Firstly, psikeyhackr, I can’t tell if you think I believe this sort of god exists ... FWIW, I don’t. I’m simply repeating what sort of thing the theologists tend to believe god is.

psikeyhackr - 06 August 2007 01:33 PM

How many of these concepts about God come from European “classical” culture?  Is there anything that might be called theology outside of European culture.

Not sure what you mean. There are theologies outside of European culture, for example Islam, Hinduism, Jainism and (some forms of) Buddhism have quite sophisticated theologies. Some of them even use concepts of god that are quite like these.

psikeyhackr - 06 August 2007 01:33 PM

This concept of omniscience for instance.  Does God know what I am going to have for lunch on thursday 5 weeks from now?  If he does not does that mean he is not omniscient even if he knows everything about how the universe works and everything that has happened up to this point?

On the notion of omniscience, it means that for every proposition P, god knows if P is true or false.

psikeyhackr - 06 August 2007 01:33 PM

And as for perfectly good, can we even conceive of what is good from the perspective of an omniscient being.  What is the system works on reincarnation and a child dying of leukemia was a sadistic torturer in a previous life and he is just balancing out his karma.  If he is in a culture that doesn’t believe in reincarnation this God can’t seem too good.

If we can’t conceive of what god means by “good”, then it is similarly meaningless to say that god is “perfectly good”. All we could say is that “god is perfectly ixzleibwpl”. Insofar as traditional theology takes god as perfectly good, we must have some concept of what good means, even for god.

You have noted that there follows a pretty significant problem of evil for god. How is it that there is any evil in the world if god is perfectly good (and all powerful, and all knowing)? There is an entire branch of theology devoted to coming up with answers to this problem. It is called “theodicy”. FWIW, I don’t find any of the traiditional answers in theodicy to be remotely convincing, but at any rate one can’t fault them for trying ...

psikeyhackr - 06 August 2007 01:33 PM

Our assumptions about the God concept are based on what we are told by people that lived centuries ago.  Did they know that other galaxies existed?  Could this mean that every galaxy has its own God and none actually knows what is going on in any other galaxy?  Has anyone ever mentioned that possibility to you before.

Well, if there were such supernatural creatures in each galaxy, by definition they would not be god. Again, god is traditionally defined using the above formula. Theological arguments are given to show that only one such being could ever exist, since any two beings with those properties would be identical.

psikeyhackr - 06 August 2007 01:33 PM

How different would a theology based on reincarnation be from a theology based on eternal salvation or punishment?  Since neither has proven anything to date are they both useless speculation and not worth getting bent out of shape about unless you happen to BELIEVE in one?

They aren’t as different as one might think. Traditional Hindu theology believes in karma and reincarnation. On some understandings of Brahman, Brahman is pretty much the god we were just discussing. (On other understandings, he’s one of a pantheon of gods. There are many different, competing interpretations).

jufa - 06 August 2007 01:16 PM

Everything is personal to the individual.  Nothing anyone has done, shall do, or does is personal to you from their vantage of experience.  Relativity appears to make things impresonal, but relativity only allows one to relate to that which has been done, shall be done, or what one shall do.  But to be aware of the exactness of what is,  what was, and what shall be, one must experience the exactness for themselves.  And it is impossible for you to see what others see, hear, touch, taste, smell, think, and that yet to enter into their minds, no less touch as another touches, and feel as another feels.  Everything is personal to the individual, even their realitivity of relating.

So then why are you here discussing this stuff then? If everything is entirely personal, then it follows that it is literally impossible for you to transfer any of your knowledge or understanding to anyone else.

jufa - 06 August 2007 01:16 PM

God has never been anything.  God has never been nothing.  God has always been God.  And since God has always been the singularity of pluralism, the omniety of such an entity not only exceeds the bounds of mythology but also metaphors.  Therefore any argument you present, and have presented to explain in your words that which is:

incomprehensible comrpehensible

nullifies all that you have presented in answering my post.  Why?  Because the mind cannot comprehens what it cannot grasp.

To put forth a valid aggument you must begin answer the metaphorical proposition

“God is a metaphor for a mystery” which transcend human comprehension, I present as a present and true metaphor Life Itself.

I put to you.  Here is where we must begin.  Why? Because not to define the cause makes the effects metaphors.

