on discussing god and religion

It’s a metaphor … simple people understand … educated people … not so much … they demand objective(scientific) proof. Anyone who has observed the metaphor in life … not on TV … knows the cattle will placidly stand around in their own shit up to their knees. Seems humans are willing to do the same.

OK … I’m content with agreeing to disagree.

Read … watch the news … the answer is self evident.

The planet goes round and round. :smiley:

As I noted above, from my frame of mind this is what I call a “general description” of human interaction. And, relating to religion or not, my first reaction when confronting one is to ask “can you cite particular examples of this?”

Regarding this thread, who are the simple people and who are the [over] educated folks pertaining to the relationship between particular behaviors on this side of the grave and a perceived fate on the other side? And out in what particular corrals?

Can you provide examples from your own life?

And, again, given that there is so much at stake – immortality, salvation, divine justice – that which is being offered by the believers either revolves around faith [more or less blind] or arguments that, while embraced “in their head” as true, are not able to be demonstrated as that which all reasonable men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

With science, however, the arguments and the evidence are almost always conveyed more substantively.

Here of course that is more the rule than the exception. Almost nothing relating to a belief in God and religion is ever really pinned down. My point is merely to suggest that with so very, very much at stake, many will settle for that frame of mind which allows them to experience the least discomforting conclusions: no, we don’t just die; yes, there is salvation; yes, God has a final explanation for everything.

Depending of course on the particular “self” that is reading and watching it. It seems self-evident to “me” that there are hundreds and hundreds of true believers out there all convinced that how they interpret the news [with or without a belief in God] reflects what is true for “one of us” and what is not true for “all of them”.

The rest as they say really is history. And in all the corrals.

At least so far.

A “general description” is inherently wrong?

The particulars of the French Presidential and South Korean Presidential elections.

Visit a church during service on Sunday … the distinctions are obvious … especially when observing behavior upon completion of the service.

About 25 years ago I was pushed … shoved … forced … off the “grid” … out of the corral. My exit was neither planned, voluntary, desirable, expected etc etc. Despite several later attempts to get back in the corral then existing circumstances prevailed and I remained on the outside … alone!

For the first 14 years or so I limped along on the crutches of faith … the RC flavor. About 11 years ago the crutches were knocked out from under me … I found myself in China with no church … no public RC rituals … including Christmas and Easter … and no RC community to hide among.

Begs the question … “Has my faith diminished?”

On the contrary … my RC faith has become even stronger … seems the dogma, doctrine, rituals and corral were all a hindrance to faith.

In the absence of the “decorations of faith” I’ve been able to transcend the “walls” of the RC religion and come to understand there is no contradiction between the (un)institutional religion (faith) of the Chinese people and other world religions.

For details:

thoughtsofamisfit.weebly.com/

pilgrimtom.weebly.com/

We don’t know … science can’t tell us … that there is anything at stake … we have no way of knowing that all persons will end up in the same place. :slight_smile:

Science has been a tremendous boost to humanity … single handedly debunking so many destructive superstitions.

When science is capable of answering all questions the notion of faith will quietly recede into the shadows … never to be seen again. :smiley:

I can only note this: Inherently wrong about what particular human interactions in what particular context?

And, in particular, when they come into conflict over value judgements. Either relating to or not relating to God.

The discussion will either go there or it will not.

How would the reactions of individual men and women here not be profoundly embedded in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

And I suspect that the narratives of these individuals will be embedded in turn in all manner of conflicting renditions of God/No God.

Again, there are any number of folks attending any number of church services – religious corrals – who will embrace completely conflicting and contradictory sets of behaviors that they insist will be the price of admission on Judgment Day.

How on earth then is this pertinent to the point that I raise, if not basically to reinforce it all the more?

Yes, this is a reflection of the particular existential trajectory that your life took. You were embedded in a unique set of experiences and relationships that none of us here is ever likely to have a true understanding of.

What then could we really know about the things that predisposed you to go in one particular direction rather than another? What could you know about ours?

And none of us can possibly fathom what we might be predisposed to instead had those experiences [choices] been very different.

My point then is this:

Over the course of human history there have been thousands upon thousands of human cummunities invested in thousands upon thousands of religious narratives regarding that crucial relationship between before and after the grave.

But here we are, you and I, having had own own unique agglomeration of experiences, of interactions. We both know that death is galloping towards us and our thoughts will necessarily revolve around the question of “what then”?

This: You have your assumptions, I have mine.

