Do theists disbelieve the same God as atheists? Topic open for everyone

[Looncall]

This is something I hear people say a lot, and it always puzzles me. I for one have never claimed any mystical experience of my own proves it comes from "outside of me", that it proves there is some God "up there", in some realm of ghosts and angels and whatnot. Yet I seem to get the impression people think this is what is being claimed. Why is that?


The only claim I would say is the experience is something transcendent in nature. That is not the same thing as saying it "comes from" something transcendent, as if it were outside of us. The statement that it transcendent in nature simply is in reference to the ordinary or mundane experience of the world. What we experience in every day life also comes from within us. It doesn't come from outside of us. It is an internal response to the world. So a transcendent experience is one that likewise is a response to the world, just of a transcendent nature as opposed to a typical average daily sort of response. It honestly all boils down to a change in perception of what is right there before us the whole time. And the response in accord with the type of awareness. It no more "comes from" outside than any other experience does.

Make sense?


If you understand it as I just framed it, it really is nothing more than the type of experience that is being described. It is in fact a personal experience of the world. And that is true in any understanding of the world. The nature of reality itself is understood through everyone's personal experiences. The mystical experience allows the mystic to experience the world in a, well, "transcendent" light. It's not transcendent world "up there". It's basically exposing the world in from of you through heightened awareness.

This is very clear. Many thanks.

However, I don't see how one then progresses to statements about gods(s), "ultimate reality" and such like. That is, anything not strictly personal.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I wanted to try to respond a bit more to this, and by "this" I mean the general problem of definitions, or the attitude of skepticism towards approaches to the question about 'God' that deny the possibility of giving a conceptually univocal or comprehensive definition. It seems to me that there's a suspicion that this is more a matter of obfuscation or an attempt to avoid criticism on the part of theists than a defensible position or a reasonable approach (c.f. the entire discussion on agnomists).

I don't assume that you're insincere in your use of the term "God". I just realize that the term has a boatload of meaning, connotation, and baggage with it. This makes me wonder how much baggage goes along with the term when someone uses it in a new way; there must be some, or the person wouldn't have used the word. When the reply is something like "there's no baggage; it's just semantics", I suspect that there's something else going on. Why use "God", then? Why use a baggage-laden term unless at least some of that baggage is important to what you're trying to say?

Also, whether it's deliberate obfuscation or not, I can't count how many times that I've heard someone say something like "I only use the word 'God' because it captures my attitude to the Universe/nature/my experience/whatever" only for them to start talking about their God in ways that imply a lot more about him than the experience or whatnot they claimed was all they meant by "God".

So I'd like to suggest an analogy, and I don't think it's perfect, and I'll point out some of the weak points, but maybe it's useful:

The analogy would compare theological conceptions of the Divine to the cosmological theory of dark matter. Conceptually, "dark matter" is hypothetical. We don't directly observe it, but we infer that there is something (which isn't necessarily even matter, i.e not necessarily a "thing") which explains the divergence between the predictions of our very well established models of gravity and our actual observations of gravitational effects in space. If you ask, "what is dark matter?" the answer will be that we don't know, but we infer certain things, because it must account for the gravitational effects. But if there's a discussion about whether not dark matter is a "thing" (i.e a previously unknown fundamental particle, say, or the product of an undiscovered force), or if you were to require a more concrete account in order to consider the possibility of a real referent of the term "dark matter", you'd be left frustrated.

There are several major differences between your analogy and this situation. Scientists can still answer the question "why call it 'dark matter'?" With dark matter, we don't bring in extra baggage that isn't supported by the facts. (E.g. we don't call it "cosmic cheese"), and what connotational baggage there is in the term "dark" and "matter" is dealt with. Scientists can also answer the question "why do you think this dark matter exists?" and give you reams of data and studies explaining why they claim it's there.

If you could do the same - i.e. answer questions like "why call it 'God'?" "why not call it something else?" and "why do you think it exists?", then I would be happy.

