I’m not sure we can anchor our identity. I think that our identity is a process that makes us go through several modes of being and makes us look back and wonder who that was, back then. We all know that the years seem to be speeding up as we get older, the image in the mirror changes faster towards the end. Am I really the same person that my wife married 43 years ago? She says yes and no. Having been going through a similar process and watching me, she knows that I am the same person, but in many ways I’m not. The world is spinning and our minds give us whirling images of all those years at the same time sometimes, our dreams, especially after traumatic experiences, make us wake up suddenly in the night, back on earth thank goodness.
I disagree that rationality is the yardstick by which we measure whatever we comprehend to be God. It would be nice if that were so, but life is so irrational, thereby the source of life may be too. Besides, it is tangled up in Being, tangled up in our experiences, in our dreams and imaginations, tangled up in how we see our peers and, not least, tangled up in how our life works out. It is tangled up in our vocabulary, our ability to make words and speak them. Our comprehension is wrapped up in so much irrationality that our ideas of God cannot ever meet any kind of reality.
I like the way that Jordan Peterson describes it, he says that the narrow path to salvation passes between chaos and order, a middle way. It is a pathway of conscious choice, choosing order and chaos/creativity in measured quantities, keeping the ship on an even keel on whatever course you’ve chosen. This takes in the reality that confronts us, sees the co-residents of the planet, and provides balance there too. A healthy life, according to Ayurveda, is a life in balance.
But existence itself [to most religious people] is synonymous with God. Just as [ultimately[ nature must be.
Maybe, but maybe not … there are a myriad of ways to describe God, consciousness is also on offer as the “spirit” of God.
But: Gun control, immigration, the consumption of animals, gender roles, the role of government, immigration, war and peace, capital punishment, abortion, busing, separation of church and state, and on and on and on: With or without God, what constitutes a positive in life? Clearly, given particular political policies, what some see as overcoming suffering, others see as creating it.
And that’s when, in presuming a No God world, the components of my own philosophy kick in.
I think that we don’t take symbolism seriously enough, or think that it is too overbearing, given the amount of symbolism that went bad in the 20th century. However, how do we present the good that we want to promote? How do we make it clear to people where we want to go? How do we make any engagement in good behaviour appealing? If you manage to do that, and help society to become morally clear on some of those issues, you have a direction away from chaos, decay and degeneration
Which just brings me back to this:
1] someone defines God in a particular way
2] this definition then allows them to reflect on the relationship between God, nature, natural disasters and mere mortals coping with the terrible results of themBut: How does their definition of God account for the fact that mere mortals are left to cope with the consequences of disasters that can only be attributed to God Himself?
In the end, if God is all powerful, then you can attribute the bad things to him. That is the weakness of theism. But what if God is the starting point of everything and where we end up? What if we fall, struggling as we were in this life, into “the arms” of God, like waking from a bad dream? That is how many people rationalise suffering.
we still need to bring less restrictive views down to earth and explore them in a particular context. And then connect the dots between that and Judgment Day. A cafeteria Christian gets to pick and choose the behaviors that he or she presumes is okay with God. But then any number of other far more orthodox denominations protest vigorously that this is not the case at all. So, how then ought God to be defined here in order to reconcile this? Again, with so much at stake throughout all of eternity: immortality, salvation, divine justice.
The road to salvation is narrow and winds left and right, up and down. But it goes right through the middle of existence. There are many voices, some are unbearably restrictive, some are unbelievably lax in their approach. There is only one way, and that is the one you choose. I don’t think the way is the most important thing, but why you choose it. That shows our moral fibre.