Define God

The modern way forward…?

Now, that’s rare.

I tended not to confront - of course, I have some pretty far out there beliefs - but rather contrasted and compared. I suppose I got into some of my own justifications for why I saw things as I did then. But I generally did not ask for their justifications. I did ask questions. I suppose I was more of an anthropologist than a philosopher. And, well, a social guy.

And on other forums. It’s harsh. Though I’ve experienced harshness online for a long time. I think it’s gotten worse, though I may just be more tired of it. And, unlike you, once it gets aimed at me, I get harsh right back. Then I try to avoid people who bring that out in me. Or whom I see as dishonest or lacking in respect or who don’t really respond just use one’s responses as opportunities to repeat their positions. Not claiming any objectivity here.

I think there are good reasons for all of them, because they are all deeply rooted in us as the archetypal ideal. The “Force” has become popular in the recent decades, but it has always been felt to be the way we should understand God.

The Bible gives us the statement that “God is love” and “Agape” is the unconditional love of God. It is given, not earned, especially when we consider the dark side of our character. The problem people have with this ideal is that life often isn’t compassionate with us, and seems to be an unyielding malevolence when, as Iam said, hurricanes and tornados, or any other natural catastrophe strikes.

Many traditions tell us that compassion is the Way, truth and life itself, if it be lived properly, and there is a lot to say for this. It is the alignment with all that is good and wholesome that restricts the amount of chaos in our lives, and therefore is promising. Even under duress, people that live in a community where this is lived, the way can be found to cope with hardships.

Reward and punishment are often what we conceive experiences to be, rather than declared and executed. If you have an idea of God that is mostly punishing, you might rate experiences this way.

Heaven and Hell certainly seem to be part of human experience here and now, rather than in an unknown future. Although, there are less heavenly experiences I would say. This can be taken to prove that people are not living in the Way, Truth and Life. It could be simply the way it is for many people.

Theism is certainly based on mythology, which is probably based on dreams or imaginations that ring true in real life. We tend to think in symbols, metaphors and allegories, especially when we experience something we can’t otherwise explain or portray. Having said that, the mythology of the Bible, for example, has withstood the test of time. We shouldn’t judge based only on our experience of life

No. 7 is probably especially true for Christians, although living fully is something that all traditions encourage us to do.

I must confess that he had been impressed with me after I had trained to be a geriatric nurse late in life, but he was the best of them and unfortunately died not long after our conversation. It was the training and the experience with the dying that had changed my attitude and I had brought this viewpoint into our meetings. Finally, I had to accept that they were not going to be able to cope with my approach, although many of them just interpreted what I said into what they wanted to hear. That is what I explained to him.

I asked the young ladies how they had got into the JW, why they were so convinced that they knocked on peoples doors – even those of the obnoxious – and put up with what they had to put up with. They were taken aback by my questioning and tried to get back to the subject they had prepared. Unfortunately for them, at that time I was at home in the Bible and being the personality type that I am, I had recognised patterns in the Bible and remembered them when we spoke. They were obviously not so well versed and the conversation regularly broke down because of that. They couldn’t cope with me bringing in psychological viewpoints or experience with the dying. It was probably totally unfair of me, but that’s how I was then.

I went through a phase here on ILP when I followed links and found out some things about people who bugged me. When I presented them with contradictions, they went to town with me and I suffered a barrage every time I posted. It was probably well deserved …

Well, they were coming to put forward their ideas, they can’t really expect people to behave differently from them. It was an encounter. They are really looking to learn, generally. I met scientologists, odd Buddhist sects, the Moonies, Jews for Jesus, and then more run of the mill groups. Sometimes I even went to meetings - though I always told friends where and when, and when to call out the cavalry - at least with the Moonies.

Do you mean you went private detective on people? I love that.

It wasn’t that difficult, people sometimes gave information about themselves and I just followed it up. The best one was the one who used the same avatar for uploading on youtube.

I don’t do it nowadays, what with the amount of misuse around.

I hope these point to the modern way forward. Most of them can be found in Bishop Spong’s 1998 work “Why Christianity Must Change Or Die.”

But there are any number of factors embedded in the self that seem to be anything but illusions. The biological me. The world around me bursting at the seams with clearly demonstrable facts – things – that I [and you and everyone else here] take for granted as there objectively.

Only when going out onto the Matrix, sim world, demonic dream world limb does that begin to crumble.

Still, the eddies and obstructions in the river of life need a particular context in which to explore, among other things, a definition of God.

