This is where I find your thoughts problematic to begin with. The assumption that God is invented “via crude reasons” assumes to begin with that the Ancients were tumb and their reasoning crude. The fact is that they had to cope with problems that are already solved (by others) in our time, and that ideas had to be borne out by experience to survive. As I have written elsewhere, I believe that the content of the Bible, for example, has been gathered by generations of people looking for answers to their questions. Over a long time, only the answers that held up were accepted and grafted into the anthology we call the Bible. Of course the Bible is pre-science and we are post-renaissance, which makes our appreciation of what they had gathered difficult to understand. That is why I think that people like Jordan Peterson (and CG Jung before him) are best suited to help us understand what these scriptures are actually telling us. Theologians have fallen to the temptation of presenting arguments that are difficult to swallow, but even there you find ideas that are not completely different to the psychological exegesis.
It would be so easy if human beings were just biological robots with algorithms to hack. Fact is, they’re not. Of course there are sequences of behaviour, like the development of personality type within the first four years, along with an exponential learning rate. Then playing out the role they were expected to take on as adults. Going through the experience of adolescence and being initiated as an adult. During this development, answers were sought as to why consciousness separates us from the animals, and where meaning is to be found. That is really the first existential struggle, because human beings look ahead and need some motivation. They play out aspects of life, and myth, allegory and metaphor allow them to do that. I believe that God is a thought that comes to the young people entering adulthood, leading up to the initiation, giving them perspectives and identity.
The “crude reason” you are alluding to are talking about is too crude. Rather, the fairy tales told to children have become simpler and more soothing than they used to be when humanity was struggling for existence. Reality had to be described in some metaphorical way to make children understand that they have to obey to survive. You have not taken this survival aspect seriously enough. It is only recently in human existence that life has been as relatively comfortable as it is in the West. In the East, there are still young people who have to go through growing pains of a different kind.
Santa Claus is also something that is very new in the history of mankind. The original St. Nicholas was a figure that was known for his legendary habit of secret gift-giving, and who is said to have rescued three girls from being forced into prostitution by dropping a sack of gold coins through the window of their house each night for three nights so their father could pay a dowry for each of them. Of course these are just legends, but being forced into prostitution was a very real danger, and not kid’s stuff. Maslow gave us the hierarchy of needs which show that an awful lot must happen before people can aspire to write these things down in a way that inspires others.
At the extreme, atheists will do the same, and for the same reason. It is ideology that turns a religion or a philosophy into a reason for killing. Both religious people and atheists can fall foul of all the emotions that lead to war or oppression. The twentieth century is proof of that, and exploitation is everywhere – not only amongst theists.
I think that James answered you appropriately on that.
Your argument against perfection is flawed by the fact that you are not aware of what the word translated as perfection means. Even the English word means thoroughly made or formed, fully accomplished, completely prepared, in the state of compete excellence, free from any flaw or imperfection of quality, of supreme moral excellence or righteous, and fully answering to what a name implies. Taken with the context of how the word translated as perfect is used, we come to see that it isn’t used in the way we would use it today.
There are numerous people who have said that they had “mystical experiences” that are also quite revered, like CG Jung for example. Research into the psychedelic experience has shown that mystical effects can be profound and meaningful. Mystical experiences have been the cornerstone of religious and spiritual practice for thousands of years. From early Christian mysticism to Zen Buddhism, almost every religious path offers space for experiences that make a more direct connection to the more mysterious aspects of reality. Worldly practices such as meditation, yoga and being in nature can also produce mystical experiences, and people who encounter mystical experiences often find them life-changing and positive.
Or perhaps it is just that we do not yet understand what was going on all that time ago and prefer to pull in pathological examples as though these were the same as what these other people in history experienced. Like I say above, mystical experiences are often found to be life-changing and positive. Even astronauts have had mystical experiences at the sight of the earth rotating below them.
Your argument that what is not empirical is only an illusion suffers the lack of knowledge as to what consciousness actually is. We know that the brain reacts in different areas according to the varying thoughts we have, but an old tube radio used to do the same without being the source of what it was playing.
The main argument for something not graspable, but present, is the fact that our existence and abilities beg the question, how can consciousness come to be on a bunch of rocks if it isn’t inherently present in the universe? There are simply things that we have to leave open.
I appreciate that this is definitely a question that those suffering the onslaught of a hurricane may ask. They may even be praying that the hurricane swerves away or that they survive. Of course, how their ideas of God play out under such circumstances, we can’t know. My father was once in an accident with an amphibious tank that sank and took his crew with it. He survived because he was a good swimmer. After that, he couldn’t bear the sight of a pastor or priest. I didn’t understand that for a while, but now I do.
I don’t believe in the God of millions of Christians across the planet, but I do experience faith in the whisper in the storm, in hope in the face of disaster, in the beauty of poetry and metaphorical stories, or in love and in flow. None of it is graspable, but it is there none the same. Many of these things are only individual experiences, impossible to be passed on, except by metaphor or in poetry, but it can be life changing.
