My spiritual beliefs - what does this make me?

[pghguy]

I second this idea.

I've taken the Belief-O-Matic quiz several times over the past eight years; my top five results have never been the same, which, IMO, shows that my beliefs are evolving.

Actually, this very evening, I think, correction I know, I experienced some sort of wonderful revelation. It was like euphoria and totally amazing.

 

[shawn]

Quote:
Originally Posted by pghguy
6. I think God is omnipresent and within all of creation.

So do I. But creation is not God.

So by this reasoning then, you are not your body either.
You inhabit a body, but it cannot be said to be you.

 

[Saltmeister]

So by this reasoning then, you are not your body either.
You inhabit a body, but it cannot be said to be you.

I could interpret this as you saying that creation is God's body. I can see that you might be suggesting what many say about "God is everything" and/or "we are a part of God" or that "we are God."

I didn't create my body. I found myself having a body when I did not choose to have one. But creation is something God consciously chooses to create that previously did not exist. If I design a machine is that machine "me" or a part of me?

I could say that a machine I design and create is a part of my life and say it is a "part of me" in the sense of being "part of my life." I went through a journey and adventure to design and create that machine. But I cannot say it is a "part of me" in the sense of it being an essential or fundamental part of who I am.

If I lose that machine or that machine is destroyed, I do not lose a "part of me." It was not the physical manifestation of the machine that really became "a part of me," but the journey and adventure of designing and creating it that became a part of me. I still have the memories associated with designing and creating it. That is a part of me that I have not lost. The machine is just a symbolic monument of the process of creating. Destroying the symbolic monument of a creational process does not destroy the process.

If God loses what He created, He does not lose His memories of creating the universe and the people in it. God does not lose a part of Himself from having or letting creation be destroyed.

 

[shawn]

If God loses what He created, He does not lose His memories of creating the universe and the people in it. God does not lose a part of Himself from having or letting creation be destroyed.

And you know this.....How?
If it is opinion, then fine, we are all entitled to have opinions.

Another thing is, which God and which creation of man would you be referring to?

There seems to be a God who is the Source of all and then a bunch of other beings who are more advanced than we and have been making lifeforms to suit their needs whom we were cobbled together by.

 

[Saltmeister]

And you know this.....How?
If it is opinion, then fine, we are all entitled to have opinions.

It's not a matter of "knowing" but a matter of "what makes sense" to a person. I have said on a number of occasions that I don't claim objectivity. But that doesn't mean that I don't have a view and not also believe in my own views. If I have a view and believe in it strongly enough, I will put it out there to "test" it. The belief and confidence I have in a view is a statement of how I feel about its "validity." I don't think in terms of "logic" but "politics." Every view I put out there is a political statement of how I think things should "work."

If I see the words "God" and "creation" in a discussion and someone says that "creation" is like a "body" to God then it would invite the kind of response I gave a few hours ago.

To give more background to my response, I was not thinking in terms of the paradigm of creation being an incarnation of God, but the paradigm of God not being in creation. My response was a response to your response to Thomas and I was thinking in terms of the paradigm Thomas seems to operate in -- that of God not being in creation.

Another thing is, which God and which creation of man would you be referring to?

Because this seems to be a discussion between two Catholics, I have to assume it's the Abrahamic God.

There seems to be a God who is the Source of all and then a bunch of other beings who are more advanced than we and have been making lifeforms to suit their needs whom we were cobbled together by.

So ..... could it be some "lesser god" that has creation as its incarnation?

 

[Thomas]

So by this reasoning then, you are not your body either.
You inhabit a body, but it cannot be said to be you.

Hi Shawn —

Christian metaphysics holds that 'God' is not subject to any anthropological or cosmological determination ... so the short answer is no.

The point to remember is God is utterly unique, and so not like anything else.

I'm pretty sure Hebrew and Moslem metaphysics insists upon the same, and Brahminic systems also ...

Thomas

 

[shawn]

Hi Shawn —

Christian metaphysics holds that 'God' is not subject to any anthropological or cosmological determination ... so the short answer is no.

The point to remember is God is utterly unique, and so not like anything else.

