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General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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Re: Shrinking back from God ? Perhaps? [Re: Sclorch]
    #1586861 -

That depends on how one defines "God." The first line of Martin Heidegger's 'An Introduction to Metaphysics,' that I have remembered for 30 years is "Why are there essents ['existents' or 'things that art'] rather than nothing?"

For Freud, as soon as one asks ultimates 'whys,' one is immediately deemed neurotic. For the religious mind, this is the fundamental question, and the equally fundamental (not Fundamentalist) answer is God. However, the word God for a philosophical and existentialist theologian like Paul Tilich (the "Ground of Being"), or for John Shelby Spong, who has been influenced by Tillich, is markedly different from a modern person who tries to keep alive the paternalistic tribal deity of the ancient Hebrews - an anthropomorphic tyrant who could divide the Red Sea 'with a mighty blast from His nostrils.' An existentially grounded theology easily, and naturally says that yes, of course God is tangible in ANY of the tiniest, infinitesimal degree of matter, or energy or space-time.

The VERY FACT of existence immediately infers origination, both in a linear or chronological sense, as well as in the sense of immediacy - the eternal present - the transcendental and ungraspable from which existence emerges in each gigasecond. If you must follow your sensate typological tendencies, you might have to follow this thinking in a chronological sense back to 10 to the minus 43rd second of the Big Bang, but the eternality whence that singularity emerged is Present to the religious mind, as Presence - perhaps like background microwave radiation is still perceptible from the specific moment of the Big Bang.

Walking out of an Indian restaurant on my birthday in Concord, New Hampshire about 11 years ago, with a childhood friend, trained in astrophysics and geophysics, a synchronicity occurred. We had been arguing from his physics point of view, and my metaphysics point of view. My argument was to say that the religious mind was an Intuitive grasp, while the scientific mind was the Sensate grasp of the same phenomenon (I am an INTP and he is an ISTJ according to the MBTI). Being an Intuitive, I make connections like this, he does not. As we left the restaurant, the car parked right in front, facing us, had a license plate that said COSMOS. We were stunned, laughed and marvelled at that before walking a block, at which point another license plate caught my eye - MYTHOS. These words symbolized his point of view and mine, respectively. This time, the synchronicity completed was multiplied subjectively so that it literally wasn't funny. We were shocked wordless, which is rare for us when we see each other. At moments like this, I see God.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Shrinking back from God ? Perhaps? [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1587426 -

Markos: For Freud, as soon as one asks ultimates 'whys,' one is immediately deemed neurotic.

Really?
Yet another reason for me to dislike Freud...


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Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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Re: Shrinking back from God ? Perhaps? [Re: Sclorch]
    #1588073 -

Because in attempting to preserve the air-tightness of his reductionism to impersonal physical processes, there could be absolutely no meta-motives - no ultimate 'meaning' implicit in existence. We are merely the evolutionary result of biological processes that are 'ultimately' derived from chemical and physical principles. Pure materialism, though without a modern cosmology (Big Bang) which would remind Freud of the question "Why are there essents rather than nothing?" A Steady State cosmology for Freud allowed him to [unconsciously] make infinite duration god enough for anything to develop out of pure chance - not that 13.7 billion years isn't long enough - but with no decisive moment of creation, the question of Whence was not addressed (not to mention Whom).

It wasn't an Alan Watts Zen 'This Is It' sense for Freud. The "This" for Watts was creation taken in a non-dualistic Way, with BEING just shouting from existence. In other words, the Numinous, the Spiritual, the Divine - whatever one chooses to refer to the experience of the Ground of Being, the Isness of existence - was absent in Freud. I can scarcely remember how I once saw life like this. Only a powerful sci-fi movie can sometimes convey to me a totally godless existence. Things have never been quite the same since my first significant dose.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Shrinking back from God ? Perhaps? [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1588136 -

Too many people passed the orange bag around and banged it up.. now it's all slimey and rotted... nobody took time to understand what was in the bag and how they should go about interacting with it.. they just wanted to feel it so badly because everyone else did.. it was one big orange orgy.

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