Quite right about Peterson being Jungian in his approach. However, I think that there are both unconscious and conscious forces at work. There are many people who beat themselves up, having an idealistic idea about the world, or having a high standard they are trying to achieve. Feeling inadequate or as a failure may be a way of elevating their being, but I see his meaning as something that is far more a principle of validating people, putting them up a step higher and acknowledging them as complex human beings.
The spirit that brings everything together is a force against those influence that lie transversely in relationship to what would make things good. Those who are in this spirit align themselves with what is good and elevates being, whether in action or in prayer for example. Prayer is more about actively being a channel for good and using affirmations to that goal. Incarnate truth is where people are actively in faithful to the truth you can sense an air that is somehow different and inspiring.
Agreed, mystical experience is a sensual experience, which is something you can never describe perfectly, even if you employ all methods available to do that.
Yes, but why would you want to touch that which hides behind their personae? Are you as open in your relationships? I think not, nobody is. We feel that they could stumble upon the shadow that is lurking behind some facade, and suddenly shy away. Why expect other people to accept your shadow – you don’t!
It is a good thing that it is that way too. A little mystery is what lures us and enthrals us at the beginning of a relationship and once we think we have nothing more to discover, we grow tired. We may start looking in other quarters for the next mystery.
My point was that when people are confronted to give explanations of God by skeptics, it is presumed that you either have a completel coherent answer or it is meaningless or you have no reason to believe. So, I was talking about how we only know portions of those we live with for years. IOW the demand and the conclusion is confused.
But, now, in answer to your question: sure, of course. What hides behind the persona is in contact with us already and ours with them. We cannot keep others from experiencing even things that we are not conscious of about ourselves. And beyond that, yes, I want that. I want as much of the authentic other as I can find. If I am either wanting to be close to them or sometimes if I want to protect myself from them.
There are obviously degrees, but my relationships generally include agreements to show as much as possible, even if it seems ugly, evil, chaotic. This is balanced with the day and everyone’s needs.
Me and my spouse, for example, are openly working on integrating our shadows and are will to expose these to each other. We can even do this very expressively. But also we discuss what we find and are quite open with the very unpleasant stuff we find. It is much harder to integrate the shadow alone.
Why bother? We can only be all wrong anyway though we think that we know. We like to romanticize things.
As much as I would like to know God AS IS, IF IS, it is never going to happen.
If i cannot know the Real, or even IF it is Real, I would much rather be within the mystery within the darkness.
It is all darkness - well perhaps except for the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest pinpoint of light and do I even see that!
That is not God. What is it? I have no idea.
I think it is worth the effort to be clear about what we mean by God, even if you are an atheist, so that we are aware of what we are thinking. There are many people who have an unclear idea about what they mean and in some, their idea of God needs some exchange. It is in defining that we come to terms with what we’re thinking.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world who have no idea of their own, but instead obey what the church or the party, or their particular peers group, say they have to say. I believe we are religious creatures insomuch as we need an orientation that gives us that meta view, as though from above, the big picture etc. so that they have a blueprint of acceptable behaviour.
When people are talking to themselves, even in thought, who do they mean? Themselves? Maybe, but I believe that people hope that someone is listening, especially when pleading that something will or won’t happen. Many are acting AS IF, but what do they hope for?
I too accept God to be a mystery, but there are aspects of interaction, like mystical experiences, or that surprising alignment of events that leaves us in awe. We experience selfless love and ask where it comes from. Or we are amazed at what can happen when people with the same spirit join together. Or quite simply, we look into that chaos of stars and ask, why me, here, at this time?
The question of consciousness, i.e. the hard problem, does not warrant anyone to jump to the conclusion God exists.
What you missed out is the criticalness of the existential crisis and the terrible impulses manifesting from it.
Here are the facts surrounding the existential crisis;
DNA wise all humans are programmed with terrible fears under any threats [real or apparent] of premature death.
This is why babies and children will be very fearful and cry if they are away from their parents. They will feel relieved and secured in the presence of their parents.
But for adults, they are endowed with self-awareness to be aware from empirical evidence, death is inevitable. While most can suppress the thought of death at the conscious level to some degrees, there is nothing to prevent the more stronger 90% subconscious mind to pick up this fact of death.
At the subconscious level, a cognitive dissonance is generated, i.e. the person don’t want to die but death is inevitable. Note more to the subconscious mind than the conscious.
This cognitive dissonance at the sub-conscious level in ALL humans generate terrible angst, anxieties and despairs to drive the mind to seek solutions to relieve this terrible mental sufferings.
For the majority of humans, the idea of God [despite factually illusory] is twisted and bent by the subconscious mind to be real and thus provide instant relief to the terrible mental sufferings.