Now the weakness of the analogy is that, whatever ultimately explains the problem which we refer to by speaking of dark matter, it will necessarily be modeled by physics using the same mathematical and theoretical techniques that are used throughout physics. We don't know what dark matter is, but there is not necessarily any question of the answer being unknowable. So it is not a perfect analogy for the intuition about the ineffable, the unknowable. But if you consider both science and theology, not as making proclamations of an absolute truth, but of conveying a human wisdom within their own limits (methodologically, epistemologically, and etc) there is still a parallel, if an inexact one. This is not an argument for the existence of God, it's an attempt to explain why some of us in this thread are offering descriptions of a divine dimension of reality, that we infer (conceptually) from experience, or from the universality of mystical tradition, and yet maintain that we do not know what "it" is. In the same way that "dark matter" is a phrase that refers more to a problematic, an unresolved question, than to something known in a definitive way, so I would say the word "God", in its broadest connotations, also refers to a human existential questioning, an intuition and experience which people have nearly universally felt compelled to question and seek an understanding of.

But it doesn't only refer to that. "God" also refers to a being with will. A cosmic mother- or father-figure. A protector. The creator. A provider. The all-wise and caring source of justice/blessings/curses/etc.

These sorts of connotations have been present in every god-concept in the history of god-concepts. Not every god-concept has all of them, but none have had none of them.

The universality of certain "mystical" insights is not a proof of any specific theory about the nature of the divine, but it's compelling evidence at least that there is some human phenomena that is interesting.

Interesting or not, mystical experiences are irrelevant to the question of gods until you show some sort of link.

You had a profound experience - so what? You could get a profound experience from an acid trip, but I wouldn't consider taking drugs to be a reliable pathway to truth.

... or any altered state, whether it's induced by drugs, physical extremes (e.g. a sweat lodge) or meditation.

What is the nature of the referent of the word? Is it a Supreme Being who creates the world out of nothing? Is it no more than a quirk of human neurology and a side-effect of evolution? I don't know. I can't prove it. It is a rationally defensible position to reject that it could have a referent of the first kind, or to reject any referent that transcends human subjectivity, but I think it's interesting that a more or less pure rationalism still is involved in the same kind of existential question. What is the highest principle of human experience? Or of life? The apotheosis of reason is a different kind of answer to the existential question that is bound up in the problem of "God", but it is related to the theistic modes at least insofar as they are considering a similar problem.

Following millennia of human wisdom I choose to refer to an element of my own experience, and of human experience which I hear those traditions speaking of, as "divine", and I use words like the Ineffable, or Infinite, or Spirit, or talk about an awareness that seems to transcend both the senses and pure reason, or I speak of love, compassion, fullness, or of Brahman, or Sunyata, or any of dozens of different (and mutually incompatible! at least as religious systems) symbols that try to speak to the experience. Ultimately, my argument for the value of this is not an objective demonstration of the truth of a particular conceptual model, but the value I find in it in my own life, which is not a question so much of knowledge as of fullness of life. But I don't go so far as to extrapolate from this that you cannot have a meaningful life as an atheist. It's not really an argument, it's an attempt to share, for whatever value there may be in it.

Again, I have no more reason to think that your mystical experience is any more meaningful to me than someone's drug trip... and I note that drugs have been used in religious rituals to support the sort of views your saying here.

You had an experience. Again: so what? What does anything that you personally felt have anything to do with God, Brahman, transcendence, or any of the other terms you're throwing around?

 

[Windwalker]

This is very clear. Many thanks.

However, I don't see how one then progresses to statements about gods(s), "ultimate reality" and such like. That is, anything not strictly personal.

I'm not sure where I may have said, "God's ultimate reality". In fact I know I've never used that language. I speak of "Ultimate Reality", with capital letters, but that for all intents and purposes interchangeable with the word "God" for me. When I say God, I most often mean "Ultimate Reality". So, as I said before somewhere in this thread, I might say "God" with the gestures of my hands pointing to everything before us and within us referring to Ultimate Being. It's not a deity I am speaking of when I say Ultimate Reality, nor even really when I say the word God.

There is some exception to this however, where I speak of God as the face we put upon the Infinite. That is the case when I may envision God in a 2nd person relationship, an archetypal form to which we relate ourselves and become in ourselves through that imagining. But I try to differentiate between the uses when I do. Sometimes I may not and it could cause confusion.

To the latter point above about God as archetypal form. This explanation below may help clarify:

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
​

Let me know if this helps, and I'll try to clarify better if it doesn't make sense.

