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Underground > Head Shop >

Christianity as a hollow spiritual experience.

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:00 / 23.03.04
Oh sorry Grant, that was me playing the lame game!
 
 
Jack Fear
14:12 / 23.03.04
The Copts fascinate the heck out of me.

Me, too. I went to a Coptic Mass once, at the only Coptic Orthodox church in New England. The cars in the parking lot had license plates from all over the region--people driving to the Boston suburbs from as far away as southern Maine.

And man, that Mass gave them their journey's worth. Six hours long, clouds and clouds of incense. Lovely people--very welcoming, despite the fact that I was soooooooo obviously out of place. At the same time, the religion is pretty intensely conservative and distrustful of the secular modern world: their current pope, Shenouda III, used to live in a cave, for cryin' out loud. And after fifteen years of that, get this--he decided his cave was too close tocivilization, so he moved to a different cave.

Trilingual service--English, Arabic, and Coptic. Very ritualistic, with lots of numerical symbolism--chanting a prayer refrain 44 times (once for each of Christ's wounds, if you count the crown of thorns as one--the Copts, unlike Mel Gibson, believe that the scourging of Jesus consisted of the rabbinically-mandated "forty stripes save one").

And even the tiny details are prescribed--like how you hold your hand when you make the Sign of the Cross: ring and pinky fingers tucked into the palm--two fingers representing Jesus's dual nature, fully human and fully divine--middle, index, and thumb touching at the tips to represent the Holy Trinity.

A tiny, tiny thing, yeah--but it has stayed with me, and it's how I make the Sign of the Cross today. And every time I hold my hand this way, every time I make this small, "meaningless" gesture, it prompts in me a conscious mini-meditation--lasting no more than a second--on the nature of the Christ and the Trinity.

It's a humble,everyday sort of spiritual tool, but effective.

Shit, did I just bring the thread back on topic?
 
 
ajm
17:09 / 23.03.04
I have gone through my posts again to see where people are losing me, I feel like people are missing my points, and I don't want to keep repeating them. Also people are nit picking through semantics with what I am saying. Some people seem to be saying that politics 'is important' to spirituality, without any reasons. That the fighting that causes denominational breakdowns is a spiritual activity. Sad.

grant: thank you for the links, I will read up. And yes I know there is different interpretation of who Jesus was (a large basis for denominational differences). But it's all interpretations of JESUS. and it shouldn't be about the interpretations, it should be about the teachings.

Grey area: I want insight from this forum. I have never really discussed by views like this before and I feel a lot of hostility towards them, only because other people also hold strong views as well, whether it's the view of a particular religion, or the view that one must be sensitive towards all views which seems to be the most popular because you can hold that view and be religious, atheist or agnostic.

Starskey: (creative name, I want to see that movie) Maybe if I knew everything that would be enough? Certainly there are holes in my knowledge of Christianity and Religion (no one knows it all) Also I plan to improve my knowledge of these things through time as knowledge is a life long process (is there any end to the accumulation of knowledge?). But to be honest, religious doctrines and rituals bore me to tears (just me). Also I like the way you worded the question (you've done this before). I would like to have seen where this thread would have gone if I didn't post anything (probably along the lines of religious politics and such)

Baz: I certainly could have. Religions aren't spiritual, people are.

Information: Thanks for all the info on the books, ("Book 4" By Aleister Crowley, "The Meaning of Christ for Our Age" By F. Aster - www.alibris.com. )
Mindless memorization of prayers seems dare I say, hollow, just as it is in the self-hypnosis of chant meditation. I've had to memorize lots of prayers as a member of the Catholic Church and in my attendance at Anglican Church services. I agree, meditation is very hard, but well worth the effort.
Oh, and I have also said the rosary many times, and my rosary was made out of rosemary

Ex: You have an individual view of spirituality it appears, just as I do. Yours is that it is some sort of chameleon that changes with a person’s belief. We could also have many views, say, on the shape of the earth, one says it's flat, the other round. No need to cause hostility and say who's right, right. Maybe its a cube, why limit ourselves. My point is the nature of spirit might have only one nature. The nature of gravity doesn't work differently for different people.
(*side note - are you a musician? I am a classical/jazz musician - John Coltrane is God
I would say Christianity is popular because of tradition and the way it has been thrust upon people throughout history, and the way parents thrust it upon their children. People love to love their own culture.