For the non-theists they will find other non-theistic solutions which could be good or evil.
For all the deflections and excuses you gave above, you cannot avoid the above fact of the existential crisis.
As I had stated the idea of God is manifested from very crude reasons, e.g.
-Every creation must have a creator [from cause and effect]
-The vast universe is an existing creation
-Only God the omnipotent an create a vast universe.
-Therefore God exists
The above is driven by crude reasoning without proper empirical groundings and each premise is full of holes but theists would not give a damn with proper reasoning and justifications as long as what they thought of is sufficient to relieve the terrible mental pains exuding from the above existential crisis.
Why such bad logic is accepted is because the belief in a God [despite illusory] really works to relieve the mental sufferings and in many cases almost immediately.
If you were to research the scriptures of all religions, the main purpose for the believers are focused on the eschatological and salvation, for most the assurance of going to heaven with eternal life [a relief to the existential crisis].
The relieving and maintaining of the resolution of the natural existential crisis at the subconscious level is so critical that many believers are willing to kill if there is a threat to their belief or a calling by God to do so. [note Abraham willingness to sacrifice his son].
Such a permission is sanctioned within the Quran - words of Allah, the core scripture of Islam. Christianity [based on Gospel] is basically a pacifist religion but it has it other negatives in hindering the progress of humanity.
While theism provide instant relief for the existential crisis which is good since past years but it has its cons. The point why serious criticisms of theism is needed now and the future is because its cons are slowly outweighing its pros toward the future.
For God to provide the maximum assurance to relieve the existential crisis, God has to be perfect, totally unconditional and second to none. But a God with such qualities is impossible to be real.
What is real is that which can be empirically justified with philosophical reasonings [not groundless crude reasons].
Thus God manifesting out of crude reasons necessarily to deal with the inherent unavoidable existential crisis is an impossibility to be real, i.e. a transcendental illusion.
I think you should do what you want. But the ‘why bother’ and some of the way you word your response is as if there is a general answer to what one should bother with, and also that everyone’s experience is similar. Below also…
Why should you bother? I have no answer for you on that. That’s up to you. The same question could be asked ‘why bother trying to be intimate with people?’ or with nature, or even for ‘being within the mystery within the darkness.’
We bother about things that matter to us, and also based on our experiences, both of which differ. Sometimes be don’t bother based on ideas we have been given or built up, perhaps based on experiences or emotions - ones we may or may not be conscious of.
An existential crisis is, as I have already said, not something to ignore. It forces people to recount what they consider important, valuable and desirable. It is, after all a matter of existence.
There is no proof that the fears of humanity is genetic, but rather they start from the moment the unborn experiences its existence in the womb. Fear is reactive, even if the stimulus is imagined, and the body goes into flight or fight mode – to the degree at which it is able.
The parent, usually the mother, is the only interaction it knows of and when this interaction is terminated (even in the short term), the baby cries until another soothing influence is given. The baby is getting to know its environment and its experiences in a spiral outwards. If it experiences something unpleasant it will cry. However, the experience of the child teaches it when to cry and they are not fearful from the beginning.
Self-awareness grows on people and young children can be confronted with death so that it becomes a reality for them. Once children realise that something as final as death can happen, they fear it. However, we all suppress the thought of death until we are reminded by circumstance.
A mental discomfort (psychological stress) can be experienced by any person who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, but it isn’t necessarily the case with death. Many people go through life blissfully ignorant until confronted with death.
I don’t believe that the fear of death is always present. The may be fears, like suffocating for example, but the fear is mostly concerned with the experience rather than its consequence. There are many fears that a human being can have without it being a fear of death.
No. God is not always the relief of fear, but the all-seeing eye. There are many children who are brought up on the idea that God is only good and they are quite shocked when they read that God is also a source of fear. I don’t see the instant relief, especially because many children have no idea of a God in the Judaeo-Christian sense. There are enough children in the West that only become aware of something called God when they are confronted with the idea in school or church. That can be relatively late. Then it is also a question of how the parents opinions influence children.
Like what exactly?
You really push your argument that this reasoning is something that everybody goes through. I didn’t, for a start. I experienced Sunday school as a place where we were told stories that we immediately forgot when we left the room. I couldn’t even relate them to my mother, despite being an imaginative child. In all my games, God wasn’t a part of them, despite being “impressionable”. Speaking to other people, there are many who grew up completely ignorant of the idea of God.
My first experience was when, at 11, I was on a summer camp run by Christians who read the Bible to us. On the way back, we had to cross the Bristol Channel on a small ferry and were caught up in a storm. Despite the storm being something I had never experienced in that way before, with the sea rising up above the boat only to fall immediately afterwards, I wasn’t scared. Waves came crashing on deck, soaking all those who were hanging over the rail to be sick. I was enthralled by the experience and felt quite safe, and connected for the first time with the God of my imagination.