My point then is this: that seems to be about as far as it goes. It’s all profoundly subjective/subjunctive in that no one is able to actually establish what does in fact happen then. But, in the interim, we are still ever embedded in these ghastly confrontations that revolve around conflicting goods. Around conflicting Gods. Around conflicting renditions of the same God.

Bottom line: As with Phyllo and others, you are able to sustain a frame of mind that [up to a point] comforts and consoles you; I am not.

And then this:

That’s what you are left with. The rest would seem to revolve around one or another Kierkegaardian leap of faith…or one or another Pascalian wager.

different strokes for different folks … ain’t life grand! :smiley:

Some folks are able to think themselves into believing that there is a God, some folks are not.

Some folks are able to think themselves into believing there is a way to properly [even philosophically] distinguish moral from immoral behaviors, some folks are not.

Some folks are able to think themselves into believing that there is a way to connect these dots so as to accumulate some measure of comfort and consolation, some folks are not.

Are the folks able to better off?

Sure. And I know this in part because one way or another I was one of them.

And all I can do now then is to come into places like this one and start discussions to see if these folks might yet be able to yank me up out of my own rather abysmal hole. The one that I have thought myself into believing.

This one:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

And then [of course] the part that comes after the grave: oblivion.

ambiguous … I just read your post … went for a smoke and the following thoughts popped into my consciousness.

  1. I hope you will read your post. Writing a post and reading a post are really quite different tasks … even when one believes himself/herself to be the author of what is written.

  2. I’m ‘dead’ serious … ‘dead’ as in figuratively and literally. It is only when one becomes ‘dead’ to oneself that one starts to live. Confucius said … paraphrasing … “If I hear Dao in the morning I’m content to die in the evening.”

  3. You … like almost all people … are already in the ‘grave’ … why concern yourself about the part that comes after the grave.

  4. You yearn for resurrection … in this life.
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  1. Asking for help is halfway home. Accepting help is the other half. The unborn chick must make an effort to break the egg shell in order to hatch and join the world of the living.

  2. Clinging to someone else’s history is futile and frustrating … whether that ‘history’ be philosophical concepts … religious dogma … political shit etc.

  3. Each of us is making history every day … whether we are aware of it or not … whether we like it or not. We are conditioned to spend our life trying to catch the big fish … what a waste. Big fish … small fish makes no difference. Often enough what appears on the surface to be very small fish often turns out to be very big fish. For example, in my Fatima OP … 3 peasant children … 2 of which died in early childhood … turned out to be big fish in the landscape of human history.

:sunglasses: The future is today … you are part of some ‘story’ … get on the stage and play your part … with all the muster you can garner.

Weve got some video discourses going on here.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=188756&start=750

Not unthinkable to debate a Christian. He must have something to offer philosophically.

i just see my post was added to this thread an not the one I posted it in… bizarre

All of this may well be perceptive. But it does not change the fact that some choose to behave as they do on this side of the grave in order to bring about that which they imagine their fate to be on the other side of the grave. With or without God. But mostly [by far] with.

And you will either intertwine the points that you raise here into that discussion or you won’t.

In other words, my “story” revolves around the manner in which [here and now] I have come to understand the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy as this relates to the manner in which [here and now] I have come to understand the meaning of God and religion.

But the “part” that “I” play here is fractured and fragmented by the manner in which I have come to understand the “self” as an existential contraption evolving over time in a world of contingency, chance and change. At least with respect to these particular relationships.

Why don’t you focus your observations on a particular context in which “stories” come to clash. Your own “story” for example. Your own actual behaviors – challenged by others.

Illustrate your observations by bringing them down to earth. Because, until you do, I am not likely to garner a substantive sense of what you are trying to tell me above.

From my frame of mind it is analogous to a New Age assessment. A psychologism in which the emphasis is entirely too much on subjective/subjunctive reactions. It’s all “up there” in a world of words that I am unable to make relevant to my own actual lived life.

How then do you make it relevant to your lived life.

But, again, as that pertains to the thrust of the thread.

ambiguous … this thread is about you … your thoughts … your beliefs … your values

All else is simply ‘fuel’ that empowers … energizes … your pontificating. I try to help where I can but I refuse to be anyone’s door mat.

Not sure if the above comment is a threat or an invitation. I feel no compunction to intertwine … integrate … my thoughts with another person’s thoughts. I’m quite content to remain a ‘flock of one’.

There is no “here and now” … by the time you write the words the universe has moved on … and changed. There is no “there” … whether it be before the grave or after.

