech]

Some people have a definition of God that is so vast and borderless it could mean almost anything - it almost means anything good, anything which brings happiness, or emotional satisfaction, or a sense of mystery and wonder. That's fine. But no, there is no human-like mind or whatever out there that eavesdrops in on your thoughts, or that pulls your puppet strings to direct your life or created the universe, no God as defined in the conventional sense. Of course not.

[Geezer]

....... Whether I believe in a god depends on definition used.

 

I agree. The word God generally conjures up images of an old white male with long white hair and beard. The same problem occurs when the word supernatural is injected into a conversation. These words tend to generate images and definitions that are associated with traditions and experiences. Deities and the supernatural are theoretical concepts and as such are left to the individual to either accept or reject. I am unaware of any empirical evidence that supports either theory, but there have been numerous beliefs and theories dating back to antiquity that eventually were proven to be true when the technology caught up with the theories.

 

It seems to me the most honest answer to either of these belief is that there is no scientific evidence that supports either theory. That said, until relatively recently dark matter and dark energy were also nothing more than “theories”. Multiple universes and multiple dimensions are also “theories”. If there are other dimensions then could it also be possible that what we are commonly referring to as the supernatural realm is in reality simply another dimension? And what we commonly refer to as God or Deities is simply undiscovered energy forces or alien life forms with technology that is millions of years beyond what we have now?

 

I’ll leave you with this. In 1968, soon after my discharge from the Navy, my wife and I were visiting my family in Northern Indiana. Around midnight we were returning to my sister’s house. Her house was in a rural area. Nothing but farms, pastures, and wooded areas and no lights. We were about three miles from her house when some lights caught my attention. I looked out the driver’s side window and saw multicolored lights hovering just above the tree line about a quarter mile away. They appeared to be rotating around an object but it was so dark I couldn’t see anything but the lights. Against my wife’s strong objections I stopped the car and rolled down the window to get a better look. All I could hear was the car’s engine so I shut it off and got out of the car. There was dead silence not even the sound of crickets. The object was making no noise whatsoever. It was just hovering. I was a jet engine mechanic in the Navy so I was a trained to identify aircraft during night operations. This object was definitely not an aircraft.

 

My wife was genuinely upset and begged me to get in the car and for us to get the hell away from this thing. The object didn’t’ appear to be threatening but I was torn between my curiosity and my concern for our safety. I got back in the car and put the accelerator to the floor getting out of there. As we drove off the object appeared to move parallel to us for just a few seconds and then it accelerated straight up and disappeared in what seemed like an instant.

 

UFO sightings are well documented by numerous creditable sources and have also been tracked on radar. Are they all optical illusions? Can radar track optical illusions? I can think of a lot of valid reasons that would eliminate them as being extraterrestrial. Are they super secret technology that we have developed? That would seem to be one of the more reasonable explanations. I don’t know what we saw, but I definitely don’t think is was extraterrestrial or that it contained alien life forms. I don’t have any idea what it was but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t swamp gas or an optical illusion.

 

My point being this, there is a whole lot of stuff that people experience that doesn’t appear, at last on face value, to be possible. In probably 99.9% of these cases there is a reasonable and scientificly plausible explanation for it, but there are some things that cannot be explained. The universe is a big place and most of it remains a mystery.

[Deva]

We know that we are. We have a sense of beingness. I guess you could say consciousness is the Absolute. After all, what would there be without it? We wouldn't know anything or have any sense of being here.

 

But this definition of God is not what most people think of.

[Serendipity Rose]

....... Whether I believe in a god depends on definition used.

The word God generally conjures up images of an old white male with long white hair and beard.

 

This is what I imagined when I read your words above, Geezer.

 

[falemon]

....... Whether I believe in a god depends on definition used.

The word God generally conjures up images of an old white male with long white hair and beard.

 

This is what I imagined when I read your words above, Geezer.

 

 

Maybe they're onto something, what people thought was God was really evolution!! Who would've known, eh?

[movingon]

I think there might be some sort of higher power,purely because I intellectually can't accept that the world just appeared at this point. I don't particularly think that higher power its involved in the world today

[MultifariousBirdLady]

I was torn between voting "yes, gods plural" and "unsure." 

 

I went with "unsure" because when it comes down to it, my thought is along these lines:

I still have sympathies towards polytheism, but I can't vouch for the existence of gods that may or may not be out there somewhere.

 

I disagree that their power is only along symbolic/meme lines, though. (i.e. Athena as "Goddess of wisdom," or that various "Goddesses of wisdom" are interchangeable.  IMO there are real differences between them.)

[Evolution_beyond]

I believe in a mysterious 'presence' that exists within nature itself.  It is not conscious, properly speaking, because consciousness requires a brain.  But there seems to be something that a person can connect with through prayer or meditation, or simply when walking or resting somewhere natural.

 

It probably is simply the human mind's response to nature or the cosmos; the affection we naturally feel towards the source of our being (nature).  Nevertheless like love, music or humour, the scientific, rational explanation of it seems to detract from its beauty and "magic".

 

It seems to me that truth can be factual - and rational science is the best way to discern that type of truth.  But there are also other kinds of truth, to do with the way we navigate our way through life, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to better make sense of our place in the Universe.  This is why I say there is some mysterious "presence" in nature, because I have felt it myself - and in the "navigating our way through life" sort of way, it seems to be important to me and that I should respect and honour those feelings, not by explaining them away, but in the way that seems most natural, to use those feelings to connect myself spiritually with all things and so navigate my way more succesfully through life.

 

Maybe I'm just cursed with the God Gene and so I've found a way to make peace between my rational and irrational sides.  I don't really care what it is, it works for me (I'm a pragmatist like that). And I call it Pantheism.

 

But I honestly don't know whether to call what I believe in God or not.  I guess it depends on how you define the term.