Is religion inferior to logic ?

[shunyadragon]

YES!!! OF COURSE. Obviously nobody who knows the first thing about metaphysics believes in the infallibility of peers.

[/QUOTE]

As revious stated false.

The problem is three fold.
1.,= Peers are prone to see reality only in terms of what is known.
2.,= Amateurs and a few scientists don't know the first thing about metaphysics.
3.,= Even peers rarely question existing paradigms.

Scientists based their discoveries and research based on questions as to what is not known yet.

It might be noted as well that in many of the soft science there is no instruction at all in scientific thinking. Essentially practitioners work solely on building on previous work and the interpretation of new findings in terms of previous work. Dead et als become unchallenged.

Misrepresentation of what is often called 'soft science.'

Meanwhile I still believe religion is based on the results of natural science.

No, ancient religions are based on scripture and ancient cultures without science.

 

[Windwalker]

The Biblical fundamentalists would disagree.

Of course they would disagree. But did you not see how I said, "Apart from fundamentalism, those degrees of change in interpretation of scripture is set against a backdrop of changes in the human experience of a changing world"? What I was saying is valid of a healthy religion, not what you are going to find in fundi churches, which I consider dysfunctional.

But even fundamentalists themselves are constantly reinterpreting scripture to fit their fear-based views of life. Take Creationists reading of Genesis as if it were intended to address scientific questions. That's purely an attempt to fit an interpretation of the Bible to fit a modern context. It's horse**** theology to be sure, but it's still doing theology. You have some horse**** science out there too. We call it pseudoscience. You could call their theology pseudotheology, and be right.

The Bible has everything to do with science as far as they are concerned.

Right. It's horse**** pseudotheology, as I'm now terming it. It's bad science and bad religion.

They are justified in believing things like the scripture do nnot change, and by the literary analysis of the text the authors believed literally what they wrote.

No they are not justified at all. Those who say, "It's not my thought, but God's thoughts" are self-deceiving. They are blind to the fact that have to interpret the Bible, the same as every single person has to interpret every single thing in life without exceptions. The correct term is rationalizations, not justifications.

Actually no as far as those who hold a literal fundamentalist view of the Bible.

Again, as I said, "Aside from fundamentalists....". I'm not talking about pseudotheology here as much as I'm not talking about pseudoscience.

As far as Orthodox Christianity today and in history the basic tenants of Christianity are not questioned even though the concept of the 'Fall' and Original Sin' are held sacred even though they are based on ancient Creation mythology.

That's actually not true. Even in traditionalism, you have those who try to reinterpret the meanings of the myths. While they might not be viewing them through a modernist's framework or lens, they are still doing legitimate theology.

Seeing things through the lens of traditionalism and seeing things through the lens of modernity, or seeing things through the lens of postmodernity, are very different things. Theology is like rearranging the furniture on one floor of the house to better accommodate the use of that space.

Shifting from traditionalism to modernity, or from modernity to postmodernity is not simply rearranging the furniture. It's moving the office up to another floors in the building, where there is a shift in altitude that changes everything in how it is perceived looking out of the windows at the new floor.

The harder approach dominates about half of Christianity today and it is justified by scripture. No such 'harder approach' exists in science, except for the fundamentalists that reject science.

You believe this? I don't. I try to be a little more realistic about it. But don't take my word for it: Resistance to New Ideas | Science for the Public

Resistance to new ideas seems to be an enduring human characteristic, and scientists —despite extolling the virtues of objectivity— have often proved themselves very human in this respect. Many of the great breakthroughs of modern science were initially rejected or ignored, sometimes for decades, and mainly because of bias. It is instructive to consider a few examples of scientific advances that were originally rejected.​

​

The Atom. In the late 1800s, when Ludwig Boltzmann, the great Austrian physicist, proposed that all matter was comprised of atoms and molecules, the suggestion seemed entirely strange to most of his contemporaries. Although the concept of the atom was familiar in Western science, it was not taken seriously at that time. Boltzmann more or less stumbled on the probability of atoms as the basis of matter when he developed a theory of gases. But he had no way to actually prove that atoms existed.​

​

Many prominent scientists of the time, especially Ernst Mach, scoffed at the idea of an unimaginably small and invisible structure as the basis of matter. The proof emerged in 1906, when Albert Einstein noticed the movement of pollen grains in still water. He was able to explain that this movement, called "Brownian motion" for the botanist who originally noticed the phenomenon, was due to the activity of atoms in the water. Einstein's proof vindicated Boltzmann a year after Boltzmann's death. Unfortunately, Boltzmann did not witness the rapid acceptance of the atom after 1906 and its role in the development of modern physics.​

​

And the article goes on to demonstrate this exact same thing I have been saying all along here, in regards to the Big Bang, Exoplanets, Evolution itself, for instance....

Evolution. In biology, the best known example of initial rejection is Darwin's theory of evolution. Because the theory was introduced in the mid-1800s when the Biblical view of creation still reigned, Darwin anticipated the hostility his theory (and that of Alfred Russell Wallace) would inevitably draw. The antagonism was not confined to the general public. Very prominent scientists attacked Darwin's theory and rejected the evidence he so carefully assembled. Even now when evolution is an established fact, there is still resistance among religious conservatives.​

​

and it continues to explain the scientific communities resistance to other areas as well such as an ancient earth, Continental drift (I just watched a documentary on this and how mainstream science wouldn't accept the data).

I think I've made my point well enough here.

As far as science goes this is false on the long haul. When new theories and hypothesis replace older ones there is a temporal resistance, but as the new theories and hypothesis become accepted resistance fades. There are no old doctrines and beliefs in science that hold back progress in science."

Just like that, huh? No human factors involved at all in doing science?

By the way concerning the religions of Judaism, Christianity and ISlam. have not fundamentally have not changed for millennia, except maybe Judaism with relies more on tradition rules and midrash than scripture today.

You would of course need to factor in other things, such as cultural centers of gravity and the like when talking about religion. Religions are a whole lot more than just a discipline about discovery. Social systems as well change very slowly, because they need to. Too much change too fast, and people can't keep up and things fall apart. You can't make a direct comparison like that.

But that said however, the same thing can be said of modern science. It too has remained in the same basic premise of Newtonian physics, until things like quantum mechanics and the complexity sciences have come along to create a new paradigm shift. So, religion and science may continue along their merry way doing what they do within a certain framework, until something radical comes along to shift it to a new modality. This is as true for religion as it is for science.

Paradigm shift - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

My whole point here is to disabuse others of this overly idealized view of science as the "pure path" to all true and bring us back into a reasoned perspective. It is not supernatural, in that it is above our humanness doing human things with everything we do in life, be that religion or science.

In Christianity going back to the scripture as is over rules attempts at reform in the end, because the authors believed literally what they wrote.

Did they? Did they think the same ways as modernists, and could differentiate between symbolism and literal facticities? I don't think so.

 

[Whateverist]

It's just that modernity ended up with far greater successes in the sciences, but the whole "We've found the true path to truth" seems a hangover from religious authority.

To me it seems more a case of those so impressed by the knowledge and ability to use it to manipulate the world that they just assume “oh, we’re smarter now so we’ll figure out how to use all this knowledge well”. But of course that kind of knowledge is unrelated to the kind required for wisdom in human affairs.

I see this countless times in those who have left the faith, typically of the fundamentalist variety, in discovering the power of science and the tools of modernity. It's just a shifting of loyalties, really. Not a shift in how one approaches Reality as a whole.

As do I and how one sees reality as a whole is crucial. If there is a baby (the sacred) in the religious bath water that’s where it’ll be found. Religion provided an armature to hang such a gestalt but that has gotten covered over by explicit explanations which render it less effective as a way to be in the world, reducing it to just one more way to think about the world.

