Og

There's a contradiction right there. No thing has intrinsic identity on a universal scale. The notion of a god judging us is disproven. There is nothing to judge.

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Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
Satchitananda - True Being, Pure Consciousness, and Bliss
Tat Tvam Asi - Thou art That.
You & I, no distinction.
Mettā & Namaste

Lanya

May I ask what the disproof is?

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Please take each statement of mine as an assumption only. I don't mean to state anything as a truth.

Abel

What proof? Your opinion? Or perhaps the opinion of your god Joseph Campbell? Making a statement such as this indicates that you believe yourself to have infinate knowledge.Therefore, you appear to be presenting yourself as a god.

Your arrogant self confidence is truly distasteful. It is ironic how your continued denial of God and the Bible actually lend support to it's truthfulness: Romans 1:21-22 "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,"

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God loves you and I'm trying.

romansh

It's funny ... if I went to Christian forum and expressed these kind of thoughts?
Why not at least try and understand Og's stance before condemning it?
Can you repeat Og's ideas (in your own words) to make sure that you guys are on the same page?
Strikes me as a tad judgemental?

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There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ........... Douglas Adams

Cleric_of_Reason

In my experience I believe the Bible to be a work of man. The first thing that I observed about the Bible is the fact that 13 New Testament books are written by one man. One man that claims he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus and proclaims that he is the apostle to the Gentiles. Somehow this is accepted with the other 12 disciples after a little scratching of the heads, and Paul goes on to write what many Christians apply in their everyday lives today and accept it as God's word.
I find it hard to believe that one man can have as much credibility as the other authors of the Bible simply because he said he had an experience with God and the only proof of that is his testimony in...the Bible.
I believe it is a work of man also because the Roman Empire created what we now know as Catholicism which later branched off into numerous other denominations. They organized the Bible relatively into what we know it as today. There are other Gospels that were left out because they didn't fit what they wanted Jesus to be.
I was brought up being taught that God was omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent and that he never changes, but I do have to agree that the God of the Old Testament is not the same God as the New Testament. And frankly for a God to give his own "chosen people" a harder time about their sins back then than the Gentiles today is unfair.

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I'm tired of living under a desk lamp. I'm ready to find the real light.

Og

No. Again, science does not deal in proof. And as you see above, I was not dealing in PROOF. I was stating that a hypothesis can be disproven (which is quite within the realms of science's tool kit).

Furthermore, my statement had nothing to do with the work of Joseph Campbell. I have a PhD in biophysics, am an electrical engineer and work in the field of behavioral neuroscience in model systems where we are fleshing out the neural basis for behavior in mice/flies/worms/etc.

Evidence indicates that human brains are complex networks of computational units called neurons. These neurons are arranged in adaptive networks that function to produce sensory experience, memory, and all the other properties of consciousness (as well as autonomous functions of body regulation). When it boils down to it, a human is an adaptive computer that is extraordinarily complex (there are as many neurons in your brain as there are trees in the amazon rain forest and as many connections between neurons as there are leaves on the trees).

All behavior, concepts, thoughts, experiences, feelings, etc, can all be linked to neuronal correlates. For example, the Bill Clinton, Jennifer Aniston, sweat, and orange neurons. Here is a Scientific American Story on discoveries in humans about neural correlates of consciousness.

There is simply no room for a supernatural concept in the brain. We've shined light on all the corners. Though we can't map out an individual human's brain due to computational power and limited access to the internal tissues, we know precisely how every element of that brain functions.

The notion that a human being is somehow different than a highly complex confluence of events is just plain false. Free will is not a term that has any meaning. It's a null term. We are highly complex machines and all of experience including love and religion and everything that you could label is the product of this wondrously complex network of neurons all responding to sensory stimuli, its own chemical state, and its stored versions of previous states (memory).

Thus any notion of a God that judges individual human beings as if they were some isolated entity in the world is disproven. We are NOT those. The reason that we developed that idea in the past is precisely due to the complexity of the human brain. Describing a soul is like seeing a face on the moon or will in the weather. Just as a tornado is a complex confluence of meteorological events, a human being is a complex confluence of biochemical events.