Oh, do I have a book for you!

Jufa,

I’m not sure if perhaps English isn’t your first language, but I find the way you use the language vague and confusing. Sure, you are technically correct in saying that we can never appreciate another person’s experience directly. But that doesn’t mean that we can learn nothing meaningful from others. Many true facts about life and the world are transmissible by language, though of course some are not. As for whether or not the nature of god can be communicated, that is a separate question, and not one I’m very interested in since I’m not convinced that such an entity even exists. But for the word “god” to mean anything, it must embody ideas people can understand and communicate. We are all alone in our heads, but we do still manage to share our perspectives and experiences in meaningful ways, so unless you are a solipsist, I think you are overemphasising subjectivity.

As for the koan-like comments about God being all and nothing, alpha and omega, etc, it’s all pretty poetry but I don’t see that it means anything.

The purpose of metaphors is to attempt to make the incomprehensible comprehensible. They do so by characterising the pehnomena in ways that are familiar, by simplifying, and by representing one thing as like something else. Often, this is not very accurate, which is why Doug is correct in suggesting you have to go beyond metaphor to really talk about the real world directly. If ‘god’ is a metaphor for the mysterious or incomprehensible fine. But since man y of us on this site don’t feel a need for such a metaphor, it isn’t a useful concept for us. And for many religious people, saying it is only a metaphor contradicts their belief that the word represents something real, perhaps even the ultimate underlying reality of the universe. So strictly limiting the word to a representation of the ineffable is fair enough, but it’s not a limitation many people are likely to accept or find helpful.

So then why are you here discussing this stuff then? If everything is entirely personal, then it follows that it is literally impossible for you to transfer any of your knowledge or understanding to anyone else.

Don’t you know relating and learning and dialoging are personal experience experimented with for comprehending on this level.

the meaning of “God”?

wasnt that a Monty Python movie?

or is it the excuse for good people to do bad things?

Hi Mckenzievmd!  I can understand why you find the way I use language to be confusing.  I am a metaphorical writer.  And if one has only used intellect for expression of ideas for communication, I find they are conformist to materialism.  In my introduction I presented how I would be presenting myself.  If you would care to read it, you will find I am true to my word.  I am my word.  That is all any man can claim, for his words are representative of his nature.  If a man is not t rue to his word, he is not true to his nature and he not only is a deceiver of himself, but all who he touches. 

Allow me to give you a little insight into Jufa so that when, and if you do respond to Jufa, you will know where Jufa is coming from.

I’d like to give a definition of my way of experiencing life to all who are participation in this thread, and respond to any of my post. Please do not take what I say as my being arrogant.  This is my style of writing. 

I just want to say that I am not attempting to change any one’s mind or the way they accept their experience, belief, way of thinking, or their way of reaching their conclusions. As all here and I, I make my determination based solely on my experiences, because it is the experiences which makes me bring forth my favor of acknowledgedment.

To myself, I know to bring forth conceptual conjectures from what I’ve been taught from books is truely the delusion. Books tend to express the experience of the writer to others on an absolute basis. The writer’s are absolute to him/her self, but the reading by others is something which cannot be felt nor lived in exactness of actuality. This does not say one cannot relate nor learn. It is saying one must relate; learn what was issused forth as that day’s manna to that person relating, and then one must move on in the continuum of the moment of now when one lives and receive the manna issued forth to them from the “force - use the force Luke” - for lack of a better term.

What I have experience is the fact that mankind live in a catch 22 situation. Man live in a parenthesis which began for him the exact moment of his conception. That parenthesis is a bubble within a bubble, within a bubble, within a bubble which he inherited from his parents, who inherited it from their parents going back beyond the cords of memory. One thing is sure, however, no human being is the beginning of himeself, and therefore, no human being is responsible for the principles and patterns they have inherited through DNA.

At conception mankind is indoctrinated with a universal human belief system which finds formation as the fetus dependent on DNA, water, and the life which carries it. So men begin their entrance into life as the change of structure which the DNA of the universal human consciousness built upon while we are still water creatures. Complete domination of the universal human indoctrination of our inherited DNA code of the human parenthesis takes place the exact moment men exit the womb of their carrier and become totally absorbed physically and mentally in the Spirit of life in the uniquiness with the very first breath. The uniquiness is the form the earth took and shaped itself to be man temporarily before it returns to its first love and originakl elements…the dust of the ground.

