Weve got some video discourses going on here.
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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.
- 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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- 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
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Food … which is absolutely essential for sustaining human life … is not made of our hands. Sure some people participate in the process.
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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”
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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.
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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.
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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.
Personal Experience
Yesterday I spent an hour or so walking around my wife’s garden. She farms about 6 mu … the equivalent of one acre. Her garden area is not a single contiguous patch of ground … rather several separate patches of one mu or so. The patchwork separation of the land is a remnant of the land reforms of 70 years ago. At that time land was given to families based on the size of a family … the intention being that each family would have enough land to feed their family.
A few individuals who live in our apartment community offered their family land to my wife for a token rental fee. Apparently these people no longer depend on the land to feed their families and they are tired of the hard work required to farm the land. The small patchwork separation of the land precludes the use of modern machinery and equipment … not that the individual owners could afford such equipment.
For example … in rural China most peasants still use a single furrow plow … the use of this rig is rather unique. The plow is not pulled along behind a horse or donkey … it’s pulled by a man walking backwards across the field. Obviously these peasants never had enough land to feed horses or donkeys. What ingenuity! I saw a two person single furrow plow as well. The wife pulls on the front end and the husband guides the rig in the rear … used for preparing a furrrow for planting peanuts.
The peasants are artists … they take such care to ensure their field work is ‘pretty’ … not my wife … who is stubbornly independant and lacks the 40-50 years of practical experience. For example … my wife’s rows of corn meander like a snake while her neighbor’s rows are straight as an arrow.
On discussing God and religion.
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Seeds and soil are passive elements when separated … together they develop a symbiotic relationship. So it is with people and God.
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The goal of modern farming techniques is to maximize output with optimal efficiency. To achieve this goal man has developed artificial actors … chemical concoctions … pesticides, fertilizers … equipment that attempts to enforce regularity/uniformity. Seeds are planted at exactly the same depth … with identical space between them … even seed DNA is re-engineered for optimum and uniform output.
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So it is with religions … the goal being to homogenize large communities of individuals for the sake of efficiency in control … manipulation.
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So it is with cultures/societies.
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Despite all the effort … absolute uniformity/conformity eludes the program’s authors.
Personal Experience
My wife’s ‘farming’ activity this year has lead to some exciting and unusual personal experiences … with their consequent reflections … contemplation. This morning I felt the urge to observe her peanut seeds germinating … a fascinating experience.
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Today I learned … as far as observation is the equivalent of learning … how peanuts germinate and sprout. The peanut seed seems to create a white ‘stem’ (for lack of a better word) that pushes down into the earth or … perhaps simply creates an anchor … that serves to push the peanut to the surface. For many of the seedlings the peanut breaks through the surface of the earth … intact … the peanut later opens … exposing it’s two independent halves … the colour changes to green and leaves start sprouting from the base of where the peanut split into it’s two halves. For me, absolutely fascinating … the only plant I know of that pushes the seed to the surface before sprouting leaves.
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Observations concerning my wife’s corn plants. They sprouted several days ago … the leaves were about 3-4 inches long. The leaves were full of holes … and some had the end of the leaves chewed off. I jumped to the conclusion these corn plants were doomed … they wouldn’t grow into mature corn plants because of my wife’s strong aversion to pesticides. I was wrong again … these same plants have recovered and are growing normally. Hmmm!
“On discussing God and Religion”
In the previous post I wrote:
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This morning I witnessed some of that symbiotic relationship.
- The peanut seed … the genesis of it’s symbiotic relationship with the soil occurs in the ground … in the dark … unseen … dancing alone with the soil. Reminds me of the book “Dark Night of the Soul” by St John of the Cross. According to St John the genesis of our symbiotic relationship with God starts in the dark … in the unknown … the unseen … some part of our being is dancing with God and we’re not consciously aware of the dance.
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Writing the above reminds me of something Ambiguous has written about himself many times … again this morning in another OP:
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Perhaps finding a way for “our house to be at rest” and patience … ergo … no effort on our part is the answer.
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The peanut seed splits into it’s two halves … exposing each half to the sun. The sun joins the dance the peanut seed is having with the soil … the peanut seed turns green … and tiny leaves begin to sprout. The sun … the light … is an integral partner in the growth of the seed plant. Perhaps answers why the sun … the light … figures so prominently in many world religions.
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The corn plants … it’s not over until the fat lady sings. People … like the young corn shoots … are full of holes … a portion of our being has been eaten or chewed off … not to worry … there is something within our being that has the power to overcome these ‘attacks’ and we can grow into a healthy productive life.
