God? What I need as proof!

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 1:44 am

So, to get back on track here, deism is evident non-sense. It supposes a literal deity which is not even in good keeping with a proper knowledge of world mythology. Monotheism is the exact same non-sense. If you try to put a deity into pantheism it's evident non-sense as well.

The whole issue is that the deity is nothing more than the stork, easter bunny, or Santa Claus. Those three symbols are symbolizing something else - namely your parents. In the case of the deity, it symbolizes the sheer mystery of your own existence.

Campbell left the world with a few considerations to ponder over:

"How, in the contemporary period, can we evoke the imagery that communicates the most profound and most richly developed sense of experiencing life? These mythic images must point 'past themselves' to that ultimate 'truth' which must be told: That life does not have any one absolutely fixed MEANING. These mythic images must point past all meanings given, beyond all definitions and relationships, to that really ineffable 'mystery' that is just the 'existence', the being of ourselves and of our world. If we give an exact meaning we diminish the experience of its 'real depth'. But when a poet carries the mind into a context of meanings and then pitches it past those, one knows that marvelous rapture that comes from going past all categories of definition. Here we sense the 'function of metaphor' that allows us to make a journey we could not otherwise make, 'past' all categories of definition." - Joseph Campbell

Newbie First Class Joined: Dec 21, 2005 Posts: 44

I am Not sure I quite understand the Polytheism of life. As there is no theism in life.
I am sure there is ONE life and that maybe there can be only ONE force of all life.
But the poly of life or theism? No.
There is (maybe) a poly-perspective of life, that is all.
Not poly-life or polytheism.
Everything alive has life and therfore everything in life has their own persective.

It's circle time, break it down!

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 1:34 pm

If God is understood as the mystery of it all then the theism's suddenly look like this:

Monotheism - One great mystery (God)

Polytheism - Many different sub-mysteries (Gods) under one great mystery (God).

Pantheism - All great mystery (God)

Atheism - No mystery (God)

My intention here is to hit religious fundamentalism with the original esoteric format known only to the initiated of the religious priesthoods who actually wrote these myths and riddled them with astrotheological analogy.

The Son of God, is symbolically expressing the "Sun of Existence".

( see www.truthbeknown.com )

I don't see a problem admiring the Sun in the sky or the mystery of existence for that matter, but I do see a problem with the religious leadership suggesting that the Son is not the Sun, or that God is not the Mystery of Existence. When people "Lift there hands on high", they're quite literally praising both the Sun in the sky, through the symbolism of Jesus, and the mystery of Existence through the symbolism of Yahweh.

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 1:39 pm

PantheistWorldView wrote:

So, to get back on track here, deism is evident non-sense. It supposes a literal deity which is not even in good keeping with a proper knowledge of world mythology. Monotheism is the exact same non-sense. If you try to put a deity into pantheism it's evident non-sense as well.

The whole issue is that the deity is nothing more than the stork, easter bunny, or Santa Claus. Those three symbols are symbolizing something else - namely your parents. In the case of the deity, it symbolizes the sheer mystery of your own existence.

Campbell left the world with a few considerations to ponder over:

"How, in the contemporary period, can we evoke the imagery that communicates the most profound and most richly developed sense of experiencing life? These mythic images must point 'past themselves' to that ultimate 'truth' which must be told: That life does not have any one absolutely fixed MEANING. These mythic images must point past all meanings given, beyond all definitions and relationships, to that really ineffable 'mystery' that is just the 'existence', the being of ourselves and of our world. If we give an exact meaning we diminish the experience of its 'real depth'. But when a poet carries the mind into a context of meanings and then pitches it past those, one knows that marvelous rapture that comes from going past all categories of definition. Here we sense the 'function of metaphor' that allows us to make a journey we could not otherwise make, 'past' all categories of definition." - Joseph Campbell

I don't like to badmouth deism except to call it irrelevant. Deism is a concept that does exactly what it was supposed to do and that is to answer the question "why something instead of nothing". It's as good an answer as any. The only thing I would add to it is that there may be no why. If there is no why something instead of nothing, there is no need to invoke deism to answer the question. If there is no why, there is nothing to know, no mystery.

Alan Watts was fond of the kind of rhetoric Campell is using here. It reflects their early east-meets-west mythologizing.

It's easy to say "beyond all categories of definition" or "beyond all categories of though" as Alan Watts said, but what does that mean?

Fiction is powerful as it can invoke in us emotions and thinking about fictional events AS IF they were real. I think the big mythologists give mythology and those who held to mythologies of the past (and present) too much credit. All it is is fiction. I have often said that one of the functions of poetry is to "seem to mean as many things as possible without risking the illusion of meaning nothing in particular". This premise can be expanded to include all art forms and I believe it is in this premise that the power of art resides. But the important thing to remember is that it is a rhetorical trick, a skill of an artist.

