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Offline3MJ3
i&I
Registered: 03/01/03
Posts: 102
Last seen: 19 years, 2 months
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: Deiymiyan]
    #1537716 - 05/10/03 07:25 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

I disagree, I think there are more people than you think who have TRIED to understand and investigate their own inner spirituality but who have given up.

What you are referring to sounds alot like Nietzsche - slave morality.

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Anonymous

Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: Strumpling]
    #1537717 - 05/10/03 07:26 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

Pipe down!  Back the fuck off, before I slap the taste out of your mouth!  :mad:

:grin:

j/k

As you can see I am testing the policy.  I have been asked by a member to try it and see.  I am willing to try anything if it serves the bulk of the membership well.  So I am relaxing it just a hair.  If it works and things don't get too out of hand we'll keep it relaxed.  If it doesn't I'll have to go back to being strict.  I don't want to do that anyway.  It is too much work. :wink:

Cheers, 

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Anonymous

Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: JohnnyRespect]
    #1537723 - 05/10/03 07:30 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

No matter WHAT defintion of god you have, he either intervenes with human affairs, or he doesn't.




You can't understand the fallacy of what you've just said because you seem to completely lack the ability to entertain a concept of God that is not built upon the Sunday school image you have. I have explained the answers to your questions as you have asked them several times, at which point you then fall back on saying "oh, this is about an argument with my cousin, you have to adopt an asinine standpoint on god or i dont want to talk about it", then you come back and say THAT? Markos was right, you are having a monologue with yourself and making no effort to think outside of your current concept. So why are you bothering talk with others? I HAVE answered your questions, can you not see that? If everything a human does IS GOD'S WILL, because every human IS PART OF GOD, what is the answer to this question? Do you think you've come up with a question that has never been asked before? THE QUESTION ONLY APPLIES TO CERTAIN CONCEPTS OF GOD. As do all of your questions. Yet there you just made a completely asinine blanket statement. If interfering with himself makes God an interfering God, I guess that is your answer, yet when it's posed in that context the statement is exposed for what it is - moot.

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OfflineDeiymiyan
I AM

Registered: 04/17/03
Posts: 656
Loc: Within the Realm of Imagi...
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Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: 3MJ3]
    #1537731 - 05/10/03 07:36 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

I really don't understand how you deduce slave morality out of what I wrote.

Read it again, and notice the child's closed mind.

... and then tell me again that it has to do with slave morality. 

Then again... maybe if you explained slave morality...  I've never encountered that term before.

Regardless...  That example, still, was the illustration of a closed mind.


LOL

:grin:


   


--------------------


Dei Gratia de integro,

Veni Vidi Vici:

In Nomine Domini..


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OfflineSole_Worthy
Stranger

Registered: 04/20/03
Posts: 463
Loc: over here
Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: ]
    #1537800 - 05/10/03 08:28 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

we are playin it cool mr m...playin it cool :wink:


--------------------
get it all together get like birds of a feather

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Anonymous

Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: Sole_Worthy]
    #1537849 - 05/10/03 08:50 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

Thank you Sole. :smile:

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: JohnnyRespect]
    #1538266 - 05/11/03 12:01 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

Ya know, it might help your obsession to have intellectual responses to your inquiry by paying attention to the older tradition of classical Hinduism. There, the understanding, paradoxical as it is, that GOD and GODHEAD, the Personal and the Transpersonal exist as ONE, simultaneously. Saguna Brahman is GOD with attributes, with personality and Who intervenes in the INNER LIFE of humans. Nirguna Brahman is GOD without attributes, transcends any human conception of personality, and is absolutely impassive and Transcendent.

If you are looking for theophanies - for Old Testament-like descriptions of a localized mountain deity who routinely suspends natural law with supernatural phenomena (before later sophisticated thought equated YHVH with the Universal
Creator), then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Transcendental Nature of GOD. The intervention is between the Spirit (the Being of GOD), and contingent beings (namely us) whose spiritual nature is described Biblically as 'the image and likeness' of GOD. GOD'S interventions, covenants, reponse to prayer, occurs on this level, in the "still, small voice within," not directly on insentient, inanimate creation. If GOD responds to our desires, it is because those desires are GOD's desires - GOD'S Will, to use the common sense of it - not OUR egocentric desires apart from GOD'S Will. GOD is not our errand-boy or our genie. If it isn't clear yet...what WE want doesn't matter. It's 'GOD'S Will' that matters, or re-stated, 'what is,' or 'Reality' - that which actually IS happening. We either humbly 'submit' to Reality (hence Islam=submission), or we fail to accept Reality.

