Heathen Dawn

I think it’s justified, especially when the Ground of Being is considered to be the Creator. Of course it’s a philosophical God and not an anthropomorphic one. I had ruminated upon this dilemma for quite a period until I finally settled upon it, in the form of soft polytheism: one Ground of Being both impersonal (nirguna) and personal (saguna), manifest as a plethora of fully personal and anthropomorphic Gods and Goddesses.

The natural universe is not the ground of being but an aspect of being.

Thugpreacha

This aspect of spirit as pantheistic is in my opinion a lie from the dark side. The Devil always seeks to allow people to feel illuminated, and uses much occultic wisdom from ancient sources. The Holy Spirit is all powerful, more so than any human conceived gods or goddesses. Beware of occultic paganism disguised as deep knowledge. Dare not worship things that have been created
including our own very fallible human minds. Allow the Holy Spirit to fill your doubts with security. (Oops, I'm preaching! Sorry if I offended anyone! :notworthy

Biff the unclean

Still waiting.

trendkill

Haven't you ever observed that this is the exact method others use to determine that your ideas about the supernatural are man-made, and theirs are true? Haven't you ever wondered how this could be?

/doesn't understand how anyone could be so convinced of their "spiritual truth" after being exposed to the Internet

Asha'man

That depends. Attaching the name 'Thor' to lightning is essentially empty, it adds no information. There is no testable claim there. However, if you made an additional claim, such that Thor caused lightning to hit infidels more than believers, then science is easily up to disproving that additional claim.

Simply claiming that there are gods is an empty statement, since you have done nothing but attached a name to nothingness. You know nothing more than you did before you made the statement.

But religions rarely stop at that simple claim. They recognize the emptiness of just a name, so they make additional claims about reality. By disproving those additional claims using science, you can show that the religion has nothing but a meaningless name.



But let’s look at this from the other side: if science is unable to observe the supernatural, then how exactly do we know anything at all about it? Clearly, observation can’t tell us anything, so we must be told about the supernatural. We must get our knowledge from an external source. But what source? Humans can’t be that source, because they can’t have observed anything. Therefore, knowledge of the supernatural must come from the supernatural.

This suddenly produces a testable claim: that a person is in possession of a supernatural source of knowledge. We can test that source, look for the types of errors and mistakes that humans make, look for knowledge that is clearly beyond the ability of the possessor to have known on his own. When I examine the Bible, for example, it looks exactly like I would expect for ignorant and superstitious authors from a pre-scientific age. Therefore, I reject the claim that it has a supernatural source.

Do you have a supernatural source for your knowledge of Thor? How can you show that your source isn’t just more mythology and wishful thinking?

Naked Ape

No offence taken, here are a few things you may have overlooked:

1. There is no devil, it's just god when he drinks. (words of the prophet Tom Waits)
2. God is just pretend, like Santa for grownups.
3. Ghosts, spirits, demons and immortal souls are fictional as well. Yes there are ancient and modern stories about them, but there are ancient and modern stories that about talking animals too.

In light of this, your statement: "The Holy Spirit is all powerful, more so than any human conceived gods or goddesses." has as firm a grip on reality as this arbitrary assertion: "Superman is all powerful, more so than any other supehero like Spiderman or Daredevil." Go ahead and prove me wrong.

Cheers,

Naked Ape

Hobbs

And just how do you know that Christianity in all its various forms are not also lies from the dark side? How do you know that some other religion's devil is not deceiving you into believing a false god? Your own experiences? Are you infallible? Do you have an infallible understanding of what you think you are experiencing? Why do you reject the real, deep, life-changing experiences of Muslims, Hindus, and many others who have interpreted this Spirit in such radically incompatible ways? Are you any better than they are at understanding this Spirit? It seems obvious to me that yes, of course this "spiritual" realm exists, but that it is our minds, and it exists nowhere outside of our minds. As for this realm being "supernatural", I'd like to see evidence of it having any effect on the natural world without having to resort to using the physical bodies which produce these minds to move things around. If you take seriously the religious experiences of all religious people, if you look at and try to compile and reconcile the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the ages, what else other than this makes sense of it?

So instead of looking to the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the ages, you'd rather go with your own private subjective experiences, and your own ability to understand those experiences, of what's going on in your own mind to be the sole criterion for determining the nature of reality?

Is that what it is about, feeling secure? I'd rather know what is true, even if the truth is something horrible. I care about my feelings, all else being equal I'd rather be happy and secure than unhappy and insecure, but I'm far more interested in reality and in trying to figure out what is actually true, so I don't let my desires for happiness and security cloud my attempts to understand reality.

0

This is one of the major obstacles that I had in deconverting from Christianity. The fact that everywhere I looked, I had someone telling me that what I was thinking and feeling was from the Devil. That I had been possessed by a spirt of some sort that was making me "go astray."
I've been in churches that came to my childhood home and informed my grandmother that the reasons for our poverty was because I chose to read "devil literature" such as Stephen King and other horror writers and that I was going to hell because I listened to TuPac and the Pet Shop Boys rather than gospel.

I have heard this line of reasoning before...and it never fails to get under my skin. It is as if you claim a monopoly on holy thought, as if not one person has ever held a religious conviction worth having if they are not worshiping your Holy Spirit and Christ.

But what bothers me is the need to tell someone else that they are "deceived" into thinking differently. The world is full of individuals. It always has been. Not all of them have been Christian. There were religions before Christianity and there have been religions after it. In my eyes, it is no more the one path to go on than any other belief that a person might have.

Further, what is the Devil? Does this deity represent all that is in opposition to what you say? Is it working against you? is it speaking out of people like myself who have learned that my way is not the only way to do something?
How, in fact, do you know that you aren't working for the Devil? What makes your version of the "truth" so all-encompassing that we should trust you any more than any one else saying that they have the "one true religion"?


I will never condemn you on your path, my friend. This journey of life, with all its brilliant highs and lows, is trying enough without me extending myself in judgement against you.

I ask why you would do so to us, who have nothing to gain by adopting your religion because many of us have been in it. It was not for us. Not everyone will walk the path you walk. That doesn't make your path more valid. It just means it works for you.

If my beliefs make me a follower of the Devil in your eyes, then so be it. There is nothing I can say to change your mind, to open your mind.

But I would suggest that instead of condemning us, you find those that parrot holy words and commit unholy acts. These are your true devils. And I've known plenty of those.

Tangie

Heathen Dawn

I’d avoid the use of the very Zoroastrian, very dualistic phrase “dark side”, which has been the justification of numerous atrocities (most recently 9/11); I only agree that the trandescence of God should be recognised as well as immanence. That’s why I adhere to panentheism rather than pantheism.

The Devil: the embodiment of all that is evil. Eternal torment (hell) of Christianity: the worst atrocity imaginable. Ergo, the Christian God is the Devil; Christians worship the Devil. QED.

How do you like that, my dear?

Indication that you know nothing of the Gods and Goddesses.

Beware of a religion whose message boils down to “believe or burn.” Christianity and Islam.

“Thou shalt not think for thyself”

It’s not offensive, it’s just trite.

miata

It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws. The power you acquire in this way is much greater and more reliable than that formerly supposed to be acquired by prayer, because you never could tell whether your prayer would be favorably heard in Heaven. The power of prayer, moreover, had recognized limits; it would have been impious to ask too much. But the power of science has no known limits. We were told that faith could remove mountains, but no one believed it; we are now told that the atomic bomb can remove mountains, and everyone believes it. (I.S.S.p15)
Bertrand Russell

Go and pray no more.
Miata