Peace

Sure, from the perspective of some that is clearly a reasonable assumption to make. But when peace on Earth is broached in the religion and spirituality forum and the sky father and earth mother are not being spoken of from the perspective of the scientific community, I can only react to it as value judgment. And I subsume them in moral nihilism.

Again, from the perspective of science, the forces that prevail in the sky become intertwined with the forces that prevail on earth in order to create such things as hurricanes and tornados and prolonged rain events that precipitate devastating floods.

And then when you include such earthly events as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as well as things from the skies like asteroids and comets, nature is clearly a match for man-made calamities.

But, again, in a religion forum, God is almost always going to be invoked as factor in explaining these things. Especially among those who insist that their own God is both omniscient and omnipotent.

It’s hard to imagine that somehow conflict is not hard-wired into us…genetically? A biological imperative that, particularly in regard to the male of the species, is never not going to be a part of human interactions.

Still, when God becomes part of the discusion, it can go on almost any direction. Same with nihilism.

duplicate post

Iambiguous,
For the second time, please tend to your own thread and leave mine alone. You have nothing to offer toward a better future for mankind. I ask you nicely to leave my thread alone.

CASE #19: One Small Candle

Shakyamuni taught: “As the light of a small candle will spread from one to another in succession, so the light of the Buddha’s compassion will pass from one mind to another endlessly.”

Okay, just as I once agreed not to use anything you post here in my God and religion thread, I will cease and desist from contributing anything to this thread in turn. And I promise not to respond to any other thread you begin here.

Note to monad:

If you wish to continue our own discussion we will need to take it to another thread.

I’m not certain whether the wording of the OP can even be considered a value judgment. Its terseness strikes me more as an allusion to the times when gods were created for any and all reasons. It makes sense that at some late point nihilism, in one form or another, ensues as a necessary consequence.

When all the reasons which caused a single god or a multiplicity that people once implored, worshiped and prayed to no-longer exist then a slow-moving fog sets in growing ever more dense with each generation, its former beliefs less visible though some of its traditions may still persist for purposes of identity and social cohesion. In that sense, traditions are the ghosts of former beliefs.

I don’t believe peace is possible. Even if not overtly genetic, conflict is inherent in the human psyche where habits can be as powerful as instincts. Propensities to violence can be diminished but never eradicated and likely not desirable if they could be. Everything in our past alludes to violence…a tendency which requires discipline and thought to be constructive, not annulment.

God in all this should have no mention. It’s a completely useless entity since it’s humans who have trained the gods to train us, a long affair which only served to make conflicts worse and more violent…a stupid way to do business on planet Earth!

So love will not save us from ourselves?

Can you give an example of what you mean here? Paint a picture.

I have referred here to two authors who are into what I called progressive Christianity. Both dislike the OT God as Dawkins describes him (See the Dawkins quote in Greatest I Am’s thread), and both see Jesus as the way of Love. This love includes everybody on Earth and is a ray of hope against the bleak darkness of postmodern philosophy. At my advanced age I am happy to find such a hopeful trend for the future of humans.
When she was alive, my wife and I discussed much religion and philosophy. In self-examination we decided that our rage against the waste land only contributed to its viability. We needed to engage in active hope. The new religious trends seem to offer hope for anyone concerned with the future
of life on Earth.
Thanks for your candle–ray of hope.

Re: the OP
Yin and yang may someday be seen as One.

Beyond the two is the concept of plenitude as an ultimate variety comprising one thing. Certain oriental philosophies and Christian mysticism agree that enlightenment as an experience is realization of the One that is All, of one belonging to the all. Western philosophy still thrives on belief that the two are in conflict. Blake did not believe in dualism.

In mysticism it’s always easy to visualize or conceptualize what can never be accomplished. What mysticism strives for and incorporates can be denoted as the myth of transcendence, without any god inclusions, by those who can only imagine it. Unlike all the poetizing and philosophizing, Eastern or Western, it’s possible to dispense with any such enlightenment infusions and instead think of the universe as the All which is One containing all multiplicities. There is its true simulacrum transcending all our frames of reference. It’s mysticism resides in how it came to be that way, its so-called ontological imperatives, if such even exist! In that respect, as in most others, Eastern philosophy isn’t any more inspired or enlightened than its Western counterpart since mysticism attempts to fuse all distinction into one ontological I whose complete summary is the universe itself.

