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When you say "No-God", you are making a description of what it actually is. "No-God" is a positive statement. Theism is a positive statement. Atheism is a positive statement. If however you were to say "Neither God, nor no-God; as well as God and No-God, neither including nor excluding" that is not making a positive statement about it. That is the negative, to say nothing at all. The only way you take a negative position is to say nothing at all and saying nothing about God or No-God.
What? You said No-God is not a metaphysical model. It most certainly is. You are saying "No-God" is the ultimate reality. That's a positive statement and it's metaphysical. You're dealing with ultimates or absolutes. Negation has no models. It neither affirms nor denies.
No, it is an explanation. It is saying it does not have God in it. That is defining it. You exclude God. That defines it as not having God. That is not negation at all. Negation neither affirms nor denies. "No-God" denies.
Very simple answer to you my friend. I don't see what you are describing as being a fundamentalist.It's what I was saying in my last two posts. What you are describing is simply a particular stage of faith, as I pointed to in the link I provided. This is not abnormal, not an aberration, not a fixation, etc. Being "literal" is not what makes someone a fundamentalist. Being in a battle being good and evil is not what defines fundamentalism. These are characteristic of Fowler's Mythic-Literal stage, covering stage 2 and 3, the traditionalist stage. I go into some detail of how actual fundamentalism is a failure to integrate things from the previous stage. I can't repeat all that again, so you may want to look again and how I distinguish the two from each other and why I do.
Again, I don't think you probably actually are, since for one thing you've been liking my posts. That's gotta say something right there!
. You are entitled to your belief. But it is my belief that my 'fundamentalism', or whatever you want to call it, is not a lower stage of spiritual development. I once thought in the way that is characteristic of the higher stages to which you refer, but have since moved on from there. Now you may well disagree. You might argue that I never really reached those higher stages, because I moved too fast, before I had fully integrated the lessons of earlier stages. Perhaps that is true. Or perhaps things are a little more complicated than your model suggests.
This all is characteristic of normal traditionalism. These are important early lessons that we all have to learn. In developmental theory, the "in-group" begins to expand to the point that it becomes not just ethnocentric (or religio-centric), but world-centric, and further out, cosmocentric. The whole observation in developmental theory is that the circle of inclusiveness expands the further one develops, building on the smaller circles to ever-wider, ever-more inclusive circles.
There are of course ranges within each stage, from conservative to more liberal and progressive sides. Think of this like the furniture arranged on the same floor of a building. You can rearrange the furniture, move from one chair to the next, but still be on the same floor. It may seem like it's totally different, but it's actually still the same floor you're on with the other furniture arrangers. Changing floors to a new floor is what developmental levels are about. It's not about different points of view on the same floor, but a whole new attitude that sees the previous floor as a whole and sees the world through the windows with an entirely different angle. So even though you say you are "fundamentalist", what I honestly suspect is you are simply just more on the conservative side of traditionalism. My gut feeling is that you aren't an "extremist", what one would call a fundamentalist. I could be wrong, but I don't feel it at this point.
You are? You're paranoid, feeling others are spying on you, dark forces you can't control are reading your thoughts and trying to send you to hell, that God is fighting to keep you, but you are being tempted by the devil to not live up to God's wishes and that it will end in you being burned forever in flaming tortures, forever and ever, and that your loved ones need to do the right thing or God will hate and banish them and you'll do whatever it takes to save them from this, including forcing them to comply to what you see as as truth in order to please God not to destroy you all?
Again, this doesn't sound like a fundi to me.
I go against most of what others teach as well! But if you can see another's point of view, this is growth. Most fundis I know cannot.Ditto.
I don't know actually. Where would you place yourself based on that read? (Not that any of us actually fit one exclusively). Looking at the descriptions which his research resulted in, I am safe say that Stage 5 fits me best. That's not being arrogant or anything. That's not the point. But the things described, and all the precedes it are places I've been and where I am at presently. I don't take is as being "over" or "above" others. The reality is, the more you know, the more you realize, the more humbling it is. It's not a competition. As Jesus himself said, "To whom much is given, much is required". And again he said, "If any would be first among you, let him be the servant of all.".