I don’t see many people with “terrible mental pains”, and especially not in church. I don’t know where you get this from. People do experience suffering in its various forms but their immediate reaction is not to believe in a God that will relieve that.
You obviously haven’t read scripture. The book of Genesis first describes the situation of humanity in a myth that is very truthful in its estimation. It then goes on to describe the situation of the world. Then there is the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which are all very cryptic and gives food for thought. It is followed by the story of Israel, the rise of Kings and finally prophets.
The NT commences with the tragedy of Christ, follows with the hope of Christianity and letters to the communities and ends with Revelations, a book with seven seals. It is what theology takes from that great anthology that turns it into what you have said.
Hearsay I’m afraid. It is what people with little knowledge of the Bible assume, but once you get to know it, it becomes quite another thing.
I’m sure there are people like you describe, but all of them? I think not. You shouldn’t whitewash everyone with your theories.
“Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies.
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand.
Little flower–but if I could understand
What you are, root and all and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”–Tennyson.
As a pantheist I see religion’s atheists and agnostics as arguing with parts of themselves they dare not try to understand.
To understand is to acknowledge being part of the whole.
Many ideas from indigenous people are superior to ideas espoused by literalist Christians and atheists. The Earth as holy is one of these as is the idea of all creatures being relatives.
A beautiful verse. D.T. Suzuki wrote in his Essays in Zen Buddhism, “‘shujvo’ (or a staff) … seems to have been most favourite instrument used in the demonstration of the truth of Zen … According to Yeryo (Hui-leng), of Chökei (Chang-ch’ing), ‘when one knows what that staff is, one’s life study of Zen comes to an end’. This reminds us of Tennyson’s flower in the crannied wall. For when we understand the reason of the staff, we know ‘what God and man is’; that is to say, we get an insight into the natureof our own being, and this insight finally puts a stop to all doubts and hankerings that have upset our mental tranquillity. The significance of the staff in Zen can thus readily be comprehended.”
I certainly agree with this BUT perhaps it is not so much what I want but what I sense/feel/see leading me to my only recourse.
No. I do not think that I was coming from that kind of a “place”. I do not see a general answer to most things. But many people do experience the same kind of things insofar as the God concept goes and many people experience other things.
I do think that my response “why bother” came from a place of never being able to know. This is what I see. At the same time, I can and will admit that perhaps the moment before I typed that in, I may have been feeling a bit disheartened by the whole idea.
Normally, I have no problem living with not knowing because there is just so much beauty and knowledge in the universe that gives meaning. At the same time, none of that is an answer to the question of who is God or is there God. We can try to lie to ourselves and to sweep the questions under the carpet, but they do not go away.
I wonder if bothering would actually make a difference to my mind. I wonder how one would even go about changing or trying to change an agnostic mind. I wonder what journey one could take toward bringing that mind a little closer to seeing a reality of whatever pertains to this God question.
That is an easy question. We are human beings. We need human intimacy, we need to be intimate with nature. It stands there and waits for us. It is healing, it is teaching. We need that for human survival or we can whither and die (metaphorically speaking - but for some in actuality).
Of course, people also feel a need for God but how can one have a relationship with something which they cannot fathom?
We need that to feed our psyches, to come to know ourselves, our real selves at our core. Mystery allows us to realize that we cannot know everything and that is a good place to be. I also have a thing for the darkness (not evil). You can experience your self there in all the ways in which you might not even like but need to see before you can bring on chaos.
.
They do not necessarily differ. But those things we can reach out and touch, we can feel them, they are “real” to us even though on a different level as far as experiences go, they may be something different. We are human beings. Do not get me wrong. There are times when I wonder and muse about this God thing but I am not able to take that leap because the branch is just not strong or long enough to uphold this human mind.
This is certainly true. I think that for the most part, I am quite conscious of my unconscious self and needs and conflicting interests.
I have done quite a bit of excavation in those nooks and crannies.
But how do we find or know God with only one’s rational mind. Everything else is just chemicals right?
Yes, we are. I wonder what the world would be like if we all realized that?!
I agree with that. We have to do that with our thinking about everything for ourselves and those with whom we are speaking.
Maybe I defined what I meant by God perhaps on the other side of the coin? Or did I?
True and also in opening the doors to change that thinking. This is, after all, a philosophy forum. How does one define something in the negative?
Does that make us religious creatures or people who have to follow the pack?
Can you explain this a bit more.
But then why not focus on those things individually? Why bring God into the equation?
I know. It’s no small matter that I lost faith in God myself given what I had experienced in Vietnam. And given the arguments of those then and there who had already embraced a No God world.
But that’s my point. Any particular individual’s belief in God is, in my view, predicated largely on his or her own actual experiences in the course of living his or her own actual life.