Flyboy: Sorry, no more trying to be clever for me. I still state that denominational differences are superficial because they are only political/interpretational differences. When I said 'everyone has to swear the same creed' I meant in a single church not all Christians. I know there are different denominations with different views. I am going to say that for 'most' churches, if you want to be a member of the church (want to get married their, whatever) you usually have to be baptized or swear something or generally agree with the churches ideologies. Maybe I'm not always clear when I write. I assume when you say you 'attending churches' you meant becoming a member, because that is what I am talking about. Also I agree that religious people (and spiritual people) are often made fun of in film and media. Why? Because the artist has different views on the subject which causes hostility between him and others. So what's the answer? Tolerance of everyone’s views? Impossible. Even if this is your view then you are in contradiction when my view of having no views is put forth, or if someone’s view is intolerant. You can't reconcile that. Not everyone’s views are right, that's a fact.

Seth: anything? How about nothing except the truth, the spirit. Accept life you say. How defeatist. I will not accept life as it is, it must be improved. A very Christian sentiment. Christ suffered on the cross and now we all must suffer, we can't escape it. Life sucks, live with it. Thanks.

lllmatic: If someone says their Christian, then that defines them and you understand what they mean is my point. Jesus is the truth for Christians, no matter how they 'choose' to define him.
Like you said, you've only been to church a few times, you didn't become a member, did you? All that chanting and singing they do is a reinforcement of their beliefs.
Sometimes the more information you have the more confused you can be. Read the article about choice in the new edition of Scientific American. Too much choice can cause confusion and depression. Most knowledge is unimportant anyway (unless you want to win on Jeopardy). Doctrinal differences are the politics of religion. I haven't changed my view, but hopefully have made it clearer.

Stoatie: "tell me one ideology or belief that doesn't have problems." I can't, they all have problems, which is the very problem with society. We divide ourselves through belief and ideology.
(www.jiddukrishnamurti.info) or read the wisdom of Einstein or Gandhi. No one is better. You are the only one. Agnostics are just as bad, yes. Thanks, I will try to 'deal with it' instead of trying to end conflict.

Anna: Holy-nitpicking. OK, yes they define Jesus differently, but it's still Jesus. "When you say Jesus is truth you appear to be claiming that Jesus is the same truth for every Christian but he's not". No this is not what I am saying, but nice try.
"ajm, your idea doesn't work and your discussion is failing because you're wilfully ignoring what spirituality is. " No one here is even trying to discuss spirituality, mostly semantics.

grants: I've never heard of Copts, I will check it out. I'm sure I'm not the only one ignorant of this group.

Jack: great post. Like I said, I'm going to check that out.

********
One more rant.
Socrates was right in saying that the only thing you can be 'certain' of is your own ignorance. You can't approach truth/God intellectually; it is only experienced, felt, understood not through words (beliefs/ideas/opinions) but through intuition. This is hard to grasp and many of you don't (which is fine). People find truth through learning about political/doctrinal differences and accepting a belief? I would say I doubt it, but I know this is not the case. I can 'know' its raining if I go outside, but if I stay indoors I have to form a belief (which is completely influenced by superficial cultural beliefs). We must kill the mundane self to understand who we really are. We must be whole, not fragmented humans, holding on to our beliefs, which are created by the mind. Jesus said "BEHOLD the kingdom of God is WITHIN you", not in the church or up in the sky or even in me.

Encyclopedic knowledge also won't get you closer to the truth, sure its fun to debate and flex the old head muscle, but 'truth' won't come to us no matter how much knowledge of pop culture, religion or the history of the world we have. Wisdom and insight is what we need, and you don't need any knowledge to have it. It is possible to have all the knowledge of all the great minds and still not 'understand' a word. One can spend a lifetime just trying to understand one of them (ie. Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin, Buddha, Jesus, Krishnamurti, Socrates, Coltrane to name a few)

I feel like people are still just reading my words and not trying to understand them. But it's hard to understand when people have strong beliefs. If no one responds to me again I promise I won't post anymore. I am more of a reader anyway.

I appreciate everyone’s opinions. Thanks.

