i'm sending you a PM. I don't want the thread to get locked because of meOriginally Posted by bouquin
i'm sending you a PM. I don't want the thread to get locked because of me
I can't believe I am doing this because I always put my foot in my mouth when discussing religion, but briefly (I can't possibly mean that) here goes:
I have come to think of God as the creative force of the universe and all its exponential growth from the very beginning. That is all God is to me, an eternal flow of light and energy that gives and gives. God to me is not capable of anything else, just a source of creation.
Human beings are the mortal senses of this creative force. We are evolving (it doesn't matter whether we were created as we are or as some less evolved version) we are, nevertheless, evolving or we would not have come to understand as much about ourselves as we have to date. We didn't have that capacity in the Eden myth.
We are the recipients of this eternally eminating goodness from creation. We can choose to receive it by our beliefs and actions ( I do not mean religious beliefs necessarily) or we can dodge it whenever we act in discordance with our fellow humans and beast and anything for which we have stewardship. To the extent that we act in discord, we create evil in the world. There is no devil, there is no judgement of this, ever. There is no hell (other than the one we make for our own eternal consciousness). We are not born outside a state of grace (that is absurd and reeks of a male dominated obsolete social structure). We are born pure and fully in the flow of this universal goodness, which is why "becoming as little children" has been and will always be the secret to staying in a state of grace.
If you want to read a great book on evil, read Ernest Becker's The Structure of Evil and Jane Robert's The Nature of Personal Reality. Please do not respond with a diatribe on your prejudices about the latter author. It will not have an effect on me. I have always looked at the bulk of what we have written as humans as God's word also, every sentence. We can see what is there and freely educate and decide. That is why it is so utterly ignorant to ban books of any kind, good or bad. The good teacher will show us both and then, through discussion let us choose.
I am not naive when I say that human beings are intrinsically good and have always been. We know that what is pure can be polluted and corrupted, we see it often these days, but it has at its roots a choice or successive choices by a once pure entity. That is what is sad. We forgive for that and we forgive others to lift the burden from ourselves (in the end the only one we can control). If everyone forgives, there is no burden anywhere.
Hmmm. No teeth marks on my shoe. Did I _ _ ss many people off?
Not me. While I still believe in the God of the Bible as he is described in the Bible, I understand what you are saying. I think that your attitude about forgiveness and other things that are lovely in the world are important and necessary. You spoke beautifully.
You must have been in a state of blessedness when you wrote what followed the above, something like what that Czech dude called "the incredible lightness of being..."
I hope everyone gets to read it.
Firefangled,
This is just beautiful. If only everyone had you insight and way with word.
Thank you so much!
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Ah, the modern Life-Force philosophy. So grand, so poetic, so comfortable...
And yet I disagree. If God is a merely creative force, what right does He/it have to be called a god? How, if this force is (as it must be) mindless, purposeless, impersonal, can it be called a god? God must be personal. God is personal.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.--Romans 1:7
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I have to agree with you. To add, if you dont mind, that always reminds me of Star Wars. There's good, there's bad, and you manipulate the force to do what you want. If God was the "force" who's to know if He's good or bad, or what those two are. (Am I making any sense at all? I dont feel like I am...) I'm trying to say that if God cant show or tell us what is right and wrong, then how could we know? We know what is right or wrong, so He must be personal...I hope that made sense...
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, wherby they lie in wait to decieve; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. Ephesians 4:14-15
Weepingfor loman writes:
"If God is a merely creative force, what right does He/it have to be called a god? How, if this force is (as it must be) mindless, purposeless, impersonal, can it be called a god? God must be personal. God is personal."
I agree with reservations. If by "God" we understand someone or something deserving of worship then clearly nothing devoid of a mind (and hence awareness and intelligence) could qualify, since what would be the point of worship? So the conclusion that God must be personal seems to be a reasonable one. My reservation is that the movement from what God must be to be God to the statement that there is such a being is unwarranted. For example, to say that for life to exist on Titan it must be able to tolerate an environment containing methane snow does not actually prove that any such organism exists, either on Titan or elsewhere.
aude sapere
Kinda says it all, doesn't it?
God bless
Pen
Some of us laugh
Some of us cry
Some of us smoke
Some of us lie
But it's all just the way
that we cope with our lives...
I want to take a shot at addressing the original post, thank you.
By the way, firefangled's "emanations of goodness" is an extremely useful philosophy, thanks. It's encouraging to see daring minds boldly shape the future of god consciousness in new and positive directions, because where the mind goes, we go.
Philip K. Dick, Carl Jung, William Blake and many writers throughout history tend to explain the problem of good and evil with a demiurgic solution. That is, the created world is the doing of a lesser god.
I came across an essay by St. Augustine (345-430) called "The City of God," in which the writer explains how humankind was prideful even before the fall, the eating of the apple, otherwise Adam and Eve would not have been charmed by the serpent.
"For the fact that the woman sinned on the serpent's persuasion, and the man at the woman's offer," wrote Augustine.
In his essay, Augustine claims that nature is not intrinsically prideful or evil. As seems to be endemic to his time, St. Augustine separates man from nature and seems to believe that humankind are necessarily wicked.
"...yet their pride seeks to refer its wickedness to another--the woman's pride to the serpent, the man's to the woman," wrote Augustine, and I can see the tendency to shift blame continued into his own time, as well. For all this blaming of each other, could it be that we can't pinpoint blame precisely because it is God who is to blame for the malady of his own creation?