It’s just that with a belief in God, the stakes are considerably higher. The folks in the Bahamas, as with all of us facing calamitous situations, are faced with the option of continuing to believe and putting their faith in God’s “mysterious ways”, immortality and salvation…or rejecting God and accepting that their wrecked lives are merely as the result of an essentially meaningless existence, with no prospect of anything other than just accepting in turn their plight and preparing for oblivion.
My thinking then is that the option chosen here is embodied more in dasein than in a “thinking through” their situation and, using the tools of philosophy, agglomerating the most rational conclusions.
I can respect that. After all, there is no way that I could ever possibly understand the choices that you make, given how our lives are, I suspect, very, very different.
But, in a philosophy venue, my own interest in religion revolves more around closing the gap between what one believes about God and what one is able to demonstrate that, perhaps, all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.
Also, in exploring the manner in which this belief is more the embodiment of “I” as an existential contraption. In other words, a sense of self ever subject to change given new experiences. Rather than as a commitment to the “real me” in sync with the “right thing to think feel and do” in relationship to God.
Finally, the manner in which someone connects the dots between their faith/belief in God on this side of the grave as that impacts on the behaviors they choose here and now in order to sustain what they wish their fate to be there and then on the other side of the grave.
The “for all practical purposes” implications of choosing here.
So, when I see a thread entitled “define God” my own interest lies in taking that definition out into the world of interacting men and women, and putting it to the test given particular contexts.
But that’s no less my own embodiment of “I” – here and now – as an existential contraption. It will either click with others or it won’t. I am certainly not suggesting that others ought to share it. Let alone are obligated to.
Darkness, and a tiny pinpoint of light … that reminds me of Elijah who, after a great hullabaloo in which God “was not”, heard a whisper… the account ends there, leaving the reader to guess. I think that there are multiple ways to describe the phenomenon we call God. The religious traditions of the world give us a lot, but is that all?
That’s why we’re here. I think many people have defined God by what he/she/it is not … including the story of Elijah. I think that we need as many possibilities as there are, including pantheist ideas.
I think we are both, following the pack may be just be following the best alternative.
I have caught myself, especially in situations of stress, thinking as though I was addressing someone and some of my friends, even atheists, have admitted the same. I asked myself who I was talking to. Am I talking to myself in such situations, or do I assume that there is someone listening? There are times when I know I’m beating myself up for being so stupid, but that’s different.
I think it is because I feel it has to come from somewhere and if consciousness is inherent in the cosmos, what is behind it all? Especially when things happen so beautiful that they stand out, I ask myself how that can be. Of course, on the surface, you accept these things individually, but underneath my curiosity starts up …
You got it wrong.
DNA wise all human are coded and born with the primal instinct and the primary emotion of fear i.e. necessary to avoid dangers, threats and premature death thus ensuring survival.
A child will not be able to express feelings of fear consciously but the actions of primal fears in a child and adults are very universal.
This is proof, fear [primal and emotion] is genetic.
I had mentioned above, there are two levels re the fear of death;
Conscious fear of death
Subconscious [subliminal] fear of death
1. Conscious fear of death
DNA wise a person will experience conscious fear of death intermittently when triggered by the sight of it or thoughts of it. Humans are programmed with inhibitors and modulators to ensure that the conscious fear of death do not manifest all the time.
This is a very natural to ensure all humans are not paralyzed by the conscious fear of death.
Anyone who has a persistent conscious fear of death is a mental case and has to see a psychiatrist. This mental illness is called Thanatophobia or Death Anxiety.
Death anxiety is anxiety caused by thoughts of death. One source defines death anxiety as a “feeling of dread, apprehension or solicitude (anxiety) when one thinks of the process of dying, or ceasing to ‘be’”.[1] Also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death), death anxiety is distinguished from necrophobia, which is a specific fear of dead or dying people and/or things (i.e., fear of others who are dead or dying, not of one’s own death or dying).
-wiki
2. Subconscious [subliminal] fear of death
This is the critical issue.
I had stated above, the power of the subconscious mind is 10 time greater than that of the conscious mind.
The subconscious mind is very cognizant of the cognitive dissonance of must not die but will certainly die. This create a turmoil in the mind that manifests unidentifiable unease, anxieties, despairs, Angst that drives the mind to find solutions to ease the mental pain.
Angst means fear or anxiety (anguish is its Latinate equivalent, and anxious, anxiety are of similar origin). The dictionary definition for angst is a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity.[1] The word angst was introduced into English from the Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch word angst and the German word Angst. It is attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Kierkegaard and Freud.[1][2][3]
It [Angst] is used in English to describe an intense feeling of apprehension, anxiety, or inner turmoil.
It is this cognitive dissonance and Angst that drives theist to a God as a very quick-fix solution and it is very immediate and effective.
Generally it is a relief but not instant relief all the time.
It is an instant relief when there is a conscious crisis and when one surrender to God there is instant relief.
For the majority of theist the idea of God is like a comfortable security blanket. For many theists, when that security is pull or tug, they will even kill the one who is pulling their security blanket - this is so evident.