A god entity that treats humans as intrinsically individual is either confused or non-existent. In either case, the fact remains that we are all one gigantic interactive process. Social strife like in iraq is a dissipation of energy in the system just as a hurricane dissipates heat from the equator to the north.

This is not my vain imagination. It is the only possible conclusion to come to based on objective analysis. This does not mean that it is 100% true, but it at least means that the judgmental god being hypothesis (i.e. judeo christian/islam) is disproven. A judgmental god and heaven/hell just plain don't fit with the way the universe works and the way we're constructed. It'd be like saying that if you drop a rock in a pond, it flies off into space. It simply doesn't match observation at all. In fact it's quite the opposite.

As for Joseph Campbell, he does a wonderful job connecting the fundamentals of eastern religions with the fundamentals of western religions.

For me, he vocalizes this realization that I came to (on my own) in neuroscience in terms of social and historical facts. He reveals all modern religions as fundamentally expressing this same reality that I'm discussing here.

What is the difference between the connection between the light coming out of your computer monitor right now and your retina and the connection between a motor neuron and your arm muscle? One uses chemical neurotransmitters and the other uses photons. But just because your skin doesn't enfold my neurons does not mean that we are some intrinsically separate processes.

This is the message of the Garden of eden story. Its the acquisition of concepts of categories (i.e. the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil that made them aware of life/death and male/female, and fear/desire, etc)... The fruit of the tree in the garden is the ILLUSION that you and I are separate. It's the ILLUSION that there is good and evil and that life and death have some meaning different than any one moment to the next in our lives.

Jesus' act was DIRECTLY pointed at this metaphor (i.e. his sacrifice is in reference to original sin). Jesus is loaded with metaphors where you free yourself from fear/desire and categories. Love your enemy (not "don't have enemies). Hate your Family/friends/self (not "don't have family/friends/self"). Turn the other cheek and go the extra mile. Both ways of being truly free no matter what state you're in.

Campbell links Christianity to the buddhist/hindu and older roots of this message of transcendence of categories of thought.

I do not reject christianity or the divine nature of jesus. In fact, I embrace it and I embrace my (and your) IDENTITY with jesus. I am christ and you are christ. This is his true message and Campbell offers scholarly historical support to this stance. When Jesus says "I and the Father are One," I understand what he means. Jesus identified with all of humanity and saw the confluence of events that every human represents. He saw the divine ground from which all life forms arise (i.e. like the weather system from which tornadoes and hurricanes bud out from). This is fundamental and ancient buddhism and hinduism. You are God and I am You and You are It.

Again, this stance on the nature of humans and the universe is NOT something that I hold out of arrogance. It is the only stance I am CAPABLE of holding. I have no capacity to hold another stance as this is what the evidence DEMANDS. This approach can not be labeled as arrogant. There is NO ego involved in it at all. It's the product of a lifetime of honest and vigorous searching and one that I would happily discard if the evidence (which I can and do provide) indicated otherwise.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
Satchitananda - True Being, Pure Consciousness, and Bliss
Tat Tvam Asi - Thou art That.
You & I, no distinction.
Mettā & Namaste

Og

Abel, Furthermore, I understand how you would be confused and associate my stance with arrogance. From your experience, you don't know about the nature of the human mind or the fabric of the universe. This is a failure of education.

I am sorry that you don't seem to have such access to the work of modern science. I imagine, however, that the environment you place yourself in (which seems to foster fairly strict classical christian dogma) is fairly dismissive of such information/education.

That is unfortunate. I can only hope that I can adapt my message to help you understand what it is that I see in the world. I have played praise music on a guitar in front of worship services. I have led inductive bible studies on a variety of new testament books for groups from middle school to adult age levels. I played johnthebaptist/judas in a production of Godspell (the gospel of matthew). I have raised my hand up in the air to feel God's presence during worship. I have seen the christian approach. I have seen the misconceptions that they have and the feelings it produces. I have felt them first hand. It blinds them to so much and keeps them trapped in original sin instead of truly freeing them from it. They continue to play the game of dichotomies and categories.