I'm pretty sure Hebrew and Moslem metaphysics insists upon the same, and Brahminic systems also ...

Thomas

The bolded point I agree with, but again it depends on which god one is referring to, as the ones who created us in our present form are held by some theories to be beings just more advanced than people, not the supreme Source of all creation.

And in the scripture it states that we understand what is spiritual through the examples of the natural, as the book of life is the material universe all around us and is allegory for things of a higher nature.

 

[Amergin]

Where does this leave me?

I’m currently trying to determine where I belong on the religious spectrum. For some time, I’ve been giving this much thought and would like the input of others.

This leaves you as a free thinker even though I do not agree with most of your ideas. You are open minded with a strong hint of rationalism. You are somewhat to the left of the spectrum with Christian Fundamentalism/Islamic Talibanism. I am at the far left end being an Atheist.

I was raised Catholic and technically still am but am searching for truth, answers and meaning.

Keep searching and keep thinking, Mate.

Here’s where I am in my self reflection and evaluation:

1. I’m not sure I agree with the idea of organized religion but rather spirituality. I think in many ways, the institution of religion has become too legalistic and mechanical and has lost its true purpose and meaning.

I agree with your general theme except that I do not believe in spirituality.

2. I do believe in God, and only one God but possibly with several incarnations – likely including Jesus Christ. I think Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah…are also the same God just with a different name.

I agree. Most gods are simply copies of other older imaginary gods. I agree with second sentence except that I do not believe in those gods. I like the idea that I am 99,999% in agreement with you. I just disbelieve in one more god.

3. I feel closer to God in a park overlooking a Sunset, checking out flashes of lightning or watching the first snowfall of the season than in any specific building. Not that I have anything against churches, temples or other religious structures.

I look out at the night skies over Orkney Island at the 4,500-year-old stone village of Scara Brae. I may see the Northern Lights reflecting on the still waters below the archaeological sight. I look at the sky of stars and galaxies. There is great beauty in nature. There are also fearsome things like Black Holes and Supernovas. I always remember sitting on the hill above Scara Brae with the Northern lights reflecting on the smooth still water and the stars above. I do not need religion to be my spirituality. With Quantum Physics, I do not need a human invented God to give it meaning to me.

4. I thing science and religion can and do coincide. For example, God created man in His or Her image but this does not discount that this could have happen over tens of thousands of years via the means of evolution.

Science is seeking explanations for phenomena of the universe and the human mind. For those phenomena that we cannot yet explain, I say, "I don't know." That is intellectual honesty.

Religion is making up answers for phenomena that we cannot explain. It is explaining the unknown with the unknowable. JHWY, Allah, Christ/Trinity are clearly (to me) inventions of the human imagination. The Monotheistic Gods have all of the major human virtues and vices. They are said to be powerful. However, they are all vindictive, jealous, cruel, violent and genocidal, with temper tantrums (Noah's Magical Flood), hatred of incorrect believers, and an inexcusable indifference to human and animal suffering revealing total lack of mercy. They were invented by Bronze Age Warlords to instil fear and abject obedience in ignorant savages to achieve power of the Chief.

5. I believe there is a plan for our lives and no life is without meaning or purpose.

I believe that there is no plan for our lives apart from that of our human parents. The hard truth is that live has no purpose other than to survive and possibly mutate/evolve. My life has no more purpose than one grain of sand on the beach.

6. I think God is omnipresent and within all of creation.

However, you have no evidence for that. That is why I say, "I don't know, but I doubt it all."

7. I think God gave humans the innate wisdom and ability to distinguish right from wrong and has given us guidelines along the way to help us be in touch with those skills.

Humans evolved from a long line of apes dating back to 14 million years ago when the Orang Utan line went its separate ways while the Gorillas split off 8 million years ago and the Chimp-Human line went on to 6 million years ago. Only after the line of upright apes appeared did our brains begin to increase in size and wisdom. Early Homo sapiens and neanderthalis developed morality by social selection of individuals with harmful behaviour. We learned to distinguish right from wrong by the results. Those of us who learned right and wrong passed on genes for behaviour regulation. Over time, it produced humans capable of wisdom, reason, and morality (natural morality.)