As for becoming at one with existence [God or No God] that is still construed by me to be a psychological defense mechanism some are able to think themselves into believing because believing that is so much less disturbing than subscribing to the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless existence that ends in the obliteration of “I” for all time to come.

Yes, facts about you – biologically and circumstantially – do change over time. But they are still able to be demonstrated to others at any particular time and in any particular place to be what they are. As for the observing “I”, that depends on any number of factors that may or may not be beyond ones control. The use of drugs or a mental illness or a brain tumor or diseases like Alzheimer and dementia, can reconfigure “I” into a frame of mind barely recognizable to yourself and to others.

With God, you may have once in fact defined Him one way, but then in fact came to define Him in another way instead. But either way that does not in fact enable you to demonstrate His actual existence.

And that is always the distinction I come back to in discussions such as this. This part:

Based on your definition and understanding of God, you do certain things. Based on conflicting definitions and understandings of God, others do very different things. These precipitate conflicts in which rewards and punishment are meted out on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation are rewarded to some on the other side of it. While others are punished. Depending entirely on which Scripture one subscribes to.

As for, “joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”, we’ll need an actual context. In my view, these words pass through your mind and they soothe you. Why? Because you are able imagine a future [with God] where they are just there. There all the time.

I’ve been there myself.

Yes, many religious folks over the years have basically summed it up in that manner. After all, with objective morality, immortality, salvation, divine justice and all the rest of it on the line, all there really is are soul-fulfilling leaps of faith like that. And then all the terrible things are able to be subsumed in “God works in mysterious ways”.

And, again, my own [at times] disgruntled reaction here is no doubt embedded in having to accept the fact that this sort of thing is no longer available to me.

As for this part…

…you are not now yourself burdened with the manner in which “I” construe human interactions given the points I raise in my three signature threads.

And this, in my view, is deeply embedded existentially in dasein.

From my frame of mind, you subsume the reality of the world as I understand it in general descriptions of this sort. In other words, as soon as you take these words out into the world of actual human interactions, the words [and the definitions] become so much, much more problematic.

So that is avoided as much as possible. But this assumption can only be but an existential contraption of my own.

Of course the answers are less complicated when all that matters is what you are able to convince yourself is true “in your head”.

The part that, in my view, any number of objectivists [God or No God] will strive mightily to take with them to the grave.

The part in the funeral, where the Pastor says, “From dust you came and to dust you shall return”, is enough to show that the river metaphor applies, even when out of water. We came out of this planet, and our bodies will return, but the question is posed, what about the “breath of God” that made mankind a “living spirit?” What happens to that?

However you call it, it is hope that helps us get up in the morning, do our jobs well and keep a positive approach to life. Given just the knowledge about life that we have today, and accepting it as fact, we don’t achieve anything but the loss of hope.

I think you choose the exception to the rule as though it were the rule. I agree, there are numerous things that can happen, which endanger the observing “I”, but the various examples you have given tell me nothing about how people in those circumstances experience their observing “I”.

Your insistence that one should demonstrate the existence of some thing called God fails to accept that God isn’t a “thing”. The Bible is clear on that, except when speaking metaphorically.

Demonstrably, over thousands of years, there has been faith. It is only since we try to apply rationality to religion that we find it doesn’t compute. But that is because it never should. The truth of the Bible, for example, is the “true to life” truth. It is listening to a poem that takes us back to the past. It is singing a song that reminds us of the last time we were singing with loved ones who have departed. It is observing a painting and being caught up in its colours. It is listening to a symphony and flying in the clouds. It is being in everyday situations and feeling an inspiration overcome us. It is being in a loving community and feeling it with all our senses. It is being in flow modus.

What other people do I can’t influence, and even if I do, then it was out of my control. The fruits of the spirit are not there to soothe, but they give a direction of flow in which everything wholesome can align and may then soothe or inspire, but most of all it spreads. The fruits of the spirit are the splitting of the light of love into a rainbow.

That is also my opinion, that if someone has a personal faith, the fruits will show it to be what it is.

The terrible things are the boundaries that we come up against, and we realise that we are not in Eden, but have been metaphorically driven out by our consciousness. Our knowledge of Good and Evil makes us no longer innocent and this presents us with borders that we can’t cross. It is what the sages that wrote Genesis came up against and tried (quite well in my opinion) to come up with some way of understanding it.

I’m still not really sure what you mean by this.

You can see it that way, but there are other ways to consider existence in this contradictory world.

