This is a little off topic to go down this rabbit hole, but I'll say there is nothing freer than Freedom itself. The fullness of the Freedom is limitless though. This is the nature of the nondual.
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Do theists disbelieve the same God as atheists? Topic open for everyone
- Thread starter Jumi
- Start date
Looncall
Well-Known Member
When you go deeply enough within, who are you really? You see this is about disidentification with the surface structures of what we look at and say definies us. If we can look at those, then who is it looking? It's the exploration of knowing that, stripping away all of these surface identification as this object or that in our awareness, that leaves us with simply the one who is seeing, or the "Seer". When we realize ourselves as That, we see that it is unconditional. It is not based on this or on that, and is who we are before and beyond all forms we self-identify with. So what is that, but the Ultimate Reality of ourselves, and we come to see it is the Ultimate Reality of everything. We are not this object or that object. Form is none other than Emptiness, and Emptiness is none other that form.
Earlier I talked about the wetness of each wave, it is the same wetness in small waves and big waves. There is no "more wet" or "less wet", than wet itself. When we realize that wetness in ourselves, we see this is the same in all forms. When I say I am the universe, it is not to say I am the objects that exist in the night sky, literally. I am saying that the "wetness" that is in my wave is the same wetness in all waves. I am ultimately not this skin sack I am in. I am the universe itself in this skin sack. This unique skin sack is the eyes of the universe in this form. As Carl Sagan eloquently put it, "We are the universe experiencing itself". I am 14.5 billion years of evolution typing to you right now in this person I am. And you are 14.5 billion years of evolution trying to understand the world through my eyes through reading these words. Marvelous. Quite marvelous.
I have never said the gods are literal beings. Again, I think it would be enormously helpful if you were to make a list of what you believe the mystic is claiming and I can go point for point down that list and either affirm or correct misconceptions. I feel you are working off a lot of misconceptions or misinformation.
Just a wry aside that I hope amuses. I was on a canoe trip on a day with the kind of thick mist that is sometimes called "Scotch mist". Its effect is to soak one very gradually. Exasperated, we used the term "luke wet". (for other language users, body temperature is called luke warm)
I appreciate the poetic value of your expressions, but I find them problematic as statements of fact. You are not 14.5 billion years of evolution, you are a human. Maybe we could use the phrase "as if" to sort out this disagreement.
Orbit
I'm a planet
Even given pantheism, you clearly assume God is Abrahamic to Ouroboros, otherwise why do you call it hypocritical?
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Of course this is metaphorical expressions. Anything the mystic points to uses metaphors. Again, we are not talking about objects laying around out there. But if you think about it, what is a human? Am I not stardust?
As an exercise, after you hopefully lay out what you think it is mystics are claiming (I genuinely think this will help progress our civil discussion between us, which I appreciate), we may wish to examine this point you said that "I am a human". Is that somehow separate from the universe that lives within me? Is "human" separate from the strings and quarks and atoms and molecules and cells that live within me doing their things and are as much me as my thoughts about myself? Where do you do place the locus of your self-identity? This is something most people general just assume without introspection. "This is me!," the child smiles as he points to his body. "This is me!" the teen smiles as he looks at his room, his bike, his friends, and his hobbies. "This is me!," the adult beams as he points to his job and his care and his wife and his family and he thoughts and ideas and personality. Is it? Is that who we truly are? And if so, why does this change over our lifetimes?
So what is "a human"? Isn't it also a form of the universe? Am I separate from the universe? Most people assume we are. And that is what the mystical experience does. It shifts your perception away from these separate, constructed distinctions which we exclusively identify ourselves with, separating us from the world and our own true Self. Everything I am saying here in actual realization that people have, not just concepts or ideas. The center of your identity becomes Infinite in being, not just your body, your friends, or ideas you have about what makes you different from others.
BTW, I loved the story about the mist!
He was responding to Oroborus, not me I believe.
Orbit
I'm a planet
fixed it.
thx
Come again?
He complains that atheists assume that theists only believe in the Christian god while assuming that atheists only reject the Christian god. He's doing the mirror image of what he says we shouldn't do.
It's hypocritical because he's assuming the beliefs of others while comdemning assuming the beliefs of others.
Orbit
I'm a planet
So what ARE you assuming about what "God" means?
Out of curiosity, why would you say that I assume that God is Abrahamic right after I finish giving an example of a non-Abrahamic god concept that I would consider to be a god?
Orbit
I'm a planet
So what ARE you assuming about what "God" means?
I don't think that the term "God" (or "god") has one coherent definition.
Orbit
I'm a planet
What definition are YOU using when arguing against mystic pan(en)theists as you do here in this thread?
If God does not have one coherent definition, then how can anyone claim to be an atheist of something they cannot define? How can they reject something that has no definitions? Logically since God is being rejected as true or valid, there has to be some definition being rejected. What is that definition that is being rejected? What specifically is someone an atheist in regards to? A lack of definition? Is atheism actually just anti-abstraction in general?