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses the dogmatic." - Einstein

"In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves." - Siddhartha Buddha

"Truth is eternal, knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them." -Anonymous
 
 
grant
18:12 / 23.03.04
grant: thank you for the links, I will read up. And yes I know there is different interpretation of who Jesus was (a large basis for denominational differences). But it's all interpretations of JESUS. and it shouldn't be about the interpretations, it should be about the teachings.

Well, I think this might be the crux (ho ho!) of the problem here: I'm pretty sure it's all interpretations. I was just (as in less than five minutes ago) reading the annotated Gospel of Thomas, and it stands as a pretty good case in point. It's not part of the Bible (not even the massive Ethiopian Orthodox canon - not to be confused with the Coptic Church canon, which is still larger than the Catholic Bible).

It *may* be an older text (and thus more authoritative, closer to the original teachings) than the four canonical gospels -- the guy doing the annotations in the translation I'm reading thinks Thomas was one of the source texts for Mark, the oldest gospel in the Bible. Other scholars think it probably got written around 150 C.E. -- about 50-70 years after Mark. And the only complete text we have is 200 years later than that, buried in Nag Hammadi in 350 C.E.

Some of the teachings in Thomas are nearly identical to the teachings in the canonical gospels. Others are (apparently) quite contradictory. And they definitely don't jibe with the version of Christianity (apparently) preached by Paul. Depending, of course, on how you interpret Paul.

He's the fellow who wrote most of the New Testament, but never actually met Jesus in person. So you see, the issue of "which Jesus" and "which teachings" is really very vexed.

In a great deal of mystic Christianity -- including some of the basically mainstream denominations (Pentecostals, etc) -- the adherent approaches Jesus as a kind of cipher... guided by intuition, in much the same way you describe as the way to approach God.

You hear this kind of subjective, personal relationship with Christ (familiar phrase?) in, oh, gospel music and older negro spirituals. Compare that kind of relationship with a more chemically induced awareness, maybe. And it's based on a particular, dynamic interpretive process.
 
 
ajm
18:41 / 23.03.04
Thanks for the link grant. I was actually looking for more information about the lost gospel of Thomas as well as Phillip and James. Also does anyone have any good links to the ancient teachings of Hermes (Trimegistis).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:01 / 23.03.04
Trismegistus.

OK, we have moved onto "semantics", which is a magical codeword for "people are not worshipping my big sexy clever, so clearly they cannot be understanding it". Would anyone mind, since it appears that keeping this discussion even faintly on-topic is a forlorn hope, if we move it to the Conversation, where one could at least introduce zombies?

As I believe I have suggested before, ajm, take a look at some Head Shop threads of yesteryear. If you honestly believe that knowing things and having some interest in discussing them rather than throwing out ill-informed opinions is a pointless diversion, then you are not going to get a lot of joy from this forum. Also, might I humbly suggest that, while knowing everything is not a prerequisite, wishing to know anything is not a bad idea. Reading a bit of Plato before quoting Socrates would be a good start.
 
 
Lurid Archive
20:42 / 23.03.04
I'm not sure that a move to the conversation is ideal. Despire the provocative style and statements, I think that ajm is making a real effort to engage and I'm learning from the responses even if they aren't strictly on topic. I think it has become a rather more exploratory and less well defined topic than is usual for the headshop, but theres nothing wrong with that is there? A move to the conversation could make this less interesting. I'd like to wait to see how it develops.
 
 
Seth
23:20 / 23.03.04
I was addressing the impoverished assumption in the particular phrase that you encouraged people to respond to (My point is still that this type of politics gets in the way of spiritual development. Please someone comment on this statement, with reasons, expecially if you disagree). To reiterate, if you let anything get in the way of your spiritual development then you're disempowering yourself. My questions of the statement, "This type of politics gets in the way of spiritual development" would be:

- Which type of politics?
- What do you mean by spiritual development?
- How specifically does that type of politics get in the way of developing spiritually?
- Based on what evidence?
- How many counter examples exist?

It's interesting that someone who has says that they've started a thread in order to promote an inclusive spirituality centred around unity and individual experience also finds that the responses to the thread are reactionary and missing the point. How else can you communicate what you're saying without causing the effect that you say you're trying to avoid? Because at the moment you're just exhibiting that you're ill-equipped to encourage the growth of the very spirituality that you're attempting to advocate. The onus is very much on you to try to elicit the meaning that you want received - that's your responsibility as communicator.