At the time of the Old Testament, it was OK to slaughter babies on a large scale. It was Ok to attack defenceless cities killing men, women, and children. Today the very thought of such evil actions repulses us. There are still pockets of cultural immorality in the world. Not all humans evolved from savagery. God did not teach us morality. He ordered Israelite Storm Troopers to slaughter relatively defenceless Canaanites.

12. I feel that God is the ultimate judge of our eternal destiny and that few if any of us are enlightened enough to know on what criteria we will be judged. This also means that many of the ideas taught to us by organized religions may be off track.

13. I feel that no religion has cornered the market on God.

I do not feel that an apparently fictional human like cosmic monster in our judge. Religion is an organisation based on the God Delusion. Rules made by delusional people are unlikely to be just or kind.

14. I believe that people are inherently good by their nature and only become evil through corruption, indoctrination and other means.

Agree. Especially indoctrination by religions that pretend our sins are forgiven may foster repeated criminal behaviour. It is interesting that countries with the most non-theists and weak watered down Christianity have the lowest crime rates (Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, and Czech Republic (not counting Muslim immigrants.)

The most religious nation in the West is the USA and it has the highest crime rates and homicide rates. It also has the highest percentage of Bigotry as I see from the news.

Amergin

 

[Dragonseer]

Actually, this very evening, I think, correction I know, I experienced some sort of wonderful revelation. It was like euphoria and totally amazing.

May I ask what your revelation was? Were you guided to follow a certain religious path/ sect?

 

[pghguy]

May I ask what your revelation was? Were you guided to follow a certain religious path/ sect?

No. I realized that it's about living a life based on love. Which, in many ways, transcends religious sects.

 

[shawn]

No. I realized that it's about living a life based on love. Which, in many ways, transcends religious sects.

Religion divides people into teams and such....Love unites as Love is Connection.
One is either Aware of this, or they are not.

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

1. I’m not sure I agree with the idea of organized religion but rather spirituality. I think in many ways, the institution of religion has become too legalistic and mechanical and has lost its true purpose and meaning.

How would you define spirituality? I used to say this a lot too. "I'm spiritual but not religious." But what exactly does that mean? Is spirituality an attempt to preserve the trinketry and magical thinking while abandoning the cultural specifism and institutional power structures of organized religion?

If you have time read this article from the Poor Richard's Almanack blog.

Is spiritual the new supernatural? Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

2. I do believe in God, and only one God but possibly with several incarnations – likely including Jesus Christ. I think Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah…are also the same God just with a different name.

What, in your mind, is God? Is it possible to say what God intrinsically is without resorting to culturally loaded anthropomorphic constructs? If God is something like "Love", or the integral interconnectedness of all life, or a primal logoistic First Principle which informs the intrinsic structure of the universe, does that in any way serve to recommend any of these culturally specific personal Gods like Allah, YHVH, or Brahman?

4. I thin[k] science and religion can and do coincide. For example, God created man in His or Her image but this does not discount that this could have happen over tens of thousands of years via the means of evolution.

I think that metaphysical modeling can be an interesting and useful exercise, but even when foundational mythology like that found in the creation myths of various cultures is taken 100% metaphorically or allegorically it doesn't inform the scientific process. Rather, scientific discovery serves to shrink and deflate mythology back to it's allegorical origin against the concerted will of Religion, which only under duress and with extreme reluctance is forced to concede, bit by bit, it's non literal nature as it scrambles to regroup and take up it's next defensive position.

5. I believe there is a plan for our lives and no life is without meaning or purpose.

Why do you believe this?

6. I think God is omnipresent and within all of creation.

OK. Instead of using a baggage laden yet amorphous term like "God", can we say what we really mean, or describe the exact process we're referring to when we say something like "God is omnipresent" or "God is within all creation"? IOW, do we have to borrow religiously flavored metaphysics to say what we mean about this? Maybe we do, or maybe we're just intellectually lazy and prefer to cut and paste concepts rather than think out what we actually mean. That's something I constantly ask myself.

