What I believe.....

God is an idea to Wil, not personal, not judging; if I am correct. A nice idea. Won't you agree to that, GK? Some people may say, why have this idea (of God) at all. But why should anyone constrain
Wil's freedom to imagine?
 
Wasn't denigrating just asking for clarification. From his previous posts my understanding of Wil's concept of God was that we are all a part of God. That God is within each of us, not some force separate from us.
 
Yes I believe G!d to be principle...the underlying principle of everything....the theory of everything...permeates the stars, the universe, rocks and us...

Oneness...all connected...

Not a personal G!d or acting entity...

we access thru the law of mind action...thoughts in mind appear in kind...what we think about we bring about...good or bad.

G!d permeates us...and we access from within...

there is a power within each of us far greater than anything that exists outside of us...and that is the connection to us all.

we is one.
 
wil said:
Yes I believe G!d to be principle...the underlying principle of everything....the theory of everything...permeates the stars, the universe, rocks and us...
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In short, a human construct?

wil said:
Not a personal G!d or acting entity...
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So nothing other than a human construct?

Is this not the ultimate anthropomorphic projection of God? Have you not just taken the Medieval portrait of an old man with a beard off the wall, and replaced it with an post-modern abstract?
 
Thomas said:
In short, a human construct?


So nothing other than a human construct?

Is this not the ultimate anthropomorphic projection of God? Have you not just taken the Medieval portrait of an old man with a beard off the wall, and replaced it with an post-modern abstract?
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Interesting ground to walk on. Is there any evidence that anything we can say about God or religion is anything other than a human construct?
 
Paladin said:
Interesting ground to walk on. Is there any evidence that anything we can say about God or religion is anything other than a human construct?
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Well I would say there's evidence in abundance, in all traditions, but not proof.

The claim of the Great Traditions is insight not into a construct, but insight into a transcendent reality, and a knowing, beyond knowledge, of the Real.
 
Paladin said:
Interesting ground to walk on. Is there any evidence that anything we can say about God or religion is anything other than a human construct?
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This is the question in a nutshell. There is no verifiable proof that all the sacred writings of all the great religions are anything more than the words of mortals.

One can come to the conclusion that sacred writings have a divine origin and that is fine. It is an opinion though. It is a choice to believe that.

That is what religion is all about though is it not? Having faith in something for which there is no verifiable proof?
 
Thomas said:
Well I would say there's evidence in abundance, in all traditions, but not proof.

The claim of the Great Traditions is insight not into a construct, but insight into a transcendent reality, and a knowing, beyond knowledge, of the Real.
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I understand the experience of human beings, but a claim is still a human construct, so is the idea of a transcendent reality.
 
Thomas said:
True ... very true ...
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Please understand, I'm not attempting to denigrate or marginalize, but I firmly believe that when we tear at the fabric of another person's beliefs, we are tearing at the fabric of our own.
 
Gordian Knot said:
This is the question in a nutshell. There is no verifiable proof that all the sacred writings of all the great religions are anything more than the words of mortals.
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True.

Gordian Knot said:
One can come to the conclusion that sacred writings have a divine origin and that is fine. It is an opinion though. It is a choice to believe that.
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For some it's a conviction, more than an opinion they happen to hold, but I get what you're saying. (And it could be 'a very firm opinion', so maybe I'm just being picky.)

Gordian Knot said:
That is what religion is all about though is it not? Having faith in something for which there is no verifiable proof?
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Empirical verification, yes, which is 'cheating' because religion by its nature an experience which is beyond the empirical, so in that sense, yes.

Can we prove 'love'? We can come up with empirical data which brackets the phenomena, I suppose, but does that prove it?
 
Paladin said:
Please understand, I'm not attempting to denigrate or marginalize, but I firmly believe that when we tear at the fabric of another person's beliefs, we are tearing at the fabric of our own.
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Agreed.

But there is the case when someone tears up a belief system, and denigrates it, and then uses those materials to fabricate their own 'version of events', then I think one has the valid right to defend and to challenge.
 
Thomas said:
Agreed.

But there is the case when someone tears up a belief system, and denigrates it, and then uses those materials to fabricate their own 'version of events', then I think one has the valid right to defend and to challenge.
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Agreed. I'm interested to know however, how you determine when this is happening and when someone is honestly talking about their own understanding of things in general. For example, people have very strange ideas about psychology, and I hear some very odd versions of what psychology entails, much of which is merely outdated ideas and misinformation. Sometimes I feel as if I need to set the record straight, but most times I just let it go, because one must pick one's battles carefully. I know how hard it can be to watch people make a mess of things that you have studied so carefully over many years.
 
