Two Perspectives

[Rolling_Stone]

Perspective 1

Question: Why is it important to you that others associate their inner experience with “God”? There's real life without “God” for many.

Answer: It’s all about relationship. Looking outward, we see and experience only the reflection of our soul, our inner life. Why settle for crumbs? Jesus said he came so that we may have life and have it more abundantly. He taught that the greatest thing we can ever learn is to love and how it is to be loved in return. The contemplation of nature and the inner life without a personal God can instill wonder, even peace, but only a person can love. And how much greater is the love of the Divine than the love of man?

Question: Do you not appreciate that not everyone feels a “being” “loving” them and that this does not mean they lack an “inner life” or a genuine spirituality?

Answer: No. (I can already hear accusations of arrogance and intolerance from the politically correct.) First of all, the question flows from lowbrow theology, the assumption that God is something “out there,” something apart from us and experienced as though he were a foreigner. Second, if I am a person, can the Ultimate Source be less? "Human personality is the time-space image-shadow cast by the divine Creator personality. And no actuality can ever be adequately comprehended by an examination of its shadow. Shadows should be interpreted in terms of the true substance." (UB, P.29) Or, as mystics have said for thousands of years, “As above, so below; as below, so above.” Third, I affirmed in the above answer that the contemplation of nature and the inner life without a personal God can instill wonder and even peace. That’s fine, but intellectual assent to sentiment is not spirituality. It is nothing more than a capricious acceptance and appreciation of physical law. How, then, can I appreciate it? I love my children unconditionally, but does that mean I should support them in everything they think, say and do?

Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.

True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of original divine endowment of both mind and spirit. (UB, P.1126)

Perspective 2

Let’s suppose for a moment that immediate experiences, however various and disparate they be, are logically incapable of contradicting each other. Can you draw a non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises?

1. The body functions as a pure mechanism according to the laws of nature.
2. The “I” knows by incontrovertible direct experience that it is directing the mechanism’s movement, foresees the effects, and takes responsibility for them.

I’ve been aware of this problem for years but was surprised to learn that a physicist, Erin Schrodinger, posed it before I was born. He wrote, “The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I— I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt ‘I’— am the person, if any, who controls the ‘motion of the atoms’ according to the laws of nature.” In short, the ‘I’ that I am is God. When Jesus said “I and my Father are one,” he was speaking for all of us, but because we identify with the events so much, we lose the aspect of the observer. I am well aware that to most religionists in the West this is blasphemous and sheer lunacy to the non-religious, but where is the faulty logic? It is consistent with our modern understanding of the world even if it is not proved by it.

 

[Comet]

It does not surprise me Schodinger answered as such, but to take 1 and 2 as facts is a false premise. As for your first half.... the question was posed "do you NOT" and you answered NO, that is to say you agree, correct?

As for the thing you quoted:

Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents

I enjoy many fruits that grow on plants, not trees. What is wrong with adopting an orphan?

You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.

By the "law" of cause and effect, if it is all an effect.... show me the cause.... you can't, nor can people agree upon it. How does religious experience imply God? Why can one not find such things in such things? I know many who have found a religion due to their expirience with math, physics, etc.... it had nothing to do with God for them.

True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God-ascension

If God does not exist to one, how is God-knowingness and God-ascension even relavent? Devoid of survival values? Does a mouse worship God? Does a mouse not learn and evolve? Does not a human do the same, have the same?

In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of original divine endowment of both mind and spirit.

?????? Does one not learn spiritual things as they grow, even without social fruits? Like a Buddhist monk.....???? and the last speaks again of the so called "fact" that there is a divine that seeps into all.

I'm not sure I understand what you are looking for here. I am not debating, but asking what it is you seek. This is a discussion, and I do not agree by my "religion/philosophy". Please clarify the conversation.....