10. I see God as gender neutral. God is both He and She and neither all at the same time. God’s is unclassifiable is such terms and to label God in these terms would be to believe that God is limited.

But you still see God as a being with a personality? Not a Force or a Principle?

11. I think we are to have an individual connection with God rather than a collective one and that God has granted us the ability to give our lives meaning.

Ah, a personal God. Do you think that this Personal God has the ability to circumvent causality? Can it meddle with things?

12. I feel that God is the ultimate judge of our eternal destiny and that few if any of us are enlightened enough to know on what criteria we will be judged. This also means that many of the ideas taught to us by organized religions may be off track.

What is our eternal destiny? How does God judge us? What recommends the idea of an sort of after life?

13. I feel that no religion has cornered the market on God.

I like this. It suggests that God is essentially a marketable commodity. I totally agree with that.

14. I believe that people are inherently good by their nature and only become evil through corruption, indoctrination and other means.

Have you ever thought that what morality essentially does is codify what level of evil is acceptable?

Hey, it's nice to meet you! Don't take any of this as condescending or mean spirited. I'm just riffing on what you wrote and asking questions.

Chris

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

I like this:

 

[Thomas]

Hey Chris — How are you ... this is supposed to be a somewhat light-hearted response, hope it reads that way, without me putting emoticons all over the place

How would you define spirituality? I used to say this a lot too. "I'm spiritual but not religious." But what exactly does that mean?

Good question!

Is spirituality an attempt to preserve the trinketry and magical thinking while abandoning the cultural specifism and institutional power structures of organized religion?

I think so, but it's a romantic and impossible ideal. And what's with 'organized religion' can you 'disorganized religion'? I don't think so.

You can, and you will, have problems with the organization, but that's ancilliary to the essence of the thing, and it's the message that keeps me Catholic, not the degree to which we cock it up.

The acid test is not living 'spiritually', but living with one's neighbour, that's where the spiritual rubber hits the road, as it were. Skidmarks, everywhere ... in every sense!

What, in your mind, is God? Is it possible to say what God intrinsically is without resorting to culturally loaded anthropomorphic constructs?

Nope. Even philosophical constructs are equally as idolatrous.

If God is something like "Love", or the integral interconnectedness of all life, or a primal logoistic First Principle which informs the intrinsic structure of the universe, does that in any way serve to recommend any of these culturally specific personal Gods like Allah, YHVH, or Brahman?

But how can you have otherwise? As soon as someone utters a word, or when a word is heard, it's culturally specific. It can't be any other way, can it?
Aren't you asking the impossible?

I think that metaphysical modelling can be an interesting and useful exercise, but even when foundational mythology like that found in the creation myths of various cultures is taken 100% metaphorically or allegorically it doesn't inform the scientific process.

Never set out to. Yet those models, thousands of years old, inform Freud, and still do philosophy ... so maybe yes?

I heard one guy argue that Plato makes more sense of the Quantum Universe than the Enlightenment.

Rather, scientific discovery serves to shrink and deflate mythology back to it's allegorical origin against the concerted will of Religion, which only under duress and with extreme reluctance is forced to concede, bit by bit, it's non literal nature as it scrambles to regroup and take up it's next defensive position.

Only in empirical matters.

Yet Christian doctrine has never done that. The data is unaltered from the start. Expanded and explained in a contemporary context, but still the same basic data. Same with Buddhism, same with the Vedanta, and no doubt others.

Not nearly as much as science has been obliged to do!

OK. Instead of using a baggage laden yet amorphous term like "God", can we say what we really mean, or describe the exact process we're referring to when we say something like "God is omnipresent" or "God is within all creation"? IOW, do we have to borrow religiously flavored metaphysics to say what we mean about this? Maybe we do, or maybe we're just intellectually lazy and prefer to cut and paste concepts rather than think out what we actually mean. That's something I constantly ask myself.

Well language inadequate, again that is said in many traditions, but what's the option? Non-communication? When the Buddha made the empty handed gesture, it came laden with all manner of cultural baggage.

I could point you to catholic texts, but my God, dry, technical and laborously precise or what!

In short, what about apophatism, not what you can say, but what you can't say about God.