There is non-theistic religions like Buddhism [including Zen] and others.
Others may turn to pain-killers and all sort of drugs to relieve the mental unease to their detriment in the long run.
Others keep themselves occupied with various interests to keep suppress these impulses from the subconscious mind for an idle mind is the devil’s playground.
Others turned to spiritual self-development programs to strengthen the inhibitors that inhibit the impulses of Angst.
My argument is that reasoning of the existential crisis is a fundamental and a potential, DNA wise, in ALL human beings.
It get triggered to be very active in various circumstances.
It is not likely to be triggered in a child until the person is in the late teens with a stronger self-awareness of death that feed backs to the subconscious.
As stated above, for most, the existential crisis is active within the subsconscious during late teens or early twenties, and for adults it can be anytime when the inhibitors are weakened by stress and various factors.
The existential crisis will manifest stronger as one get older because all brain cells naturally atrophized and for the said inhibitors they are not replaced.
Across the world, people have varying levels of belief (and disbelief) in God, with some nations being more devout than others. But new research reveals one constant across parts of the globe: As people age, their belief in God seems to increase. livescience.com/19971-belie … m-age.html
Even the once world’s most famous [a]theist, Anthony Flew, succumbed to the existential crisis impulse in the later part of his life where his neural inhibitors eroded and the existential crisis impulse overwhelmed his rational faculty to some degree that he turned to deism.
It is possible for any [a]theist including me that the relevant inhibitors will weaken via atrophy in my later years. Thus I am taking steps to strengthen the relevant inhibitors so my mind do not drive me into theism in the future.
I have explained above, the conscious mind is not supposed to fear death persistently and have feeling of fears.
But deep down, the existential crisis is brewing strongly deep in the brain especially those theists who are zealous of a belief in God.
What??
As a Christian, you are not aware what is the core of Christianity for a Christian?
The core of Christianity is not the Bible but the doctrines of God expressed by Christ in the Gospel. The Epistles, Acts and OT [relevant verses] are merely supporting texts to the main doctrines within the Gospel of Christ.
For a Christian, the central focus in the Gospel is God’s offer within John 3:16 and the likes;
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
The above is an offer for anyone to accept.
One a person accept the offer, there is an implied contract, i.e. a personal covenant with God.
Once the divine contract is signed, the Christian will have to comply with the covenanted terms as in the Gospel in exchange for an everlasting eternal life in heaven.
Thus the main purpose of Christianity for a Christian is to receive the promise in a contract of everlasting eternal life in heaven.
Everything else is secondary.
I am not an expert of the Bible, but I am well aware of the main doctrinal principle of Christianity from the Gospel alone. Note my explanations above.
Whitewash??
I have justified all my points.
I don’t expect anyone to agree with me based on blind faith but for one to review the justified arguments I have presented and counter them rationally.
Show me, where am I wrong or have presented clear-cut falsehoods in the above.
My point;
God is an idea which is a transcendental illusion manifested out a psychological driven existential crisis to ease existential pains and Angst.
War is said to either drive men away from God or into his arms. I can only imagine some of the things you had to watch or do in Vietnam as I was a child at that time, living not far away, but safely in Malaya.
But you are right about belief being predicated by peoples experiences. It was one reason why I had to leave the church and pursue a spiritual path which led me to the various traditions and to the awareness of how similar religions are, in a strange way. I was following Thomas Merton in doing so, although he was long dead by then. I was also led to believe that religion, including Christianity, had monastic beginnings, even if it was mixed. That is why it is hard for people caught up in everyday life to practise and why it seems so outlandish.
I question the existential threat that you see the people in the Bahamas are up against. The storm is still the storm, whether they believe or not. In fact, there are people that say that humanity only learns via confrontation, and that is one mighty confrontation. That is where we have to think things through.
We have spoken about dasein before. I understand the struggle with existence (or being) in the use of that word. All aspects of being cause a struggle with suffering in its various forms. Life is suffering, but there are ways to confront it. I read Peterson as saying that if you follow a few rules, you will find that existence aligns with you and things can get a bit easier, although the struggle stays. Buddha had some good ideas as well. It is the fact that there are ways to successfully struggle with being that is so astounding. I have read him as well as various other authors who have brought up the fact that things going right are some kind of miracle in a world that is caught up in decay and degeneration.
Closing that gap might be easier than you think, the problem is that it isn’t the solution that many Christians would want. If we could agree that the stories of the Bible have more to do with psychology than with history, we could pull the wisdom that is held in there out of the more dated stories. The value of the Bible is the thousand year tradition that rings true to life when you observe it that way and the message that the New Testament carries. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not a sensible thing to do. It is like felling a massive Hyperion, the grandparent of all tall trees, to have firewood.
