viewtopic.php?f=5&t=194924&p=2728744#p2728744
My Gods are Great.
My favorite philosopher is Spinoza, and His view of God I interpreted as a grand awareness, a higher serenity of peace, a throne of council to honor the way of nature, and to tap into the deepest power in the universe, realizing the infinitude of all things.
Can a religious perspective get any fluffier than this? The whole point seems aimed at getting as far removed as possible from the actual nitty gritty reality of human interactions as most of us know them to be. Instead, you create “in your head” this hopelessly vague and vacuous “spititual” reality you can use as a counterweight to anything that might happen to come along and spoil your day.
The extreme dangers of physical existence, not necessarily higher metaphysical/spiritual awareness, but real life may be draining and damaging, but (assuming all of our basic bodily needs are met), we can reach a purely transcendental state of wholeness and warmth/love, bubbling hearts if we treasure this precious opportunity we have in life to shine our talents and secure wisdom for the future.
Really, how on earth is this “grand awareness” applicable to a nature that is a veritable slaughterhouse of predator and prey? How does one square a “higher serenity of peace” with a natural order that is bursting at seams with all manner of catastophic calamities – from earthquakes and volcanoes to great floods and devastating droughts.
Not to mention such things as “extinction events”.
The power of nature may be absolutely outrageously vivid, even violent in magnitude and display, but, from our secure scientific vantage points, such phenomena may be a source of fascination and awe, kind of like how swords became lightsabers for hollywood entertainment and geeky play. And, regarding the pain of being eaten, it’s the infinitude of forms in nature that represent the full splendor and spectrum of the divine intellect. Still, there’s a better way, and when we rise up to supreme levels (which is already promised to us in the holy books, God protecting our destiny), we can remove the hurt and death from existence.
The “deepest power of the universe”? And what might that be? It seems no more able to be examined and explained realistically than the “infinitude of all things.” Instead, it seems more in the way of being able to say it and think it and feel it in your “heart and soul”.
This divine, omnipotent, megagalactic power is God - He is real, watches over us, supervises us, and ensures for our highest fate. If we tap into the will of God, imagination (the desired part) becomes at least somewhat real (and perhaps in the future very real). How do we know that God is real? Because of chance/destiny synchronicities and prayers being answered, even feeling in your heart the full embrace of spiritual ecstasy. The existence itself may presently be evil though, but that can be overturned centuries down the road.
I just don’t get it. Sure, the idea of a particular denominational God existing, then creating the universe and then the human race at least allows one to focus in on something. But God as the “the sum of the natural and physical laws"?
The cosmic completeness that can arise in our sanctuaries of soul from the divine outpouring of nature gives effect to passions of lucidity and clarity, finding that center of council that blesses us with the fanciest garb, or maybe if mind was strong enough, then it’s just as we will it, and no law, natural or supernatural will hold us back.
How does one really connect the dots here between an entity of this sort and the choices that one makes from day to day to day. And in a world that is often bursting at the seams with all manner of pain and suffering.
Parts of life are perfect, and parts of it are not, but it’s the growing phase, and the key is this - if we just made everything perfectly suddenly, the invisible code of liberty/free will would weaken, because if there was ever a chance that the devil could overcome us, that triumph over his matrix is victory and freedom every day. Would you ask for it to happen that way again? No, never - hurting people is a sin. But it won’t happen again, so we may as well dig deeper for bigger rewards through more pain.
It all just seems to be a flotation device, a psychological balm able to offer up at least something to counter all the horrors built right into the human condition.
Yes, it’s escapism, but if we’re pure of constitution and valor/vitality enough/sufficiently, then we can throw down those arrows and chains of miserable, determined/devil-controlled existence, and strike our conquest celebrations enough to take over the universe. And even though I don’t do anything wrong, I’m dark sided, because sometimes I contemplate the poisonous perspective to try to be more unique, or grab for myself huge labyrinths of control grounds to feel the force energy of the eons spent dreaming of the highest utopia.