 

[Windwalker]

Something to add to the description of "God" as the archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness I referred to above. I discovered this morning where someone said I was insulting atheism in my posts in this thread, a claim I have rejected as true, and they pointed to my post #2 as an example of me being insulting to atheism. I'll bold-letter what was quoted that was read as insulting by me and then make a comment to this in light of what I just posted a couple minutes ago:

I have something similar to this in a different way. The God that the atheist rejects is the anthropomorphic form of God of traditional theism. To say one is an atheist, is to start and end with that imagining of God as the great being in the sky who looks down up his creation, who acts upon it with either grace and compassion or disciplines and judgments, the way a parent would with a child. In other words, the atheist rejects this mythic-literal interpretation of God, what really boils down to a mode of interpretation of reality. In a sense, God is still a symbol, even to them.

So atheism is only atheism to that definition of God, the only one many if not most seem to believe exists. Do all theists imagine God this way? No, of course not. Therefore, is atheism relevant to them? No, because they already don't believe in the same form of God the atheist doesn't. So then, is an atheist, really an atheist?

What I just posted above about God as archetypal form, this is not the God I hear criticized by modern atheism, nor any atheism I am familiar with. What I was referencing in my post #2 was the fact that atheism's criticism is not about other forms of God like this understanding, but specifically about the mythic-literal interpretation of the Abrahamic deity. That's not an insult, but an observation of facts.

I support and applaud this moving beyond mythic-literal understandings. I consider atheism an advance in moving beyond this! All I am saying is that that is not the beginning and end understanding of what God is. As I see it modern atheism doesn't touch what I just posted, and it is in fact starting and ending with that mythic-literal understanding of God in its criticism of theism. If some feel I have insulted atheism outside of this criticism, I sincerely have not intended to. I consider it an advance. But I criticize it as imagining it is the last word on the matter. It's only looking at a small slice of it in its critiques.

I'll quote one thing to unscore my respect of atheism, and where I feel it is of great service to the world. I came across this quote in one of my books I enjoy reading,

It is necessary, therefore, that advancing Knowledge should base herself on a clear, pure and disciplined intellect. It is necessary, too, that she should correct her errors sometimes by a return to the restraint of sensible fact, the concrete realities of the physical world. The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of Earth, even when he seeks a supraphysical Knowledge. It may even be said that the supraphysical can only be really mastered in its fullness – to its heights we can always search– when we keep our feet firmly on the physical. “Earth is His footing,” says the Upanishad whenever it images the Self that manifests in the universe. And it is certainly the fact the wider we extend and the surer we make our knowledge of the physical world, the wider and surer becomes our foundation for the higher knowledge, even for the highest, even for the Brahmavidya.

In emerging, therefore, out of the materialistic period of human Knowledge we must be careful that we do not rashly condemn what we are leaving or throw away even one tittle of its gains, before we can summon perceptions and powers that are well grasped and secure, to occupy their place. Rather we shall observe with respect and wonder the work that Atheism had done for the Divine and admire the services that Agnosticism has rendered in preparing the illimitable increase of knowledge. In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration."


Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pg 12,13
​

I do not insult atheism, I applaud it, while at the same time understanding it as "partial truth".

 

[Looncall]

I'm not sure where I may have said, "God's ultimate reality". In fact I know I've never used that language. I speak of "Ultimate Reality", with capital letters, but that for all intents and purposes interchangeable with the word "God" for me. When I say God, I most often mean "Ultimate Reality". So, as I said before somewhere in this thread, I might say "God" with the gestures of my hands pointing to everything before us and within us referring to Ultimate Being. It's not a deity I am speaking of when I say Ultimate Reality, nor even really when I say the word God.

There is some exception to this however, where I speak of God as the face we put upon the Infinite. That is the case when I may envision God in a 2nd person relationship, an archetypal form to which we relate ourselves and become in ourselves through that imagining. But I try to differentiate between the uses when I do. Sometimes I may not and it could cause confusion.

To the latter point above about God as archetypal form. This explanation below may help clarify:

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
​

Let me know if this helps, and I'll try to clarify better if it doesn't make sense.

I find this kind of writing so vague as to border on the meaningless. The term "deepity" springs to mind.

"Archtypal summit of one's own Consciousness": what can this mean?

What do you mean by "ultimate reality"? (I don't buy that you gain anything by putting the phrase in capitals.) How do you know there is one?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I think that "God" has become so closely associated with Abrahamic monotheism that it's better to use different language if that isn't what we're actually talking about.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

(I don't buy that you gain anything by putting the phrase in capitals.)

I think that starting words with capital letters is very problematic. It makes ordinary words into jargon, and also implies that they convey some deeper truth or carry more weight.