There is no “I” … ego is our worst enemy.

The above comment summarizes my life for the past 25 years … I am the loser … sticking to my story has rendered me “alone in the desert” … a price I’m willing to pay.

Have you read the personal experiences I shared in the Fatima OP?

You are the master of your own “frame of mind”. Words … regardless of the source … or the potency … have any impact. OTH … your personal experience(s) … the trivial … seemingly insignificant … experiences of daily life are key.

I live spontaneously … responding daily, hourly, momentarily … to what happens around me.

I suspect however that just because you have come to conclude that I am using you here as a doormat, it doesn’t make it so.

Whatever that even means.

And I invite the thoughts, the beliefs and the values of others here. As they relate to a discussion of God and religion.

You are just like all the rest of us. You are alive “here and now” and you choose particular behaviors in the course of interacting with others from day to day. Behaviors that you would deem to be the right ones. Behaviors that you sift more or less reasonably through a philosophical sieve.

And you either construe right and wrong behaviors here as it pertains to your fate on the other side of the grave or you do not. Most religious folks do tend to connect the dots here. It’s a fundamental component of their life…of religion itself. One or another historical and cultural rendition of What Would Jesus Do?

That’s just a fact.

That’s your prerogative.

The thread, however, was created for those who have a belief in God and religion. A belief such that their religious values are integrated into their moral values are integrated into the lives that they live on this side of the grave.

Again, whatever that means “for all practical purposes”.

Right. When we talk about living our lives among others from day to day “here and now” that is “technically” incorrect. And though we know that we are going to die and that “I” either is or is not sustained afterward, it’s not correct to talk about what might happen to “I” “there and then”.

I’m sorry but what on earth are you talking about?

Cite some examples of this from your own life. You live your life and then [existentially] you come to embody a particular set of values. Re dasein from my point of view. Now, from time to time in the course of interacting with others, those values come into conflict. So, in those particular contexts what specifically do you mean by "there is no “I”; and that “the ego is our worst enemy”?

And how is that related to your belief in God?

How then does that relate to my own rather precarious situation? I have no way in which to differeniate right from wrong behaviors in my interactions with othes from day to day. Other than as the embodiment of particular shifting political prejudices embedded in the existential contraption that is “I”. “I” am entangled instead in my dilemma above. And as death approaches I have no belief in anything other than oblivion.

That’s the price I seem unable not to pay.

No. Everything here revolves around the time I am able to allot to any particular post. Bring some of them here and integrate them into the thrust of the thread.

Yes, this is another frame of mind that folks are able to think themselves into believing.

But it doesn’t change the fact that if God does in fact exist whether you care about that is rather moot.

Now, why do so many folks care instead?

Because, in the course of living their life from day to day, they bump into, among other things, thoughts of death, of morality, of justice. They look around them and think “what on earth does all of this mean?!”

Obviously, a belief in God here allows for considerably more peace of mind [certainty] than for those who figure that morality and justice are, problematically, ever shifting manmade contraptions; and that when we die, that’s it.

Few folks after all are able to sustain much apathy about those things.

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Yes, this encompasses a particular sequence of experiences that you had and observations that you made in regard to them. And they are not experiences that I have ever had or observations that I have ever made.

But how then would you go about integrating them into a thread that was created in order to explore the extant relationship between behaviors that you choose on this side of the grave and the manner in which you imagine your fate on the other side of the grave. As this relates to morality as this relates to God and religion.

  1. I subscribe to the community who believes experience is superior to knowledge. Apparently Buddha advised his followers that when their personal experiences did not confirm his words … they were to ignore his words.

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  1. I subscribe to the community who believes that every individual is pregnant with enormous potential.

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As a general description of the interaction between “I” and death, this seems rather well put.

But who is to really say that, when one attempts to integrate all of the various conflicting reactions to death from a “scientific” and a “philosophical” and a “religious” and a “psychological” frame of mind, the one and only manner in which to truly understand it is able to emerge wholly in sync with Reality.

We just don’t know.

There is what we profess to believe about it “self-consciously”, and there are all the ways in which that is intertwined in the subconscious and the unconscious frames of mind. And all of the ways that is intertwined with our own unique set of experiences with death.

And clearly religion was invented as the shortcut answer of choice: God.

It’s all [ultimately] about Him and His mysterious ways.

And if that works to allay the fear and anxiety, you can simply stop there and be done with it.

