Exuberant Teleportation wrote: My favorite philosopher is Spinoza, and His view of God I interpreted as a grand awareness, a higher serenity of peace, a throne of council to honor the way of nature, and to tap into the deepest power in the universe, realizing the infinitude of all things.
Can a religious perspective get any fluffier than this? The whole point seems aimed at getting as far removed as possible from the actual nitty gritty reality of human interactions as most of us know them to be. Instead, you create "in your head" this hopelessly vague and vacuous "spititual" reality you can use as a counterweight to anything that might happen to come along and spoil your day.
Exuberant Teleportation wrote: The extreme dangers of physical existence, not necessarily higher metaphysical/spiritual awareness, but real life may be draining and damaging, but (assuming all of our basic bodily needs are met), we can reach a purely transcendental state of wholeness and warmth/love, bubbling hearts if we treasure this precious opportunity we have in life to shine our talents and secure wisdom for the future.
Okay, but this sort of thinking and feeling is deemed no less "fluffy" to me.
That you are in fact able to achieve this frame of mind works for you in that it allows you to sustain a level of equillibrium and equanimity that most of us are unable to attain. Let alone to sustain. But I am more interested in understanding how this frame of mind is applicable to your interactions with others. In particular interactions that come into conflict with those who have a very different understanding of that which is deemed to be wise for the future.
Really, how on earth is this "grand awareness" applicable to a nature that is a veritable slaughterhouse of predator and prey? How does one square a "higher serenity of peace" with a natural order that is bursting at seams with all manner of catastophic calamities -- from earthquakes and volcanoes to great floods and devastating droughts.
Not to mention such things as "extinction events".
Exuberant Teleportation wrote: The power of nature may be absolutely outrageously vivid, even violent in magnitude and display, but, from our secure scientific vantage points, such phenomena may be a source of fascination and awe, kind of like how swords became lightsabers for hollywood entertainment and geeky play. And, regarding the pain of being eaten, it's the infinitude of forms in nature that represent the full splendor and spectrum of the divine intellect. Still, there's a better way, and when we rise up to supreme levels (which is already promised to us in the holy books, God protecting our destiny), we can remove the hurt and death from existence.
So, the slaughterhouse that is nature and hellholes that natural disasters can become in inflicting terrible pain and suffering on mere mortals from the cradle to the grave...this is just something that you are able to subsume in the manner in which you have thought yourself into believing what you do. Or would you explain it differently?
On the other hand, when push comes to shove, you insist that your own rendition of God is there to protect your destiny. But what of the hundreds and hundreds of denominational narratives out there that have very different assumptions about God? Are they all just subsumed ecumenically in your own set of assumptions?
I call them assumptions only until you are able to demonstrate to us that what you believe is true here "in your head" is in fact true for all of us.
Instead, in my view, you merely assert things like this:
Exuberant Teleportation wrote: This divine, omnipotent, megagalactic power is God - He is real, watches over us, supervises us, and ensures for our highest fate. If we tap into the will of God, imagination (the desired part) becomes at least somewhat real (and perhaps in the future very real). How do we know that God is real? Because of chance/destiny synchronicities and prayers being answered, even feeling in your heart the full embrace of spiritual ecstasy. The existence itself may presently be evil though, but that can be overturned centuries down the road.
And this must be true because the whole point of believing it is true is that it sustains the emotional and psychological comfort and consolation that such a belief engenders.
I just don't get it. Sure, the idea of a particular denominational God existing, then creating the universe and then the human race at least allows one to focus in on something. But God as the “the sum of the natural and physical laws"?
Exuberant Teleportation wrote: The cosmic completeness that can arise in our sanctuaries of soul from the divine outpouring of nature gives effect to passions of lucidity and clarity, finding that center of council that blesses us with the fanciest garb, or maybe if mind was strong enough, then it's just as we will it, and no law, natural or supernatural will hold us back.
In my own opinion, more of the same. The point seems not to broach, describe and then to demonstrate that what you believe is true, but to note that the fact that you believe it is true is what allows you to nestle down in it triumphantly. After all, any number of others can profess to have achieved the same sort of "lucidity" with entirely different renditions of God and religion.
It just so happens that yours and only yours is the one and the only true calling.
How does one really connect the dots here between an entity of this sort and the choices that one makes from day to day to day. And in a world that is often bursting at the seams with all manner of pain and suffering.
Exuberant Teleportation wrote: Parts of life are perfect, and parts of it are not, but it's the growing phase, and the key is this - if we just made everything perfectly suddenly, the invisible code of liberty/free will would weaken, because if there was ever a chance that the devil could overcome us, that triumph over his matrix is victory and freedom every day. Would you ask for it to happen that way again? No, never - hurting people is a sin. But it won't happen again, so we may as well dig deeper for bigger rewards through more pain.
Ever and always keeping it vague. That, in my view, is the whole point of general descriptions like this. Whereas I created this thread in order to go in the opposite direction:
When you are out and about interacting with others, what moitivates you to choose particular behaviors...as this relates to the assumptions you make about God and religion as this relates to that which you construe your fate to be on the other side of the grave?Are you willing to bring the rhetoric down to the reality of defending your own value judgments on this side of the grave?
Instead, from my own perspective, transcendental thinking of this sort is more in sync with this:
It all just seems to be a flotation device, a psychological balm able to offer up at least something to counter all the horrors built right into the human condition.
Exuberant Teleportation wrote: Yes, it's escapism, but if we're pure of constitution and valor/vitality enough/sufficiently, then we can throw down those arrows and chains of miserable, determined/devil-controlled existence, and strike our conquest celebrations enough to take over the universe.
Let's focus in on a context in which men and women, in thinking about God and religion, might experience this sort of thing.
When, more specifically, would escapism give way to all those other things? Can you cite examples from your own life?
Exuberant Teleportation wrote: And even though I don't do anything wrong, I'm dark sided, because sometimes I contemplate the poisonous perspective to try to be more unique, or grab for myself huge labyrinths of control grounds to feel the force energy of the eons spent dreaming of the highest utopia.
Again, what would you deem to be wrong behavior on this side of the grave? And suppose others with conflicting views of God and religion insisted that this behavior was actually right instead. Regarding an issue like abortion. Which has been in the news here of late in America.
In detail, note your own chosen behaviors regarding an issue like this [on this side of the grave] and how and why you chose it given your assumptions regarding your fate on the other side of the grave.