I don’t think we ever leave behind the science and philosophy by which we understand important aspects of s world. We just stop getting swept up in the narrative of progress and an explicit, science like knowledge of those areas of our humanity science cannot shed light on.

trying to reconstruct a new very provisional grand narrative, yet held lightly with openness.

That was particularly well said and is and always was the most mature response to take to Post Modernism. Deconstructing everything in sight was always an immature response, either just running off half cocked with a minimal grasp or perhaps a strategy to discredit it in favor of the status quo of Modernism.

I said in a previous post today that I was "spiritual but not religious", and that's not quite right. I'd put it more as 'transreligious', in that I respect and integrate the principles of it, but go beyond the structures itself.

I like that way of putting it. There is definitely something sacred in this world and these lives we lead but it is time to set aside the dated icons of celestial liege lords and so on. Rather than putting energy into choosing new icons why not absorb the message and live accordingly?

I listened this morning to an hour long video conversation between Iain McGilchrist and the English Islamic teacher Muhammed Foudes on wisdom traditions in which Iain expressed criticism of one aspect of religion I thought was particularly apt which happens between 12:55 - 16:04 with the points made at 13:20 and 14:29 especially resonating with my experience.

 

[shunyadragon]

Of course they would disagree. But did you not see how I said, "Apart from fundamentalism, those degrees of change in interpretation of scripture is set against a backdrop of changes in the human experience of a changing world"? What I was saying is valid of a healthy religion, not what you are going to find in fundi churches, which I consider dysfunctional.

But even fundamentalists themselves are constantly reinterpreting scripture to fit their fear-based views of life. Take Creationists reading of Genesis as if it were intended to address scientific questions. That's purely an attempt to fit an interpretation of the Bible to fit a modern context. It's horse**** theology to be sure, but it's still doing theology. You have some horse**** science out there too. We call it pseudoscience. You could call their theology pseudotheology, and be right.

Right. It's horse**** pseudotheology, as I'm now terming it. It's bad science and bad religion.

No they are not justified at all. Those who say, "It's not my thought, but God's thoughts" are self-deceiving. They are blind to the fact that have to interpret the Bible, the same as every single person has to interpret every single thing in life without exceptions. The correct term is rationalizations, not justifications.

Again, as I said, "Aside from fundamentalists....". I'm not talking about pseudotheology here as much as I'm not talking about pseudoscience.

That's actually not true. Even in traditionalism, you have those who try to reinterpret the meanings of the myths. While they might not be viewing them through a modernist's framework or lens, they are still doing legitimate theology.

Seeing things through the lens of traditionalism and seeing things through the lens of modernity, or seeing things through the lens of postmodernity, are very different things. Theology is like rearranging the furniture on one floor of the house to better accommodate the use of that space.

Shifting from traditionalism to modernity, or from modernity to postmodernity is not simply rearranging the furniture. It's moving the office up to another floors in the building, where there is a shift in altitude that changes everything in how it is perceived looking out of the windows at the new floor.

You believe this? I don't. I try to be a little more realistic about it. But don't take my word for it: Resistance to New Ideas | Science for the Public

Resistance to new ideas seems to be an enduring human characteristic, and scientists —despite extolling the virtues of objectivity— have often proved themselves very human in this respect. Many of the great breakthroughs of modern science were initially rejected or ignored, sometimes for decades, and mainly because of bias. It is instructive to consider a few examples of scientific advances that were originally rejected.​

​

The Atom. In the late 1800s, when Ludwig Boltzmann, the great Austrian physicist, proposed that all matter was comprised of atoms and molecules, the suggestion seemed entirely strange to most of his contemporaries. Although the concept of the atom was familiar in Western science, it was not taken seriously at that time. Boltzmann more or less stumbled on the probability of atoms as the basis of matter when he developed a theory of gases. But he had no way to actually prove that atoms existed.​

​

Many prominent scientists of the time, especially Ernst Mach, scoffed at the idea of an unimaginably small and invisible structure as the basis of matter. The proof emerged in 1906, when Albert Einstein noticed the movement of pollen grains in still water. He was able to explain that this movement, called "Brownian motion" for the botanist who originally noticed the phenomenon, was due to the activity of atoms in the water. Einstein's proof vindicated Boltzmann a year after Boltzmann's death. Unfortunately, Boltzmann did not witness the rapid acceptance of the atom after 1906 and its role in the development of modern physics.​

​

And the article goes on to demonstrate this exact same thing I have been saying all along here, in regards to the Big Bang, Exoplanets, Evolution itself, for instance....

Evolution. In biology, the best known example of initial rejection is Darwin's theory of evolution. Because the theory was introduced in the mid-1800s when the Biblical view of creation still reigned, Darwin anticipated the hostility his theory (and that of Alfred Russell Wallace) would inevitably draw. The antagonism was not confined to the general public. Very prominent scientists attacked Darwin's theory and rejected the evidence he so carefully assembled. Even now when evolution is an established fact, there is still resistance among religious conservatives.​

​

and it continues to explain the scientific communities resistance to other areas as well such as an ancient earth, Continental drift (I just watched a documentary on this and how mainstream science wouldn't accept the data).

I think I've made my point well enough here.

Just like that, huh? No human factors involved at all in doing science?

You would of course need to factor in other things, such as cultural centers of gravity and the like when talking about religion. Religions are a whole lot more than just a discipline about discovery. Social systems as well change very slowly, because they need to. Too much change too fast, and people can't keep up and things fall apart. You can't make a direct comparison like that.

But that said however, the same thing can be said of modern science. It too has remained in the same basic premise of Newtonian physics, until things like quantum mechanics and the complexity sciences have come along to create a new paradigm shift. So, religion and science may continue along their merry way doing what they do within a certain framework, until something radical comes along to shift it to a new modality. This is as true for religion as it is for science.

Paradigm shift - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

My whole point here is to disabuse others of this overly idealized view of science as the "pure path" to all true and bring us back into a reasoned perspective. It is not supernatural, in that it is above our humanness doing human things with everything we do in life, be that religion or science.

Did they? Did they think the same ways as modernists, and could differentiate between symbolism and literal facticities? I don't think so.

All this does not address the fact that it is well documented with academic literary and text research and archaeology.that those that compiled and wrote the whole Bible from Genesis to the Book of Revelation is that the believed literally what they wrote. That gives fundamentalists a justification to believe as they do. Of course, belief in a literal Bible is redicnulous based o what know today, the belief has a Biblical basis. There is an unresolved double standard that liberal believers try to make the Bible fit our science and history of humanity. The Fall and Original sin of Adam and Eve from an ideal world without sin no more fits our knowledge today than a simple literal belief based on scripture.

You are trying to present a rational argument against a literal Genesis,, which for believers that does not work in Christianity and Ilam. Devote believers sinply appeal to scripture to support thie believe.

