If God is something real for you, how do you imagine who/what that is?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Yes. God is only recognizable as a gestalt and cannot be deduced from a compilation of all demonstrable facts. It isn’t an empirical matter nor a question of pure logic. If it has any validity at all you’d need access to insight afforded by the depths of your humanity.

This doesn't strike me as the way that someone would talk about something that literally, objectively exists. Was this your intention?

 

[Whateverist]

I appreciate your response, and can forgive the ignorance of polytheism. I was not suggesting anything comic book, what made you assume I was?

God(s) mean many things to many people.

I didn't think you in particular thought that but I just mean to show how stereotypes can over simplify and distort too.

 

[The Hammer]

I didn't think you in particular thought that but I just mean to show how stereotypes can over simplify and distort too.

Hard not to see that as it was in response to my question, but I accept your explanation.

 

[Whateverist]

This doesn't strike me as the way that someone would talk about something that literally, objectively exists. Was this your intention?

"Objectively exists" isn't a category I use much, at least not in matters of the sacred. I think the sacred is a subjective matter, not an empirical one.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

"Objectively exists" isn't a category I use much, at least not in matters of the sacred. I think the sacred is a subjective matter, not an empirical one.

The question of what we should hold sacred is a subjective matter. The question of whether a thing we hold sacred actually exists is not.

 

[Whateverist]

The question of what we should hold sacred is a subjective matter. The question of whether a thing we hold sacred actually exists is not.

That is fine. You do you but it seems obtuse to me. Dreams and creative inspiration are entirely subjective and real as such. I think the sacred is similar. Its existence like the other two can be fleeting and disappear when focussed on directly. For me God is not a being in any sense but is rather a conception of a unity which contains the multitude of individuals. That can be a valuable perspective when cultivated but if only want the concretely objective is of value to you, have fun.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

That is fine. You do you but it seems obtuse to me.

Care to tell me why you felt the need to resort to insults?

Dreams and creative inspiration are entirely subjective and real as such. I think the sacred is similar. Its existence like the other two can be fleeting and disappear when focussed on directly.

Do you mean that your god(s) themselves or their sacredness "disappears when focussed on"?

For me God is not a being in any sense but is rather a conception of a unity which contains the multitude of individuals. That can be a valuable perspective when cultivated but if only want the concretely objective is of value to you, have fun.

It seems like you're using circular language to obfuscate. It also seems like the approach you describe is effectively atheism cosplaying as theism.

 

[Tamino]

I imagine the greater Gods and Goddesses as beings that are far bigger than I am... not bigger in size, necessarily... bigger in scope.

In my way of experiencing the divine (which is of course subjective) I see certain aspects or facets of divinities present in my life. Most obvious are the basic bits of my environment. Every breath is the breath of life, given to me by the gods. Every sunrise is a new reiteration of creation, the sun god manifests as the visible sun, and each night I look up into the embrace of mother sky.
My feet are on father earth, each bird might be carrying the soul of a god.
So the gods and goddesses are immanent and manifest in the world around me, but that is not the entirety of their being. They also exist as more ephemeral concepts of the mind, and I am sure that they also exist in ways that are impossible for my human understanding to grasp.

 

[Whateverist]

I appreciate your response, and can forgive the ignorance of polytheism. I was not suggesting anything comic book, what made you assume I was?

God(s) mean many things to many people.

Just rereading parts of The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist and copied this quote from early on in the introduction which helps me think about “God” and what god belief is really.

I can easily understand someone saying ‘I can see why we need to go beyond what science can tell us. Very few people now believe that science can answer all our questions. And you have already suggested that metaphysics and science when properly understood sustain one another in different ways. But why bring God into it? God is no more an explanation of how things came about than the ground of Being. Where, after all, does God come from? We are still as ignorant. Theology gets us no further than philosophy.’ I am sympathetic, particularly because the weight of history attached to the word makes it hazardous to invoke the word God. It is perfectly true that invoking God does not explain anything. But, importantly, that is not its purpose. The recognition of God is not an answer to a question: it is to fully understand the question itself. In this spirit Wittgenstein wrote: ‘To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life.’ And he continued: ‘To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.’44 The point of invoking God is to ensure that we do not lose sight of the deepest of life’s enigmas. ‘When we speak of God’, writes theologian Herbert McCabe, ‘we do not clear up a puzzle; we draw attention to a mystery.’45 When the word disappears from our vocabulary, we don’t abolish that mystery; we just cease to recognise that it is there. We no longer know what it is we do not know. There is nothing shameful in not knowing: the human mind is inevitably characterised by its ignorance more than by its limited understanding. But the deeper ignorance is when we choose to put out of mind what it is we do not know, and pretend to know what we never can.

Location 342

 

[Balthazzar]

When I was a young kid I imagined God as a beardy guy in the sky. Soon I stopped thinking God was real because it didn't jive with everything else I knew about the world and because my very religious father was away with the navy and my mother wasn't dragging seven of us there alone. I pretty much figured it was just old superstition held together by long habit. I was pretty dismissive and naively thought science was all the reality we were going to get.