So apparently "Truth" is more true than "truth", and "God" is more real than "god."

 

[Windwalker]

I find this kind of writing so vague as to border on the meaningless. The term "deepity" springs to mind.

To me when I first read that quote it was crystal clear, not vague or unduly deep to just sound deep, "deepity" as you put it. This says to me it's a matter of foundational understanding that is the issue. Are you familiar with what archetypes are? If not, that could cause confusion. If I make an error it's in assuming others know what these mean. That I am often guilty of.

"Archtypal summit of one's own Consciousness": what can this mean?

Archetypes are used by Carl Jung to describe the symbolic representation of universal forms, such as the hero archetype, etc. The "Archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness" it is the symbolic representation of one's own deepest knowledge of self. It is who we are before and beyond everything we tell ourselves we are through conventional means, through language and culture and thoughts and ideas about ourselves. "God" is our own Infinite Self, not our finite limited self. This makes me thing of something Hafiz said that rings loudly true with me, "To know ourselves is to know God. To know God is to know ourselves". You see? God is not "other" to us, but is us, before and beyond the small self of our egoic self-identifications. It's simply knowing who we truly are, not who we imagine we our with our ideas of ourselves.

This may sound confusing, and understandably so. It's not something people normally are even aware of about themselves. This is where things like meditation practice opens awareness beyond these "given" we assume as true reality. But these words are in fact not gobbledy gook, but have real, very real referents in ourselves. We see them by entering into them directly.

What do you mean by "ultimate reality"? (I don't buy that you gain anything by putting the phrase in capitals.) How do you know there is one?

By entering into these states of awareness directly. At best someone telling you about them is simply pointers one may or may not be able to wrap the reasoning mind around. At best it's a theoretical possibility. But to actually have awareness itself open to seeing the one seeing, to see our minds itself, radically shifts reality away from that center and exposes it as "illusion". What is sensed, what is experienced is that that was not really reality at all, but like a dream state of reality. "Ultimate Reality" is what is experienced as unconditional being itself. In other words, not conditioned about thoughts and idea, or even form itself.

 

[Windwalker]

I think that starting words with capital letters is very problematic. It makes ordinary words into jargon, and also implies that they convey some deeper truth or carry more weight.

So apparently "Truth" is more true than "truth", and "God" is more real than "god."

It is a referent to distinguish between relative truth and absolute Truth. But to qualify, Truth with a capital T is not a propositional truth, it is not a truth, but Truth itself. It is not something someone "believes in". These capital letters all point to the unconditional. So if someone uses it to say "this is true what I'm saying," and what they are saying is a propositional truth, they are using it inappropriately.

 

[Windwalker]

I think that "God" has become so closely associated with Abrahamic monotheism that it's better to use different language if that isn't what we're actually talking about.

I responded to this before when you said it, and I'll add again here that I'm sympathetic to this and understand it. But in a certain light, even the Abrahamic God is an understanding of the Ultimate. It is in a sense "God", just understood in mythic-literal terms. Make sense?

 

[`mud]

hey Windy, and Spiny,
Ultimate Reality....so simple....anyone could think it.
To my mind, I replace that phrase with Cosmos, some times I use the word 'enodlo' meaning 'oldone',
kinda like Einstein's thoughts of the old one throwing dice, or doesn't throw them,
never figured that out, but I think it, and it means the light beyond the Cosmos with a CAP 'C'.
But UR can get it also, it has to exist as something ultimate, doesn't it ?
It's not in any books, not one word in text, not even a whisper voiced, just a thought of mind.
That's the gnosis of my mind, the inner channal within my thinking, all that I know.
~
'mud

 

[Windwalker]

hey Windy, and Spiny,
Ultimate Reality....so simple....anyone could think it.
To my mind, I replace that phrase with Cosmos

Cosmos would work too, if you used it the sense the Greeks said it which was not merely the night sky or the heavens above as we mean "the Cosmos" now, but that it included everything internal and external, relational, societal, cultural, atomic, emotional, mind, body, soul, spirit: everything. I know one author who refers to it as Kosmos to make this distinction between the Greek understanding and the modern notion of the Cosmos as stars and whatnot. What to me makes Ultimate Reality is that includes everything and excludes nothing. It's not just another idea of what is true versus what is false.