Literal interpretation | Definition, Christianity, Hermeneutics, Key Figures, & Facts | Britannica

Literal interpretation, in hermeneutics, the assertion that a biblical text is to be interpreted according to the “plain meaning” conveyed by its grammatical construction and historical context. The literal meaning is held to correspond to the intention of the authors. St. Jerome, an influential

www.britannica.com

literal interpretation​

biblical criticism
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literal interpretation, in hermeneutics, the assertion that a biblical text is to be interpreted according to the “plain meaning” conveyed by its grammatical construction and historical context. The literal meaning is held to correspond to the intention of the authors. St. Jerome, an influential biblical scholar of the 4th and 5th centuries, championed the literal interpretation of the Bible in opposition to what he regarded as the excesses of allegorical interpretation. The primacy of the literal sense was later advocated by such diverse figures as St. Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Lyra, John Colet, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. A strictly literal interpretation of the Bible, particularly the book of Genesis, has given rise to a number of Christian fundamentalist beliefs that are frequently deemed unscientific, including young-Earth creationism (Genesis 1) and the belief that Noah’s Flood covered the entire world (Genesis 7:17–24).
The literal interpretation of scripture is often, but not necessarily, associated with belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, according to which the individual words of the divine message were divinely chosen. Extreme forms of this would imply that God dictated the message to the speakers or writers word by word, but this view is criticized on the ground that it does not account adequately for the evident individuality of style and vocabulary found in the various biblical authors. Verbal inspiration received classic expression by the 19th-century English biblical scholar John William Burgon:
biblical literature: Literal interpretation

THE BIBLE is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the Throne! Every Book of it,—every Chapter of it,—every Verse of it,—every word of it,—every syllable of it,—(where are we to stop?)—every letter of it—is the direct utterance of the Most High! (From Inspiration and Interpretation, 1861)

This explains Burgon’s severe judgment that the revisers of the English New Testament (1881), in excluding what they believed to be scribal or editorial additions to the original text, “stand convicted of having deliberately rejected the words of Inspiration in every page” (The Revision Revised, 1883). Such a high view of inspiration has commonly been based on the statement in 2 Timothy 3:16 that “all [Old Testament] scripture is inspired by God” (Greek theopneustos, which means “God-breathed”) or Paul’s claim in 1 Corinthians 2:13 to impart the gospel “in words not taught by human wisdo

 

[Windwalker]

All this does not address the fact that it is well documented with academic literary and text research and archaeology.that those that compiled and wrote the whole Bible from Genesis to the Book of Revelation is that the believed literally what they wrote.

Yes and no. This is a bit complicated to try to explain. I tried to touch on this in saying that they didn't differentiate between factual (or literal) and symbolic with such distinctions as we might today. The symbolic meaning was embedded within the story, or the symbol, and while they may have simply assumed "that's what happened", and the meaning of the story was conveyed to them through that "historical" story, its point was not about understanding history and science in the way we moderns do. They didn't think in terms like that.

This is where it gets complicated. In James Fowler's research explained in his book, Stages of Faith,

Stage 2. Mythic-Literal faith is the stage in which the person begins to take on for him or herself the stories, beliefs and observance that symbolize belonging to his or her community. Beliefs are appropriated with literal interpretations, as are moral rules and attitudes. Symbols are taken as one-dimensional and literal in meaning....​

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The actors in their cosmic stories are anthropomorphic. They can be affected deeply and powerfully by symbolic and dramatic materials and can describe in endlessly detailed narrative what has occurred. They do not, however, step back from the flow of stories to formulate reflective, conceptual meanings. For this stage the meaning is both carried and "trapped" in the narrative.​

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The new capacity or strength in this stage is the rise of narrative and the emergence of story, drama and myth as ways of finding and giving coherence to experience.​

Now contrast this with Stage 4 faith, the Individuative-Reflective stage:

In keeping with Stage 4's critical reflection upon its systems of meanings, its relation to and use of symbols differs qualitatively from that of Stage 3. Symbols and rituals, previously taken as mediating the sacred in direct ways and therefore as sacred themselves, are interrogated by Stage 4's critical questioning. In its critical reflection Stage 4 regards meanings as separable from the symbolic media that express them. In face of a liturgical ritual or a religious symbol, the Individuative-Reflective person asks, "But what does it mean?" If the symbol or symbolic act is truly meaningful, Stage 4 believes, its meanings can be translated into propositions, definitions and/or conceptual foundations.​

.....​

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For those who have previously enjoyed an unquestioning relation to the transcendent and to their fellow worshipers through a set of religious symbols, Stage 4's translations of their meaning into conceptual prose can bring a sense of loss, dislocation, grief, and even guilt.​

....​

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It expresses its intuitions of coherence in an ultimate environment in terms of an explicit system of meanings. Stage 4 typically translates symbols into conceptual meanings. This is a "demythologizing" stage. It is likely to attend minimally to unconscious factors influencing its judgments and behavior.​

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So what I am trying to get at here with this, is that while those writers of the books of the Bible may have been believing these things "literally" happened, it is not in the context of the distinction that we moderns make. The stories were NOT about presenting the facts of history, and ancient ideas about science, for instance, doing science with myths. They were primarily about meaning and signficance symbolically.

Most certainly the readers themselves would translate these stories in a Stage 2 manner above. But again, the mindset wasn't thinking of them as primary about history and science, if at all. They were about narratives of meaning. That's how they thought primarily, as evidenced in their art and literature. We cannot simply take our idea of literalism, in a time where we can easily make distinctions of meanings apart from the symbols, as in Stage 4 above. Stage 2 simply was unable to think in those terms of distinction. So therefore, when they wrote "history" they were not writing history as we think of it. There were writing narratives. of symbolic meaning in the characters and events as they saw it.

And we as individuals do that same thing in the narratives we tell ourselves about our own pasts and histories. How much of it is truly "factual", as opposed to vehicles for our own self-fictions, or narratives?

That gives fundamentalists a justification to believe as they do.

Only if they wilfully choose to ignore the insights we moderns have access to. I can read the exact same Bible they do, but the lens I read it through allows me to make these more mature, or developed understandings of it. Fowler's Stages of Faith details what those different stages look like from Stage 1 to Stage 6. It follows along similar development lines such as Piaget stages of cognitive development, others stages of moral development, and so forth.

The error of the anti-theist brand of atheism, is that they assume right alongside of the fundamentalist that the ancients were actually trying to do science and history like us, and therefore they were either miraculously correct and modern science is wrong, or they were just naive and got the science in wrong. Both assumptions are equally misguided and uninformed.

Of course, belief in a literal Bible is redicnulous based o what know today, the belief has a Biblical basis.

No, it has a basis in ignorance about being able to differentiate between modern sensibilities and ancient ones. The Bible held in a more enlightened context does not justify fundamentalism at all. Fundamentalism justifies itself through denialism, excuses, and self-rationalizations and wanton cherry picking.

There is an unresolved double standard that liberal believers try to make the Bible fit our science and history of humanity.

Correct. And the modern so-call skeptic debunker of religious faith makes that same error in assuming that's what the ancients were attempting to do, but got it wrong and therefore the Bible is worthless.

The Fall and Original sin of Adam and Eve from an ideal world without sin no more fits our knowledge today than a simple literal belief based on scripture.

I would very much disagree. The story of Adam and Eve wonderfully captures the human condition in a simply heavily symbolic story that anyone from a child to an enlightened sage can extract a variety of useful symbolic meanings and metaphors from, if they look beyond trying to see it through the literalist lens of "this is real history, not what science says" utter nonsense.

You are trying to present a rational argument against a literal Genesis,, which for believers that does not work in Christianity and Ilam. Devote believers sinply appeal to scripture to support thie believe.

They are simply translating their views of scripture seen through the lens of their developmental stage of Stage 2, Mythic-Literal faith. They cannot differentiate conceptually, between the meaning of the symbol and the facticity of the symbol. They are fused together. But what I believe they are fighting to defend is not the actual historicity or science of it, but the meaning of it. To them, to say it didn't literally happen, threatens the meaning of it.

Again, this takes a bit to process to understand, but refer to the selected explanations of the Stages I briefly mentioned above. Also, since you only chose to focus on the last sentence of my response, I'll assume then that you accept everything I said previously, and this was your only objection? Hopefully, this may have begun to address that concern. But as I said, this is a little complex. It requires a bit of shifting how we look at these things to see a more informed context, which changes how we understand the motives and mindsets of others and where they are likely coming from, what eyes they are looking through.

 

[Windwalker]

As do I and how one sees reality as a whole is crucial. If there is a baby (the sacred) in the religious bath water that’s where it’ll be found. Religion provided an armature to hang such a gestalt but that has gotten covered over by explicit explanations which render it less effective as a way to be in the world, reducing it to just one more way to think about the world.

I don’t think we ever leave behind the science and philosophy by which we understand important aspects of s world. We just stop getting swept up in the narrative of progress and an explicit, science like knowledge of those areas of our humanity science cannot shed light on.