If you are attempting to overcome the contradictions you encounter in the world, there is no book with an objective explanation. There only the books with metaphor, allegory, fables, and myths.

Yes. And those who believe in a God, the God, my God are able to concoct a “frame of mind”, “a psychological bearing” enabling them to intertwine that in the life they live. Still, what doesn’t go away for me is that distinction between what one is able to demonstrate is true about their own religious narrative and what can only be embodied in a leap of faith.

Thus:

And, indeed, I truly do miss that in my own life. But: I am no longer able to believe in God. I believe instead that “I” am embedded in the profoundly problematic mystery that is existence itself. And, here and now, there is nothing that enables me to go beyond it as that “brute facticity”, essentially meaningless and ending in oblivion.

That seems reasonable to me given the accumulation of actual experiences that I have had, coupled with the many, many hours I have spent groping and grappling with my own existence philosophically.

In fact, I am the first to acknowledge that even regarding my own observing “I”, there are simply too many variables in my actual lived life that were/are either beyond my control or understanding.

I just suggest that, in turn, this is applicable to you and to all others.

In fact, that is the whole point in my speculating about “I” here as an “existential contraption”. And certainly in regard to value judgments that revolve around God. What’s left then but that which we are in fact able to demonstrate is true in regard to this…and to all other aspects of our lives.

As with Ierrellus and others here, you have you own definition, your own understanding, your own take on God. I see this largely as an existential contraption rooted in the lives you’ve led…more so then in anything you are able to show us is true because there is evidence to substantiate it.

You can believe, say or claim to know anything about God. But then what? With immortality, salvation and divine justice itself on the line, that’s just not enough for some folks.

This part:

Look, if you are able to think yourself into believing this is a rational take on God and religion, fine, that works for you. It enables you to ground your own “I” in frame of mind that comforts and consoles you. And, sure, why not sustain this as the “bottom line” for you all the way to the grave.

I certainly once thought the same myself. But, over the course of our lived lives, each of us can come to think themselves into believing something they are not able to think themselves out of. Like me. But that’s the part I root existentially in dasein.

This is a psychologism to me. It is a frame of mind that wraps itself around the way the words make you feel. And that need be as far as it goes. But it is not connected to the world as I know it to be. Not in the context of a God said to be “loving, just, and merciful”.

Here [for me] there is only Harold Kushner’s take on Him.

And my own “bottom line” here basically revolves around this:

Okay, but, from my frame of mind [in a philosophy venue], someone will either bring his or her own personal faith out into the world of [at times wrenching] subjective/subjunctive human interactions, or it remains largely bundled up “in their head” as what I construe to be just one more psychological defense mechanism.

Stuff like this…

…just doesn’t connect with me anymore. It tells me little or nothing about God out in the world that I live in. Instead, it becomes what I have come to construe as the “mind’s eye” God. And even then assuming some measure of human autonomy.

Basically, it revolves around the assumption that you don’t think about these relationships as I do. For you the battle is intertwined in a considerably more substantial “self” grounded in a belief in God. Therefore it has a meaning far beyond anything I have access to now. For me, viewing human interactions in an essentially meaningless word that ends in oblivion deconstructs any battle as just another existential contraption rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and in the raw naked reality of political power.

Perhaps. But the points I raise above remain that which I have managed to think myself into believing is a reasonable assessment of the human condition in what I presume to be a No God world.

Nobody wants to hear negative aspects of their being, spouted from books that know nothing of they and their struggles with life… it’s condescending, negative, and unhelpful, in living a fulfilling 21st Century life. Bishop Spong’s got my vote.

MagsJ,
Thank you.

Is it a modification of definition that’s catching on and being implemented? even in small pockets of the Continent, or more widespread?

Has it been implemented in your place of worship Ierr? Most of the churches here have adopted something similar, including becoming multi-faith places of worship, in order to fill the empty pews… and don’t even get me started on the fairs, concerts and other such neighbourhood socialising events they hold.

I find “Confessions” very helpful in the situation I presently find myself in. For a long time I have been going through the same questions that Tolstoy describes in his “Confessions”, albeit without the thoughts of suicide that cornered him. Fortunately, that didn’t occur to me, even though life sometimes seemed so pointless, but especially when I saw my family I recognized my responsibility. However, I do feel tormented and fear the isolation whilst at the same time doing many things to cause my isolation.

