You Are Here (& this matter of god)

[Michael J Masiko]

hey guys and gals,

the following is

in response to

contemplating the impact

of 'believing' in god

and all that that connotes,

has had on humanity.

this is a rant of rants

if ever i went on a rant.

so i figured i'd fly it your way

just to see what walls it sticks on.

and what a better place than here @ Ramblers' Realm.

... goes like this ...

You Are Here (& this matter of god)

ancient chinese proverb say:

he who go to bed with itchy hiney

wake up with stinky fingers.

sorry,

that was just my first response.

if i were to apply 

some 'serious' thought to the matter … 

yea, 

this whole god thing is pretty perplexing.

i mean, people who believe in god 

are generally ok by me.

until that is, they start killing 

in the name of said invisible 

all powerful entity.

then some of the motivating factors

may have to be brought under scrutiny.

if you find yourself in the act of war

because of limited resources,

and there's no diplomatic recourse … 

after much exhaustive dialog,

the truth is revealed = 

in order for our species to thrive

some will have to die.

and what better way to prove

who is more worth their salt

& most likely to survive

the next turn of events

in order to see

our ultimately sublime gestalt.

then to battle!

that said; 

if you must equate an almighty being

into your reasons for slaughter,

then i have to ask you:

"if i am such a blight

upon this creation,

why don't the guy

you allegedly work for

do me in himself"?

you know … do it right.

does he have something to prove,

using you as his lightning rod?

is it a test you must pass

to gain entrance to his kingdom

in all it's imaginary glory?

look around you.

if you think about it

just a little bit

you'd realize

what we got

is pretty amazing.

even that there is

anything at all

to see.

let alone stand on.

not to mention

to be aware of the sensation that; 

'you are here'.

there are so many flavors to savor of god.

in fact even if you don't subscribe 

to any concept at all,

life can still be pretty enjoyable

and purpose full.

life is in abundance all about you.

of which you are only

one tiny little incy miniscule part

that has become so obsessed with

right from wrong

that you can not think straight.

and therefore, 

for all you belief systems

you don't even get to appreciate

the wonder of it all.

where is the value in that?

holywar is just a monicker for murder,

in bad taste and a poor excuse

for not facing yourself

when you pass the responsibility

for your own actions

off onto your illustrious god.

to that end

i can see

god is an impedance.

and i for one

won't live my life in fear.

simply put,

the very light within you

is asking you to dance.

while

you are here.

that was just my second thought

and i certainly do not mean to offend

but i don't know that i got 

a third thought in me.

as you can see

i'm running out of steam.

when i used the word 'end'.

it had a subliminal effect on me

and i lost focus.

my only hope is

a second wind of O2

to all cooperating neurons and synapses.

but that's another story.

i know you'll make the right decision eventually.

peace. MJM.

PS. no, i do not care to sniff your digits.

[Maricel Evasco]

Mike, I am in school so I can't respond the way I want to right now, but I hear what you are saying. I have spent many hours responding to posts about God and God's existence. Tim will verify this for you. lol

To put it simply, Gof to me is the entity/energy we define as LOVE- a unifying principle. One could see God as a personification of Love. I perceive God as being real, not a figure of speech. k....school is over...I have to get ready to meet the parents this evening.....I'll get back later.

[Tim E]

Maricel wrote: I have spent many hours responding to posts about God and God's existence. Tim will verify this for you.

Yes, I can attest to that. Is it okay for this group to get into such discussions? I'm a little unclear about what range of topics is appropriate for Ramblers' Realm. I suspect you hope the group doesn't become another den of (ir)religious bickering.

I like Michael's poem. My own view is that war rarely, if ever, is perpetrated for religious reasons. But fear of other religions (i.e., a sense of cultural vulnerability) is often used to rally support for it.

Oh, BTW, Maricel, if God is a personification of Love, might God also be a personification of the Hunger that drives animals to eat each other?

[Maricel Evasco]

Yes, I can attest to that. Is it okay for this group to get into such discussions? I'm a little unclear about what range of topics is appropriate for Ramblers' Realm. I suspect you hope the group doesn't become another den of (ir)religious bickering.

I hope not. I envisioned this group as a sort of watering hole or parlor for conversation. I named it after another group I was part of for many years. One thing I can vouch for is that conflict will be inevitable. I just hope I am seasoned enough to diffuse or mediate it when it does arise.