Now I think I had been rash. The real decision isn't whether you do or don't think God exists but what you think the word refers to and what value it has had to people since before the written word.

I do think it is real but I see it neither as a who nor a what but simply as something prior. Nothing like a watchmaker let alone a supernatural being or even any kind of being apart from the cosmos. I don't think it has a master plan or plays favorites or offers any kind of immortality whether in suffering or happiness. The only sense of continuation of life it offers is the realization of being part of something ancient that will go on through other beings when our time is up.

I view God a lot like you seem to, but I cross between an abstract image to a more human one. I suppose consciousness is part of this, as well as scale and how deep the expanse. Sometimes I envision layers upon many layers going both ways, inside and outside. The density forming from the inner layers and less dense forming as an outside expanse. Growth, development, consciousness, intelligence, and always moving, changing, evolving into whatever God is and whatever God is going to be, and we do the same as we live, move, and have our own being inside the substance of, being part of the all-encompassing conscious mind and universe. God's form? I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure there is one and if there isn't there will be in the future. As far as I know, we see God from the inside of God and maybe God sees himself from the inside too.

 

[Whateverist]

Do you mean that your god(s) themselves or their sacredness "disappears when focussed on"?



It seems like you're using circular language to obfuscate. It also seems like the approach you describe is effectively atheism cosplaying as theism.

I have no gods. I have a sense of what God refers to and it is no thing.

What you mistake as circular language is simply a different understanding of what language is about. I don’t think words are reality but only ways to present something about what reality one has experienced.

 

[christos]

I find in all my studies that common theme is that the “true God” is even beyond the trinity

The trinity is an emanation of God

God is formless, eternal, and occupies no space

God is the first source and centre of all
The trinity is the second source and centre of all

God is unimaginable and cannot be known, because if you could know God, then God would be finite

God is and isn’t energy
Energy is again an emanation of God

God did not create the universe or at least have an active hand

God has no nose, ears, eyes, it isn’t human, it isn’t alien

We’re not a physical image of God but our minds may be… perhaps

A worm exists within God, and God exists within a worm, but the worm itself is not God

I think the same may be true for us

But we’re talking of something completely beyond our grasp, so how would we know?

The closest we can get to understanding is mystical experience and NDE

 

[Whateverist]

I find in all my studies that common theme is that the “true God” is even beyond the trinity

The trinity is an emanation of God

God is formless, eternal, and occupies no space

God is the first source and centre of all
The trinity is the second source and centre of all

God is unimaginable and cannot be known, because if you could know God, then God would be finite

God is and isn’t energy
Energy is again an emanation of God

God did not create the universe or at least have an active hand

God has no nose, ears, eyes, it isn’t human, it isn’t alien

We’re not a physical image of God but our minds may be… perhaps

A worm exists within God, and God exists within a worm, but the worm itself is not God

I think the same may be true for us

But we’re talking of something completely beyond our grasp, so how would we know?

The closest we can get to understanding is mystical experience and NDE

I agree with you though I suspect our conception of God varies, as it almost must. Probably, correctly understood, existence is beneath God. I see you aspire to be a scholar so I wonder if Iain McGIlchrist has made it into your bookcase? I've been rereading the last two chapters of his book The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Last night I read the following which I think goes a long way to understanding the ongoing confusion over God's existence. From pp 1860-61:

"That awe and wonder are the end as well as the beginning of philosophy is one reason why God may be a better name than just ‘the ground of Being’ for this creative mystery. A phrase like ‘the ground of Being’, too, may have its conventional cultural baggage - in this case its presumed dullness. ..​

​

So, providing we remain appropriately skeptical about language, we not only can use a term other than ground of Being, but, it seems to me, we must. Metaphysical argument can take us some of the way, but it deals only with the what, not the how. Even the rather abstract question ‘why should there be anything at all? Is not, after all, just an intellectual puzzle. It is a fundamental question - the fundamental question - for human beings; and we miss the point if we suppose it is a matter for abstract reasoning alone.​

​

In a wonderful passage Schelling writes about how we should prepare ourselves for an understanding of any subject:​

​

First and foremost, any explanation should do justice to what is to be explained, not devalue it, explain it ‘away’, diminish it or mutilate it, simply so as to make it easier to grasp. The question is not ‘what view must we adopt so as to explain the appearances in a way that accords neatly with some philosophy?’, but precisely the opposite: ‘what philosophy do we need if we are to measure up to our object, and be on a par with it?’ It is no how the phenomenon must be turned, twisted, skewed or stunted, if need be, so as to be explicable according to principles which we have already resolved never to go beyond. The question is ‘in what way must we broaden our thinking so as to get a hold on the phenomenon?’​

​

..But he who refuses, for whatever reason, to broaden his thinking in this way should at least be honest enough to count the phenomenon amongst those things (which, when all is said and done, are for all of us plenty enough) that he does not understand; rather than drag it down and degrade it to the level of his own conceptions; and, if he is incapable of raising himself up to the level of the phenomenon, at least to stops short of holding forth about it in wholly inadequate terms.​

​

I believe that in the necessary process of achieving a fit between our understanding and what there is to be known, our present materialist culture has disregarded Schelling’s advice, and contracted the scope of what exists. We are like someone who, having found a magnifying glass a revelation in dealing with pond life, insist on using it to gaze at the stars - and then solemnly declares that if people in the past had such a wonderful magnifying glass to look through, they’d have known that, on closer inspection, stars don’t actually exist at all."​

 

[Whateverist]

The question of what we should hold sacred is a subjective matter. The question of whether a thing we hold sacred actually exists is not.

