GOD - NO GOD. Agreeing to both Yes and No

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Last night I watched a program on National Geographic regarding the possible faking of the Shroud of Turin by Leonardo De Vinci.

Though the program did not mention it, if one juxtaposes the odds of the shroud being the genuine burial cloth of an obscure Rabbi who took centuries to become famous, somewhow surviving for the next 1400 years, to surface in medieval Europe - when the power of Christian relics was at its height, as apposed to it being a fake, perpetrated by the powerful Savoy family, who commissioned both the genius and silence of Da Vinci ( who had a strange sense of humor) to collaborate with them, the odds greatly favor the latter by a huge margin.

The show transported me back in time to my hippie years in the 60’s - when hundreds of freaky LSD trips mixed with Transcendental Meditation pricked the bubble of my former rigid atheistic stance and got me fully hooked into shamanism, yoga and zen and the mystique of the super-natural.

There is nothing more fervent than a religious convert, even if he be ontologically orientated I remember how important it was for me to grasp at any evidence that supported my newly discovered state of altered perception and how defensive I was when scientific skeptics debunked paranormal event.

Recalling how fixed I once was in my belief that the Shroud was an authentic relic and measuring that state of mind against my present attitude, which allows me to be quite happy to accept that it is more than probably a fake - got me to dwell on a host of various reasons why such elaborate religious hoaxes could and would be perpetrated on the multitudes by any individual or organization with a particular axe to grind.

I am not going to give examples of the pros and cons of the effects the psychological distortions that religious hoaxes impose on the mass consciousness - or analyze how and why our need for fixed sets of belief, from the Stone Age onwards, religious or otherwise, inevitably lead to our wars of confusion. I have already done that in my book on Psyche-Genetics.

What has struck me as immediately pertinent is that any belief in the existence or non-existence of God - that is fixed - cuts the power of the psyche exactly in half.

A Universe with or without God is equally fascinating - only if we keep the question open. Wre all need to enjoy the mystery of that dual concept for entirely different reasons. It allows us to be truly free to entertain any and all possibilities - including finding interest and enjoyment in the infinite and profane implications of religious hoaxes.

Instead of shutting off a part of ourselves because a partucular argument that does not fit ito a box, we can free the psyche to remain open and altert to enjoy and appreciate all and everything that comes our way.

We need a greater appreciation of the esoteric dynamic underlying human consciousness, which lies in an endless quest, both religious and scientific, to find out whether a creator God may or may not exist - and that, war and strive as we might, we will never uncover the whole Truth of it - nor is any final answer really necessary.

Without that eternal mystery: God/No God - life would not be half as interesting. Our history would have no drama. And our future would be boringly predictable.

Arriving at this Middle Path allows one to embrace all men of all Faiths and Creeds as a single brotherhood - not condecendingly or out of social politeness, but with fellow feelings of genuine affection, with humor and with rueful introspection.

2

Creator/Non-creator is still monistic.

I believe both.

As in:

Some things are built.
Some things automatically manifest.

But, anyone or anything which calls themselves “god” – is almost always a maniac. The same goes for prophets.

3

Hmmm… Is this a brand new creed? Or are you quoting another prophet?
Please explain how different parts of this univese you know of builds itself and which parts mysically manifest via automatic over-drive???

4

Without eternal mystery life would not be half as interesting. We’d be better off putting the God concept to bed.

5

You just contradicted yourself there, Dorky. Putting “the” God concept to bed would foreclose the mystery, and by your own statement make life much less interesting.

Interesting take, Magnet. My own thought on the subject goes beyond the mere existence/nonexistence question. Because the main problem with both theists and atheists is that they define God, both of them, the theist to insist there is one and the atheist to insist that there isn’t, because if either understood the ineffability of God, and that He/She/It is outside the category of “things we can look at” (which is what we always mean by “exist”), they would know the question is meaningless.

God, the universe, and consciousness, all exist and don’t at the same time. Neither consciousness nor the universe can be observed; there is nowhere you can look and see them; they are nowhere (and everywhere), and so they do not “exist.” But to deny their existence is impossible. God, being where consciousness and the universe meet, is both at once, and equally paradoxical in the same way.

6

No. God and mystery are two different things IMO.

7

Well, that’s because you insist on defining God, and end up with a caricature.

Where there is no mystery, there is also no God. A lot of theists try to deny this, but it’s true.

8

Well done Magnet, very nicely put. Can I commend to your attention a book called ‘Supernatural’ which, I believe, has just been released on your side of ‘the pond’. He covers, in 700 or so pages, the subjects you raise in great detail and thereafter expands into many others. And as for the question ‘Does God Exist?’ he comes down on the side of very definitely – MAYBE.

9

The problem is not defining God, its defining God properly, and few know God so their definitions and explanations of God’s personality reflect their own desires and flaws, this makes God look silly and petty.

10

And where there is mystery there is no God.

11

Where there is mystery there is lack of understanding, and thus no basis for making that statement (or its contrary). :wink:

12

Exactly! No point in saying there is a God, no point in saying there is no God. Which is why I should never hear the word uttered…and yet I continue to.

13

“No point in saying there is a God, no point in saying there is no God,” does not imply that one should never hear the word uttered. What you should never here uttered is either “there is a God” or “there is no God,” spoken as if either sentence had a clear meaning. Other things may be spoken regarding God, while making sense, just not those.

But I can’t resist pointing out that one reason you keep hearing these sentences is that you keep uttering one of them yourself. :wink:

14

Quite an oxy-moron. And they may, but they shouldn’t.

15

What’s the logic behind the statement that “there could be no proof of God or no God?”

If God is the source and the life of all things physical, then why wouldn’t there be some physical proof that points to the source. Doesn’t science of QM find some reasonable proof to another dimension? Isn’t there proof for waves of energy and electromagnetism and gravity? Are these things physical, do they have physical properties? Can you tell me how much heat radiation weighs or how much mass it has or how much space it displaces?

16

After all of the arguments, Dorky, you still don’tt understand the flaw in YOUR concept of God…

It exists, in YOUR mind, as something totally unreasonable (yet you press on trying to reason it away).

You are attepting to shed your own mind using a new mind which is not yet your own mind because you haven’t accepted that your own mind is your own mind and it can’t be a false mindset simply because your new mind cannot speak with it.

Yet, you use the language of your new mind to refer to something your old mind, yourself, could never properly explain in words (because you could never share that part of you that is you–that mystery-- to anyone else, or yourself, because you cannot tell yourself what it is… it disappears with any attempt of reflection or repetition, it only exists at the moment of its existence, and then gone, forever).

And now this new mind, this new friend, becomes foe, and they struggle. Calling each other names without understanding one another.

To the child another child is an adult,

and to an adult the child’s a child.

And to the wiser adult, the child and adult are both needed manifestations of HUMAN.

17

Why?

You know, there’s great wisdom in that, but probably not the way you mean it. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m thinking of Lao Tze and “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” Or the Zen saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

However, I’m not quite ready to abandon individual existence yet, so Silence isn’t on my agenda this day.

18

Very much the way modern Zen master, Roshi Harada Seike puts it.

Kant on the other hand suggested that we should act as though God exists

For me life flows most harmoniously when I accept that God is indeed omniscient. We, and every other cooperative atomic association in the Cosmos, is a conscious expression of He/She/it.