Tim, here's the page I designed for Ramblers Realm about 8 yrs ago: http://www.angelfire.com/stars/for/ramblershome1.html I was one of the steady moderators for that group.


I like Michael's poem. My own view is that war rarely, if ever, is perpetrated for religious reasons. But fear of other religions (i.e., a sense of cultural vulnerability) is often used to rally support for it.

I like Michael's poem too, because it is unfettered and genuine.

Oh, BTW, Maricel, if God is a personification of Love, might God also be a personification of the Hunger that drives animals to eat each other?

I don't know the answer to that and at the moment I'm really tired from the parents teachers evening and the horrible traffic I was stuck in on the way home. It took me over an hr to get home- past 10 pm.

Tim, animals eating each other isn't evil. It's part of their nature. at least when they kill their prey, they don't torture them or kill them for sport like humans.

[Tim E]

Maricel wrote: Tim, animals eating each other isn't evil.

Agreed. But is it Love? If animals eating each other is not evil--It is evil only to those being eaten--then there should be no problem with God being a personification of the Hunger that drives it. But then, one animal's loving God is another animal's evil (in)carn(ate)ivor.

But who likes getting watered at a watering hole where they are arguing about God? I desist lest I become something other than a conduit of the personification of Love.

[Maricel Evasco]

Agreed. But is it Love? If animals eating each other is not evil--It is evil only to those being eaten--then there should be no problem with God being a personification of the Hunger that drives it. But then, one animal's loving God is another animal's evil (in)carn(ate)ivor.

But who likes getting watered at a watering hole where they are arguing about God? I desist lest I become something other than a conduit of the personification of Love.

Tim,
I don't mind discussing any topic, controversial or not, but I do mind having my thoughts oppressed...but that is another topic for another time. I'm still smarting from a recent experience.

Since the subject of God is one that interests me greatly, I have saved a few links which shed relevance on the controversy of God's existence. Knowing me as you do, you know I shall argue for God's existence. Yet, listening to you helps me to refine my own understanding of why I believe in God which is why I am appreciative of your input and missed it at the other discussion board which I have left recently.

I rediscovered a link I had saved several years ago on the Inner Workings of Faith:
http://www.innerexplorations.com/catchtheomor/fpartiii.htm Pls peruse it and tell me what you think.

In the case of our natural knowledge of God there is no question of love entering into its structure. We know God through the mirror of creatures, and not by any co-naturing or intersubjective experience, which is reserved to the order of grace. But our knowledge of each other, in contrast, takes place in a whole atmosphere of the connaturality of love. We are profoundly united to each other by the whole reality of our nature which we share in common, and while truly being individuals we are prismatic reflections, especially in our subjectivity, of what humanity as a whole or unity means. (157) And it is out of this common social being that springs our basic desire to draw close and love one another. By love we become each other in a very real way, and out of this unity arises the desire to fully experience in knowledge as well as in love what this unity means, and out of it as well comes an instinct or sympathy springing from this very co-naturing. And it is this instinctive connaturality with the very subjectivity of the other which allows us to see and recognize the thou that comes through the veiled form of bodiliness. It is because we are in some way the other that we can see what this concrete other is like even though its messages are coming through the quasi-objectified form of spiritualized matter.

Maritain in a beautiful passage from Existence and the Existent expresses the nature of this natural connaturality, this knowledge through love, that we have of each other:

"To say that union in love makes the being we love another ourselves for us is to say that it makes that being another subjectivity for us, another subjectivity that is ours. To the degree that we truly love (which is to say, not for ourselves, but for the beloved) and when - which is not always the case - the intellect within us becomes passive as regards love, and, allowing its concepts to slumber, thereby renders love a formal means of knowledge) to this degree we acquire an obscure knowledge of the being we love, similar to that which we possess of ourselves; we know that being in his very subjectivity (at least in a certain measure) by this experience of love. Then he himself is in a certain degree cured of his solitude; he can, though still disquieted, rest for a moment in the nest of knowledge that we possess of him as a subject." (158)

If these moments of exceptional clarity where the intersubjective experience brought about through love breaks through to conscious awareness are rare, this does not prevent this connatural knowledge from playing a fundamental role in our love for each other. It provides the atmosphere of intimacy that colors all our words and gestures and hints of their ultimate fruition, and it provides the best way that we can approach the nature of the act of faith.