But what if what is held as sacred no kind of thing? If God as the ground of being is the answer to the question why anything at all exists, then whatever God is is not on the plane of things which exists. It is prior.

 

[Nakosis]

When I was a young kid I imagined God as a beardy guy in the sky. Soon I stopped thinking God was real because it didn't jive with everything else I knew about the world and because my very religious father was away with the navy and my mother wasn't dragging seven of us there alone. I pretty much figured it was just old superstition held together by long habit. I was pretty dismissive and naively thought science was all the reality we were going to get.

Now I think I had been rash. The real decision isn't whether you do or don't think God exists but what you think the word refers to and what value it has had to people since before the written word.

I do think it is real but I see it neither as a who nor a what but simply as something prior. Nothing like a watchmaker let alone a supernatural being or even any kind of being apart from the cosmos. I don't think it has a master plan or plays favorites or offers any kind of immortality whether in suffering or happiness. The only sense of continuation of life it offers is the realization of being part of something ancient that will go on through other beings when our time is up.

I saw God as a dreamer. God's dream is our reality.
At some point God would awaken and realize that nothing which happened to us individually was real. Nothing we experienced actually mattered because it all was just a dream.

 

[Whateverist]

I saw God as a dreamer. God's dream is our reality.
At some point God would awaken and realize that nothing which happened to us individually was real. Nothing we experienced actually mattered because it all was just a dream.

Interesting and pretty sophisticated for a kid. I'm looking for a quip involving a red or blue pill but coming up empty.

 

[christos]

I agree with you though I suspect our conception of God varies, as it almost must. Probably, correctly understood, existence is beneath God. I see you aspire to be a scholar so I wonder if Iain McGIlchrist has made it into your bookcase? I've been rereading the last two chapters of his book The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Last night I read the following which I think goes a long way to understanding the ongoing confusion over God's existence. From pp 1860-61:

"That awe and wonder are the end as well as the beginning of philosophy is one reason why God may be a better name than just ‘the ground of Being’ for this creative mystery. A phrase like ‘the ground of Being’, too, may have its conventional cultural baggage - in this case its presumed dullness. ..​

​

So, providing we remain appropriately skeptical about language, we not only can use a term other than ground of Being, but, it seems to me, we must. Metaphysical argument can take us some of the way, but it deals only with the what, not the how. Even the rather abstract question ‘why should there be anything at all? Is not, after all, just an intellectual puzzle. It is a fundamental question - the fundamental question - for human beings; and we miss the point if we suppose it is a matter for abstract reasoning alone.​

​

In a wonderful passage Schelling writes about how we should prepare ourselves for an understanding of any subject:​

​

​

I believe that in the necessary process of achieving a fit between our understanding and what there is to be known, our present materialist culture has disregarded Schelling’s advice, and contracted the scope of what exists. We are like someone who, having found a magnifying glass a revelation in dealing with pond life, insist on using it to gaze at the stars - and then solemnly declares that if people in the past had such a wonderful magnifying glass to look through, they’d have known that, on closer inspection, stars don’t actually exist at all."​

Thank you very much for the book recommendation!

 

[Whateverist]

Thank you very much for the book recommendation!

Fair warning: it is brutally long and if you're as thick as I am you'll not only have to read it slowly but frequently reread parts. If you end up giving it a go please let me know how you like it and I'm always happy to discuss whatever strikes your fancy if you do.

His first book The Master and His Emissary is much shorter though not short and there are many YouTube interviews with him and an amusing RSA animation done to a talk he gave. If you like a Christian slant you might like this interview done by Elizabeth Oldfield who I respect a great deal.

 

[christos]

Fair warning: it is brutally long and if you're as thick as I am you'll not only have to read it slowly but frequently reread parts. If you end up giving it a go please let me know how you like it and I'm always happy to discuss whatever strikes your fancy if you do.

His first book The Master and His Emissary is much shorter though not short and there are many YouTube interviews with him and an amusing RSA animation done to a talk he gave. If you like a Christian slant you might like this interview done by Elizabeth Oldfield who I respect a great deal.

Oh it’s quite alright

I’ve read the Urantia Book twice and that’s 2097 pages long

 

[Whateverist]

Oh it’s quite alright

I’ve read the Urantia Book twice and that’s 2097 pages long

Can you tell me a little about it? New to me.

Edited to add I read everything Amazon had linked about it. It strikes me as an effort to place Christianity in the widest context possible with a huge back story. Not being a Christian myself I probably won’t be going there. But I can see the attraction.