I also came to the realization that our existence has a cause, as Tolstoy writes. This “coding of life” into the chaos of the universe briefly excited me, only to subside in the same way as Tolstoy describes his experience. One aspect he discovered, however, and which often goes unnoticed, is the fact that the “spirit” brings people together and is active among them. In intellectual discussion, however, it rarely occurs if it is present at all. In other words, the more we discuss (Latin discussus: to break apart, shaken, scattered), the less likely it is that the mind can be effective.

This understanding led Tolstoy to renounce his social status and to study the farmers in his area who had recently been taken out of slave status. Their conditions were not good, but their faith impressed Tolstoy. It also impressed me and fits well with my acquired understanding that when communities focus on good and healthy, more good happens. The opposite is also the case: whoever focuses on evil and that which is unhealthy, also experiences evil. The fact that Christianity uses (sometimes drastic) archetypal symbols and metaphors to enliven the representation of this reality only shows us how people were taught in the past. It takes nothing away from the truth of the stories.

The problem begins for me, as for Tolstoy, when one tries to judge the doctrine by reason. Teaching is very often what separates the different churches, and it does not help that they agree on central themes of the Gospel. This, in my opinion, should be the goal, instead the different churches have gone to war because of the differences in doctrine. Tolstoy experienced the conflict in Russia. There was also, among other conflicts, the Thirty Years’ War in Central Europe, which also made it clear that these conflicts were about power constellations and not about central teachings from the Gospels. How can one upkeep the command to love your neighbour, even one’s own enemy, and still go to war because of doctrinal differences?

I think we must accept that the stories of the Gospel, which carry so much truth in them, do not stand the test of academic decomposition, but speak directly to the part within us that recognizes what corresponds to life. The inspiration that leads to a focus on what is true, healthy and good, hits every true listener in the heart and is immediately understood. What is often lacking is the willingness or ability to act accordingly. God is what happens between people when love is shared.

All I can answer here is that hope and faith is what keeps us alive. That was what I realised when I read “Confessions” by Tolstoy. He struggled with faith and ended up embracing the simple faith based on the Gospels and ruled out the doctrines that he found himself unable to believe. It is a slender book, perhaps something for you to read.

I found that I wasn’t able to believe in the God that most theologians spoke of, moralising as they do. At the same time, I grasped the Sermon on the Mount as a central expression of my Christianity. I also found the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism helpful, where there is no mention of God. These two statements give me the standing and the perspective I need to progress through life. In addition to this, the Mystics approach that God is “no thing” has also helped my put things into perspective. I think our problem is self-induced to some degree, due to our adamant demand that any idea of God be reasonable, but our understanding of reason is limited if we can’t understand that our very presence in this strange universe isn’t reasonable.

I would say that the living force - I use the term metaphorically - in us keeps us alive and out of depression. I think it would be confused to think of depression and hopelessness as the default and anything else as delusory. Animals have few beliefs and certainly not like our equivalent verbal ones, yet they are rarely depressed. Depression and severe anxiety (over the problems in life, over death) are associated with a welter of beliefs. One can then add to these, for example, beliefs in a deity or something to soothe the problems caused by other beliefs.

Of course some lives are shattered, and without the option of getting out of certian kinds of holes (because it certainly helps if one has time and help to process, for example, trauma, and severe poverty can also devastating, some people are depressed anxiety due to their ongoing life situation. But it would be a mistake to think that the default state is depression and hopelessness.

I am not sure that faith (as if faith in God is necessary), but one needs some kind of focus. Something one loves to do, would love to do (better) and social connections as a base. For the person who is depressed they happy person may seem ‘in denial’. But this is confused. Hope is also a complicated concept. I think one needs some sense that one can achieve one’s goals, some of the things one loves to do or accomplish. I think ‘hope’ often elicits and image of a person yearning, sort of on the side of life, or locked in a cell, or looking out a windom. IOW as a kind of passive, hoping to win the next lottery, kind of thing. I see that thing that keeps us going as more inextricably tied in with activities and goals and people.

And then also viewing approach to a deity (or whatever) and one mediated by reason, rather than say, experience.

I cannot answer your legitimate concerns. I’ve not been to church in sometime. I learned of Spong by reading Dennett’s “Caught in the Pulpit”, a work about ministers who have had to change their ways of thinking about religion. As a former fundamentalist, I found Spong’s ideas liberating and hopeful.
The loudest voices of religion in the USA are still the fundamentalists. There is no progessive movement in the way the hippies did in the 60s USA, to my knowledge. Apparently, these ideas have not gotten down to street level, but are found in books the fundamentalists would probably not read, because they have not had an existential crisis that demands change of attitude. Yet I’ve been told, but cannot verify it, that in many polls the people do not claim to believe the old ways of thinking about religious dogma.

