So, pertaining to God and religion, how is this not basically applicable to all of us here?
We all believe particular things are true “here and now”. Some for a short period of time, others for a much longer period. Some having always basically believed the same thing, others going through any number of transformations in their beliefs.
And, in my view, we come to acquire these frames of mind based in part on the particular historical and cultural context in which, as children, we were raised. Taught to believe a particular set of assumptions about God and religion.
Then, as we grow older, we come to embody particular sets of experiences, engage in particular sets of relationships and acquire a particular confluence of information and knowledge.
All of us, right?
And then some folks – let’s call them philosophers – stop and think about that. They wonder…
“Okay, these are all of the things that I have come to believe about God and religion over the course of the life that I have lived. Now, what am I then able to determine is actually true about God and religion such that I am able to demonstrate to others that they ought to believe the same thing?”
Really, when it comes to questions like this [and with so much at stake beyond the grave] what else is there?
And what else is there for both those in the East and those in the West? The manner in which I probed a possible explanation for the “spiritual” above is basically the same for all human beings.
The West migrated to the single God because science was able to offer explanations for the phenomena that had once been attributed to the many gods. But, with the advent of capitalism, the concept of God changed dramatically in the West. Instead of placing the focus for behavior on this side of the grave solely on the afterlife, things began to shift more to this side of it. The Protestants more or less synchronized God and capitalism.
Just as today in China, with a burgeoning state market economy, the No God of Mao’s Cultural Revolution has no doubt shifted over the years. Somehow [I suspect] Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and other “spiritual” agendas there have had to be reconciled more and more with increasing materialism.
Okay, what then does one who is more partial to the I-Ching, have to tell us about connecting the dots between behaviors on this side of the grave and one’s fate on the other side of it? The focus of this thread.
What might the “pulse of the universe” possibly be as this pertains to human interactions that do come into conflict over value-judgments?