I like this line:
It provides the atmosphere of intimacy that colors all our words and gestures and hints of their ultimate fruition and I think my belief in God has made me more accessible to people because I see God (love) as the common denominator in all humanity (believers and non believers alike). I don't expect everyone to "see" the way I do, but I like how this way of perceiving has shaped me as a person and I see no reason to change it.

[Tim E]

Maricel wrote: "I don't mind discussing any topic, controversial or not, but I do mind having my thoughts oppressed...but that is another topic for another time. I'm still smarting from a recent experience."

I'm sorry you had that experience. You may have heard about the study that was in the headlines this week and concluded that people are happier the more they talk about matters that are important to them. I find that true in my own experience. When I was a Christian there were people ready at hand to discuss the deeper issues in fundamental agreement. Now that I have become a skeptic, I find it much harder to find companions with whom I can dialog about these matters without causing alienation. The catch-22 is that satisfaction can occur only at the razor's edge of criticism, but that razor is the very instrument that severs intimacy.

I read Arraj's Chapter 7 in full. Not surprisingly, I find fundamental fault with it. His assertion, in so many words, is that humans coming to know and love each other is an imperfect shadow of a greater spiritual reality involving the knowledge and love of God. Corporeality is a veil by which we experience only as mist and cloud a subjectivity by which we are assured of a clear, bright, and transcendent perfection. Our "connatural" love for each other, limited as it is by physical media, can be but a dim experience of a perfection of the Love of God. Our human experience is not the thing itself, but only a veiled glimpse of it. The human experience of love testifies to a Perfect love, not by virtue of reason or metaphysics but through the experience of special intuition, perception, and insight.

I have numerous problems with the position. Human experience is claimed not to be the thing itself, but only human experience is posited as descriptive of the supposed superior thing. If nothing but human experience compels belief in a superior ideal, then why is human experience itself not the end of the matter? Arraj holds a kind of gnosticism at worst and dualism at best that pits corporeality as inferior to spirituality, while his descriptions of spiritual ideals come only by why of corporeal experience. This is more than suspect to me. Nothing in the chapter besides an appeal to special revelation compels me to think that he is talking about anything more than human experience. And by positing a superior realm of experience as understood through and reflected by a supposed human inferiority, he devaluates physicality as being fundamental to what it means to be human.

In my view, what humans experience through language, what they experience of each other through sensory perception, what they know of each other through mental symbolic systems, are all of the same cloth, and there is nothing transcendent of it. Human love is human love. It is neither ideal nor inferior. It is what we experience, and to talk of it is to talk of it, not of something else. We are what we are as corporeal creatures, and all our experience is experienced by us as such. Our experience is sufficient to describe us. Our corporeality is essential to defining us. Any idealisms that derive from our fancies about ourselves are sufficiently both problematic and inspiring as idealisms about who we experience ourselves to be. To project our experience of ourselves onto a transcendent perfection is, in my view, just that: a projection.

This is my opinion, Maricel. And I would hope that I could carry on a discussion or argument about it respectfully with you or anyone. I hope I don't come across oppressively, because I sincerely don't like it when I see others doing that to someone. Is there a way to pursue an argument without alienating? There probably is, and sometimes I get it right even if more often I probably don't. Regardless, my hat's off to you for your active mind and positive attitude.

[Maricel Evasco]

The human experience of love testifies to a Perfect love, not by virtue of reason or metaphysics but through the experience of special intuition, perception, and insight. Tim

if intuition, perception, and (metacognitive) insight can otherwise be redefined as a particular human human skill grounded on extrapolations from sensory experiences, perhaps honing that particular skill makes 'knowing' God easier for some than others. My intuition has always been keen as a child and sharpened as I grew older. I don't believe in a superior and inferior realm of experience. My understanding of God involves a more pragmatic and even mundane acceptance of a guiding presence in my life which enables me to savor who I am and my place in the cosmic scheme of things.


In my view, what humans experience through language, what they experience of each other through sensory perception, what they know of each other through mental symbolic systems, are all of the same cloth, and there is nothing transcendent of it

How would you then explain prescient experiences which run very strongly in my family?...knowledge of someone's death the day it happened even if you are oceans away. I believe/ "know" there are things beyond perception through sensory experiences, but that the supernatural realm is insufficient proof of a divine existence. Believing in a divinity to me is rooted in personal choice. Some may see it as a saving "grace." I see my belief as a personal affirmation of a life force greater (more expansive) than me, yet still a part of me.