I don’t think that I meant that depression and hopelessness are the default, but they are the other end of the scale to hope and faith. This means that when hope and faith are destroyed or even weakened, the gradual recession comes and leads us downhill. Listening to a lecture by Jordan Peterson, he indicated that the flow of serotonin not only influence our posture and stance, but posture and stance can influence the flow of serotonin as well. This means that if you speak or act as if everything is depressive, serotonin levels become low and you gradually become depressed. The same principle is also true if you speak or act with hope or faith. Of course, this is only one part of a complex procedure in the body, but it illustrates my point.

I think the difference between us and animals is that they have been blessed with no conscious awareness that could make them depressive. Sure, a dog may look down in the dumps if it has to go out in the rain, but that is a long way off from depression. But the difference with us is that we can be a walking paradox, whilst animals (except cats maybe) are straightforward. Our projection of a possibility, that we regard as malevolent, into the future, may affect our outlook on life, whereas animals appear to live in the present.

I was using faith in this context in a wider sense. You need faith that what you’re doing is purposeful (at least I do) or right. You need hope in an outcome in order to proceed. That is probably what you call focus. But hope doesn’t necessarily have to do with yearning, except maybe in the middle of winter yearning for summer. To think of it, there are many things that one can yearn for, but I get the picture you’re painting.

But it isn’t a woeful yearning that I’m referring to, but hope and faith that you mostly take for granted. When that falters, it can have you lying in, missing appointments, ignoring the phone etc. Being active in life requires a positive mindset and that I call “hope and faith”.

I guess I prefer to terms (at least partly) positive expectation - generally based on past experiences coupled with temperment and intuition. Faith to me is too specific. I know you are using it in a broader sense, and I have also. But I think it is too hinged to an ontological assumption that there is a God. I don’t think one needs this to not be depressed. But this is me making suggestions of word use, not really disagreeing. I just see this as not based on having certain beliefs. We, like other animals, have momentum to engage in life. Beliefs can stop this momentum or potentially enhance it. We may fear death, suffer lost or missing connections to others, nature, meaninful work, but unless we have been severely damaged we will like wolves or deer continue to be social and work towards goals. Life carries its own momentum, regardless of the specifics of beliefs. You have to have extremely damaging events or circumstances, generally the latter and/or literally unhealthy thoughts and beliefs that take over to have this momentum stop. Humans are particularly vulnerable, due to their awareness to letting verbal cognitve thoughts take over and be destroyed or severely damaged by them. The default is not depression, as you agreed, but engagement.

I suppose I would say, metaphorically, that the animal in us will get knocked down and reengage with life, again and again. The only thing that stop that animals is not a lack of faith, but the present of thought schemas that tell the animal there is no point. I can feel sympathy for that and know how that can happen from personal experience. But the default is to engage.

I certainly believe that human beings can get waylaid by ideas that are totally contradictory to reality, which can cause all kinds of behaviour. But we can be of a malevolent, selfish nature or of a beneficial, caring nature. Both are engaging with life, coming from different backgrounds, and depending on what we have learnt as children to be the default. The “shadow” personality is often overlooked, because we are not really in touch with it and attempt to pretend that it isn’t there. It seems to be more powerful when we do that. We seem to be channels for various influences, good and bad.

One aspect is that the malevolent nature needs a “medium” with which it can express itself. The Bible is as good a medium as any other, but it can equally be used to find expression of the beneficial, caring nature. This is because the biblical mythology describes human nature with all of its features, looking from a meta perspective, but especially the nature of life when the beneficial spirit is driven out. The Bible describes above all the classical competition between Chaos and Order, which, when overdone, can also lead to a different kind of Chaos, but Chaos nonetheless. The Bible describes the physical default as entropy, degeneration and decay, which is not only in Autumn visible. The amount of extinct species shows it very clearly as well. The only thing that has enabled thriving civilizations has been the heroes of the past that have brought order and fought against decay. They aligned themselves with the epitome of all that is good – God. From the beginning, the Bible makes it clear that humans have a proclivity to degeneration, albeit we often lack an awareness of that fact.

Of course, there are people who assume that the Bible is describing a material reality, but it is really a metaphorical reality, nonetheless true if you go along with the story. Everywhere in the Bible, God is a mystery. How else? But I believe that people need a very clear vision of what is good in order to be able to struggle against the degeneration that is a part of life that we need to be aware of.