Instantly men become selfish individuals. And their universal human indoctrination find compounding factors to insure it’s temporary existence, such as his parenths teaching him of the two sided coin of fear and aloneness, men become possessive selfish individual ego’s.

So men sat out on a journey of security; believing their minds are a creative power which will carry them up and beyond their predecessors. They reach out to the utmost parts of consciousness and find everywhere they go in height, breadth, and length, still they cannot shed the robe of aloneness and fear, nor stop believing themselves Atlas’ and must carry the world on their shoulders.

At times there is a light which comes on in man and lets him know there is Something beyond. Something much greater than himself. But then there is the pain he feel; the joy he revel in, and the need he have been taught to work and acquire the good life by the sweat of his brow which will not leave So he buries himself in what he feel, and what he learned and grasp of intellegence. Never does man make the carryover that feelings, learning, and grasping are all one and the same entity…thought.

In order for the bodies to feel; emotions to flow, learning to stick, and the minds to grasp, there must be a corresponding element in the DNA consciousness which produced man’s physical being in order for relativity to be relative.

Every generation repeats the same mental and physical endeavors. Demonstrate and portray the same mental and physical needs and deeds of preceeding generations only more sophisticated. Even the level of worship; seeking of the presence of that Something more greater than one’s self has not been elevated to allow men to understand myth and metaphors of life. Of how to become the Master of the unit. And that the mind, body and soul are the great functioning principles and pattern and underlying source of man’s manifested forms.

There is no power in the human mind, imagination nor thought process which has, or can change one iota of creation. The source of all power in the human realm is divine Consciousness or Life. The source of any kind of power man manifest by mind is his awareness of that Life. The source of power in the human imagination is the mental images the mind projects into the imagination, which stamps these images with labels according to its interpretations. And the source of power of the human thought stems from all the varieties of those interpretations of Life which become the patterns of man’s physic.

To myself it matters not, therefore, what religions men profess and adhere too. It matters not what men label religioin because if it is their philosophy and output of their energy to do what they believe they must do to keep them with purpose…....that is their religion.

So I found regardless of what words of knowledge rolled off my tongues, at some point in my life I had to change my ways. I had to begin to question my human reasoning; to become a maverick, a rebel. if I was to reach that space in myself where my conscouseness would open unto the knowledge that I am not a divided Spirit. I had to come to grips with a number of things hindering me. The firsrt was I had to begin to understand the mind is not a creative power because all the minds fruits are by-product of that which already is. I had to face the truth that the human mind is an effect, and I could either find my way back to the ‘causation’ or forever be lost within myself. 

The catch 22 is the bubble which the human mind has formed, which mind men use to reach the utmost point of the bubble believing they can burst it and move into a deeper realm of Being, only to find they cannot continue in their efforts of realization because of death.

The earth reclaims it’s own substance. And because mankind is of the earth mentality;of believing in the tree of dualism to be its rightful order of inheritance, mankind is a subject victim to the recycling of the universal parenthesis he sought to escape previously by using the natural laws of human intellect, which he will one day find after being recycled, himself once again climbing the collective walls of humanism.

“Thou we should soar into the heavens,
Thou we should sink into the abyss,
We never go out of ourselves.
It is always our own minds that we preceive.”
R.W.Emerson

There are theologies outside of European culture,

Is theology the same as religion?

Do we need this symbolic logic “proposition P” crap?  Does the supposedly omniscient God know what I’m going to have for lunch in 5 weeks or not?  If not is He disqualified as God even if He created the universe?  ROFL

psik

psikeyhackr - 06 August 2007 06:51 PM

There are theologies outside of European culture,

Is theology the same as religion?

Do we need this symbolic logic “proposition P” crap?  Does the supposedly omniscient God know what I’m going to have for lunch in 5 weeks or not?  If not is He disqualified as God even if He created the universe?  ROFL

psik

I think that according to the usual theology, God should know what you are going to have in lunch for 5 weeks. The contradiction is not here, but with free will “Can you act in such a way that god would not know it”?

jufa - I did not understand what you mean. I understood the words, but not the connection, not the sentences.

People who use metaphors don’t use them completely freely.
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep”
The above metaphors make sense, they enlighten the subject and do not obscure it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“To think, or not to think: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep”

Hi Wandering! 