Well put. And does this not take us to the very heart and the very soul of religion?
With God we get…
- immortality
- salvation
- divine justice
- a moral font
- a denouement
- a teleology
And can there really be a greater source for peace of mind – happiness – then to believe that this is true? Is there a secular font that even comes close to it?
But most of the true believers don’t stop there:
Think about it. Once you go here with your God and your religion, you find yourself having to translate them into a narrative that becomes applicable to the actual interactions of mere mortals from day to day to day. Into an actual denomination.
In what particular context then is this to be understood? What does it mean existentially to value the self, to embody “a total acceptance around a center of love”, to take the measure of one’s “will”?
And what happens when others share the same intellectual scaffolding here – the same “general description” of human interactions with God and religion – but disagree fiercely regarding what is actually to go on inside it?
Ambiguous … it appears personal experience has no place in your search for answers. With this attitude you stand firmly with the crowd … a crowd that includes almost all of humanity … almost … not all. 
For example, Socrates chose death rather than return to the crowd.
Early European settlers in America thought the indigenous Americans were savages … this attitude persists to this day.
Yet the spirituality of some of the tribes of indigenous Americans is superior to most forms of spirituality throughout history.
How so?
The culture/traditions of these particular tribes forced their young boys … about age 14 … to separate from the crowd … to leave the village … to abandon their comfort zone … and walk out into the wilderness … the chaos … all alone … in search of a purpose for their individual life. The activity was called a “vision quest”
Ambiguous … are you prepared to separate from the crowd … abandon all you know … and walk out into the wilderness … the chaos … all alone. From the few of your posts I read I think not.
Manifestation of your enormous potential is stymied by clinging to the crowd.
No, my point is that personal experience is not the only source for answers when the questions being raised revolve around God and religion.
After all, eventually you are going to bump into others who, through a different set of personal experiences, are going have very different answers.
This thread was then created in order to explore these answers. Answers relating to behaviors that are chosen on this side of the grave as that relates to certain sets of assumptions regarding one’s fate on the other side of the grave.
As this is related to the answers that different folks give to the question, “Does God exist?”. As this relates in turn to their capacity to actually demonstrate that in fact their God [and only their God] does exist.
How is that related to the reason that I created this thread? And my reaction to Socrates and his ilk would be no different here. As would be my reaction to early European settlers and Native Americans. Whatever their particular narrative regarding morality on this side of the grave and their perceived fate on the other side, they had particular answers. And I would explore those answers as they relate to my own – answers rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Rooted in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts.
Exactly: How so?
How on earth would you [or them] demonstrate this to be the case? With respect to what particular behaviors in what particular contexts?
Or: What particular “visions” relating to what particular behaviors on this side of the grave; as that relates to what particular “visions” of the other side of it.
What I am prepared to do is to sit down with folks who have a set of answers before and then after their “vision quest”.
How are the answers different? And “for all practical purposes” how are the different answers more or less relevant in their interactions with others?
And how is that related to their “vision” of the part that revolves around immortality and salvation?
Is there really a “Happy Hunting Ground” where the souls of any number of Great Plains Native Americans go? Is there the equivalent of a Judgment Day there? Which particular Native American tribes get to say which particular vision prevails in which particular context on this side of the grave?
In my view, you won’t go there because you find no need to. As long as you can attach your own “peace of mind” to this “general description” of “spirituality” that you give relating to these “vision quests” that’s as far as it need go for you.
Or, again, so it seems to me.
But I will be the first to acknowledge that my own narrative here is no less an existential contraption in turn.
That’s why I always come back to the crucial distinction between that which we believe is true “in our head” “here and now” about these things [relationships] and that which we are able to demonstrate is in fact true for everyone now and forever.
In a vision or not.
Forever? That’s an absurd requirement.
How can you possibly know how humans will evolve in the distant future and what discoveries will be made? Even the hard sciences would not satisfy such a requirement. You’re essentially saying that nothing can be demonstrated. =D>
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Iambiguous … do you consider your above statement an example of what Jacob labels “dyadic”.
If so, what a revelation!
Your animated persistent and tenacious clinging to your ‘existential contraption’ reveals the existence of ‘spirit’.
How so?
Spirit is invisible, unknowable, indescribable, ineffable and so on … making it logical that ‘spirit’ has chosen to reveal itself through ‘dyadic’ with people like you.
Our e-exchanges have strengthened my faith after all … thanks. 