Not at all. It doesn't work like that. Would you say you are "better" than your nephew who has not had the life experiences you have had yet as an older person? That's not at all what it's like. Each of us, me too by all means, has those who are many years ahead of us. But none of it is about being "better". Again, the more you know, the wiser you should be. And the wiser you are, the more you realize how little you truly know. We use our gifts to help others. If you imagine yourself "advanced" then you need to wash the feet of others. This too was a lesson of Jesus, if you are familiar.
I've explained I don't see actual fundamentalism (which you haven't been describing) as a stage of development. I consider a broken, pathological aberration of actual, legitimate developmental stages.
There is a difference between this and paranoia. Firstly, this is the mythic-literal view, which takes symbolic representations of reality and take them not as metaphorical images but literal actual entities. This is not what I'd call paranoia, but simply mythological symbolism. That's commonplace. That's not a pathology. Is it paranoia? I don't believe so. What makes it paranoia is when it becomes an obsession which controls one's ability to see beyond their own fears into seeing another. The result is a cutting off of themselves from knowledge of themselves and knowledge of others. It seizes them and makes them prisoner to their fears. This is the pathological conspiracy theory mentality that is unhealthy. Does that describe you? I actually doubt it does.
I certainly am impressed by your intelligence as well. I asked for someone to respond having taken the actual time and energy to try to follow what I was saying, and here you are!
I do like this and find it refreshing. This is reflective of ethnocentric thought, to point that out. The whole insider and outsider lines, the saved and the lost part of the mythic membership of these stages outlined by many developmentalists, not just Fowler. As I was saying the more sophisticated the system, the stage of grow, the wider and more inclusive that circle becomes. It begins in a purely self-centered reality of very early childhood, expands out to the family group, then later in development to include friends and peers, then later in life to include community, then later to religion and nation, the identify as part of the ethnic group, beyond mere family ties. And so forth to the point of identifying oneself with all people and all living things, all of the universe itself.
You shouldn't! I don't think you are. Do you want people who don't believe like to die? Do you want to root out evil through violence? Do you want to force your will and beliefs on others? Do you worry yourself sick that those you love who don't agree with you will find themselves in hell or be punished severely by God for not believing like you? No? If yes, then you may in fact be a fundamentalist and I would be concerned for you, and those around you.
I personally see you as just more conservative. Nothing wrong with that, even if personally fall on the more progressive and liberal side of the street.
Admittedly I'm working to refine them a bit, to put of finer point on them. This discussion is helping me focus more the really dividing points which I'm articulating more clearly as I go, I feel.
He's a researcher, along with a lot of other researchers in other areas of developmental theory; morals, cognition, faith and spirituality, social, cultural, and so on and so forth. Do you have other theorists you can cite to show other results that contradict his? Actually, his fits well with other developmental models. It also fits well with what those in religion itself see in the growth stages of novices to masters. It's all quite consistent with everything else. Yes, I accept after examination that his models measure up. That's different than me simply "presupposing". Do you presuppose he's wrong?
See, right there you said what I was getting at earlier. To quote you, "I once believed in such a notion". That is very different than say I once saw the world this way. You "believed in such a notion". It was conceptual to you, not something you actually were in your own person. As I said, you cannot un-bake the cake once it's baked. If you saw the world through the eyes of universal love, you would see anything other than that as "less", incomplete, lacking, partial, and so forth. I have seen the world through such eyes, and everything falls short of that. It is Truth itself. It's not a notion, it's quite literally seeing with the eyes of God.
Based on what other researched data?
At a certain point the comparison game ends. When one is truly advanced, and it's fine to recognize that as I am in all of what I've been saying, that advancement is no longer about self on some ladder, but as I've said throughout this, it is advanced in the sense of all-inclusive. That means all judgment of others and self is gone. There is no more separation, but that inclusiveness embraces everything as itself.
There is a difference between this and paranoia. Firstly, this is the mythic-literal view, which takes symbolic representations of reality and take them not as metaphorical images but literal actual entities. This is not what I'd call paranoia, but simply mythological symbolism. That's commonplace. That's not a pathology. Is it paranoia? I don't believe so. What makes it paranoia is when it becomes an obsession which controls one's ability to see beyond their own fears into seeing another. The result is a cutting off of themselves from knowledge of themselves and knowledge of others. It seizes them and makes them prisoner to their fears. This is the pathological conspiracy theory mentality that is unhealthy. Does that describe you? I actually doubt it does.