I wholeheartedly agree that direct personal experience is paramount, and I find that's best communicated through injunctive methods, by setting up an environment in which people can be guided into personal experience if they so choose (the idea being that having encountered it they can use these methods or others themselves). Which is what my Church has always aimed to achieve, and done it much more successfully than this thread (see my first post above). They've also been extremely interested in many of my experiences that differ from their beliefs, and they've also told me about many of their experiences that differ from mine.

In a nutshell: what is your objective? How is labelling Christianity a "hollow spiritual experience" likely to fare in achieving that objective? How many other ways do you have at your disposal of doing what you want to do, in a manner that won't get the response you've received in this thread?
 
 
Ex
08:43 / 24.03.04
You have an individual view of spirituality it appears, just as I do. Yours is that it is some sort of chameleon that changes with a person’s belief. We could also have many views, say, on the shape of the earth, one says it's flat, the other round. No need to cause hostility and say who's right, right. Maybe its a cube, why limit ourselves. My point is the nature of spirit might have only one nature. The nature of gravity doesn't work differently for different people.

This is a really weird paragraph. You seem to be saying, "Hey, why argue, we're both just taking up positions in a beautiful pluralist spectrum. And you can be pluralist about the shape of the earth and other ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS-OUT INSANE PROPOSITIONS. But that's fine, and I'm going to talk in a calm, lulling voice about how there's no need to be hostile, but I'M RIGHT. Like GRAVITY'S RIGHT."

Do you mind if I find that a tad confusing? You're using somewhat absurd propositions to comment on my suggestion of multiple viewpoints. I'm sure it's not intentionally offensive, and you're sincerely trying to place yourself in a pluralist perspective, but it won't fit, and your comparisons demonstrate this.
If you think it's impossible to take a pluralist approach to this question of spirituality, then don't. Instead, you could explain why you think there is one kind of spirit and possibly try to persuade me.

So: I feel as though the difference between our views is not really that we take up positions on a wide spectrum of opinion. It's that I think there's a spectrum of spiritual response exists, and you're working with a model where spirituality is unitary. Which is indeed not really a reason for hostility.

Which means we're back to a very simple proposition:
You have a clear definition of spirituality.
You alone, really, can decide whether Christianity/ies live(s) up to that. Partly because you haven't explicitly explained how your model of spirituality works.
How can this board/thread help? You could explain your model of spirituality and we could help out in assessing different bits of Christianity, but it would probably just generate more disputes about what spirutality was. Unless you retitled the entire thread "Is Christianity spiritually hollow when you're using ajm's model of spirituality?"

Other than that, if you are writing an essay on it, then it'll really help if you define terms like "spirituality" from the kick-off - and which bits of Christian practice/doctrine you're looking at. Or you'll just have this discussion all over again with whoever marks it. If you're explicit about your premises then you can construct a good solid argument even if the reader disagrees with those premises.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
08:52 / 24.03.04
Can I just point out that (among other factors) reading this thread has, through reminding me of many of the wonderful things it has to offer, actually gone some way towards rekindling my interest in Christianity (if not my faith- though that's debatable)?

Oh, that sweet, sweet taste of irony...
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
09:33 / 24.03.04
Please don't move this to the conversation, regardless of how you feel about the quality of ajm's posts the majority of the rest of the post are of a superb quality, very interesting and higly informative. Also isn't this one of the faster moving topics in the Headshop?
 
 
Cat Chant
11:00 / 24.03.04
isn't this one of the faster moving topics in the Headshop?

Not sure that that "fast-moving" is a good thing in itself, though I would also argue against moving this thread to the Conversation. I'm a slow thinker, though, and it can take me days or weeks to come up with a response to Headshop posts, so I'd like to try and put a positive spin on the slowness of some threads here.

(Sorry for offtopic, but I really know absolutely nothing about either Christianity or spirituality, so I can't contribute anything ontopic.)
 
 
illmatic
11:08 / 24.03.04
Ajm: Thank you for a more thoughtful and considered response than previously. I appreciate that you’re making an effort to engage with everyone here. However, with ref. to your last paragraph, don’t think that people don’t know exactly what you’re talking about. Argumentative we may be, but we’re not stupid (with some exceptions). I think I understand what your saying quite clearly, it’s just I happen not to agree and I, like pretty much everyone else here objects to the way your presenting your message, and it’s inherent contradictions. I’ll come onto this below.

