Marlowe

"Devil's Due" - great episode. (Always nice to run into another Trekkie - Hi.)

Correction - these are all early Western religions. Not all concepts of god are the same as the ones developed in the West. Check out the Hindu concept of Vishnu who exists in an almost constant transcendent state. While depicted artistically as a sleeping human with four arms, this depiction is understood as metaphorical. Vishnu is fact incarnates from time to time as everything from a fish to a turtle to a man-lion to various mythological heroes. So, there are some anthropomorphic qualities to Vishnu, but they exist side by side with several other qualities, the most important being the primary state of transcendence. Or take the concept of the Tao, which is wholly non-anthropomorphic and is one of the oldest conceptions of divinity in China.

True that some theists use the idea of god as a copout, but it is just as facile to dismiss this mystical concept as it is to throw it out to stop debate. Again, going to Eastern concepts that are often repeated by Western mystics - "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao." A statement that sounds remarkably similar to the words of the heretical Christian mystic Meister Ekhart:

"Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin. If you wish to be perfect and without sin, then do not prattle about God. Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding. A master says: If I had a God that I could understand, I would not regard him as God. If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance..."

Italics mine for I think this is an important point. It sometimes seems to me that we've forgotten a whole world-wide tradition of thought that deals specifically with the concept that divinity (or God) is a word we substitute to talk about that which nothing greater can be conceived. This is not necessarily a cop out, but an abstraction for pushing our own thought processes beyond materialism.

Just curious - then how does an atheist argue with someone like me - a pantheist for whom god (I generally don't even use the word god as it is too often misunderstood as Yahweh or the Christ) is most definitely not a being?

I hope I am not causing problems with some of these questions - being a believer in divinity but not in an anthropomorphic god, the subject seems perfect for me, though I've had some people get irritated with me for arguing pro-divinity outside of the general western Abrahamic conception of god in these fora.

Cheers!

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Jobar,
Well, I don't think it was so much that man (Adam) didn't have wisdom...as much as it was man consciously choosing to not adhere to it.


I don't think there is alot of mystery here. How many times have you done something you knew was not wise? Lord...I've done this so many times I can't even count. And (almost) always...not doing the wise thing ends up having bad consequences.

And by 'bad consequences' I mean 'me with a hangover, in a ditch with a motorcycle on top of me'.




Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Silent Acorns

OK, then why didn't God grant him the wisdom to heed his own wisdom? What your saying is that God made Adam a fool.

In His own image perhaps?

sandlewood

Then does God ever do anything that is not wise?

Regarding Star Trek, don’t forget that episode from the original series, “Who Mourns for Adonais?" The powers of the Greek god Apollo turn out to be more conventional in nature. Unfortunately, the whole thing gets ruined at the end when Apollo asks, “Is there no room left for gods?” and Kirk responds with “We find the one quite sufficient.”

Fiach

Slainte Mhaith (good health in Gaelic)

Fiach

Marlowe

From sandlewood:
Take heart - Roddenberry was a died-in-the-wool atheist who thought organized religion was extremely dangerous and a 'primitive' idea. The network suits made him add that last line.

From Fiach:
I think I was responding to fishbulb, but doesn't it suck that they are cancelling Farscape - makes one want to kick the SF Channel suits in the mivonks.

No sweat - I have read a couple of popular books on neurology ('The Feeling of What Happens' and 'Why God Won't Go Away', oh, and the Newsweek article, though you may still want to post it for others) and am aware of the neurological phenomenon you speak of. But Newberg and D'Aquili have charted similar experiences in perfectly healthy brains during meditation, so it seems to me the question has to be asked - if mystical experiences are just neurological artifacts, how are they so wide-spread, and why does a perfectly healthy brain have the ability?

It also brings up the philosophical points - does the fact that something has a physical cause necessarily mean it has no other significance? That once we can reduce an experience to its physical/ neurological mechanism, it is to be stripped of larger meaning? We know the basic physical phenomenon involved in sexual arousal - does that mean the passion you feel when having sex with someone you love is merely a physical artifact?

I chime in on debates like this in the hopes of broadening this idea - Is there such a thing as god, no matter what it's form? Even atheists I've noticed seem to think the choice is between no god or an anthropomorphic god (I'm just going from how you phrased the question so it may be nothing more than semantics), while there are so many other ideas of divinity that make it less of an either/ or question. It's why I chose pantheism finally - through my understanding of science I came to see the universe as animated by awesome processes that to me can only be defined as divine, and of which I (and you, and everything) am a part. I end up with atheists and theists upset with me because I believe in divinity, but cannot conceive of any level of anthropomorphism to it. The funny thing is, when I start talking to either group we find that we share many ideas, we just call them different things.

I actually have great sympathy for Christians, who have ended up having to debate an essentially mystical god in rational terms - they are doomed to defeat and don't seem to know how to rephrase the debate. It all seems something of an accident of history to me - the combination of the Christian tradition, which is a mystery religion, laid over the Greco-Roman civilization, which is a primarily analytical, rational tradition, and the two have yet to find a true balance.