I certainly am impressed by your intelligence as well. I asked for someone to respond having taken the actual time and energy to try to follow what I was saying, and here you are!
This is reflective of ethnocentric thought, to point that out. The whole insider and outsider lines, the saved and the lost part of the mythic membership of these stages outlined by many developmentalists, not just Fowler. As I was saying the more sophisticated the system, the stage of grow, the wider and more inclusive that circle becomes. It begins in a purely self-centered reality of very early childhood, expands out to the family group, then later in development to include friends and peers, then later in life to include community, then later to religion and nation, the identify as part of the ethnic group, beyond mere family ties. And so forth to the point of identifying oneself with all people and all living things, all of the universe itself.
What you say later in this response that you saw things in a more universal light but have now seen it as a battle between the "saved and the lost", to put a term to it, I would say I doubt this is actually true. I would tend to suspect you perhaps tried to adopt this view and found it didn't ultimately fit where you were at. That's quite a bit different than actually seeing things that way, as reflective the very set of eyes you cannot help but see through. One is trying to adopt a view, and the other is to actually become and be that person. The reason I say this is because in development one cannot "un-bake the cake" so to speak. It would take some serious problem to go backwards down the chain of development, some form of damage. Again, the reason why this is considered more advanced is because it takes what came before and builds upon it, making it "more", expanding it, not throwing it away. We don't get rid of our bones as we grow, they grow with us to continue to support our "larger" self.
You shouldn't! I don't think you are. Do you want people who don't believe like to die? Do you want to root out evil through violence? Do you want to force your will and beliefs on others? Do you worry yourself sick that those you love who don't agree with you will find themselves in hell or be punished severely by God for not believing like you? No? If yes, then you may in fact be a fundamentalist and I would be concerned for you, and those around you.
I personally see you as just more conservative. Nothing wrong with that, even if personally fall on the more progressive and liberal side of the street.
Admittedly I'm working to refine them a bit, to put of finer point on them. This discussion is helping me focus more the really dividing points which I'm articulating more clearly as I go, I feel.
He's a researcher, along with a lot of other researchers in other areas of developmental theory; morals, cognition, faith and spirituality, social, cultural, and so on and so forth. Do you have other theorists you can cite to show other results that contradict his? Actually, his fits well with other developmental models. It also fits well with what those in religion itself see in the growth stages of novices to masters. It's all quite consistent with everything else. Yes, I accept after examination that his models measure up. That's different than me simply "presupposing". Do you presuppose he's wrong?
See, right there you said what I was getting at earlier. To quote you, "I once believed in such a notion". That is very different than say I once saw the world this way. You "believed in such a notion". It was conceptual to you, not something you actually were in your own person. As I said, you cannot un-bake the cake once it's baked. If you saw the world through the eyes of universal love, you would see anything other than that as "less", incomplete, lacking, partial, and so forth. I have seen the world through such eyes, and everything falls short of that. It is Truth itself. It's not a notion, it's quite literally seeing with the eyes of God.
Based on what other researched data?
At a certain point the comparison game ends. When one is truly advanced, and it's fine to recognize that as I am in all of what I've been saying, that advancement is no longer about self on some ladder, but as I've said throughout this, it is advanced in the sense of all-inclusive. That means all judgment of others and self is gone. There is no more separation, but that inclusiveness embraces everything as itself.
I should add some qualifying comments to my calling these mythological. By mythological I do not mean "false". To call something "the devil" does not mean that our sense of what that thing is doesn't exist, but that giving it a name in the form of some imaginal creature is not literal in the sense that you would encounter some form of actual entity with literal horns and a literal tail. I wish to quote something that says this to me best about the use of the term mythology. From Conrad Hyers' Biblical Literalism: Constricting the Cosmic Dance,
Fear is rarely a good thing outside it kicking in for us to run when in actual immediate danger. But imaged enemies are enemies of our minds. We feed the fear through our own thoughts and create an imaginary world of threats. In reality, our general anxieties look for things to worry about, to fear, and so we search our minds for things we can attach this general anxiety upon and feed it back on itself in a loop. I personally find fear to have little actual use, and 99.99% of it is purely useless. It does far more harm than good, even in actual, real, threatening situations. A clear mind is far better in making choices and courses of action. Those who are constantly or regularly seized by fear and not functioning in healthy ways. That's something that should be addressed for that person.