Firstly:

If someone says their Christian, then that defines them and you understand what they mean is my point. Jesus is the truth for Christians, no matter how they 'choose' to define him.

Not always. I’ve met different types of Christian, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, “lip service” C of E people, Baptists all of whom have different beliefs and points of emphasis in their religion, some of which were close to my ideas, some quite far away, some of which I found abhorrent.

Sometimes the more information you have the more confused you can be.

I’m aware of this. It’s referred to as “option anxiety”. My point was when I tried to paint a more complex picture than the one you allowed, you accused me of attempting to exclude people. This might work as a get out clause in some circumstances, but not one when you’re attacking someone else’s beliefs.

I haven't changed my view, but hopefully have made it clearer.

You have made it clearer. Cheers. Anyway onto the matter in hand:

“You can't approach truth/God intellectually; it is only experienced, felt, understood not through words (beliefs/ideas/opinions) but through intuition”.

I understand that, but I would say the organised religion can sometimes provide a context for this “knowing” to occur. As I said before, See Seth’s first post above. He’s offering clear examples of this occurring in a Christian Church taken from his experience. It doesn’t make this particular church “right” and all others “wrong” of course. And note this is a sometimes, not always. Religion can miserably fail to do this. Sometimes – and I suspect this happens a lot – the “fire” of gnosis gets lost, or stultifies, or sets into rigid dogmas and the whole process begins again. Even people in organised religions talk about this “knowing” as something that has to found again and again, a struggle, a process, even in the context of a religion. It isn’t just say your prayers and get to heaven. (Well, it maybe in some churches,but then we get back to Christianity being a diverse and varied entity, don’t we?). In fact, I’m sure someone here can come up with the correct Christian term or some quotations that illustrate this.

Also, I’d say that you talking about religion solely as spirituality. What I find fascinating about relgion is it attempts to bridge the divide between individual spirituality at one end and the needs of a community/expressing this spirituality as action in the world at the other. This effects of this aren’t always negative either (see my comments above in my first post). Surely, spirituality shouldn’t always be solophistic (‘scuse spelling)? Surely it should exist in a community at times, and use any insight gained to affect the world?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:26 / 24.03.04
Hang on, I thought this discussion was about semantics and not spirituality?
 
 
Tom Coates
11:54 / 24.03.04
I've tried to get a grasp on the overarching themes of this thread, but unfortunately I seem to have failed. A few things that occurred to me while reading it though was that there's a certain amount of intellectual clumsiness associated with the argument that you can't come to God through rational means and that it's purely experiential in that - frankly - there are an awful lot of people in the world who believe blatantly counter-factual things which they base on unverified personal experience. For the most part these people are considered insane. In fact if you follow that path to the of experiential connection with god being of the supreme importance then you end up in all kinds of difficult territory. Is it then only the fact that a number of people believe in god or feel themselves to have experienced roughly the same 'truth' that means that we can't lump it in with radio transmitters in the skull? But then again there are an awful lot of people who think they've been abducted by aliens too... I can't help thinking that if I started seriously believing in God according to your system, I'd feel compelled immediately to go and seek psychiatric help to make sure that I wasn't profoundly mentally unwell instead.

Also clearly there are Atheists in the world. I am an atheist. I do not consider it in any way obvious that there's a God. I do not in fact consider it worth argument. In my worldview a God of this kind is no more likely than invisible monkeys watching me all the time. I consider it ludicrous beyond believe, in fact, that people take these kinds of religions seriously. Now imagine for a moment that no one had this 'experience of god' that you've been talking about. I've never had it, for example, so it's quite possible that a world could exist in which everyone was like me. Would that make God not exist under your system? Or would he exist but just be really really bored? If we can imagine that it is possible for a God to exist when no one believed in them whatsoever, then doesn't that leave us in trouble with regard to the monism of God. I mean - couldn't there just be a billion gods that we have no experience of? How would we know?