Ultimately, all of OUR desires constitute who we are as 'ego,' and we, as ego perish completely. If anything continues, it is the Covenant, or the Communion of Spirit with spirit. To the extent that we Realize this, we 'have' Eternal Life in us. The 'us' dies, the Eternal Life remains. It is a paradox.


--------------------
γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Invisiblesunyata
nonexistentexistentialist
Registered: 12/26/02
Posts: 133
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1538421 - 05/11/03 01:38 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

As Carl Jung once said, religion is the best defense against a spiritual experience.

I think the reason a lot of people use the word "God" when what they are talking about is the ultimate spiritual reality, the state of the universe as something that neither exists nor does not exist and both exists and doesn't, the unspeakable as Wittgenstein called it, is because that's the word that a lot of great teachers throughout our history used. I think in a way it was an attempt to reclaim the word "God" like homosexuals have reclaimed the word "queer" or black people the word "nigger". Jesus said "God" when what he meant was more like satori because he was talking to people who believed in a vengeful old bearded man who hurls lightning bolts at bad people and casts them into a fiery eternity, meanwhile rewarding all the nice people with harp music and cloud pillows. How was he supposed to communicate his message to these folks? He said, look, God isn't up there judging you, he is in all of us, one with everything, in me, split this rock and he is there. I AM GOD, I am the rock. And so are you, only you don't realize it because you're too busy worrying about being a sinner. So know that you are forgiven, and worry not for the morrow because now is all there is, and knowing this, truly knowing it, is to enter the Kingdom of God. The kingdom of god is enlightenment, enlightenment is a state of absolute subjectivity, the universe knowing with no objects of knowledge, a concept that cannot be conceptualized by our minds which are constrained by the dualisms of language.

Now Jesus wasn't the first to use the concept of "God" as a metaphor for "that thing"; Hindus and Buddhists did it, everyone has done it. The mystical Christian tradition, the greatest minds of the Christian church like Eckhart or St Theresa, they are talking about that thing when they say God. All spiritual experiences come from direct realization of this state, which the human mind seems to be capable of accessing through all kinds of methods from mediatation to starvation to entheogenic plant ingestion (check out the "thumbprint" thread in the other drugs forum for discussion). This is the spiritual experience that religion is such a great defense against. The word "God", like all words, is a barrier to realization because whether we admit it or not we constantly have our words mixed up with reality, and through language we run into ridiculous paradoxical questions that the logical positivists declared were irrational and meaningless. It's like the Godel's incompleteness theorem of language. But reality is not the words we choose to describe it, it is forever just an inch beyond the grasp of our dualistic minds...

So anyway, I think that's where all the confusion over this word lies, in that millions an dmillions of people, from all religious backgrounds, still conceptualize some variant of the old daddy God in the sky, either acting in our affairs or not, but still with a personality or a presence separate from ours, while a few get the gist of what Jesus actually meant. Even fewer have ever realized it directly. I think Jesus also used the word God partly to avoid getting killed while converting people to this crazy new way of thinking, but we don't have to worry about that anymore (or at least right now), so I think those who are confused by the use of the term raise a valid point: why cling to the word when it causes so much misunderstanding? I guess knowing this particular definition helps me understand the Gospel of Thomas a bit better, and to not ignore the wisdom of some ancient traditions because of their more hokey appendages, but I would be willing to try out new words. Plenty have been suggested: spirit, godhead, sunyata, and so on, but ultimately they have just as much use as "God" does, because they are all metaphor.

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Invisiblesunyata
nonexistentexistentialist
Registered: 12/26/02
Posts: 133
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1538435 - 05/11/03 01:48 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth man's minds about to religion.
- Francis Bacon

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

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Anonymous

Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: sunyata]
    #1538509 - 05/11/03 02:45 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

I think in a way it was an attempt to reclaim the word "God" like homosexuals have reclaimed the word "queer" or black people the word "nigger".




That my friend, is a brilliant interpretation. Very nice post.

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OfflineStrumpling
Neuronaut
Registered: 10/11/02
Posts: 7,571
Loc: Hyperspace
Last seen: 12 years, 10 months
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: Deiymiyan]
    #1538567 - 05/11/03 03:42 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

"Just a clarification for you [ strumpling, and others ]..... Many people don't...."