I find that a little concerning for how to live one's life. Even if it's not paralyzing for you, it's no way to live. It makes these "demons" something outside of your control. In reality we can be far less vulnerable than all that. To quote from the Buddha, "More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm." What the undisciplined mind is is what it is to live in constant fear, for one thing. To give power over to these fears is to live controlled by them. They have already won.
Well, actually....
I of course would not term this in the language of devils and spirits controlling people. I do not see these things in terms of external entities outside the person themselves, strictly speaking. What you see in what you are describing is essentially a pathology in those who are in control of these things. The systems have been rigged to allow unbridled greed to take its natural course and self-consume, like the Ouroboros eating its own tail. These are just humans with their own pathologies being given positions of power, and what you see is their disease "trickling down" from them at the top.
I should add some qualifying comments to my calling these mythological. By mythological I do not mean "false". To call something "the devil" does not mean that our sense of what that thing is doesn't exist, but that giving it a name in the form of some imaginal creature is not literal in the sense that you would encounter some form of actual entity with literal horns and a literal tail. I wish to quote something that says this to me best about the use of the term mythology. From Conrad Hyers' Biblical Literalism: Constricting the Cosmic Dance,
The early ethnologist R. R. Marett is noted for his dictum that “religion is not so much thought out as danced out.” But even when thought out, religion is focused in the verbal equivalent of the dance: myth, symbol and metaphor. To insist on assigning to it a literal, one-dimensional meaning is to shrink and stifle and distort the significance. In the words of E. H. W. Meyer- stein, “Myth is my tongue, which means not that I cheat, but stagger in a light too great to bear.” Religious expression trembles with a sense of inexpressible mystery, a mystery which nevertheless addresses us in the totality of our being.
For me to speak of things like demons is ways to speak about aspects of ourselves we fear or disown. Those aspects can indeed be powerful and negative influences on ourselves. So when we speak of "demons" we are really symbolizing the "mysterious", the frightening shadows of our disowned selves. Those are in fact real, and the faces we put upon them make them real to ourselves. This can get a lot deeper in discussion should we wish that. But just so you know I see mythology is a symbolic language, metaphors, and as such it has a certain legitimacy, if held openly versus literally. To imagine it as wholly outside ourselves misses our place within the story.
Fear is rarely a good thing outside it kicking in for us to run when in actual immediate danger. But imaged enemies are enemies of our minds. We feed the fear through our own thoughts and create an imaginary world of threats. In reality, our general anxieties look for things to worry about, to fear, and so we search our minds for things we can attach this general anxiety upon and feed it back on itself in a loop. I personally find fear to have little actual use, and 99.99% of it is purely useless. It does far more harm than good, even in actual, real, threatening situations. A clear mind is far better in making choices and courses of action. Those who are constantly or regularly seized by fear and not functioning in healthy ways. That's something that should be addressed for that person.
I find that a little concerning for how to live one's life. Even if it's not paralyzing for you, it's no way to live. It makes these "demons" something outside of your control. In reality we can be far less vulnerable than all that. To quote from the Buddha, "More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm." What the undisciplined mind is is what it is to live in constant fear, for one thing. To give power over to these fears is to live controlled by them. They have already won.
I like to take the metaphor of Jesus walking on water, or that of him commanding the winds and the storm to "be still" to truly nail this on the head. The disciplined mind, the spiritual mind, can walk on water, it can still the waves of the storm, it can disarm the devil itself and make it nothing. Again, if you live looking around every corner, seeing everyone and everything with suspicion, then you are already mastered by the devil. You invite it in and give it all your power, simply by fearing it. You are already controlled by it, surrendering to it by giving it it your focus.
Again, there is a fine line between representing these symbolically in order to understand the nature of our experiences of ourselves and to talk about these 'mysteries' symbolically, and giving away all your power to them and live in fear of them. The latter is where you start going off into the unhealthy. And when that turns to become obsessive, paranoia, looking around every corner for some dark spirit out to get you that's when it becomes a disease and you would benefit by some sort of help.
Well, actually....