That said, I think you and I probably see eye-to-eye on many of the specifics of mythology. If there is any disgreement here, it is over how much we should idolize mythology itself.

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 1:55 pm

I'm not suggesting idolizing mythology, just understanding what it actually means and how it applies to the modern world of science and advancement.

When you get down to it, existence had to have always existed in some form or another with no absolute point of nothingness - just as there is no absolute point of rest.

In the Big Bang theory the 'potential universe' existed as smaller than a single atom. There was no non-existence - something existed that has expanded outward.

In the string theory membrane model of the universe, other parallel universes outside of our own 'existed' before the big bang reaction. The big bang is said to have been the result of two parallel universes touching. So something always existed in both cases. We're stuck with the fabric of existence, in and of itself, as being necessarily perpetual with no true beginning.

How is that possible?

This is a great mystery for the human mind to consider. How could something have no specific origin, birth, or beginning? It's as if, to use a metaphor, existence is a 'perpetual virgin' constantly creating new forms and images out of itself forever and ever. That's what the mystery traditions express at their full depth through allegory and metaphor.

Joseph Campbell is quoted as saying, "Deep is the well of the past, shall we not call it bottomless". He knew about this deep philosophical issue.

How is it any different today?

What has changed over the years?

There's no alternative to non-origin so we don't exactly have any choice but to accept this issue of perpetual existence as a 'mystery to the mind' and leave it there. But nevertheless, we, being the very fabric of existence itself (space, atoms and what-have-you), are this profound mystery to our own minds.

"Thou Art That"

This type of logic about beginningless-ness went directly into the symbolism of the ancient Gods.

The Gods that are said to be without beginning and without end are nothing more than existence itself - anthropomorhized in a storyline format presentation.

It seems important to get this understanding out there in order to possibly reverse the effects of 'religious fundamentalism' that have evolved over the centuries due to the priests giving the common people an exoteric, denotative, literalistic, translation of these metaphorical mythic symbols.

Why do you suppose the same priests that put the exoteric traditions into play also predicted their eventual fall (the fall of Babylon) ? They must have known that society would eventually grow and mature into realizing what had happened and eventually uncover the astrotheological allegory and deep philosophy at the foundation of the mythologies.

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 3:43 am

PantheistWorldView wrote:

I'm not suggesting idolizing mythology, just understanding what it actually means and how it applies to the modern world of science and advancement.

When you get down to it, existence had to have always existed in some form or another with no absolute point of nothingness - just as there is no absolute point of rest.

In the Big Bang theory the 'potential universe' existed as smaller than a single atom. There was no non-existence - something existed that has expanded outward.

In the string theory membrane model of the universe, other parallel universes outside of our own 'existed' before the big bang reaction. The big bang is said to have been the result of two parallel universes touching. So something always existed in both cases. We're stuck with the fabric of existence, in and of itself, as being necessarily perpetual with no true beginning.

How is that possible?

This is a great mystery for the human mind to consider. How could something have no specific origin, birth, or beginning? It's as if, to use a metaphor, existence is a 'perpetual virgin' constantly creating new forms and images out of itself forever and ever. That's what the mystery traditions express at their full depth through allegory and metaphor.

Joseph Campbell is quoted as saying, "Deep is the well of the past, shall we not call it bottomless". He knew about this deep philosophical issue.

How is it any different today?

What has changed over the years?

There's no alternative to non-origin so we don't exactly have any choice but to accept this issue of perpetual existence as a 'mystery to the mind' and leave it there. But nevertheless, we, being the very fabric of existence itself (space, atoms and what-have-you), are this profound mystery to our own minds.

"Thou Art That"

This type of logic about beginningless-ness went directly into the symbolism of the ancient Gods.

The Gods that are said to be without beginning and without end are nothing more than existence itself - anthropomorhized in a storyline format presentation.

It seems important to get this understanding out there in order to possibly reverse the effects of 'religious fundamentalism' that have evolved over the centuries due to the priests giving the common people an exoteric, denotative, literalistic, translation of these metaphorical mythic symbols.

Why do you suppose the same priests that put the exoteric traditions into play also predicted their eventual fall (the fall of Babylon) ? They must have known that society would eventually grow and mature into realizing what had happened and eventually uncover the astrotheological allegory and deep philosophy at the foundation of the mythologies.

Perhaps I'm just not turned on by eternity as a mystery. If there was ever nothing, there would still be nothing.

I'm sure my current attitude has to do with the period over which I realized that religion = fiction. Today's religion is tomorrow's mythology. Joseph Campbell was interestingly enough the nail in the coffin of my interest in studying religion as religion. I'm more interested in the effect of religion and this still sometimes calls for getting into the nitty gritty, but I can't say I'm terribly interested in the nitty gritty itself anymore.