That's very fascinating.... Many people kill themselves every year too

"Read it again, and notice the child's closed mind."

how stimulating you are


--------------------
Insert an "I think" mentally in front of eveything I say that seems sketchy, because I certainly don't KNOW much. Also; feel free to yell at me.
In addition: SHPONGLE

Edited by Strumpling (05/11/03 03:45 AM)

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OfflineStrumpling
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Registered: 10/11/02
Posts: 7,571
Loc: Hyperspace
Last seen: 12 years, 10 months
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: ]
    #1538573 - 05/11/03 03:48 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

sorry for yelling :blush:

I'll try and keep my ego at bay


--------------------
Insert an "I think" mentally in front of eveything I say that seems sketchy, because I certainly don't KNOW much. Also; feel free to yell at me.
In addition: SHPONGLE

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Anonymous

Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: ]
    #1538636 - 05/11/03 06:46 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

God is, "That than which nothing greater can be thought." - Anselm

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Offline3MJ3
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Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: ]
    #1538758 - 05/11/03 09:21 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

Deimyan, sorry I couldn't respond sooner but I had gone to sleep........

Slave morality was a concept developed by Nietzsche which he used to critisize the Christian church with. He basically stated that those individuals who are 'weak' and 'less robust' have to find direction in a system that TELLS them what to do. In other words they follow. You were saying that these individuals with closed minds simply join the bad wagon without any investigation into the matter.....I think you were referring to the majority of so-called 'believers' of various religions. Maybe I was wrong. Slave morality also entertains the pragmatism that can follow with the 'mob effect', the everybody else is doing it so I should too, thus an ignorant and closed mind.

The second part to Nietzsche's idea of slave morality, is the role of 'Master morality' which is just the opposite. These are those that use rationality to see that morality is all relative to ourselves and the phenomenal world around us, and is only affected as such, so we must take control and believe firmly in morals we concluded were right, independant of authority (the church). The master moralists were those who were actually living in Nietzsche's view. It kind of goes along with Sartre's view of bad faith, where the slave moralists would be in such a state.

I don't nessecarily agree with this view though.......I have to attend church at the moment :smile:

i&I

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Posts: 14,279
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Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: sunyata]
    #1538803 - 05/11/03 10:01 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

Yes, I agree with most of your words, and I well appreciate Thomas and other 'Gnostic' gospels, but none of the non-canonical works that stress a fully realized (the Kingdom of GOD is fully Present, but unrealized by most [especially the hylic and psychic 'level' believers]) deny GOD as a Living Reality. This is the main thing - GOD is a Living Reality ("Living Water," wherein water symbolizes life), and by Living - Aware. Even Eternal Awareness, and not limited. It is us that suffer limitation.

Like background radiation, still detectable from the Big Bang, GOD in His Immanence is only faintly perceived in creation. Outside of space-time, we may, as Paul said, see Him face-to-face, but here, in this veil of illusion, 'in a glass, darkly.' Paul's Christ is the Resurrected Christ, not the Earthly Jesus. His faith (paradoxically known as 'by faith alone,' so touted by Luther and all of Protestantism) was given to him through mystical experience, through Light and through Ecstasis ("...in the body or out of the body I know not...caught up to the third heaven...")

There is GOD, and there is humankind's experience of GOD, which of course does not shape GOD, but the other way around. The bottom line for me is that the Creator is infinitely 'more' than the creation, and insofar as our awareness is personal, GOD, Who IS Awareness/Consciousness, is AT LEAST personal, but so completely exceeds our human type of personality that I, and others, prefer to refer to GOD as Transpersonal. This word at least helps to discern from that which is Impersonal - less than personal - like lower-than-mammalian life forms.

Lastly, unlike a cosmic religion like Buddhism, that does not value the historical process as the 'handiwork of the LORD,' the yet-to-be-realized eschatology of Biblical faith holds meaning. Now, this is not my bent - looking for the 'promises' of the prophets to be manifested in history, or the restoration of Jerusalem, in that whole Middle Eastern sentiment. This is all too provincial for my taste in Universality, but I do acknowledge that all of this creation IS teleological. It has design, purpose, direction. It is not meaningless, though I do not know the overarching meaning. Creation is not just 'stuff happening,' which is a ridiculous marginalization given by those who just can't handle the immensity of the realization that 'it all means something, but I'll never have the whole meaning, so forgetaboutit.' Pierre Teilhard de Chardin thought that the entire creation was being transubstantiated into Christ - into pure consciousness of GOD - the culmination of which he called "The Omega Point." As time passes, this thought becomes more and more satisfying to me. Peace.


--------------------
γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Invisiblesunyata
nonexistentexistentialist
Registered: 12/26/02
Posts: 133
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1538945 - 05/11/03 11:57 AM (20 years, 10 months ago)

Markos, I thank you for your reply. My post was not specifically directed at you but I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I have learned a lot from your posts here at the Shroomery, and I bow to your superior knowledge in matters theological.