What comes to mind to here is a quote I saved from Sri Aurobindo, which may put some perspective on this.

"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 imagines 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.​

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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."​

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

This quote really speaks to me from my own path out of fundamentalist religion, into atheism/agnosticism, and now beyond. I've come to see this leaving behind of the mythic-literal world of religion to the rationality of modern science and reason to be a necessary progression.

But this reactionary jettisoning of the spiritual by atheists in pursuit of knowledge leads to the overcompensation of the egoic mind, whereas spirituality has a way of tempering the ego through humility in the face of the Infinite, which is beyond the mind's ability to comprehend. It is as I see it, an immature stage of the faith of atheism, where like the novice to Christianity feels they have now found the truth and the hopes for Answers with a capital A to answer that uneasiness of their minds facing the Infinite Unknown.

I like that way of putting it. There is definitely something sacred in this world and these lives we lead but it is time to set aside the dated icons of celestial liege lords and so on.

LMAO. I love that "celestial liege lords". That's a good way to put it, and when you consider in Christianity so much of its current theology comes out of the worldview of Norman kings through Anselm of Canterbury and his "Penal Substitution Atonement Theory". The very view of God requiring Jesus to pay off on our behalf a debt we owed to him, as though God were a Norman King, is very much mainstream in Christian theology today.

That particular view of God was something I never really got, as it did not match my experience of the Divine I had through a direct mystical experience, prior to my converting to Christianity in order to understanding more about the nature of the Divine. I tried to make it work, but it was like trying to force fit a square block into a round hole for me. I heard someone ask this question recently in response to that theology, "Does God really love me, or was he just paid off"?

Rather than putting energy into choosing new icons why not absorb the message and live accordingly?

This is not an easy question to address. Since you are attracted to matters of how the brain works, I think one could argue that in order to absorb the messages, we as humans needs some sort of symbolic framework in order to help translate the deeper experiences (of the mystical in this case), into meaningful terms that the mind can process.

Or perhaps better stated, they offer the mind some focal point beyond its grasp in order to allow the deeper mystical states to be exposed and become known to us. That is to me the very purpose of our mythologies and symbols. They are archetypal forms that the human brain can look to in the aim of transcending itself through engaging our spiritual cores.

Here's another one of my quotes that I've encountered and saved for reference. I think this may help explain a little better what I'm touching upon now.

"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. John Blofeld quotes Edward Conze on the Vajrayana Buddhist viewpoint: " 'It is the emptiness of everything which allows the identification to take place - the emptiness [which means "transcendental openness" or "nonobstruction"] which is in us coming together with the emptiness which is the deity. 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."​

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~Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye, pg. 85​

So to address your question, I think what we may need to do is find new symbols, ones which aren't so mired in the baggage of the past. You see this impulse in New Age religions, which are just basically "experimental Christianity", which has crystals instead of crosses, but the same basic dualistic, mythic-literal structures of consciousness.

What really needs to happen is the grow the structures of consciousness through which we translate the experiences of faith itself, or the experiences of actual mystical apprehensions. I'll touch on this more in what is next here.

I listened this morning to an hour long video conversation between Iain McGilchrist and the English Islamic teacher Muhammed Foudes on wisdom traditions in which Iain expressed criticism of one aspect of religion I thought was particularly apt which happens between 12:55 - 16:04 with the points made at 13:20 and 14:29 especially resonating with my experience.

Excellent. Yes, we are thinking in the same vein. What I want to mention here, in the hopes this will spawn more discussion with you, is what I've been touching on about translating mystical experiences through our various developed structures of consciousness.

In the video, he makes the distinction between the left brain (religion) and the right brain (mysticism), citing the the Sufis as an example. Other terms for this would be exoteric and esoteric, or exteriors and interiors. The exteriors are the structures, or frameworks of consciousness, and the interiors are the states of consciousness. The states are experiential. The structures are mental, constructed of symbols, and language, and ideas.

Enter here the Wilber-Combs Lattice. It maps out the various structures, from archaic to magic to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral on the Y axis, and the States on the X axis, which are gross, subtle, causal, and nondual. Anyone at any stage of development may have any of the state experiences, from nature mysticism, to deity mysticism, to formless mysticism, to nondual mysticism.

Structures, or Stages are developed in order, and cannot jump from magic to rational without first growing through mythic. But States can happen in any order at anytime to anyone at any stages.

This ties in perfectly with what they were discussing in the video, as he was citing traditional religion, typically at the mythic stage, and mysticism of the Sufis. But the mysticism of the Sufis can be translated through the mythic stage. It can also be translated through the rational stage. It can also be translated through the magic stage.

The point is we have to look at all of these common mystical state experiences (right brain), and see them as held by stages or structures of frameworks of mental translations (the left brain).

Here's a short video where one of the developers of this model, which I find extraordinarily insightful and helpful, talks about it briefly.

 

[Whateverist]

What comes to mind to here is a quote I saved from Sri Aurobindo, which may put some perspective on this.

"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 imagines 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.​

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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."​

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

This quote really speaks to me from my own path out of fundamentalist religion, into atheism/agnosticism, and now beyond. I've come to see this leaving behind of the mythic-literal world of religion to the rationality of modern science and reason to be a necessary progression.

But this reactionary jettisoning of the spiritual by atheists in pursuit of knowledge leads to the overcompensation of the egoic mind, whereas spirituality has a way of tempering the ego through humility in the face of the Infinite, which is beyond the mind's ability to comprehend. It is as I see it, an immature stage of the faith of atheism, where like the novice to Christianity feels they have now found the truth and the hopes for Answers with a capital A to answer that uneasiness of their minds facing the Infinite Unknown.


LMAO. I love that "celestial liege lords". That's a good way to put it, and when you consider in Christianity so much of its current theology comes out of the worldview of Norman kings through Anselm of Canterbury and his "Penal Substitution Atonement Theory". The very view of God requiring Jesus to pay off on our behalf a debt we owed to him, as though God were a Norman King, is very much mainstream in Christian theology today.

That particular view of God was something I never really got, as it did not match my experience of the Divine I had through a direct mystical experience, prior to my converting to Christianity in order to understanding more about the nature of the Divine. I tried to make it work, but it was like trying to force fit a square block into a round hole for me. I heard someone ask this question recently in response to that theology, "Does God really love me, or was he just paid off"?

This is not an easy question to address. Since you are attracted to matters of how the brain works, I think one could argue that in order to absorb the messages, we as humans needs some sort of symbolic framework in order to help translate the deeper experiences (of the mystical in this case), into meaningful terms that the mind can process.

Or perhaps better stated, they offer the mind some focal point beyond its grasp in order to allow the deeper mystical states to be exposed and become known to us. That is to me the very purpose of our mythologies and symbols. They are archetypal forms that the human brain can look to in the aim of transcending itself through engaging our spiritual cores.

Here's another one of my quotes that I've encountered and saved for reference. I think this may help explain a little better what I'm touching upon now.

"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. John Blofeld quotes Edward Conze on the Vajrayana Buddhist viewpoint: " 'It is the emptiness of everything which allows the identification to take place - the emptiness [which means "transcendental openness" or "nonobstruction"] which is in us coming together with the emptiness which is the deity. 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."​

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~Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye, pg. 85​

So to address your question, I think what we may need to do is find new symbols, ones which aren't so mired in the baggage of the past. You see this impulse in New Age religions, which are just basically "experimental Christianity", which has crystals instead of crosses, but the same basic dualistic, mythic-literal structures of consciousness.

What really needs to happen is the grow the structures of consciousness through which we translate the experiences of faith itself, or the experiences of actual mystical apprehensions. I'll touch on this more in what is next here.


Excellent. Yes, we are thinking in the same vein. What I want to mention here, in the hopes this will spawn more discussion with you, is what I've been touching on about translating mystical experiences through our various developed structures of consciousness.