Is not the problem more that we carry the baggage, hang it on the language, and then blame the language?

But you still see God as a being with a personality? Not a Force or a Principle?

I see an order of engagement that transcends the principles of being ... and deals direct, being to being as such ... I think that's what the 'personal' idea is pointing towards. When we can abandon that notion of ourselves, we can abandon that determination of God.

Ah, a personal God. Do you think that this Personal God has the ability to circumvent causality? Can it meddle with things?

I rather think they imply anthropomorphisms?

What is our eternal destiny? How does God judge us? What recommends the idea of an sort of after life?

Good questions ...

I like this. It suggests that God is essentially a marketable commodity. I totally agree with that.

I think marketing is a violation of gift. I was going to say something had to be there for someone to market it ... but then I thought ... Doh!

Have you ever thought that what morality essentially does is codify what level of evil is acceptable?

From the waist down, as it were ... But then I think the virtues, without evil, would still be virtues.

Thomas

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Hi Thomas! It's so very nice to converse with you again.

...Even philosophical constructs are equally as idolatrous

...But how can you have otherwise? As soon as someone utters a word, or when a word is heard, it's culturally specific. It can't be any other way, can it?
Aren't you asking the impossible?

Yes, yes. This is the ring-pass-not that confounds me: how to have a useful God concept without resorting to idolatry. It seems impossible. From my position there can only be the "graven image." I don't know how to get around that. Even to posit God's non-existence implies an existence which birthed the non-existence. This leaves me in an impossible position. I can't transcend my own functionalism. What do you see as path out of this quandary?

Chris

 

[Dragonseer]

I realized that it's about living a life based on love. Which, in many ways, transcends religious sects.

Religion divides people into teams and such....Love unites as Love is Connection.
One is either Aware of this, or they are not.

Understood and agreed.

 

[Thomas]

And you —

What do you see as path out of this quandary?

Well if you were Catholic, there are so many places I could lead you ... but as you ain't, all I can suggest is apophatism, and the Poetics of Silence.

The Word speaks from the Silence: The Word spoken in the beginning, in Genesis, is the same Word become flesh in Christ, is the same Word that spoke to Saul on the road to Damascus — and our response is always the same: Who are you? ... and we can never know who Christ is, unless God reveals Him in our hearts ... and this we receive in silence.

Currently I'm reading "The Darkness of God" and a selection of essays "Silence and the Word" which has led me to Heinrich Bonfoffer, the Lutheran killed by the Nazis in 1945.

"A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol"
This is a point I picked up from apophatism — any name by which we refer to God generates an image, or contextualises the deity — and an image is an idol, yet Christ gave us a name: Father, but Father designates only a relation, in that sense it is impersonal, it tells us nothing about He who is the Father. It does not convey anything like a name (El Shaddai, Jahovah, Jahweh, etc.) not does it convey a quality (Merciful, Boundless, etc.)

In like manner, the name given to Moses on Mount Horeb, 'I am that I am', is equally not a name, but a designation, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" or "I am the God of your fathers" doesn't tell us who God is, just what God is in relation to our world.

And again, even the metaphysical transcendentals: The Absolute, The Infinite, The Good, etc., as as idolatrous as Pat, Mel or Marty.

Here's the clincher for me:
"I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This correlates with recent texts I have read, by Denys Turner (Catholic) and Andrew Louth (Orthodox), that the contemporary quest for the spiritual is, in fact, the desire to experience 'otherness', and is basically self-serving and the quest for self-satisfaction: for the real spirituality is not to be found in experience.

(There are historical reasons for this, mostly that the contemporary mindset is far removed from how the medievals saw the world, for example.)

The modern mind pursues the experience of non-experience

The Christian is called to stand before the Darkness of God: to pray before the empty tomb.

I think, in many ways, in their praxis, the Jews have it right.

Thus he or she who says 'I am spiritual, but not religious' is kidding themselves, the idea founded on a false and flawed understanding of what spirituality is. Generally what they seek is the experience of the fullness of their own being. A richer sense of self.

Thus their contempt for 'religion' because they see it as burdensome and demeaning.