I'm an agnostic-leaning-atheist's worst nightmare, and it's a compliment - well, there's a Farscape moment for you.

"May you have safe transport to the hallowed realm. Actually, not our hallowed realm. That's for Hynerians. Go find your own hallowed realm. With the Ceremony of Passage completed, I declare you officially dead, and claim all your possessions for myself.'

Shadowy Man

How do you define "divine"?

Hehe.. just saw this episode on Monday night.

Fiach

No sweat - I have read a couple of popular books on neurology ('The Feeling of What Happens' and 'Why God Won't Go Away', oh, and the Newsweek article, though you may still want to post it for others) and am aware of the neurological phenomenon you speak of. But Newberg and D'Aquili have charted similar experiences in perfectly healthy brains during meditation, so it seems to me the question has to be asked - if mystical experiences are just neurological artifacts, how are they so wide-spread, and why does a perfectly healthy brain have the ability?

I think that they are wide spread for the usual reasons that things are wide spread. They work. In some way they helped survival and adaptation. It may be that the experience triggered God beliefs, which we view now as negative, may have been beneficial (group cohesion, authority, discipline, boosting courage with a sky father protector). They formed a workable world view to explain the many mysteries around them, and that was conscious construction. But the mystical experiences reinforced this by giving them experiences of God. In primitive times, I suspect such experiences were close to universal. Being beneficial, the behaviours and brain circuits mediating them were genetically coded to be passed down to us.

It also brings up the philosophical points - does the fact that something has a physical cause necessarily mean it has no other significance? That once we can reduce an experience to its physical/ neurological mechanism, it is to be stripped of larger meaning? We know the basic physical phenomenon involved in sexual arousal - does that mean the passion you feel when having sex with someone you love is merely a physical artifact?

While I believe essentially what I said above, an alternative explanation in the article is that the parts of the brain producing the experiences could be "designed" by the creator as a communicator between God and us.


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It is not so much a wish to understand god but that is perhaps a route to my search. My search as an Agnostic leaning Atheist is further back on the line of reasoning. "Is there such a thing as God, no matter what he looks like?"

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I chime in on debates like this in the hopes of broadening this idea - Is there such a thing as god, no matter what it's form? Even atheists I've noticed seem to think the choice is between no god or an anthropomorphic god (I'm just going from how you phrased the question so it may be nothing more than semantics), while there are so many other ideas of divinity that make it less of an either/ or question. It's why I chose pantheism finally - through my understanding of science I came to see the universe as animated by awesome processes that to me can only be defined as divine, and of which I (and you, and everything) am a part. I end up with atheists and theists upset with me because I believe in divinity, but cannot conceive of any level of anthropomorphism to it. The funny thing is, when I start talking to either group we find that we share many ideas, we just call them different things.

I have postulated alternatives of God concepts: (all creators)

1. Anthropomorphic gods (JHWH, Allah, and old western gods)

2. Conscious, cognitive God who is not human in personality but something else entirely. This could include Pantheism.

3. A non-conscious, non-cognitive God of natural forces in 9 or 10 dimensions who created the universe and is equivalent to the laws or properties of matter.


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My answer, is that it is fecking hard to debate or refute you. My argument boils down to an unimpressive "divinity is not necessary to explain the universe as I see it." The Judeo-Christian god essentially makes it easy by being self-contradictory and basically an impossible entity. Yours is not self-contradictory nor logically inconsistent. In a debate you are my worst nightmare, and I mean that as a compliment. :-)
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I actually have great sympathy for Christians, who have ended up having to debate an essentially mystical god in rational terms - they are doomed to defeat and don't seem to know how to rephrase the debate. It all seems something of an accident of history to me - the combination of the Christian tradition, which is a mystery religion, laid over the Greco-Roman civilization, which is a primarily analytical, rational tradition, and the two have yet to find a true balance.

If we argue a generic mystical god, it cannot be proven or disproven. An anthropomorphic God is weak and can be refuted rationally. If we were arguing the former, we would get nowhere.

I'm an agnostic-leaning-atheist's worst nightmare, and it's a compliment - well, there's a Farscape moment for you.

"May you have safe transport to the hallowed realm. Actually, not our hallowed realm. That's for Hynerians. Go find your own hallowed realm. With the Ceremony of Passage completed, I declare you officially dead, and claim all your possessions for myself.'

May the Force be with you.

Fiach

Jobar

Welcome, Marlowe. I think you'll be surprised at the number of pantheists here. If you're interested, some links-

Here
here
here
here
and here.

Lately, I've been thinking about changing my belief listed in my profile from atheist/pantheist to atheist/Taoist, because the Way does not carry all the baggage that theos does. But that's purely semantical.

Marlowe

Hi Jobar - always nice to run into another Taoist/ pantheist/ whatever. I looked at the links briefly yesterday, then unfortunately got distracted by my job of all things. How annoying. Looks like some good discussions.

I don't. That's the point. Divine is a stand-in word for all the things about existence that cannot be defined. The inexpressible, mysterious wonder of it all.