 

[Looncall]

It is a referent to distinguish between relative truth and absolute Truth. But to qualify, Truth with a capital T is not a propositional truth, it is not a truth, but Truth itself. It is not something someone "believes in". These capital letters all point to the unconditional. So if someone uses it to say "this is true what I'm saying," and what they are saying is a propositional truth, they are using it inappropriately.

I am still uneasy with this style of writing. It reminds me of the postmodern stuff I have seen where someone who really has nothing to say writes in an elaborate way to disguise that fact. Trivialities wrapped up in baroque language make me suspicious.

 

[`mud]

hey Loon,
What about the "..light beyond the light..".....how does that work for you !
Too poetic still ? Try my name ? Is that plain as ....
There's always straws in those winds, aren't there ??
~
'mud

 

[Windwalker]

I am still uneasy with this style of writing. It reminds me of the postmodern stuff I have seen where someone who really has nothing to say writes in an elaborate way to disguise that fact. Trivialities wrapped up in baroque language make me suspicious.

Well, yes that exists. I'm not sure I'd call that postmodern so much as New Age, which is not the same thing. What happens is people take legitimate language and they make it some sort of pseudo-jargon. The words sound appropriate, but they are used in such as way as to bolster nothing but nonsense. I know what this is. But just because someone then hears the same words used legitimately, and are unfamiliar with the concepts upon which it's founded they make the mistake to assume it's all just New Age jargon. It's like the madness I feel in listening to fundamentalist Christians using all the right words, but saying what is really little more than just infantile twaddle. All the right words, saying something quite different.

There's nothing wrong with using the words, but it's the context that helps determine whether it's actually pointing to something, or is just twaddle, or "word salad", as those who like to dismiss out of hand anything they automatically associate with New Age not understanding anything else.

Unless of course you actually mean postmodernism, which then you'll need to clarify what you are referring to. The use of capital letters to refer to the Absolute, has been around considerably longer than postmodernism has.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Something to add to the description of "God" as the archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness I referred to above. I discovered this morning where someone said I was insulting atheism in my posts in this thread, a claim I have rejected as true, and they pointed to my post #2 as an example of me being insulting to atheism. I'll bold-letter what was quoted that was read as insulting by me and then make a comment to this in light of what I just posted a couple minutes ago:


What I just posted above about God as archetypal form, this is not the God I hear criticized by modern atheism, nor any atheism I am familiar with.

Maybe part of the problem here is that you assume everyone else approaches the world in terms of archetypal forms. I don't.

... and I'm not so sure that constructing an "archetypal form" of all gods - or even a set if forms to do this - is even possible.

There's a problem: a coherent definition of "god" is impossible, even before we consider "non-traditional" theistic beliefs. There's no way to define "god" in an objective way that makes Hermes, the divine messenger, a god but Gabriel, the divine messenger, not. Thor is a god, Superman is not. Why? No objective reason that I can see, just precedent.

...but precedent isn't enough, either, since we generally don't have a problem saying "that's not a god" about all sorts of things from emperors to the Sun that were traditionally worshipped as gods by various cultures.

What I was referencing in my post #2 was the fact that atheism's criticism is not about other forms of God like this understanding, but specifically about the mythic-literal interpretation of the Abrahamic deity. That's not an insult, but an observation of facts.

It's a mischaracterization of the facts. One that implies that atheists are narrow-minded fools.

I support and applaud this moving beyond mythic-literal understandings. I consider atheism an advance in moving beyond this!

... but not as advanced as you, right?

"I don't look down on atheists as much as other people I look down upon" is hardly a compliment.

All I am saying is that that is not the beginning and end understanding of what God is. As I see it modern atheism doesn't touch what I just posted, and it is in fact starting and ending with that mythic-literal understanding of God in its criticism of theism.

Except that it does. You've admitted as much several times: you've said that for a decade now, you've run into atheists who don't consider what you describe as "God" to be a god. It's just that you fail to allow the possibility that this objection could be based in anything other than a "Sunday school understanding" of God.

I do not insult atheism, I applaud it, while at the same time understanding it as "partial truth".

There's a term for this approach: "damning with faint praise." Telling someone that they're less ignorant than they could have been otherwise is hardly a compliment.

... and pretty insulting to traditional theists as well. I know many who are very intelligent, thoughtful, and not the fools you make them out to be.