From Chabad.org....

The Name
The flow of being: now you have found G‑d The flow of being: now you have found G‑d. In fact, in Hebrew, that's His name. G‑d's name is a series of four letters that express all forms of the verb of all verbs, the verb to be: is, was, being, will be, about to be, causing to be, should be --all of these are in those four letters of G‑d's name. As G‑d told Moses when he asked for His name, "I will be that which I will be."
In our modern languages that doesn't work. We quickly slip into the trap of thingness again. Who is G‑d? We answer, "He is One who was, is and will be."

There we go with the "thing that is" business again. No, G‑d is not a thing that is or was or will be. G‑d is isness itself. Oy! The frustration of the language. We need new words: Ising. Isness. Isingness. Isifying. Isifier. In Hebrew you can conjugate the verb to be in all these ways and more. Perhaps in English one day we will do the same. Until then, we are like artists using pastels to imitate Rembrandt; like musicians trying to play middle-eastern strains in tempered C Major.

And the proof: We ask questions that make sense only in English, but in Hebrew are plainly absurd. Such as, "Does G‑d exist?" In Hebrew, that's a tautology, somewhat the equivalent of "Does existence exist?"

There is no need to "believe" in this G‑d--if you know what we are talking about, you just know. You will know, also, that there is nothing else but this G‑d--what is there that stands outside isness?

Think simple: You wake up in the morning and, even before coffee, there is As for faith and belief, those are reserved for greater things. Like believing that this great Isness that isifies all that ises cares, knows, has compassion, can be related to. In other words, saying that reality is a caring experience. Which reduces to saying that compassion is real, purpose is real, life is real. That's something you have to believe. But G‑d's existence--like most ideas that men argue about--that's just a matter of semantics.

Think simple: You wake up in the morning and, even before coffee, there is. Reality. Existence. Not "the things that exist" but existence itself. The flow. The infinite flow of light and energy. Of being, of existence. Of is. Think of all that flow of isingness all in a single, perfectly simple point. Get into it, commune with it, speak to it, become one with it --that is G‑d.
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There is more....this was the end of a discussion about getting over the 'thingness' of G!d.

What Is G?d? - The Not-thing - Essentials

Yes, I call myself a Christian, a nontheistic panentheist Christian, not believing in the standard Christian G!d... and I take my sources from the folks that wrote the book, and other books, the Gitas, Upanishads, Dharma, Tao te ching, to me they all have value.
 
wil said:
Yes, I call myself a Christian, a nontheistic panentheist Christian, not believing in the standard Christian G!d...
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There you go ... a self-serving construct.

Same with Rabbi Tzvi Freeman's quote ... it's cool, but it doesn't really stand up to any logical criticism:
There is no need to "believe" in this G‑d--if you know what we are talking about, you just know.
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Like people know that smoking is bad for them, but keep on smoking.
This is just sophistry, Wil.

Ask anyone who actually walks the walk, and they'd laugh at this posturing at 'insight'.
 
Nick the Pilot said:
"...I call myself a Christian..."

--> What is your definition of the word Christian?
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Indeed. Definitions should not be up to personal interpretation. I know, I know. I go on about this all the time! It is one of my pet peeves. Seems to me the only way we can communicate with each other in any kind of effective way is if we agree on the definitions of what we are discussing.

Webster defines the words (well a few others do too) in a dictionary. It is in our best interests to stick to the accepted definitions.

When people get to decide for themselves what a word means (an epidemic of massive proportions in the world today) the ability for rational discussion collapses.

My all time favorite use of self definition is one a lot of you will be familiar with, i.e. "It depends on what the definition of "is" is. Self serving gobbldy gook of the first order! Brilliant even. Bullturds, but brilliant bullturds!
 
Gordian Knot said:
Indeed. Definitions should not be up to personal interpretation. I know, I know. I go on about this all the time! It is one of my pet peeves. Seems to me the only way we can communicate with each other in any kind of effective way is if we agree on the definitions of what we are discussing.
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And I will always stand next to you and argue the opposite! Let language evolve and be comfortable to say what and how you wish with your friends. If we all understand each other we have fulfilled the purpose of words.
 
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