“Spinoza once said that the greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.” (Kazin 1946)

Hard to argue with Spinoza!

I see transcendence as growth and development; but perhaps that’s just quibbling over words. Apparently the One that includes all already exists. Forgetting our belonging puts us in conflict with each other. I am a part of you and both a part of god, the Whole.
Eastern and Western thought do align in mysticism. I am interested in seeing Western naturalism mature to include religion. I’ve heard too often that this cannot be done. Science and religion are like oil and water, they do not mix. Isn’t it just possible that evolution of humans can be seen as god in action? Or to state that further–“Every Thing that lives is Holy.”----Blake.

When one realizes all the near extinctions that humans and proto-humans have encountered; also the massive distruptions of both flora and fauna by those not yet acknowledged as fully homo sapien - not really knowing what they were doing - it’s kind of hard to think of evolution as god in action.

I think of god as a wholly impersonal process of nature; impersonal to the point of you, me and ALL being thoroughly dispensable if the experiment failed due to too many negative memes infecting the human psyche.Within nature we are still animals though of a kind where memes take over where genes end, the former with the greatest potential to be the most destructive. Do you believe there could be an echo of our demise anywhere in the universe? Perhaps so since we’ve recently sent out a profuse amount of broadcasts to attest to our existence…if it ever gets picked up and packed away in some cosmic archive. Time and evolution regrets nothing having killed or dispensed with anything.

For an intense mystic like Blake such a statement would make sense since, according to his view, all of creation derives from a divine mandate. For me it’s more akin to everything that lives is unique and adds to the diversity necessary in keeping the ecosystem stable.

BTW, I read a lot of Blake, not merely his most popular and quoted poems. In my much earlier days, I wrote a few of those myself though they were more metaphysical than religious. Like Blake and John Donne they all rhymed. What I’m saying is one can be inspired by their verse without submitting to their views. Nevertheless, referring to inner & outer, there’s still a great deal which remains mystical when everything turns inside-out in the persistent hope of coming into contact with some final goal and purpose.

Thanks, Monad, for your insightful post.
There has also been much good in the human reach for truth as the enlightenment exemplifies. That there has also been much bad does not exclude our propensity for hope as a viable meme with possible genetic underpinnings. On the mystical level, however, belonging to all that exists should awaken one to the responsibility of being a part of ecosystems. But the isolated “I” is still a most powerful Western idea.
Glad to hear you like Blake. I had a course in Blake in grad school and, like you. I was inspired to write imitative poems. Blake “woke me from my dogmatic slumber”, which at the time was Christian fundamentalism.

“Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounc’d that the Gods had order’d such things. (Sp.—Blake’s)
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.”–Blake, from"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

Very true! It reminds me of the following section of poetry under the title Dawn or Dusk…

Come restoration and with your empire ray
forebode dimensions to which the soul shall pray.
Make palpable in your unsharded view
investitures which gods pervade as mortals do.
Hail the untempled sinuous sublime
God unrendered that renders gods divine,
recurrent beacon of perennial birth,
host of visions of deeds on Earth.

All gods are man-made which doesn’t negate their value as long as not taken literally. Powerful myths & metaphors are created to diminish the grinding impacts of reality though it often also goes in the opposite direction…hellfire for example.

Among the myths we need to rid ourselves of are original sin, Jesus as scapegoat for the punishment of our sins, and eternal punishment in hell’s fire. I don’t believe the early Christians held such beliefs. Blake loved Christ but detested Christianity. Gandhi said something similar. There is a distinction between who Jesus said he was and the myths that were built around the concept of Jesus as God. Jesus had said,“I am the way, the truth and the life.” Thus Jesus followed is the Way; Jesus worshiped is idolatry. Our natures include good and evil. The good must be cultivated, the evil transcended. Neither alone is our true nature. We are in need of salvation from ourselves, from our fear-based opinion of our place in the natural world. As Marianne Williamson noted-- where there is fear there is no love, In other words a fear-based religion cannot be a religion of love. “Perfect love casts out all fear”, even fear of impending damnation. Where love rules peace is possible.