Still, I basically agree with your specific interpretations of what these mythologies were about.

"Now this religion happens to prevail/Until by that one it is overthrown/Because men dare not live with men alone/But always with another fairy tale."
al-Ma'arri, Syrian Poet, died 1057

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:23 am

And they are fairy tales full of pseudo-history and legend. The religions base themselves upon this aspect and ignore the deep philosophy.

The reason being, how can you control everyone when they're fully aware that the God symbolism is simply referring to each of them and there own individual mysterious existence?

You can't make money on that, you can't control with that, and you can't elevate yourself above all others with that. It knocks out the middle man position of the church. They don't want people to discover the deeper meanings. It could potentially knock them out of business.

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:15 pm

Certainly. The Church rests on money bags. It's a power play.

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:02 pm

If people start seeing the God symbolism for what it is, as something that essentially relates back to them, the reign of the corrupt church era will begin to close as I see it.

The stuff that Campbell and Watts were going over serves to end the denotative literalism that powers these institutions. Campbell absolutely hammers the institutional religious leaders in "Thou Art That".

Newbie First Class Joined: Dec 21, 2005 Posts: 44

Sorry! My mistake I saw Pantheism and read polytheism.
What's up with that?
Whatever is out there, it is most certainly not anything like a god.
Mystery?
Yeah I will go along with that.
Otherwise we would not be having this conversation.
We would not be wasting our time talking about nothing.
Would we?
We can always be subborn and say there is nothing out there, doing and managing all the somethings like sychronization and all that weird stuff.
But something always happens sooner or later that make me think, that has got to be more than a coincidence.
Mystery?
Very misty, very foggy indeed.
So what is the symbol for my-story instead of mystery?

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:43 pm

Brian37 wrote:

This is no different than the absurd argument, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

YES, the laws of physics dont cease because there is nothing around to observe it. Was the earth a triangle before scientists dicovered it was round?

Wow. You just displayed the fact that you haven't been educated regarding even the most basic aspects of quantum mechanics. No, the laws of physics don't cease to exist, but you clearly have no understanding whatsoever of what those laws actually say.

Until something is observed, the wave function doesn't collapse, hense, its reality does NOT cohere without observation.

Go do some self-educating 101 in quantum theory before you display your ignorance by berating someone else erroneously.

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:54 pm

Greyfax wrote:

Brian37 wrote:

This is no different than the absurd argument, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

YES, the laws of physics dont cease because there is nothing around to observe it. Was the earth a triangle before scientists dicovered it was round?

Wow. You just displayed the fact that you haven't been educated regarding even the most basic aspects of quantum mechanics. No, the laws of physics don't cease to exist, but you clearly have no understanding whatsoever of what those laws actually say.

Until something is observed, the wave function doesn't collapse, hense, its reality does NOT cohere without observation.

Go do some self-educating 101 in quantum theory before you display your ignorance by berating someone else erroneously.

Umm.. can you break that down? It appears to me that Brian has stated an obvious fact of our Universe. Is it possible that you are arguing how we perceive reality? While Brian is merely stating the obvious fact that things "are" regardless of whether observe them or not? I think Brian is arguing against a form of Solipsism here.

For instance, though true, it is not a reality (real) to me that people are now swimming in a water medium somewhere. I haven't observed this. However, I don't have to observe this to know that this is the case. In effect, that's a fact of our existence that this is occurring somewhere on this planet.

Knowledge verses Logical Inference perhaps?

I don't quite understand your need to talk down to Brian btw. If true, that he doesn't know something, then he just doesn't know.

You might want to get off your intellectual high horse. There's no need for such arrogance here.

The Learned Joined: Jun 10, 2009 Posts: 187

powerup wrote:

I listened to a debate on the IG site called Sonone.
During the debate the Christian kept asking the atheist,
'what sort of proof would you need to convience you that god exists"?

The Atheist seemed stumped and said if god would come down and show himself to me.

That would not be very useful proof as he would be back to square one and he would try to use his personal and subjective proof to convience others, like Christians currently do now.

Here is the proof that would convience me.

That if god would preach through every Church preacher the exact same message world wide, word for word similtaniously, without any prior communication between each preacher.

Today in most Churches all messages are taped.

So if every tape was gathered they would not be able to tell the difference between each message. They would all be exactly idenitcal to each other, even in the phrasing and pauses.

Up to this point everything was going fine.

But then came this:

Quote:

To confirm the message was from god and not from a demon

The message would have to expound the mysteries of the Bible in certain verses and then explain them in logical detail.

That would be the type of proof that would work for me.

Mysteries, demons, Bible...

oh boy, I cant help stop laughing at it...

and lets not dont forget the "logical details", which, naturally,
would have to be logical enough for the gentleman.

Posted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:54 pm

Please do not feed the troll known as Rayback by responding to any of it's posts. Thank you.


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