But for folks like me there is the problem of reaching that frame of mind. You can’t just “will” yourself to believe it. It’s not like just flicking on a light switch. After all, how exactly does one go about taking that Kierkegaardian “leap” to God? And while you can place a Pascalian “wager” on Him, is God really fooled?

Instead, folks like me have go out and search for alternative frames of mind; and then figure out a way to integrate them into that which, given the life that I have lived so far, they either do or do not make sense.

Okay, but again:

…how then would you go about integrating that into a thread created in order to explore the extant relationship between behaviors that you choose on this side of the grave and the manner in which you imagine your fate on the other side of the grave. As this relates to morality as this relates to God and religion.

What particular experience in what particular context? And how do you go about making that crucial distinction between 1] what you think you know about something “in your head” and 2] your capacity to actually demonstrate that all other rational human beings are obligated to think [to know] the same?

As for the Buddha’s advice, let’s think about that. If a Buddhist were to speak of abortion one might expect him or her to be more or less in sync with this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_ … astic_code

And yet the experiences of particular women – historically, culturally, experientially – vary in many, many enormously complex and convoluted ways.

So, basically, it seems that the advice of the Buddha above is for all practical purposes not very helpful.

Personal Experience

This morning I was leaning out of the window in the stairwell of our apartment building … having a smoke. My wife doesn’t want me to smoke in the apartment. While enjoying my smoke I watched a neighbor giving some food to my wife’s chickens, ducks and geese … 18 in total. I had the opportunity to acknowledge her unsolicited act of kindness … felt sheepish … withdrew from the window so she wouldn’t know that I saw her. I refused to acknowledge her generosity.

On discussing God and Religion

  1. Food … which is absolutely essential for sustaining human life … is not made of our hands. Sure some people participate in the process.

  2. Very few people offer sincere gratitude for the provision of our necessary bread. Religion(s) promote a personal act of gratitude … and many people even go through the motions … as ingrained habit or ritual … versus a genuine act of gratitude.

My Personal Experience
This morning I decided to go to KFC for breakfast … it’s the closest I get to the taste of western food. After breakfast, decided to go for a walk on the beach … the KFC is a few hundred metres from the beach(the ocean).

During the past few years I have come to enjoy walking barefoot along the beach … reminds me of the poem “Footprints in the Sand”. Perhaps it’s one of the unknown reasons I’m living in this particular village. I didn’t choose to live here … I piggy backed a whim my wife had about five years ago.

Yesterday I watched two middle aged village men working their small plot of land in their bare feet. Perhaps there is something mysterious about our feet making contact with the ground … opening a conduit for bidirectional energy flow. The invention of footwear disturbed/disrupted the frequent occurence of this natural phenomenon. Apparently there are antidepressant microbes in the soil. gardeningknowhow.com/garden … s-soil.htm

Back to my walk along the beach … the tide was almost completely in … the water was unexpectedly comfortable … got wet up to about my knees. Several times I looked behind me and watched the incoming wave wash my footprints away … leaving no physical evidence that I had been there … in that particular spot. The residue of me … left in my footprint … didn’t disappear … it was simply swallowed up by this yuge body of water known as the ocean.

Reflected on the notion that the water I was walking in is connected to all the oceans of the planet … several different names … one yuge ocean. The essence of this yuge body of water touched me … the physical me. The essence of me touched this yuge body of water. What mystery this seemingly insignificant event holds within the bosom of this yuge body of water.

“on discussing God and religion”

  1. Dipping our feet in a local ocean is a larger event than most people who do it realize. IOW … how many people reflect on the fact that they are making a personal connection with the ‘one’ ocean on the planet. Ditto for religion … when one makes a contact with any particular religion … a sincere contact … one is making contact with the ‘ONE’ … the somethang all religions have in common. The planet’s oceans have several different names … each name referring to a specific geography. Likewise with religion(s) … the different names simply reflect different geographies/cultures.

  2. This morning the local ocean swallowed the footprints my walking along the beach left behind … my footprints may have vanished from physical sight … yet the residue of me left in the footprint didn’t vanish … simply traveled out of sight. Likewise with life … our physical bodies vanish with decomposition or fire … yet our essence … the ‘footprint’ of our essence … remains a part of the planet and by extension a part of the universe.

  3. This morning the physical me made a connection with the yuge body of water on the planet … I cannot know the ‘totality’ of the significance of this event. Likewise … when one makes a connection with God … in however trivial a way … one cannot know the ‘totality’ of the event.