Basically I have trouble with any system that says that the only way to know it's true is to feel that it's true. And I have trouble with it because I could fill a bible in microscopic writing with things that people believe that are true that are not, and I can't realistically see why the existence of God should be taken any more or less seriously than any of the things I'd write in that book. If you have an argument that will stand up to scrutiny that explains why a God might exist then that's great, but a system that says that rational arguments have no place is not something that I could put any store in, and I would hope and pray that no one else would either...
 
 
grant
13:41 / 24.03.04
Well, one of the overarching themes of the thread is "spiritual experience" -- how one can define it, and whether or not Christianity is conducive to it.

I don't necessarily think being an atheist would preclude one from having spiritual experience, but I'm curious what shape it would take, or how it would be interpreted.
 
 
ajm
15:30 / 24.03.04
I am really starting to like where this discussion is going!

Starskey: I have read a bit of Plato (I like the Timeaus) but found most of it very dry. I love philosophy but find most of it an intellectual pissing contest as opposed to an honest search for truth.

Seth: (short answers as I feel bad about the long posts.
"Which type of politics?"
Differences in beliefs, denominational differences, the structure of the church...
"What do you mean by spiritual development?"
Developing a connection with the unknown.
"How specifically does that type of politics get in the way of developing spiritually?"
By not concentrating on that connection and filling the mind with junk (sorry for the simplification)
"Based on what evidence?"
The only evidence is life experience.
"How many counter examples exist?"
A number of examples of what (?), evidence? I don't really follow this question.

I understand that spirit is a very loaded and abstract term and there is always bound to be confusion. I myself don't put it in a box or try to define it, although I like to learn about the possibilities of what it 'could' be. Having beliefs and conclusions of what we 'think' it is limits our understanding of what it really is (which is indefinable, incorporeal, and unknown). Also I don't believe myself or anyone (thing) else can help growth in an individual but themselves. I'm not living anyone else’s life but my own, and no one else can explain your experiences to you but yourself. You need to understand your own mind. Another cannot give clarity. Confusion is in us; we have brought it about, and we have to clear it away.

Ex: I was being sarcastic (which doesn't come across all that well) and I'm sorry that I offended you. My point is that the shape of the earth, the nature of gravity, has one reality. Some could argue that the nature of electromagnetic radiation has two natures, but that seems to be only because of our limited understanding of lights true nature. All things seem to have a single nature (the consentience of nature laws and all that). Like music (my favorite analogue), there are many ways to learn music, and one can't describe or define music very well, but if I say I like music, you know what I mean. And once (from experience) you learn music well enough you have to forget everything you learned and throw out all the rules and just feel the music (does this analogue jive).
Is it possible to re-title a thread (?), because I would do it (although this title seems to cause a bit more excitement (maybe good, maybe bad)

Illmatic: I wasn't implying that anyone here is stupid, on the contrary I believe most people in here seem very intelligent, the majority being more intelligent than me. But this is one topic I have thought a lot about and I'm just sharing my own insights.
Are you saying there are some Christians that don't believe in Jesus? I don't understand your comment in regards to my own.
Strange how other people’s views, like you say, can be offensive to you, isn't it. A source of disagreement and conflict between people, no?
My comment about confusion with too much information is that that's how some people tend to complicate matters. More of a general comment.

Yes, maybe that last statement I posted, in hindsight, was a bit over the top (I thought the thread was dead and that it would be my last post). But my favorite branch of philosophy is epistemology and I have come to the conclusion, as many people before me, that intellectual truth is relative.

To the atheists: (Even the atheist have different beliefs within this ‘self imposed’ label, which I think is interesting - I personally hate labels and think they are not constructive)
You are very correct in stating that the existence of God is in no way obvious. You say it's not worth an argument, but you’re here (!), and then you say rational arguments 'should' be apart of it, which I agree with, they just won't help with the 'search'. The question of God is in no way a random notion. You simply made up the argument about monkeys, but the argument about God has been around since humans first evolved. I think even animals ponder it in their own way. (Why the hell do wolves howl at the moon?)
How can we know if there is one god or billions? We can't. I think we would agree on a lot of terms. When I speak of 'feeling' I don't exclude objective, logical interpretations of experiences. In this respect, mythical, romantic interpretations don't hold water in my view and I can't give you an argument for the existence of God. I don't like to use the term God as often as I do because it is such a loaded term (people have millions of different concepts), that's why I try to refer to it as such, truth/spirit/God/'what is'/reality. For me all these terms denote the same thing. The image of God as watcher over us I also have a hard time with, but that is the most popular view, although probably least plausible. God may be just an energy that is the glue of the cosmos, or maybe God is light, or something else (?). Why would anyone limit God? Even by telling him that he’s omnipotent.