But that's where the real spirituality is, in the ordinary, the mundane. That is where the world is, that is where God made us, and put us, not to abscond and float about in some nebulous higher realm. He made angels to do that. He made us to sacralise the material, the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday.

+++

We cannot know God. We can posit God philosophically, but, as we say, God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So we can only know God because God comes to us, God has revealed or disclosed Himself in some way, and that way is the Way, but as soon as He does that, He puts Himself in our hands, and then the trouble starts ...

Currently I'm reading Christian Apophatic tradition, and the current thinking throws up some startling notions — not the least being the whole contemporary concept of 'spirituality' and 'mysticism' is fundamentally flawed.

When Thomas Merton, 'the modern mystic' was travelling in the Far East he met, I believe, a Sufi (might have been a Hindu ... doesn't matter). They exchanged a glance, and that glance said more than words could ever adequately express. It did not say "I've made it" but rather "I've sensed it", but what was sensed was beyond saying.

It's a knowing.

Thomas

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Hi Thomas. Sorry for the delay in responding but I wanted to think about it.

Try as I may I can't find a use for religion. It's not that I don't appreciate it's cultural importance, and indeed it's cultural inescapability and redundancy in the very social structure of things. I just can't find a personal use for it. My own upbringing was very religious (Seventh-day Adventist), but at the same time almost completely devoid of any meaningful ritualism. Because the remnant church concept, that is, the idea that "we are the only small and true group which comprises the new Israel", was so forcefully stressed, and because my later biblical exegesis utterly undermined the theological basis of Christian sabbatarianism and neo-levitical dogma, I now find myself in the impossible position of being both programmed to accept no substitute, and yet unable to accept, on intellectual and theological ground, the basis of the programming. IOW, I can't accept my "home" tradition, and I find it impossible to ever feel at home in any other tradition. I had a conversation with my sister recently, and she expressed the same discontent and dismay at the fact that even though she would like to participate in a more mainstream church environment she can't escape the "all others are evil" aspect of our upbringing. My brother, in his frustration before his untimely death, sucked it up and came back to the SDA church just so he could fill in the void in his spiritual life.

The "intrinsic meaning" of cultural functionalism only exists within that cultural milieu. The cultural milieu of my programming is an artificially generated, anti-establishmentarian substitute for the actual cultural milieu: "In the world, but not OF the world." Try as I might I cannot escape this immense, intentionally placed stumbling block. So, the "God" of my programming is a self-serving, self-referential, intellectually unacceptable, anachronistic, neo-Yahweh character. And every other rendering of "God" is an even less satisfactory idolatrous construct. I'm not an atheist in the sense that I disbelieve, but rather in the sense that every God construct is utterly, and ironically useless to me.

Still... I can see, in retrospect, and feel in the present tense, the force of some sort of Providence in my life. I am unable to label this Force, but its reality seems undeniable. It doesn't feel like "me", but it doesn't feel like "other" either. It feels like a cooperative synergy of all forces combined, or more like a participatory awareness than a differentiated "thing". I don't want to call it God because of the unsatisfactory connotations that I tried to enumerate above, but I think it's what people are trying to describe when the fumble around and say things like God is "Love". I like the apophatic concept in methodological terms, but I don't really find the methodological approach useful in approaching It. On the contrary, I find the "whole systems" approach to metaphysical realities to be mostly an exercise in futility since the intrinsic originality of It is obviously outside any participatory functionality.

So, that's a slice. Thank you for your kind and thoughtful response. As always your input is most worthy of contemplation.

Chris

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Continuing on into the fog... I would like to hear other folks try to describe (not define, necessarily) what they mean by "God". It's really difficult, at least for me. It doesn't leave me happy and content. It's not a "feel good" exercise. I have to tear down and deconstruct my motives. I come up against the dark, tangled, and mostly impenetrable knot of my programming. What is it? What is Salvation? What does that mean? What exactly does it do? And why, after these millenia, doesn't religion actually achieve it's stated aims? I'd like to know.

Chris

 

[citizenzen]

I would like to hear other folks try to describe (not define, necessarily) what they mean by "God".

Borrowing from a Buddhist chant...

A formless field of benefaction