I think we can’t ignore the fact that, since we have driven modern man out of the churches, there has been a degeneration of purpose. People are struggling to find meaning and we are seeing it in our societies. More people are depressive, suicidal or have other psychological disorders. Practitioners are saying that it is the lack of orientation and reduction of purpose to getting through the day. That is why it is true that religion is often a crutch that people lean on. When that, as in recent times, fails to support, or is corrupt, those being supported fall.
One could say, what’s it to me that these people are mentally ill? However, depression is something that sneaks up on people and can have purely somatic symptoms that have doctors baffled until it becomes clear that the cause is depression. It hits all kinds of people, not just those below the minimum wage or those reduced to beggars. It is also one reason why Jordan Peterson wrote his book, “12 Rules for Life” with a subtitle “An Antidote to Chaos”. There are human resources being lost to psychological disorders, not because they are incapable, but because they have lost direction.
I have always said, we live here and now, and hoping for something better on the other side is an option, but can’t be the prime motivator. It is this world, and our own space, that we have to put in order. The good news is that when a large group work together and align their purpose, 2 + 2 becomes 5. Unexpected things happen that improve conditions. They seem wondrous in the face of degeneration, decay and corruption. The problem is that to motivate people to do that, you have to have the bigger picture in view. That’s where a world view comes in.
I don’t think that it is possible to motivate in the way needed without a world view with defined goals and standards, complete with an interactive group that embodies that world view in what they do. That is where mutual obligation comes into the picture. Agreeing to do things based on that world view. God is then the conjectural eye in the sky, the meta-vision, and judge of all things.
Fear is a feeling induced by perceived danger or threat. A baby can’t perceive a threat, but it can’t be alone after growing for nine months inside the mother. That is probably the next discomfort after the traumatic experience of birth. But reading that quote from Wikipedia, it is the response that is inborn, not fear per se. Our bodies know how to react to threat or danger, but it must first be perceived.
Here again, the reaction is what is inborn, not a fear. Fear has to be perceived, regardless whether the threat is real or imagined.
Thanatophobia is a pathological disorder, an abnormal fear of death. It isn’t “normal”, i.e. in someone’s DNA.
Terror management theory (TMT) attempts to explain a type of defensive human thinking and behavior that stems from an awareness and fear of death. According to TMT, death anxiety drives people to adopt worldviews that protect their sense of self-esteem, worthiness, and sustainability and allow them to believe that they play an important role in a meaningful world. psychologytoday.com/us/basi … ent-theory
It is an awareness, that it a perception of death that people fear. That means, it is comes when people become capable of perceiving death. This isn’t usually the case in children, unless they are confronted with death and it has a traumatic effect. Normally this fear grows with the death of parents, but also with the premature death of siblings. That is why older people tend to return to the church to find the meaning that is lost when people around them are dying.
Once again, this is all necessary if one develops a fear of death. I would say that the fear of futility or pointlessness of existence can make people take drugs to soothe their misgivings about life. Buddhism accepts that life is absurd and that suffering is the lot of mankind, but offers a way to cope.
I have never avoided the fact that an existential crisis can occur, but to say it is in our DNA is misleading. What is inborn is the bodies reaction to fear. But there are normal causes and abnormal causes of fear, which have to be separated from each other. That a growing fear of death is normal is something I accept, but to say that the cry of a baby is a sign of that fear is just as misleading.
Your reading. It may also be the way many people see it. I do not see it that way.
The sacrifice of the son is an age old mythological storyline, especially when you see Christ as the Logos, the word that created the heavens and earth. There is a deeper storyline there than this modern evangelical view. We can discuss the meaning of sacrifice seen through the words of the Bible and even in the Quran. How this reflects on key stories and practices, such as Abraham’s offering of his son, the Leviticus rites of sacrifice and purity, the Hajj, and the death of Christ. But that would have to be another topic.
The gods are primal images to describe deep phenomenon in the lives of human beings at a time when survival was the most important thing to talk about. The Ancients were considering how to understand the world and their role in it. Being pre-science, Gods, devils, angels and evil spirits describe influences they experienced and they developed stories which they enacted as a means to spread the information of how to live and survive. These stories became more and more complex and gradually a primitive understanding of human and animal behaviour crept in, which made the stories multi-layered.
When Israel formed, they were gathering all kinds of mythological descriptions of existence, and there were many. Each culture had their own gods but Israel saw this as primitive and chose one god, who was god of gods. This wasn’t an easy process and so they told a story that described how they were found and chosen by that one God. They developed a code of behaviour which became the Torah, and wrote themselves a history, based on the histories that they found in other cultures. They had heroes and Kings, but all the time, an underlying message was in these stories – Kings are not reliable but become self-serving. They envisaged a King that would not be so, but would be aligned to the will of God. The were various forerunners in their records, people who are said to have been closer to the ideal, but not quite. David was one of them.