But, all is good. They are God and I am God regardless. They are all expressions of the divine ground of being just as I and you are. It's just that some haven't opened their eyes yet and realized that they were standing in the garden of eden all along.

People have painted such an elaborate fantasy world of nightmares on the inside of their eye lids. But its the only world they know. Opening their eyes is a scary step.

But as Jesus says in the gospel of thomas (paraphrased): "The kingdom of heaven will not come by expectation. The kingdom of heaven is already laid out upon the earth. It is just that men do not see it."

Metta

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
Satchitananda - True Being, Pure Consciousness, and Bliss
Tat Tvam Asi - Thou art That.
You & I, no distinction.
Mettā & Namaste

Abel

Og
Your conclusions are the only one you can come to based on objective analysis that you can comprehend. What you fail to realize is how much more God is: Isaiah 55:8-9 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Just because you cannot place God into a concept you are able to grasp, you dismiss Him. Or worse, you invent a god that is what you want him to be. How sad that you refuse to accept that which you cannot see or explain. But understandable: Ephesians 4:18 "Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart".

You may impress others with your words and your supposed education, but not me. True wisdom comes only from God: James 1:5 "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."

You have stated your credentials in a display similiar to that of a mating peacock. I am not even able to verify that you went to a "tech" school, much less obtained a PhD. If I told you I had a PhD in Biblical Studies, would you automatically accept everything I said concerning the Bible based on my stated education? Probably not. And this is based on what I told GX. You have a presupposition, just as I do regarding the Scriptures. I will never sway you, nor you me as long as we hold to our presuppositions.

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God loves you and I'm trying.

Og

I thought I made it clear that I was defining god in terms of NOT categorizing or conceptualizing (and thus limiting). That's the point of the transcendent. Did you misunderstand what I was saying?

If you cannot see (and by this I mean any sensory experience or thought) or explain something, then what could possibly lead you to accept it? That's the million dollar question I guess. Why take a stance on it at all if you cannot see or explain something? How do you even have the first clue that your stance will be correct? I prefer informed stances instead of a stance for the sake of having a stance. Even more crucially, I prefer to let my stances be led by evidence and to not identify (i.e. "take") my stances with me.

Hrm.. There seems to be irony here since I was equating myself (and you) with God. I guess what you meant to say here was that I am not identical with God not "true wisdom only comes from God." Hopefully you can stop worrying about my words impressing you and get more towards their content and begin addressing the concepts directly. Your continued dissection of the individual delivering the argument instead of the argument itself is tiresome and goes nowhere.

The back story was relevant to your characterization of me as a dogmatic follower of campbell. You clearly had a misconception of my back story and I was clarifying. You can accept it or not. It was not designed to indicate authority at all. I was not asking you to accept everything I said as fact. I was trying to lay out a picture that would educate you. You are more than welcome to follow any vein that I tried to describe in my above post and discover for yourself. Or not. Your comprehension of it doesn't change observable reality. Again, I was not trying to get you to take me as an authority. I was simply trying to dispell your notion of me as a dogmatic follower of some individual (campbell).

And finally, what are my presuppositions about scripture? It seems to me that I make no presuppositions about scripture. And please don't mistake a supposition (based on objective analysis) with a PRE-supposition which is based on subjectivity of the observer.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
Satchitananda - True Being, Pure Consciousness, and Bliss
Tat Tvam Asi - Thou art That.
You & I, no distinction.
Mettā & Namaste

shadowind

1, if heaven and earth are the same...(not higher or lower)
2. if god is un-understandable, is he completly un-understandable? if so whats the advantage in attempting to make any statements about god. if ultimately he is not understandable. saying we can not understand god seems to turn god into nonsense, something we can't have specifics about, only a general idea that has nothing to say.

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remember "for mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescirbe to oursleves is liberty"-rousseau: the concept of the general will "if we can not reconcile all opions, then let us endeavour to unite all hearts."-?"to be is to be perceived"-? "‘We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know’-Robert G. Ingersoll