In the video, he makes the distinction between the left brain (religion) and the right brain (mysticism), citing the the Sufis as an example. Other terms for this would be exoteric and esoteric, or exteriors and interiors. The exteriors are the structures, or frameworks of consciousness, and the interiors are the states of consciousness. The states are experiential. The structures are mental, constructed of symbols, and language, and ideas.

Enter here the Wilber-Combs Lattice. It maps out the various structures, from archaic to magic to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral on the Y axis, and the States on the X axis, which are gross, subtle, causal, and nondual. Anyone at any stage of development may have any of the state experiences, from nature mysticism, to deity mysticism, to formless mysticism, to nondual mysticism.

Structures, or Stages are developed in order, and cannot jump from magic to rational without first growing through mythic. But States can happen in any order at anytime to anyone at any stages.

This ties in perfectly with what they were discussing in the video, as he was citing traditional religion, typically at the mythic stage, and mysticism of the Sufis. But the mysticism of the Sufis can be translated through the mythic stage. It can also be translated through the rational stage. It can also be translated through the magic stage.

The point is we have to look at all of these common mystical state experiences (right brain), and see them as held by stages or structures of frameworks of mental translations (the left brain).

Here's a short video where one of the developers of this model, which I find extraordinarily insightful and helpful, talks about it briefly.

My favorite line: God as an archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness

I watched the video and found the matrices interesting in a left hemispheric way but I find myself resistant to systems in general. Of course left/right thinking is one too. But it makes sense to me to realize that we, like every other creature with a brain, has such a division in order to pursue a meal and simultaneously avoid becoming one. The information about the hemispheres isn’t something to be made use of toward an end, only for understanding ourselves and the paradoxes that arise. The matrix also permits of insights but I think there is a danger of it becoming a roadmap in the service of a grand narrative. I question whether we need one at all though as a society of beings who require time and guidance to develop, without religion perhaps some kind of program is needed? My minimal involvement with any religion disposes me not to think about that but in a sense my own progress is in a sense parasitic on the Christian tradition. Without that limited, preliterate exposure who knows how I would ever have come to value reflection, intuition and insight? I’m torn.

Even with the McGilchrist material which informs much of my worldview, I don’t try to master all the ins and outs. Nor am I a disciple looking to spread the word. I’m more interested in being than doing and question just how much one person can help another on his journey. I don’t seek that. In general I resist rigid categories. Still I will look around to see if I can find more from Ken Wilber in his own words. Thanks.

 

[Windwalker]

My favorite line: God as an archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness

Yes, that is something I chew on all the time in looking at what the role of the externalized deity forms have played in our human evolution. This is the problem I have with the sterility and the harsh critical lens of modernity, is that while they may be able to 'debunk' the literalist perspective, "These are not factual! Where's the evidence?", they fail to grasp that what they represent in us is in fact quite real.

In fact, they are embedded within our individual psyches, though our collective psyches, the collective unconscious inherited through all of those who came before us, which played a direct role in the evolution of who and what we are. To deny those, to simply jettison them as "nothing but fantasy" is highly ignorant.

I liken this to our own personal histories. I had previously struggled with disowning my own choices and beliefs and practices I had adopted in my youth to try to find that deeper truth within myself. "What an idiot I was joining that fundamentalist church", for example. Yet, the truth be told, that younger self and his choices, brought a lot of important lessons and growth into who I am today, and who that person was informs who I am. It wasn't just errors, but truths that I discovered in my younger, more naive self.

The same thing can be said for my time in the atheist deconstructive period of time. Each of these stages contributed import lessons, even though there were errors at each level along with it. That does not mean "I was wrong", end of story. Not at all. Same thing with our mythic pasts. True, the gods aren't literal creatures, like an elusive Bigfoot, but what they spoke to in us, what we engaged in ourselves through these, is in fact very much part of the deep fabric of who we are as human beings.

To deny that aspect of them in our search for ultimate truth, is to cut off our own nose to spite our own face. Nothing good can come from that.

I watched the video and found the matrices interesting in a left hemispheric way but I find myself resistant to systems in general. Of course left/right thinking is one too. But it makes sense to me to realize that we, like every other creature with a brain, has such a division in order to pursue a meal and simultaneously avoid becoming one. The information about the hemispheres isn’t something to be made use of toward an end, only for understanding ourselves and the paradoxes that arise.

Well that is exactly it. We have to be very careful to not imagine that while we may have better, more accurate, more useful roadmaps that we have been able to compile through diligent efforts, that that means we have personally arrived at the destination. Simply having volumes of information about the ocean, doesn't mean we have actually stepped into the ocean ourselves and know from personal experience what is it to fall backwards into it and swim in it.

No amount of head knowledge can replace direct firsthand, first-person experience. But it's too easy for the thinking mind to try to usurp the role of subjective experience with it's intellectual prowess. It likes to imagine that a map of the terrain is the terrain itself. In fact I would argue that we do that as a way to avoid immersing ourselves in the experience, because doing that leads to uncertainty, and uncertainty leads the thinking mind to anxiety.

That said however, I will say that one of the true values of these maps is that to the rational mind does need to have something to look at. And while true, that in mystical states, or even in ordinary subjective experiences, that happens before and beyond the thinking, discursive mind with its world of mental constructs. The mind can't ultimately be told to shut itself off completely. That can easily lead to self-lobotomies and self-deceptions, and you end up becoming a fundamentalist denier of things like science in service of one's religious desires.

This is why I love that quote from Aurobindo so much. We need to have our feet planted firmly on the earth of sensible facts, as we aspire towards the highest reaches of our human spirit. I'm afraid rationalism itself is simply doing the exact opposite of the intellectual suicide of fundamentalists in hopes to find themselves in faith. They instead commit spiritual suicide in hopes of finding themselves in reason and the rational mind. Each is making the exact same error from opposite sides of the same coin.

The balance is faith and reason, heaven and earth, or as is the core philosophy of Tai Chi, "heaven, earth, man". There are different, supportive, and complementary energies converging in the human between them. This is where health and balance, mentally and physically and spiritual are to be found, not in pure transcendence, nor in pure reductionaim. Both are error and imbalance.

The matrix also permits of insights but I think there is a danger of it becoming a roadmap in the service of a grand narrative.

It can become that, yes. "I've found the real truth now!". As I'm fond of saying, it's really not what we believe, but how we believe it, or how we hold our believes that really sets the stage for how much, or how little we actual understand and are able to grow through. It's not the content, as much as it is the context, I have found that is what matters. "By their fruits you shall know them," not by their details of their beliefs.

I question whether we need one at all though as a society of beings who require time and guidance to develop, without religion perhaps some kind of program is needed?

Well, this is a huge topic to be sure. The failure of religion to keep pace with modernity, has left of bit of a hole. In reality, the priest has been replaced by both the scientist to tell us the grand truths, and the psychologist to help us sort out the struggles of our interior landscapes. And all of the many things that religion as a social and cultural repository of collective symbols and stories, is being farmed out to different things these days. Like I said, it's very complex.

I am sympathetic to the traditionalist who sees a loss of meaning as a result in the modern age. Our struggle today is to try to find a cohesive replacement for it. Humanism? Consumerism? Video Games? Pharmaceuticals? And on an on. It's not simple to be sure.

My minimal involvement with any religion disposes me not to think about that but in a sense my own progress is in a sense parasitic on the Christian tradition. Without that limited, preliterate exposure who knows how I would ever have come to value reflection, intuition and insight? I’m torn.

I hear you. Recall my touching upon my own past embedded within the fundamentalist culture? Truth be told, my understanding today would not be what it is, where it not for trying to detangle my own involvement with them. It affords me insights that I otherwise would not understand. It offers me empathy with others in trying to figure out their own place on their own path to ultimate truth and meaning, fundamentalists, as well as atheists leaving religion. I get where they both are coming from, and largely why.