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Most of my arguments with mystics have nothing to do with definitions of "god". They're more to do with whether mystical experiences are reliable pathways to truth. So far, no self-declared mystic has given me any reason for me to rate their experience as more important or meaningful than someone's acid trip.
As for the definition of "god", though, I see a few things that are common to all god-concepts:
- a god is an object of worship
- a god an entity with will
- a god is "above" humanity in some way, whether by being more important, more powerful, or physically bigger, etc.
None of these are exclusive to gods, so they wouldn't work as a definition, and I don't think they capture all that "god" means, but I think that a single definition of the term is impossible anyway without violating how we use the word (e.g. Greek gods are gods, similar angels are not).
In practice, atheism (or theism) ends up being a matter of rejecting (or accepting) individual god-concepts one by one or group by group. The analogy I like to use is that trying to define "gods" is a lot like trying to define "employees of XYZ, Inc." No short description will neatly divide the world into XYZ employees and non-XYZ employees. You'll end up having to go to the employee roster to figure it out.
Also, the vagueness of the term "god" often doesn't matter to me, since the fuzzy edges of the term are often other things I don't believe in anyhow: for instance, I don't really care about the distinction between "god", "angel", and "ghost", since I don't believe in any of them.
Those sorts of distinctions matter more to, for instance, people who believe in angels but want to call themselves "monotheists", or to people who believe in kami but want to call themselves "atheists".
Orbit
I'm a planet
I don't agree with any of your 3 premises about God. God as I understand it needs no worship, has no "will", because will is anthropomorphic, and is not outside of you but within you, in fact is the spark of your consciousness.
As to mystics, they seek union with the godhead, with whatever in our consciousness is beyond ordinary waking reality. They don't seek scientific truth. They seek mystical union. Mystics make no claims about the natural world. Some, as in nature mysticism, make no claims even about the supernatural world. The closest we come is panpsychism, the idea that the universe itself is a form of consciousness, broadly defined, that we too, are part of.
Now that you understand us, can you let us live in peace? We aren't obsessed with reducing everything to material evidence. Human psychology and spirituality are related to phenomenology, or the study of experience and meaning, not to the study of MRIs.
I have been making the argument from the outset that what is understood as God and is rejected by atheism, which is what is defining atheism in contrast to those beliefs, are all the mythic-literal interpretations of God. That is the predominant mode of belief in the Christian idea of God in the West. Even if there are individual or group concepts, the one's you have focused, or "care about" in your words, are the mythic literal God you describe in your general description from above:
- a god is an object of worship
- a god an entity with will
- a god is "above" humanity in some way, whether by being more important, more powerful, or physically bigger, etc.
I'll add one in there you could yourself if it had come to mind, that God is external to oneself. In practice, what atheism is rejecting is this mythic conception of God. And that has been my point from the outset, something that I realized was true as an atheist myself as I became aware of other modes of thought beyond the mythic mode in world religions.
You did however create a general bucket definition that seems to work for you. It's that which you reject. You have to have some idea in order to say you don't believe in it, and you did provide one strong enough to make a disidentification from it by the term atheist.
Of course in all of my "vaguaries" as they have been called, not one of these angels and ghosts and whatnot are even a distant glimmer in my eye. Again, these are mythic concepts, and to you as you just said here, these are the things you don't believe in. These mythic concepts are what you are an atheist against. Again, this has been my point from the outset, and this is supporting what I am saying. You are not rejecting rational or even mystical ideas of God, as none of these are part of those, regardless how "fuzzy" the way it is spoken about may appear. Do you believe I believe in ghosts and goblins, fairies and elves, and an old guy sitting on a throne in heaven with a dove above his head?
Again, all examples of mythic belief. My point is being made. And you know what, that's fine. I don't believe those either. So obviously I respect this, since it's something I am myself.
Okay?
I thought I should deal with this separately:
I consider ignosticism to be a form of atheism, since a concept can't be rationally accepted as true until it can be evaluated.
In these cases, rejection isn't so much "you're wrong" as it is "you're so incoherent you can't possibly be right".
As an analogy, we can reject the claim "the colour blue is taller than the Cuban missile crisis" without worrying about how to measure the height of a colour or an event.
... or maybe not so much "reject" as "disregard".
There is the school of thought - ignosticism - that the concept (or set of concepts) referred to by the term "god" is not coherent enough to be evaluated for truth or falsehood.
I consider ignosticism to be a form of atheism, since a concept can't be rationally accepted as true until it can be evaluated.
In these cases, rejection isn't so much "you're wrong" as it is "you're so incoherent you can't possibly be right".
As an analogy, we can reject the claim "the colour blue is taller than the Cuban missile crisis" without worrying about how to measure the height of a colour or an event.
... or maybe not so much "reject" as "disregard".
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
It has turned into a word-rejection game.