Are you and atheist that believes nothing happened in the first millionths of a second after the big bang, or that the big bang didn't exist because we don't understand the physics of it or that there is nothing outside the dimensions of Time and Space. The Science/logic paradigm is a belief system like any other. There are a lot of mysteries to life and nature and every field of study. Many of them are explained as unknown or God (the same thing as far as I'm concerned). If you think these things don't have answers then maybe you are an atheist, if you believe they have answers we just haven't discovered, then I believe that makes you an agnostic. If God is your answer then you are a believer.

I can't see the difference in some colors because I'm colorblind. That doesn't mean I think people are fooling themselves or that these colors don't exist, but I understand that color is just the brains 'interpretation' of wave lengths and that even color is not a reality, only an interpretation of a sense observation. (I realize my analogous maybe lost on a few) In the same vain, I understand that there is something, unknown (unknowable?) to humans 'out there', and that people interpret it differently. My goal is to understand it (not intellectually) and live harmoniously with it. I can't do that if I pretend to know what it is.

I think you're more of an agnostic if you say you are willing to change your mind in the light of evidence, but unfortunately, evidence won't be presented to you, you have to work for it, so you may be out of luck, but I think you're fine with limiting yourself like that.
Maybe you see the pointlessness of arbitrary beliefs and religious divisions as I do, but you should try to understand the religious mind. Even if you believe in self-improvement, I believe that is a personal religion within itself. You don't need a god to have a religion, just look at Buddhism. But if you want to label yourself an atheist because of 'your beliefs', that's fine, but why not take it a step further and say all beliefs and conclusions on such a topics are foolish, even the beliefs/conclusions of an atheist or an agnostic. It might create more space in your mind for other things. Why waste all that energy?
 
 
Seth
21:55 / 24.03.04
Tom, I can't answer your post with evidence. I can partially rationalise the belief in a supreme God as an extremely useful metaposition to employ in regards to exploring one's psyche and one's understanding of the world, because presupposing the qualities of omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence will all be criteria that will offer results considerably different than if one were to use other types of metaposition which did not have these qualities. That's an cackhanded attempt to explain the huge success of the belief in a supreme being, regardless of its existence or not.
 
 
Tom Coates
06:54 / 26.03.04
Seth's role is more interesting there to me - if we talk about God as a mechanism or a metaphor by which we understand ourselves or our roles in the world better, then I can understand it and even be interested in it. Unfortunately while it may be serving that purposes a whole range of people aren't going into the experience with that in mind.

Maybe you see the pointlessness of arbitrary beliefs and religious divisions as I do, but you should try to understand the religious mind. Even if you believe in self-improvement, I believe that is a personal religion within itself. You don't need a god to have a religion, just look at Buddhism. But if you want to label yourself an atheist because of 'your beliefs', that's fine, but why not take it a step further and say all beliefs and conclusions on such a topics are foolish, even the beliefs/conclusions of an atheist or an agnostic. It might create more space in your mind for other things. Why waste all that energy?

OK - firstly based on something you said earlier - if God is just light, then why not call God "Light". I mean unless your concept of light includes some kind of weird supernatural extra bits, we already have a word for light, just as we do for matter and space and infinity and bread.

Back to your paragraph (above): I don't really know how to respond to that. You now seem to be saying that everything is - y'know - just a 'belief' and - y'know - none of it is really 'true' and that all beliefs are foolish. But that's absolutely ludicrous. This is exactly the same problem I have with your position on science. Science and "high-flown" belief systems don't suddenly start having a different criteria of truth because they have big names or because they deal with important things. The criteria you use to determine whether you can believe that you won't fly into space at a moment's notice or whether you can eat bread without dying or that breathing is good for you are EXACTLY THE SAME CRITERIA as the ones that are used to determine whether something is scientifically plausible or whether a complex model of the mind or of the universe stands up. There's no difference there - it's elephants all the way down. It's your basic experience of things, combined with attempts to construct models to explain why those things behave the way they do, followed by ways of testing those models against reality. If I punched you in the face you wouldn't sit there wondering if it had really happened or not, or whether your 'believing' it was relevant or not. If I tried to feed you a bowl of lead filings you'd never blindly accept that my belief system (feeding lead filings to religious people won't kill them) over your own (eating lead filings is bad for you).