Even with the McGilchrist material which informs much of my worldview, I don’t try to master all the ins and outs. Nor am I a disciple looking to spread the word.

This is incredibly self-aware on your part. I too had to watchout for that tendency in myself, to find a new system to simply replace the role of the old system of "I have the real truth now. Now I can save the world!". In reality however, I have found like the old adage goes, the more you know the more you know you don't know. Those who know little assume they have it figured out. Those who know tons, realize how little they truly understand. Along with greater knowledge, should come humility.

A personal story here. As you know I'm a fan of Integral theory, where those with insights like MacGilchrist fit well into. My first book of Ken Wilber's I read was what is considered his Magnum Opus 1,000 page Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality. I found it enormously helpful in taken all of my disparate views and understandings and giving them an incredibly cohesive framework for my mind, which had been trying to create a "big picture" view of this enormously complex landscape. I gobbled it up, read multiple books of his, etc. The maps and models really helped take this otherwise frustrated and almost apathetic mind something to stand upon rationally.

But then, I took up a mediation practice, which was the result of something I read which he quoted from some Zen teacher, "Enlightenment happens by accident, but meditation makes you accident-prone". I took that in the sense of putting yourself out into the middle of the street, so that is just what I did, metaphorically speaking of course. I took to it like a duck to water, and within a very short time I moved into deeply expansive spaces. And it was at that moment that everything shifted.

Where I had been relying on my reasoning mental mind, finding a huge reservoir of meat to sink my teeth into with Integral theory (and it is that), suddenly I saw that whole thing shift into a two-dimensional tree-like structure, where it felt like I had just added a 2nd brain on top of my 1st brain. Suddenly these models of reality were seen as mental objects, and that what is found in the meditative, subjective interior spaces of consciousness itself, illuminates pieces and aspects of these mental understandings. In other words, it creates a real, tangible, lived context, to an otherwise, theoretical mental construct and model of the world.

This is the difference between knowledge, and Truth. Truth, with the capital T, is much more illumination, than it is propositional knowledge. This is where and why spiritual development is critical towards understanding as a human. Head knowledge from the sciences and theatrical maps, are powerful tools, but they cannot and do not inform the core of our humanity. We are spiritual beings, that is before and beyond the discursive rational mind. We feel ourselves in the atmosphere of reality. That is really where we live. And if we try to think it exclusively, we fail to swim in it and find ourselves.

I’m more interested in being than doing and question just how much one person can help another on his journey.

Amen.

In general I resist rigid categories. Still I will look around to see if I can find more from Ken Wilber in his own words. Thanks.

Yeah, I found that video from Combs to be a little disappointing, after I'd already shared it. He didn't really talk about it, but just shared other Internet users interpretations of that matrix, which were largely inaccurate to boot.

I have several books of Wilber I'd recommend, depending on where your focus is. But one I like to recommend that is relatively easy to read for his works, is a Sociable God. The preface to it alone is close to half the book, but I find the most informative. Chapters of the book I found most helpful were on "Definitions of Religion", and "Belief, Faith, Experience, and Adaptation". I draw from his insights all the time in helping myself find my way through the weeds in these terms which causes huge amounts of confusion in both discussions about these topics, and in looking at the nature of these for myself.

Great discussing these things with you.

 

[Whateverist]

they fail to grasp that what they represent in us is in fact quite real.

I agree, real not on their face value but real in what they mean for us. James Hillman recommended using “it is as if” when describing products of the unconscious. Rather than get hung up on the scientific implications or bogged down in the literalisms, just look at it for what it means to you or what it seems to be telling you.

It is humbling to realize that our better nature is more insightful than we are in our computational/discursive minds. That being the case it behooves us to nurture a productive interplay between that and what we are in the narrower sense. I think of it as being like our relationship to our talent, whatever that might be. Singing in key or writing something inspired or some other artistic endeavor may be something within our range but it isn't something mechanical like pressing a button. If we only ever perform the familiar it withers. New heights and growth requires risk to keep the relationship to our talent from becoming stale. Accessing the wisdom of our better nature is like that, it must be nurtured.

To deny that aspect of them in our search for ultimate truth, is to cut off our own nose to spite our own face.

Or to "toss the baby out with the bath". What do you say to those who insist the bath is empty?

The balance is faith and reason,

This is where health and balance, mentally and physically and spiritual are to be found, not in pure transcendence, nor in pure reductionaim.

Yes and good to see you favor "reason" over "rationality". Reading IM has made me sensitive to the way "rationality" very often is used to emphasize logic while what is "reasonable" extends mere dependence on premises to include a lot of good common sense. We are not machine like and our thinking should not aspire to become computer like. We are embodied and that comes with much nonverbal understanding if we are bold enough to claim it. But faith in some thing greater than what we are in our limited conscious self combined with a full bodied grasp of reason does seem like essentials for a good life to me.

I am sympathetic to the traditionalist who sees a loss of meaning as a result in the modern age. Our struggle today is to try to find a cohesive replacement for it. Humanism? Consumerism? Video Games? Pharmaceuticals? And on an on. It's not simple to be sure.

As am I and yet it is important to realize that much of the traditional structure, though it may may have fostered a regard for something greater was so weighted down with icons and prohibitions as to diminish adherents. At the same time, I admit I don't know how to structure a civilization in such a way as to help more human beings realize their potential. Leaving it to evolutionary pressures worked up until the pre modern period but the modern mindset is out of control and we could literally extinct ourselves before evolution could address the problem. Since I don't have the answers, I don't advocate relocating religion to the dustbin of history. Seems safer to me to seek to reform it.

Recall my touching upon my own past embedded within the fundamentalist culture? Truth be told, my understanding today would not be what it is, where it not for trying to detangle my own involvement with them. It affords me insights that I otherwise would not understand. It offers me empathy with others in trying to figure out their own place on their own path to ultimate truth and meaning, fundamentalists, as well as atheists leaving religion. I get where they both are coming from, and largely why.

I do. I still look to understand the ways in which my lack of investment in gods and traditional possibly leave my grasp of what is sacred. Though I also appreciate how that has enabled me to skate by many rats nests of issues that seem to make many adherents miserable.

I have found like the old adage goes, the more you know the more you know you don't know. Those who know little assume they have it figured out. Those who know tons, realize how little they truly understand. Along with greater knowledge, should come humility.

Absolutely right and that makes fundie believers and belligerent atheists stand out as deficient in their understanding.

I've never taken up meditation exactly but I value reflection and approach many activities meditatively so that has helped. But I agree with you that ..

This is the difference between knowledge, and Truth. Truth, with the capital T, is much more illumination, than it is propositional knowledge. This is where and why spiritual development is critical towards understanding as a human.

In the past I would have quibbled about the need for a capital T version of truth but now I just see that as referencing the truth regarding how best to live so as to better understand and appreciate these lives we lead. It isn't instrumental knowledge for grasping something you want it is self knowledge which challenges but also improves you over time, or so I would claim.

I also appreciate the opportunity to have these discussions with you. I find myself getting glimmers of what belief in a god is like and what it offers its adherents through what you describe both from your distant past and from your deconstructive experience. I guess my general inclination is to honor peoples' sincerely held faith commitments whatever they may be. If it helps them to connect with the depths of what we are capable of, fine. That does make it hard for me to respect overly rigid adherence to dogma. If all a person can do is quote scripture as though it was an incantation then I doubt the value of their belief as it does if the mere recognition of my non belief makes them resentful and belligerent on God's behalf. On the other side excessive vehemence against religion of any kind is as irrational and ignorant as it is rude. Reasonableness should count for more.

 

[Windwalker]

I agree, real not on their face value but real in what they mean for us. James Hillman recommended using “it is as if” when describing products of the unconscious. Rather than get hung up on the scientific implications or bogged down in the literalisms, just look at it for what it means to you or what it seems to be telling you.