I too have read some Teilhard de Chardin, his writing is very exciting to me. I have loosely interpreted his conception of the omega point as the universe becoming fully self-aware, knowing itself, sort of the culmination of the growth of consciousness that began at the birth of the universe. I think there is a teleological destination for the universe as well, although I think of it more as a latent potential that is not necessarily "destined" to occur. It seems all of evolution, from matter to life to mind to spirit, is headed in this general direction.

I still hesitate to think of "God" or whatever as having a "will", however, or of being any sort of particular aspect of the universe that does anything to another aspect. I think of God more as Tillich's Ground of Being or Alan Watts' "squiggles". I am having a difficult time putting this concept into words (no surpirse there), so I am going to take some time out and come back a little later when my thoughts are a bit clearer. Peace be with you too.

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OfflineDeiymiyan
I AM

Registered: 04/17/03
Posts: 656
Loc: Within the Realm of Imagi...
Last seen: 14 years, 7 months
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: Strumpling]
    #1539162 - 05/11/03 02:26 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

It is easiest to show a point by way of example....  I don't understand why you don't just accept what I said for what it was... an illustration.

"Many people kill themselves every year too" >>>  What do you expect me to say to that?  YES... I know !


"how stimulating you are " .....  Perhaps I'm misinterpreting this...  But I'm taking this as an attack... 

Check this out....  I roll with your punch...  and counter with a firm grip by the scruff of your neck....  You have "two seconds" to say "uncle" before I toss you into the arena.  :tongue:

:shocked:

 


--------------------


Dei Gratia de integro,

Veni Vidi Vici:

In Nomine Domini..


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OfflineDeiymiyan
I AM

Registered: 04/17/03
Posts: 656
Loc: Within the Realm of Imagi...
Last seen: 14 years, 7 months
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: 3MJ3]
    #1539196 - 05/11/03 02:44 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

"Slave morality was a concept developed by Nietzsche ..."
------------

Thank-you. 

I didn't know that.


I have come to think that the men of the church, back then, and further back still, have largely taken advantage of religion...  THey used it  as a means to stay in power over the people.

I even hold on to the notion that some things may have been "fudged", sort of, to make sure that they don't lose their positions of power.

To me that seems like a slave morality...  The people, as a result, would have been taken advantage of....

Many seem to have noticed the injustices [is that a word?] that have stemmed from the "rigteous" ...  Notice even relatively quite recently...  episodes with priests and...  kids.

Many have had not so good memories of the church... 

Is it possible that this may have something to do with a large portion of the population wanting to toss those belief behind? 

I just wish to understand this... 

I haven't been one to attend church very often...  That dosen't mean that I have no beliefs or morals...  I just haven't been fed by the clergy.

A slave morality, in my opinion, will not work over a longer period.  Either everyone will choose, democratically, to be a part of something... 

... I find though...  that there are limited choices at this time... 

Maybe everyone's waiting to chose the right thing together.

:confused:

 


--------------------


Dei Gratia de integro,

Veni Vidi Vici:

In Nomine Domini..


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OfflineStrumpling
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Registered: 10/11/02
Posts: 7,571
Loc: Hyperspace
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Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: Deiymiyan]
    #1539251 - 05/11/03 03:11 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

"It is easiest to show a point by way of example.... I don't understand why you don't just accept what I said for what it was... an illustration."

That's fantastic but you're still implying that people who reject religion are close-minded children who have never ACCEPTED religion in the past and have never showed interest or obtained any knowledge on any religious subject. I know an anthropologist who specializes in studying religious practices - he is an athiest. Is he close-minded too, just because he doesn't believe in God? He knows more about most religions than you know about your OWN, most likely; so please stop implying that non-believers aren't willing to at least reduce their ignorance on the subject before they decide to not accept it as 100% truth.

edit: changed "anybody" in first sentance to just "people," and changed context of sentence to plural..


--------------------
Insert an "I think" mentally in front of eveything I say that seems sketchy, because I certainly don't KNOW much. Also; feel free to yell at me.
In addition: SHPONGLE

Edited by Strumpling (05/11/03 03:24 PM)

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OfflineMurex
Reality Hacker

Registered: 07/28/02
Posts: 3,599
Loc: Traped in a shell.
Last seen: 16 years, 6 months
Re: Define God - For Nonbelievers [Re: Deiymiyan]
    #1539351 - 05/11/03 04:01 PM (20 years, 10 months ago)

I think there are many reasons there is sush a schism in humanity when it comes to God- There are misentrepratations, bias of religious leaders, money and power involved with organized religion, stupid 'sheep' that are easily subjectable to authority and many other reasons more.

The best way imo to combat all this confusion, is to raise your children free of religion until they are old enough to think for themselves. I wish I was raised this way, I had to learn the hard way.

:tongue:


--------------------
What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know,
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection,
Is it all you want it to be?


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