You state - People who use metaphors don’t use them completely freely.  “To be, or not to be:  [To be or not to be what?]  that is the question:

“To be”, as Shakesphere states does not make sense for man already is.  The metaphorical statement “To be, or not to be” is saying the same as: “Lord, I believe [Believe what?] Help me in my unbelief.”  Unbelief of what?  A man cannot be what he is until to realize what he is not.  When one realize what they are not, then the statement “not to be” has flavor of taste, for it is then one realize the reality of Being is they cannot be anything, or anyone other than themselves.

What men does not consider when expressing their ego’s, whether that ego be small or large, - that as long as they believe they are Spirit-Beings, and at the same time believe “we are only human”  there will be criticism of the short and long of that which they express.  Why? because most people in conversation of dialogue have a position of defense.  That position is a belief.  What one will find confusing while in conversation with me -that something I just can’t put my finger on - is I have no position to defend.  Life does not need defending.  Life needs only to be lived with cause which does not hinder another man without cause.

The problem as I have come to understand it; although I do not consider it be a problem at all, people in inserting what they are, and what they are thinking, and and how their lives are, forget that each person comes into this dimension locked in their own time frame. Once in this plane, social comformity form their likes and dislikes according to the law they establish for their living That law is their law. No one else has to abide by the law we have set for ourselves. And when other do not become aligned to our law     of interpretations, immediately we believe our prejudical causes, judgmental slogans, and buttons of commitment have been violated. And whether we are right or wrong whosoever violated our standard is permanently ostracized. Or, we make up some lie about them, and spread it across post after post with hope other will join our prejudice against them.

So we takes sides. We jab, and hook, and do our fancy footwork with hopes of positioning ourselves to deliver the knockout punch. What we forget is the law we have set, is the law Life applies to our living, not someone elses. Nonetheless, we go about our daily living saying we are Spirit or non-Spirit Being; that we are self-made individuals with educational backgrounds judging what is important or comprehensible to us.  We, in our self-righteous religious pride - and that is what it is - forget other people in this world are either on a higher or lower spiritual or intellectual path and it takes the short for some, and the long for others to comprehend, and/or become caught up in the Spirit which we display and express. 

Sure the the prejudicial cause can be won.  And the judgmental slogans can become our initiative desire.  And the button of commitement can become the obsession of the cause and slogan.  Yet in the end we will find that all our energy to be right has not covered our nakedness.  Our lives are lived wearing different mask to display to everyone we touch and touch us.

I’ve said all this to say, my time frame is who, what, where, why, and how I am, and I recognize this also about all mankind. We can be opinionated by right, but others have the same right to be and say the same as everyone else.  I also realize all will not understand or comprehend what I say.  But some, or just one will, and that is who I present my true experience of comprehension and understanding too.

Doug, is this what you mean by obscurantism?

Jufa,
There’s a difference between speaking in metaphor and poetry, and being unclear or incoherent. Shakespeare’s language is beautiful, and remarkably clear (when minor differences in vocabulary and word order are accounted for). “To be or not to be…” is a straightforward meditation on suicide and the difference between life and death. All else, as they say, is dross.

mckenzievmd - 07 August 2007 03:28 PM

Doug, is this what you mean by obscurantism?

Or ...

“To be or not to be is clear to who?  That is just like saying opera is understood by everyone.  Or I. Kants is understood by everyone.  One cannot categorize clearness, or poetry, or art.  Tell a Black man in the ghetto Shakesphere is clear and understandable, or a first year collage student who has not been introduced to Shakesphere.  Tell the common man of the streets of the world, who work in factories, and coal mines, and upon American streets; or the average botanist, or usher in a movie theater.  Or the mechanic, or just the average everyday American Shakesphere is clear; poetry is clear; philosophy is clear; the Bible is clear, The Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, Avesta; The Koran or Alcoran; Tripitake; Dhammapade; Granth; Adigranth; the Kings; the Eddas are all clear and not subject to personal interpretations and learning, and rearing.  Can you say this? if you can then you will be speaking what you know.  But if you cannot say this then this is what is truly mean by the word obscurantism.  And this is an assumption, and an assumption is no different than a lie.