I agree with this. I was alluding more towards mystical experiences. So real in this case is that the meaning of the symbols is pointing to an actual experience of the transcendent. The flaw of literalism is to mistake the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself. The metaphor then ceases to be a metaphor and now becomes a simple descriptor. It becomes then a 'dead metaphor'.

That is the very problem with fundamentalism. It becomes a religion of dead metaphors. The imagination is flattened. They are not "as ifs" anymore, but simply "is's" or factoids. And that is what anti-theism attacks as it seeks to supplant literalism with better more scientifics "is's". I suppose one could call it the deconstructive phase of the same system of dead metaphors, albeight more scientifically up to date descriptors to put finally lay to rest symbolic thought.

It is humbling to realize that our better nature is more insightful than we are in our computational/discursive minds.

That's where the true power of our minds lay. It's in rising above the discursive mind that vision occurs, and allows that computational, linear mind to see beyond its own system of thought. That illumination is what allows the mind to see the forest beyond the trees. We can't think our way through all problems, more often than not. They are too complex.

And when it comes to things like Ultimate Reality, complex doesn't begin to describe the incomprehensible nature of it. But that does not mean it is beyond our apprehension.

Singing in key or writing something inspired or some other artistic endeavor may be something within our range but it isn't something mechanical like pressing a button. If we only ever perform the familiar it withers. New heights and growth requires risk to keep the relationship to our talent from becoming stale. Accessing the wisdom of our better nature is like that, it must be nurtured.

This actually brings to mind something I've thought of previously but haven't circled back to until now. I used to see that the canonization of scripture, putting the texts into codified words and approved books bound in leather and denied any further insights from being added to it, works directly against the very nature of the fluidity and adaptability of spirituality. It's takes dynamic Spirit, and forces into into a leather-bound book, a box of our ideas at one point in time in history, from one perspective, from one group of individuals.

Life on the other hand is fluid and dynamic and evolving. If we reduce Life to formulas and fact, we crush the fluidity out of it into a static object. When the living is turned into the static, there is a specific word for that. Death. Fundamentalism kills God by making it static and unchanging. It kills Spirit, draining it of Life and creating a taxidermied likeness of it, like a butterfly pinned to a page in a book is no longer an actual butterfly. It's a corpse.

Or to "toss the baby out with the bath". What do you say to those who insist the bath is empty?

There's a saying I heard that I really like. "The God you don't believe in doesn't exist". Someone doesn't see what someone doesn't see. It's a non-reality to them, until it's seen. To them there is no baby. But once that baby is found, there's no denying it.

The common description of those who have an Awakening, or Enlightenment experience is similar to what my own experience was. It's seeing what was there the entire time. It was never anywhere but right here the whole time. And so forth. It's simply a radical shift in perception, that once it happens, can't be unseen.

Yes and good to see you favor "reason" over "rationality". Reading IM has made me sensitive to the way "rationality" very often is used to emphasize logic while what is "reasonable" extends mere dependence on premises to include a lot of good common sense.

Well put. I agree.

We are not machine like and our thinking should not aspire to become computer like. We are embodied and that comes with much nonverbal understanding if we are bold enough to claim it. But faith in some thing greater than what we are in our limited conscious self combined with a full bodied grasp of reason does seem like essentials for a good life to me.

What I find is a little hard to describe but I'll try to anyway. I am beginning more and more to see things in terms of energies. Our thought have associated types of energies which charge a self-amplifying feedback in our interconnected body/mind systems. To unpack that a little, think of the findings of Cognitive Behaviors Sciences.

In CBT, thoughts generate emotional responses, which reinforce the thought as a reality because it is experienced in the body. Which then affirms the truth of the thought, which then generates emotions, which then inspires more of the same types of thoughts. Different types of thoughts generate different types of physiological responses. Thoughts of fear, regret, shame, anger, guilt, etc, are all negative, body-repressing energies of differing levels.

Thoughts of hope, belief, faith, compassion, empathy, love, etc, all have positive energizing effects physiologically. They too create self-amplifying feedback loops, wth positive, life affirming responses that engage us to participate in life, rather than withdraw from life. They reinforce the thoughts, which leads to more of that type of thinking, which leads to healthier and happy bodyminds.

These are objectively measurable responses, even to a complete novice. Just sit and think of some dreadful idea. Now observe the response of your body. Where do you feel that? What does it feel like? The thought alone generated a total system response in the body. The arms go limp. Blood drains down the arms. Muscles tighten, and so forth. Now if we carry those thoughts all day, our bodies are tense, weak, stressed, and so forth. Enough of that, and we become unhealthy as our life energies suffer.

So things like meaning, faith, hope, love, etc, have positive life-affirming energies which the body responds to, and we gain in vitality, health, community, skin tone, muscle tone, etc, etc. These are tangible, objective realities. And they are directly linked to our mental outlooks.

A reductionist reality, ignores these interconnected systems. Reality is systems and systems of systems within systems, and so forth. We have to see things as systemically interrelated, not just in terms linear causalities.

But as you and I agree, we need to also be grounded in sensible thought. Pie-in-the-sky, disconnected, magical thinking is compensatory, not actually positivity. There is a balance between realism and optimism. And that becomes the trick to finding that balance. That requires cultivating both the spiritual and the mental, as they are ultimately complementary in the human being.

As am I and yet it is important to realize that much of the traditional structure, though it may may have fostered a regard for something greater was so weighted down with icons and prohibitions as to diminish adherents.

Exactly. I think it is the propensity of humans to begin with these more life-affirming systems, and then to co opt them and politicize them for worldly ends. They become dominator hierarchies, as opposed to growth hierarchies. While I continue to like to use the word "God", I unfortunately recognize the baggage that comes along with that. But I see it as much more a matter of reclaiming a good word, rather than giving the power of it over to the 'dark side', as it were.

At the same time, I admit I don't know how to structure a civilization in such a way as to help more human beings realize their potential.

That is indeed the 64 million dollar question. Ideally, religion should act as a 'conveyor belt', teaching good life principles to all stages of development. I feel ideally at some point we should be able to graduate from religion with diploma and live as well-rounded, healthy, mature spiritual adults. But what we have instead is largely 5th graders teaching preschoolers and other elementary aged children on the spiritual intelligence scale, and little to no information for the higher grades, let alone postgraduate learning.

Breaking up religion into disparate parts of the humanities, while it can fill some needs left vacant by the collapse of mainstream religion, there is not a cohesive program which brings them altogether in a well-rounded curriculum. In other words, no "liberal arts" education. It's more like vocational tech schools, and when it comes to the fundamentalist brands, they are much more like cults of personality with no actual degree material being offered. Call them unaccredited schools. Their students can't pass any real test of any merit.

continued...

 

[Windwalker]

continued....

Leaving it to evolutionary pressures worked up until the pre modern period but the modern mindset is out of control and we could literally extinct ourselves before evolution could address the problem. Since I don't have the answers, I don't advocate relocating religion to the dustbin of history. Seems safer to me to seek to reform it.

That's my thoughts as well. But to be honest, I find myself much more at home outside of it, than in it. I guess I'm not much for the idea of being crucified.

I do. I still look to understand the ways in which my lack of investment in gods and traditional possibly leave my grasp of what is sacred. Though I also appreciate how that has enabled me to skate by many rats nests of issues that seem to make many adherents miserable.

There is something my father had said to me repeatedly growing up, and also reiterated after I had abandoned my experiment with fundamentals religion. "Nothing you have ever done in life is ever lost. You'll always be able to use it again at some point". That was wisdom. I think that was his way of encouraging me to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, or do what my tendency is to berate myself for the choices in my life that I later changed my ideas about.

I look at it now as I did my best in making that choice to join it, as I did my best in making my choice to move on. An 18 year old, is not a 50 year old.