Consider the often stated, but hardly satisfactory remedy that "God gave man free will." Well? So what? If homo sapiens were faultlessly created, and given free will, don't you think he would tend to employ unselfish judgment in his decision making? Given that there is an equal likelihood that a man or woman, with a free will, would decide to take the course of action that would reflect the command of God as there is to make the decision to disobey the command, what other explanation can exist but that God's manufacture was flawed? That must also mean that the Creator is flawed, as he is unable to make a perfect creation in his own image.
What I'm trying to illuminate is the latter church's (Third and Fourth Century Roman) blindness or ignorance of who they are really talking about when they talk about the Old Testament YHVH. Augustine failed to trace the breadcrumbs back far enough in his explanation of the root of universal discordance.
Did Mastemah, the prince of heaven (Dead Sea Scrolls "Jubilees", 4Q225, fragment 2) have a hand in the creation of the human? Of course, in demiurgic literature, significantly so in the Apocryphon of John, that was exactly the case.
It isn't enough to say failure began with Adam, by way of Eve, or to indict the Serpent or Devil. The intrinsic failure to abide by God's will must indicate that humans were predisposed to failure, and that given two choices, Adam and Eve would make the bad one. And, since Adam and Eve did not make themselves, there is only one more step behind them in the chain of custody to consider. To me, that leaves two options, and I prefer the second of these:
1) That there is one God who is imperfect, and with the potential for evil. I would not say indifferent, however, because were that so this god would not be so inclined to punish his own creation for behaving according to the nature he built into them to begin with. In that respect, it seems to me that flooding and plowing those who transgress his will shows bad parenting skills. Likewise does jealousy of other gods reveal a disconcerting insecurity with one who is supposed to be supreme and infallible.
2) The world and the visible universe is the making of a god, but not the God. There is Lord, King of the Universe, and there is God in Heaven. The former toys with his creation, like a boy in a sandbox playing with toy soldiers, while the latter is aloof and above it all, perhaps s
Last edited by earthboar; 08-12-2007 at 09:20 AM. Reason: acknowledgments
Earthboar: "To me, that leaves two options, and I prefer the second of these:
1) That there is one God who is imperfect, and with the potential for evil. I would not say indifferent, however, because were that so this god would not be so inclined to punish his own creation for behaving according to the nature he built into them to begin with. In that respect, it seems to me that flooding and plowing those who transgress his will shows bad parenting skills. Likewise does jealousy of other gods reveal a disconcerting insecurity with one who is supposed to be supreme and infallible.
2) The world and the visible universe is the making of a god, but not the God. There is Lord, King of the Universe, and there is God in Heaven. The former toys with his creation, like a boy in a sandbox playing with toy soldiers, while the latter is aloof and above it all, perhaps"
In your second option, the God in Heaven seems to be unnecessary and irrelevant - effectively reducing your second option to being the same as your first.
But, I would have thought there are many feasible options, from no-god-at-all to many-gods.
Many-gods should not be discounted too easily, after all, the universe has all the signs of having been designed by a committee.
Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in my ear,
Whifflingpin! Why stayest thou here?
Thanks again Whifflingpin, I was admittedly narrow in my conclusions. I struggled for a few minutes while writing that to include religious views outside of the Judaic tradition (which includes Christianity), but decided that would be too broad for my particular contribution to the topic, and better left for others to answer according to their own abilities. The original subject, though, only says "God" and doesn't name any particular god(s) or (non)religious tradition, so you are certainly in the right to flesh out other available options.
I would like to comment on your point about my "second option," however, and that is if the goal of spirit is to transcend the material universe and return to Heaven, the source of our spirit, then in my second option, it is the God in Heaven that is the ultimate objective, and the Lord of the World that is the temporal tyrant of the soul. In other words, he's like your boss at work, you have to put up with him for now, but ultimately you're working toward retirement.
Last edited by earthboar; 08-12-2007 at 03:45 PM. Reason: expansion of ideas
i think that's right shadow, you make a good point. you can't have it every way---she can't be inside, outside, and outside time and space, all at the same time. that seems to be a blithe presumption, unless somebody will kindly explain that one to me.
my understanding is that there are gods and they dwell in human form on the earth. jack london was such a god.
the problem was borne out of neglecting to make the proper distinction between values and morality. you can have values without morality. moral facts are fantasies, and only when we eradicate "thou shalt" in favor of the "I will," we will be stuck in this living fantasy of evil malevolents and divine benevolents. or something like that.
Last edited by jon1jt; 08-12-2007 at 05:45 PM.
"He was nauseous with regret when he saw her face again, and when, as of yore, he pleaded and begged at her knees for the joy of her being. She understood Neal; she stroked his hair; she knew he was mad."
---Jack Kerouac, On The Road: The Original Scroll
"I would like to comment on your point about my "second option," however, and that is if the goal of spirit is to transcend the material universe and return to Heaven, the source of our spirit, then in my second option, it is the God in Heaven that is the ultimate objective, and the Lord of the World that is the temporal tyrant of the soul."
Fair enough, but then you have, I think postulated two creators - assuming that the God of Heaven created our spiritual nature, and is therefore less aloof than you suggested at first.
If the Lord of This World created us spiritual, then you seem to be saying that we are intended to rise above our creator - not impossible, as, by analogy, many children do, in fact, surpass their parents - a challenging concept, nonetheless.
Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in my ear,
Whifflingpin! Why stayest thou here?
"jack london was such a god."
Interesting choice - a good writer, but couldn't build a boat - wherein is/was he divine?
Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in my ear,
Whifflingpin! Why stayest thou here?
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