You have blanketed all mankind with your assumption that what you find beautiful, clear, coherent is what is “To be or not to be.”  You insult the individual uniqueness of mankind.
 

Take off your mask and answer the question “To be or not to be” WHAT?  What can man be that he already isn’t?

Jufa,
The important point is that given familiarity with the language (as I said in my original comment) the passage is clear and direct. Your riff on it, on the other hand, is muddled and vague and to my ears incoherent. I have no doubt it is clear as a bell to you, and perhaps given extensive tutoring on your idiosyncratic mode of expression I could come to find it comprehensible. But I dispute that clarity is not a characteristic of writing that can be identrified as present or absent. By obscurantism, I mean that you seem to take an idea widely and readily understood (Hamlet’s meditation of suicide and the moral and experiential issues associated with it) and rebuild it in language that obscures both the meaning already in it and, to my ears at least, the meaning you intend to give. Even the premise, that the words “to be or not to be” are metaphorical is disingenuous, because they are clearly intended to mean “to exist or not to exist,” which may not make sense to you but I venture does make sense to most of us. The passage then goes on to elaborate on the initial question, but the question is quite clear, and when I’ve read it to avrage American teenagers they’ve had no trouble grasping the point.

Mckenzievmd,

We all accept and reject things from our childhood unto the present moment because they don’t bear witness to either our beliefs, or inner conscience.  Yet that which we accept or reject is a part of the form of Jufa and Mckenzievmd.  But with all being a part of us, our acceptance or rejection of any portion is a rejection or acceptance of that which we acknowledge or reject of ourself; being we are all tied together in life.  How then can we accept or reject portions of who we are and present ourselves to other with conscience integrity when we are only fragments of the whole?  We have not been exposed to the fullness of illumination, nor to others in truth because we have accepted that which is only a fragment infinitesimal to our understanding. or rejected that which is irksome to us because we think we are sophificated in what we are putting down. 
Now allow me to put it in an abstract way, and in so doing tell you that when you say

The important point is that given familiarity with the language (as I said in my original comment) the passage is clear and direct. Your riff on it, on the other hand, is muddled and vague and to my ears incoherent.

I laugh knowing others who look beyond the outer perimeter of words for definitive meaning do just find in reading me. 
To me he greatest lie is believing that collective indoctranition of any one into conformity is the object which keeps men enslaved to ideas which go no further than the idea. And that it is the individual man blended into collectivism which is the foundation of the collective determinism of subjectiveness which base its existence on self-survival.  Self-survival is a farce just as selectiveness, because everything men do and have come to them from some one else who stepped out from conformity to follow a dream of being at peace with themselves and therefore at peace with all men.  Rich men, black men, white men, jews and gentiles. 
All is a metaphor.  All is an illusion.  And the illusion is, we don’t even realize this truth.  And so in our selectiveness, we are selecting that which belongs to someone else.  Let me illustrate this further. 

The object of art, let’s say a painter or writer, is to cause anotheer to believe they understand the stroke of the pen or brush.  The purpose of an artist is to make another believe they see as athe artist saw as the artist was drawing or painting - that is the illusion of art - No one can see or feel what the artist saw or felt.  So as the viewer or reader becomes selective in one point, but reject in another.  They are accepting or rejecting something they do not comprehend, and they are lying to themselves in saying they do by accepting or rejecting the artist’s visual or scripted inspiration.  Either way they fall in line with the conformist, or the nay sayers, and never step out on their own to just make someone say - Huh! I never thought of it that way! 
Man does not have a selective choice to choose anything of interpretation he has not initiated on his own determination to do better for himself and the world unless he want to base his life in lies.

I write from an entirely different flavor of life than you,  for I do not, and will not tell a person ‘I think’ this or ‘I think’ that.  I write what I know to be the truth of Jufa.  If you do not comprehend, some will for some do, either way it does not stop me from living.

“Existence Open

“Existence is beyond the power of words

To define.

Terms may be used

But are none of them absolute.

In the beginning of Heaven and earth there were no words.

Words came out of the womb of matter.

And whether a man dispassionately

Sees the core of life

Or passionately

Sees the surface

The core and the surface

Are essentially the same.

Words making them seem different

Only to express appearance

If name be needed, wonder names them both.

From wonder to wonder [From glory to glory]

Existence opens.”  Lao Tzu