Absolutely right and that makes fundie believers and belligerent atheists stand out as deficient in their understanding.

Very much. I try to just see it as a stage thing. Hell, I was there myself! Hindsight is 20-20 as they say.

I've never taken up meditation exactly but I value reflection and approach many activities meditatively so that has helped. But I agree with you that ..

There are many ways to practice mediation. I like rather to think of what we are talking about from the perspective of wisdom, is more the "contemplative lifestyle". That's an attitude of trying to be present in the moment, to become more aware, reflective, considerate, less self-obsessed, and so forth.

Meditation practices are simply tools to help cultivate that as a way of living. I used to practice a daily sitting meditation for about an hour each morning for around 7 years. That then shifted to practicing a more physicals standing meditation and moving mediation with Tai Chi, which I still practice. Plus, I try to practice mindfulness at all times.

As a matter of interest, within specific intentional meditation practices, there are different stages or depths that one opens into. Here's another Wilber reference, to where he details in an interview format, the two basic types of meditation and the stages of meditation and what they are like. It's well-supported by research outline. Worth the quick read: STAGES OF MEDITATION

I also appreciate the opportunity to have these discussions with you. I find myself getting glimmers of what belief in a god is like and what it offers its adherents through what you describe both from your distant past and from your deconstructive experience. I guess my general inclination is to honor peoples' sincerely held faith commitments whatever they may be. If it helps them to connect with the depths of what we are capable of, fine.

I agree. But to try to clarify some, I try to qualify what that I don't really "believe in God" in the typical theistic meaning of some external deity that I believe exists out there. Rather I see "God" in terms of the ultimate Atmosphere in which we live and move and have our being, and is in us, and us not outside of it. It is very present and very personal, yet not separate from myself or anything. I don't say I believe in that, as much as I realize that and try to be aware of that as much as humanly possible.

It didn't begin for me as an idea. It began with an experience of ultimate reality. All the rest has been trying to navigate my way home to that as a permanent condition of my being. to fully Awaken in other words. Not sure how much sense that makes.

 

[Whateverist]

continued....


That's my thoughts as well. But to be honest, I find myself much more at home outside of it, than in it. I guess I'm not much for the idea of being crucified.

There is something my father had said to me repeatedly growing up, and also reiterated after I had abandoned my experiment with fundamentals religion. "Nothing you have ever done in life is ever lost. You'll always be able to use it again at some point". That was wisdom. I think that was his way of encouraging me to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, or do what my tendency is to berate myself for the choices in my life that I later changed my ideas about.

I look at it now as I did my best in making that choice to join it, as I did my best in making my choice to move on. An 18 year old, is not a 50 year old.

Very much. I try to just see it as a stage thing. Hell, I was there myself! Hindsight is 20-20 as they say.

There are many ways to practice mediation. I like rather to think of what we are talking about from the perspective of wisdom, is more the "contemplative lifestyle". That's an attitude of trying to be present in the moment, to become more aware, reflective, considerate, less self-obsessed, and so forth.

Meditation practices are simply tools to help cultivate that as a way of living. I used to practice a daily sitting meditation for about an hour each morning for around 7 years. That then shifted to practicing a more physicals standing meditation and moving mediation with Tai Chi, which I still practice. Plus, I try to practice mindfulness at all times.

As a matter of interest, within specific intentional meditation practices, there are different stages or depths that one opens into. Here's another Wilber reference, to where he details in an interview format, the two basic types of meditation and the stages of meditation and what they are like. It's well-supported by research outline. Worth the quick read: STAGES OF MEDITATION

I agree. But to try to clarify some, I try to qualify what that I don't really "believe in God" in the typical theistic meaning of some external deity that I believe exists out there. Rather I see "God" in terms of the ultimate Atmosphere in which we live and move and have our being, and is in us, and us not outside of it. It is very present and very personal, yet not separate from myself or anything. I don't say I believe in that, as much as I realize that and try to be aware of that as much as humanly possible.

It didn't begin for me as an idea. It began with an experience of ultimate reality. All the rest has been trying to navigate my way home to that as a permanent condition of my being. to fully Awaken in other words. Not sure how much sense that makes.

I hear you about the intricacy of dancing around our lack of god belief. I never did except before I could read so I like to say because i think it is true that what has given rise to and still supports god belief is real, dynamic and important; it’s just that I don’t think it is a being apart in its own right and certainly nothing like a parent or person. Of course that isn’t enough for most fundies who want everything on their terms and otherwise just want to yell and throw feces.

 

[ChieftheCef]

Religion is personification of the world with the science of the time. It's true. Religion with science of this time may even be better, or could even include logic as a teaching.

 

[sun rise]

It is clearly understood that Force equals Mass times Acceleration while, clearly, a pendulum's Arc is NEVER a straight line. Furthermore, the distance from Death Valley to Peoria is greater than the Frequency of Puce.

Therefore Pizza = Flatbread + Sauce + Cheese +/- Anchovies

 

[ChieftheCef]

In trying to understand any subject , it is firstly of most importance to understand the first principles of a subject. Any branch of knowledge that is taught , should always have strong routes , from a starting point to a conclusion . If this basic principle is not adhered to , then the practitioner becomes ill-informed , having an inadequate awareness of the facts.
Let us now be clear in our understanding of what is a fact compared to interpretation . A fact is something that is known or proved to be true , it is not something that is solely written on paper . A fact has supporting evidence such as observations , a fact can sometimes be an axiom , something that is self evidently true . If we ignore the facts and/or axioms then we are just being subjective as opposed objective. This information is then ill-informed information and can be misleading to a student ,allowing them false ideologies of a subject .

If a diety existed , then this diety would require the ability to think !

Therefore God = Wavefunction / Volume

Religion is written with the science of the time in mind, so a new religion would be compatible with new logic.

By the way the universe is alive. I'll ask of they can say hi.

But heed my warning, there is personification and there is truth. If the universe is alive it stands to reason the stories about it would be stories, not nonfiction. There is the fiction and there is the nonfiction.

 

[shunyadragon]

Religion is written with the science of the time in mind, so a new religion would be compatible with new logic.

By the way the universe is alive. I'll ask of they can say hi.

But heed my warning, there is personification and there is truth. If the universe is alive it stands to reason the stories about it would be stories, not nonfiction. There is the fiction and there is the nonfiction.

It depends on what you describe as being alive. If you are considering being alive like the life that evolved on earth no. The universe is a dynamic evolving entity with either a beginning or a rebirth from a previous universe, and likely a death to be reborn again in another universe among a community of many universes. This different concept of like life may be best described as in some way life defined differently.

The above bold needs clarification.

 

[ChieftheCef]

It depends on what you describe as being alive. If you are considering being alive like the life that evolved on earth no. The universe is a dynamic evolving entity with either a beginning or a rebirth from a previous universe, and likely a death to be reborn again in another universe among a community of many universes. This different concept of like life may be best described as in some way life defined differently.

The above bold needs clarification.

There are stories of god and there is god, which is as far as I can tell none of those stories are god. Wouldn't you need to at least posit that any story of god is true?

 

[shunyadragon]

There are stories of god and there is god, which is as far as I can tell none of those stories are god. Wouldn't you need to at least posit that any story of god is true?

No, because there are too many different and conflicting stories, legends, and myths about God(s) dressed up with supernatural events and beliefs for anyone to be remotely true. If God exists the ultimate nature of God would be unknown to fallible humans, and these stories, myths, and legends represent a fallible human view of God.

 

[ChieftheCef]

No, because there are too many different and conflicting stories, legends, and myths about God(s) for anyone to be remotely true. If God exists the ultimate nature of God would be unknown to fallible humans, and these stories, myths, and legends represent a fallible human view of God.

You might think so.

 

[shunyadragon]

You might think so.

I believe my post was factual concerning the diversity and conflicting stories. Based on this, which would you consider true and false? How could they all be true?