[Tim E]

Maricel wrote:

"How would you then explain prescient experiences which run very strongly in my family?...knowledge of someone's death the day it happened even if you are oceans away."

I don't necessarily deny prescience, but I do know that I don't base decisions on putative instances of it. Even if I were to accede to its occasional validity--I am actually skeptical of it, however--it does not strike me as having enough inherent definition to derive anything like a theology from it. It lacks theological content. Its domain is human cognition unless I impose a theological construct on it.

Still, though, I think it likely that human psychology would have sufficient explanatory power over most, if not all, self-perceptions of prescient experience. The power of story shapes our experiences and fits them into an owned narrative by which we define ourselves. That goes for all of us, whether "skeptical" or "spiritual." My own confluence of experience and response, which I perceive to have come together as intuition, is that most, if not all, people's supernatural or paranormal experiences are unworthy of my trust, much less worth taking risks for or making decisions by. To the extent that they are curiosities, I am willing to entertain them; to the extent that they presume to make any claim on me, I reject them as banalities at best and manipulations at worst. I have no interest in dissuading anyone of their perceived spiritual comforts unless they either attempt to make a claim on me or become abusive. So I have no stake in explaining your family's perceived narrative other than to protect myself from becoming a victim of my own imagination about it.

[Harley Hans Hoglin]

All that happens around you and in you, is God. Animals, human, cat or dog most kill other things to eat, or have other things killed so they can be eaten, so that they the eaters can live.

There is nothing evil about shooting a dear, processing it and eating, any more than a mountain lion, bear, or wolf killing and eating said same dear. Weather it is God or evolution, all living things most eat. Some eat other living things, some eat the decaying bodies of the fallen, and some eat chemicals from the earth or water around them.

Now on another site I go to some one once asked what is Evil, that is the hard one to answer, what Hitler and his followers did, that's evil, Stalin, was evil, but what is evil or good really?

Love is all ways shown as a good thing, but people can love, or love to do things that are called evil. Is this God, no.

When good is done it shows the best of mankind, and the best of what God wants from use, when bad or evil is done, it is the worst of what mankind can do, and shows that when God gave us freewill it can go both ways.

If one believes the writings of the major holy books, God, or Gods gave us rules to live by that would stop us from hurting each other, then we as people set up other rules to control our baser instincts, when a person or group goes against the rules of God/Gods or the rules of man, it's their freedom of will to do evil, and God has no say in it.

As for Holy Wars, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to find themselves on the wrong side of things when the day comes they find themselves in front of God trying to give a good reason for murdering men, women, and children in his name, when he can point over and over again to writings that say, don't murder others, be kind, walk a mile in the other guys shoes.

One more thing do to a mistake made hundreds of years ago, it should have said, "Thou shall not murder.", not "Thou shall not kill.".

They are two different things. Murder is evil, killing isn't. If you know some one is going to murder some one else or you and you kill them to stop the crime your in the clear, because you prevented a murder, you didn't commit one.

[Tim E]

Harley Hans Hoglin wrote: Now on another site I go to some one once asked what is Evil, that is the hard one to answer

I do believe that evil exists because humans experience some things as evil. I would expect to feel evil as a cannibal lowered me into his boiling dinner pot. He would be thanking God for a meal, I'm sure. I suspect that to the degree a chicken brain registers that the grasp around its neck is not meant for good, but meant for dinner, it experiences it as meant for evil.

Evil is what destroys us. 'Us' is the point of departure. What destroys those whom we perceive to be either our enemies or our food is not evil. What destroys someone or some animal for whom we feel a sufficient degree of indifference is not evil. But what threatens us without regard to our welfare, what looms with intent to destroy us for no greater good, that is evil. It's a matter of perspective. I suspect that the cannibal in whose belly I digest would agree about those things that threaten him and his loved ones. His evil is a world without food. Why would his god create a world without humans to eat, after all!

[Michael J Masiko]

geezuu!
that is fantastic!
if only i could get my mind wired straight
so it would come out so eloquently.
not to mention succinct and focused.

Mr Tim Elston.
hmmmmm ...
must investigate.

or in other words
good job
how the heck are ya?

[Maricel Evasco]

More than just evil...what destroys us is the lack of character. It was evil for my student to be raped several times as child, but she was resilient enough to survive the evil done to her because of her character.

So now, what is "character" and does it really make evil foolproof?