Thanks

 

[doppelganger]

Perspective 1

Very much the straw man, Rolling Stone. As you know from the context these are borrowed from, associating "God" experiences with an "out there" God is assumed in my comments about "God." Since you don't want to consider other's perspectives, you aren't aware of how similar we view this subject but rather are fixated on the idea that everyone must talk about things the way you do.

Perspective 2

Let’s suppose for a moment that immediate experiences, however various and disparate they be, are logically incapable of contradicting each other. Can you draw a non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises?

1. The body functions as a pure mechanism according to the laws of nature.
2. The “I” knows by incontrovertible direct experience that it is directing the mechanism’s movement, foresees the effects, and takes responsibility for them.

I’ve been aware of this problem for years but was surprised to learn that a physicist, Erin Schrodinger, posed it before I was born. He wrote, “The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I— I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt ‘I’— am the person, if any, who controls the ‘motion of the atoms’ according to the laws of nature.” In short, the ‘I’ that I am is God. When Jesus said “I and my Father are one,” he was speaking for all of us, but because we identify with the events so much, we lose the aspect of the observer. I am well aware that to most religionists in the West this is blasphemous and sheer lunacy to the non-religious, but where is the faulty logic? It is consistent with our modern understanding of the world even if it is not proved by it.

I agree with almost all of this, actually, except that I don't call my thoughts "God," because it confuses people. The word almost never means that for most people, but rather is a reference to the "low theology" you so disdain. The result is that you encourage that very low theology when you don't explain what you mean by "God" and and you appear to adherents of that "low theology" as a blasphemer when you do. You haven't effectively communicated with anyone. Since I don't adhere to any idea of a "God" as a thing in the "out there," I don't consider your views blasphemous. I just think they are poorly organized and presented.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Very much the straw man, Rolling Stone. As you know from the context these are borrowed from, associating "God" experiences with an "out there" God is assumed in my comments about "God." Since you don't want to consider other's perspectives, you aren't aware of how similar we view this subject but rather are fixated on the idea that everyone must talk about things the way you do. [/size]

What makes you think this is about you, Dopp? It's not in a debate forum and the title is Two Perspectives. So, how can it be a "straw dog"? It's a perspective, a point of view, I happen to have. It's not a debate. You sound like a juvinile (or a lawyer) who's "fixated on the idea that everyone must [continue to] talk about things the way you do." Look, I'm sorry if I struck a raw nerve, but political correctness has never been my forte.

Calling my perspective "arrogant" may be correct, but calling it "intolerant" is nonsense considering (like I said in another thread) my wife is Catholic, one sone a Baptist, the oter an atheist and my sister makes most other Mormons I know look like "Jack Mormons." If I really was the way you say I am, we wouldn't get along as we do.

I agree with almost all of this, actually, except that I don't call my thoughts "God," because it confuses people. The word almost never means that for most people, but rather is a reference to the "low theology" you so disdain. The result is that you encourage that very low theology when you don't explain what you mean by "God" and and you appear to adherents of that "low theology" as a blasphemer when you do. You haven't effectively communicated with anyone. Since I don't adhere to any idea of a "God" as a thing in the "out there," I don't consider your views blasphemous. I just think they are poorly organized and presented.

Like I said, political correctness isn't my forte. Besides, it's fun for adherents of "lowbrow theology" (I'm not as kind as you) to think of me as a kind of "blasphemer." Maybe it will shock them and atheists out of their complacency...I don't know. As far as being "poorly organized and presented," except for being politically incorrect, it's no worse than yours. Like the Yiddish proverb says: "Man thinks, and God laughs."

 

[doppelganger]

What makes you think this is about you, Dopp?

Oh. . . I don't know . . . perhaps the fact that you're quoting me in the OP?

You sound like a juvinile (or a lawyer) who's "fixated on the idea that everyone must [continue to] talk about things the way you do." Look, I'm sorry if I struck a raw nerve, but political correctness has never been my forte.

You didn't strike a nerve. You made all kinds of false assumptions about me and I simply pointed them out. Sorry, RS, I'd be interested in a discussion with you, but not any more of your pompous lectures.