These are not demons doing this outside our control. We can in fact change the system which does not allow diseased people, those with not moral consciousness, sociopaths and psychopaths to be in charge of corporations and governments. This is something we can in fact control, if we are so well motivated enough to do so. To me to believe it's "the devil", makes it outside your control, when in fact it is not. I don't need a demon to explain what we're seeing. Just basic human psychologies and pathologies does just fine on its own. It's not magical. It can be explained quite easily, and remedied by ourselves. Where God comes into this is to awaken our minds and the eyes of our hearts to see the nature of what this is and to take positive responses to bring good into the world, rather than giving away our birthrights to a few diseased men.
I'll address the rest of your response at another time.
Oh yes, I don't understand what a model is. That must be the answer here! Anyway I said, which seems to go over your head here, is that for you to say "No-God" is in fact to posit the nature of reality. You specifically mention it, not mere exclude it from the model. But I suspect this all comes back to the touchy issue of many that atheism is simply the "lack of belief" (a point I reject). My argument there is the same as here, that the second you say "no-God" is the second you make it part of your metaphysical model. To simply not include it, is not the same thing as the atheist statement of no-God. There is a difference between non-theism and atheism. A "non-theist" simply doesn't have God in the equation. To proclaim Atheism in fact does include God as part of it. It's in the name itself.
Once again, you are in fact stating something as part of that model of tough questions. You don't simply not include God, you explicitly call it out as excluded from the model. What you are doing in effect is including a negative statement as part of the model.
Who said anything about "my" religion? I didn't. Nor am I suggesting that the views of Buddhism are absolute. I'm pointing out how that specifically what you are trying to say has been addressed philosophically by these schools. You seem to just want to say "Religion knows nothing", to reduce it to a strawman like this because you think only naturalists have a bead on truth?
Talk about being over your head...Wow, lots of assumptions here. And it's not religious rhetoric, if you knew anything whatsoever about what you spout to understand, but do not. That sounds far more religious than anything I've said here.
Who said anything about "my" religion? I didn't. Nor am I suggesting that the views of Buddhism are absolute. I'm pointing out how that specifically what you are trying to say has been addressed philosophically by these schools. You seem to just want to say "Religion knows nothing", to reduce it to a strawman like this because you think only naturalists have a bead on truth?
That is correct, and what I've been saying all along. They are based upon positive statements. "There is no God", is a positive statement. It's that simple.
By saying "There is no God", you are saying what it is. You are saying it is "God free" in other words. That's a positive statement describing what it actually is, "A universe without God in it". That's a model. If you simply did not mention God, then there is no positive statement. It's just simply absent. But once again, the second you say "There is no God" you've included God in the model. Again, that's pretty simple.
Have I identified myself as a Buddhist? How do you presume to think you know what my religion is? And as far as regarding Buddhism as an "authority" on metaphysics, I'm not exactly sure what that would mean. Does it have a tremendous amount of insights to offer in regards to the examination of Ultimate? Most certainly it does, as does any within mystical traditions. These folks across multiple lineages, both secular and religious who have spent untold hours sitting on the mat doing the hard work of interior investigations have a tremendous amount of insights and validity to offer into such questions. To assume otherwise on your part is just pure ignorance.
I do not miss the point at all. You miss the point that you are making a positive statement which makes it part of the model. "There is no God" is a positive statement. If you say "This corn chip is preservative free", you have defined it as "preservative free". It is bought and consumed as "not including preservatives".
First of all, why doesn't it matter? Because it's "religion"?
This is too funny, actually. You think people who are part of religions and look into these matters are completely irrelevant because you imagine they all believe a bunch of non-scientific supernatural woo? If so, this is profoundly ignorant on your part. Some of the world's greatest insights come directly out of these bodies because they support those within it who do these investigations. I honestly think your notions of religion are just a bit colorized by your particular biases and not based much in actual reality. You get the picture here?Actual negation, as what I was pointing to that Nagarjuna explained, which I linked to as a high-level explanation for you to read which you dismissed without consideration as "rhetoric", in fact does not attempt to make a model at all. Actual negation is there to deconstruct all models, as the use of them can actually interfere with seeing what actually, simply "is". The models, as useful as they are can stand in the way of actually knowing reality, where we mistake our maps of the terrain with the terrain itself. Negation is to get you to see "past" the models. And to the core point again here, you saying "There is no God", is actually modeling it into the equation. You have "No-God" defined as a positive statement, and as such you have modeled it.
Because it's a religion?
Too funny.