The prophets described how God’s people betrayed him and they were punished by God, suffering defeat and being deported, finally losing ten of the twelve tribes of Israel. Only Judah and Benjamin remained. Christianity has it, that from these two tribes, only one person remained true to God and he was sacrificed. They saw it as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. And he was the One who died to save all from retribution of God, but only those who aligned with him and his spirit, the spirit of God.
The Sermon on the Mount spelled out a new law, one of love and compassion, which revolutionised the parts of the world in which it was spread. But then, for reasons we can only guess, it became a religion of the diaspora, of gentiles and not Jews. Still it was very effective in changing the religious landscape – until Rome adopted it as a state religion. That is when things started falling apart. It is amazing that there were still pockets of the faithful, which preserved and developed the faith until this day. Today we can look back on that miracle that occurred despite the terror and the pillage that became part of Christian history. Especially the attempts to wipe out Jews is contemptuous, but also the deaths of dissenters and so called heretics, who in fact were transporting the spiritual heritage of the faith.
Prismatic talks about ‘proof’ not understanding that proof is either legal or mathematical/symbolic logic, but has little to do with any complex phenomenon like the source of beliefs. And legal proof is a very contingent - depends on the laws, customs and particular jury or judge - whereas mathematics and symbolic logic do not have, for example, empirical and semantic issues. So right off the bat when he uses proof, we should be wary that we are dealing with certitude based on confusion. This doesn’t mean his argument is wrong, it just means that he doesn’t understand the frame his argument is in and since he refers to it as proof, then he is confused in his certainty.
That said, he also confused correlation and cause. It’s a complicated counterargument, but basically since we fear death and religions offer, potentially, a pleasant solution to this fear - this fear causes the belief in God, all the other testimony by religious people be damned. A so far correlation being taken as cause. There are also religions that have no very pleasant afterlives, sometimes as one possibility, sometimes as the only one. And there are many people who believe and are terrified of that afterlife, at least for them. There are also religions where the person does not continue, where there is a return to God or Self or Vishnu or whatever. Most people have fears that come up around intimacy, let alone dissolving into a greater whole permanently, and anyone with a knowledge of, say, certain traditions in Hinduism, know that the practitioner has to deal with tremendous fear to achieve the before death goals in the religion where there is union with (fill in the blank). Why people would put so much effort into trying to do something so terrifying before death if fear is the motivator for belief, I don’t know. And then there are whole swathes of scary religions, where being god fearing is the experience. Or ones with no afterlife.
He is also spitting in the face - by mind reading claims - of all the people who would disagree based on their experiences, not just religious ones, for why they believe, the role of religion in their lives and what their belief is based on. Both theists and atheists can agree, especially on philosophy forums, that the issue around belief is either faith or some kind of logical or illogical argument. Whereas, in fact, most belief has a huge empirical component. Whether one has grown up in the religion or one has converted or come to it later. These empirical facets can be anything from what they experience in prayer, contemplation, rituals, meditation, in meetings with religious experts - gurus priests, whomever - to the experienced effects of the practices on their lives to mundane, non-controversial affects of participating in what are often highly social practices to visionary experiences in shamanistic practices or other religious practices - experiences that are often predicatable and come in certain sequences - to quite a bit else. IOW the beliefs are based on a wide range of experiences and experiences in the context of practices led or taught by experts and more.
He feels that on paper he can prove, yes prove, that they are all wrong about the source of their beliefs-
What I notice is that atheists I know don’t seem to be very afraid of death - in fact their emotions often seem dampened in general. Even those who leave religions do not seem to me to be facing fear - except their fear that they might go to hell now. I haven’t heard of this huge guantlet of fear that atheists go through converting from theism to atheism.
And in fact it seems like atheists don’t fear death more then very religious people.
Me, I think there are a lot of factors involved, but I see no reason to accept Prismatic’s universal mind reading claims, especially since he seems to think he even could present a proof and also his weak grasp of correlation cause, and last because I found him, despite his claims otherwise, to be closed to any criticism.
Yes, I can follow this argument. My estimation on the subject comes from two basic areas, Geriatric Nursing and Comparative theology. Jordan Peterson has spoken in both areas, which is why I quoted him to begin with. Having had a lot of experience with death and the dying, it is, as you say, a complex issue. I have had people who had so much faith that it almost bordered on certainty, who died as they planned by just lying in bed and closing their eyes. There was no fear in them. But I have had people of the other side of the spectrum, where, even though their dementia caused the loss of speech, they were scared out of the wits and hard to contain. They died with fever and Tachypnea, that is fast, shallow breathing, usually under drugs to calm them down. There were others who just held on, and very often we had the children tell their parents that it was okay to go, everything is okay. Relatives were often amazed at how fast these words soothed the dying. Some were outright atheists but prepared themselves and put all their family at ease and then just died.
You see, when you have experienced all these possibilities, it doesn’t make sense to say that fear of death is the main motivator to believe.
Agreed …
Yes, in my experience too, those afraid of death could be found on both sides.