I find your position on this whole thing totally inscrutable. You 'believe' in a God of some kind and yet also contend that beliefs are pointless. And despite the fact that you make make decisions in every other part of your life every day about good things to eat versus bad things to eat or dangerous actions (running in front of a car) versus safe actions (not running in front of a car) you're still quite happy to stand up and say that a belief system that told you not to run in front of a car is in no way qualitatively better than the one that says you shouldn't. Your daily life is FILLED with attempts to filter through evidence and think 'scientifically' and you're ROUTINELY judging plausibility and deciding between models of the universe on the basis of which is plausible and/or better. Why are you being so obscurantist when it comes to questions of divinity? There is an enormous world of stuff out there that is exciting and illuminating and completely unlike anything in your experience and unknown-to-you-at-present - and you can actually experience and learn from it! Surely that's a better way to spend your time than just suspending all your critical faculties and randomly choosing something to believe in.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
02:08 / 27.03.04
Tom - In a godless universe though, what would be the point ? Of doing anything, or not doing anything, of being James Joyce or Myra Hyndley, or the guy selling cigs at Two in the morning, one way or another you're inevitably going to hit the same old problem, which is why is there something instead of nothing ?
There's no particular reason, but if you spend a bit of time, y'know, in the country ( bourgeois daliance though it probably is, ) it does become clear that there's a system behind it, whether or not the human b gets involved
 
 
Spaniel
10:13 / 27.03.04
Tom - In a godless universe though, what would be the point ? Of doing anything, or not doing anything, of being James Joyce or Myra Hyndley, or the guy selling cigs at Two in the morning

Your argument seems to run like this: reality would feel (to me) purposeless without God, therefore there must be a God. Can you not see the huge logical leaps? Why must there be a purpose? Also, just because you feel there aught to be God, doesn't mean that there necessarily must be.
Further, surely meaning and value don't depend on an omnipotent being's reasons for creating something from nothing. Maybe humans are the final arbiters of meaning/value.
If you're interested, there's a over century of existentialist philosophy tackling this very issue
 
 
Spaniel
10:27 / 27.03.04
...if you spend a bit of time, y'know, in the country ( bourgeois daliance though it probably is, ) it does become clear that there's a system behind it, whether or not the human b gets involved

Not sure what you're getting at here. At the risk of sounding like a pedant, what do you mean by "country"? Do you mean the wilds of the rain forests or the factory floor that is the British countryside. Very different.
You seem to be saying that being in the presence of the natural you somehow get closer to the truth of the matter (being existence). Firstly, are you aware just how involved the human is in sculpting the British Landscape - to call it man made would only be a slight overstatement. Sure there's systems behind it, they're called farming and human habitation. Other systems include ecology, biology, chemistry and physics - none of which require a Why.
 
 
Tom Coates
18:11 / 27.03.04
Tom - In a godless universe though, what would be the point ? Of doing anything, or not doing anything, of being James Joyce or Myra Hyndley, or the guy selling cigs at Two in the morning, one way or another you're inevitably going to hit the same old problem, which is why is there something instead of nothing ?

The thing that's always confused me about this view is that I don't see how there being a God makes it any better! I don't see how there being a divinity that judges our behaviour gives our existence any kind of 'point' - and if it did, wouldn't it just be to impress our creator? Frankly that's a little dispiriting.

No - I would argue what you have a problem with is the idea of a universe under which there are no absolute criteria to judge behaviour and thought against, and which doesn't seem to have any particular end of objective. The fact that people spuriously associate ends / objectives with God or that any objective 'granted' to us by divinity would be equally spurious - well both of those appear to be red herrings.

My personal gradual understanding of my role in the universe is that the only creatures that even conceive of having a role in the universe that we've yet been able to determine exist are ourselves. And many of the people around us have unpleasant or difficult lives. If I can contribute something towards their lives, improve them in some way, or create something that they can use and which enriches their lives, then I think that's enough of a point for me. And I'll let myself judge whether or not I've done something valuable with my life, based (in part) upon the value other people have taken from it.
 
  

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