 

[lovemuffin]

re: "traditional theism" -- The other day I posted a status update which is a quote from Pseudo-Dionysius, a 6th century Christian mystical theologian, heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, whose writings became foundational to much of Christian theology, especially in eastern orthodoxy. Even Thomas Aquinas, who in many respects exemplifies the scholastic and more rationalist school of kataphatic theology, cites Dionysius more than anyone else, or at least so I have read. In any case, Dionysius writes in an epistle: "Theology does not demonstrate the truth, but exposes it nakedly in symbols, so that the soul, changed by holiness and light, enters into it."

What I find fascinating is that a great deal of traditional Christian theology sounds a lot like Windwalker does, or like what we are now calling non-traditional theism, in comparison to what we take to be the "traditional" theology. It is in an effort to make that point that I am often quoting those writers. The history of western monotheism is complicated, let alone ideas about Divinity in other religions. In many respects, I consider myself a "traditional theist", but there is certainly a question of which tradition. I think Windwalker is criticizing a particular approach towards the question, and traditional/non-traditional doesn't quite capture the distinction. He also speaks about mythic/literal vs symbolic or mystical, which is probably closer. The recognition that these more apophatic approaches are also quite traditional is one reason why we might hang on to the word 'God', or 'Theos', or etc. Although I think the arguments about baggage are compelling, and I think we also agree that the word itself is not necessary.

With regard to the implicit insult of believing someone is wrong, or has only a partial truth, I think if we always infer an insult in a disagreement (you are wrong, and therefore ignorant, and therefore in some sense less than I), it's inevitable that we will be insulting each other, since we will always have disagreements, regardless of our identifications as "theists" and "atheists". Theists disagree on everything too. I believe there are many atheists who view theism, speaking generally, as obsolete, an expression of human ignorance that we've progressed beyond. Religion is expected to die out as modernity, science, and atheism triumph over the ignorance and abuses of religion. It is probably natural that, in thinking we have a more correct or more useful answer, we believe that the other answers are less correct, less wise, less useful, and etc. At least for myself, I try to separate the value of a person from an evaluation of what they know, or where we agree or disagree. I believe that there is value in my religiosity that some atheists might be missing, which is to say that I think they may be ignorant of it, but I don't really intend that as an insult. I assume they believe my religiosity is also ignorance, but don't assume they think me a worse person for that. They also don't intend an insult. If we are both at least somewhat humble about the state of our ignorance, about the possibilities of finding value even in opposing viewpoints that we cannot embrace for ourselves, because we all see and experience things a little differently -- in other words if we embrace some minimum of pluralism -- then I hope we can disagree without either giving insult or taking offense. But of course in a debate it's necessary to try to elucidate the points of disagreement and convey the reasons why we hold one view instead of another.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

It is a referent to distinguish between relative truth and absolute Truth. But to qualify, Truth with a capital T is not a propositional truth, it is not a truth, but Truth itself. It is not something someone "believes in". These capital letters all point to the unconditional. So if someone uses it to say "this is true what I'm saying," and what they are saying is a propositional truth, they are using it inappropriately.

So how do you know that something is absolute Truth and not relative truth?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

hey Windy, and Spiny,
Ultimate Reality....so simple....anyone could think it.
To my mind, I replace that phrase with Cosmos, some times I use the word 'enodlo' meaning 'oldone',
'mud

I like "Cosmos" because it's nice and naturalistic and reminds me of Carl Sagan. "Ultimate Reality" I'm not sure about - what other kind of reality is there?

 

[Windwalker]

So how do you know that something is absolute Truth and not relative truth?

A better way to say it is how do you know Absolute Truth. That is very different than saying knowing "something is Absolute Truth". I would not say I know something is absolute truth, because that would be referring to something I'm thinking or believing as being true. I'm speaking of Truth itself, which is not "a truth", not something someone believes in. Anything we believe in is a partial or relative truth. Anything I think about is a partial truth. It's a perception of Truth itself.

So then to answer how does one know Truth itself, not to sound too cryptic here, but I touched on this before, you know your Self. You get in touch with being itself, not an idea about what reality is, not an idea of who you are, or an idea about the truth about something or another. It is sinking into just simple, pure Awareness, without any thought about it. It is experienced as Pure, and is not in conflict with ideas, but is the foundation of all ideas that arise. So Truth is not "a truth", not a propositional idea, but the foundation, the nature of all relative truths that arise from it, partial lights. If I state an idea about something, it is always partial, always relative. And this is as equally true for me as it is for anyone. It's the nature of thoughts and ideas.