Og

By theist, you mean someone who believes in a literal being that exists somewhere and is distinctly separate as an entity from you and I? This is an absurdity. The nature of the universe rules this out.

I'd call myself a theist and the gods that I know are within myself and within yourself (and without as well).

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

romansh

for me a theist would be someone who believes in a revealed religion or somebody who believes in a god that in someway is omnipotent or affects our lives.

Whereas a deist might believe in something you have described and generally nebulous

__________________
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

Og

I thought deists were entirely about a "first mover" and that it had nothing to do with this world any more. I'm certainly not a deist.

Theism has nothing to do with literal belief in a revealed religion. Often, revealed religions are entirely theistic, but that doesn't necessarily mean the converse.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

AB517

All that we are and will become (know and will know" are within it.

Og

That's a big claim.. with not much to back it up. I assume you're referring to the bible.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

Vinterland

Almost, if you have the time, can you please elaborate on these 'ordering principles' and why they have something like those attributes?
I've heard a few times before that religious and psiritual experiences are often results of heavy emotions, especially depression. I can't speak from eperience and it seems like one of those things I just don't want to, but it's practically an inevitably to go through real hardship like that.

I've been thinking about spiritual experiences a bit lately and realised...I could always cheat.


Have you read books by Jung? Can you reccomend me one from amazon?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/se...or=C.G.%20Jung

I don't understand how humans can know God by any other method. One could have a spiritual/religious experience and there would be no way to seperate a 'fake' experience from a real one. Supernaturalism lacks the epsiemology for knowing about the supernatural.
God as in the omnipotent entity that transcends the universe. I see this really as the only meanngful definition of the word 'God'. If God doesn't have superpowers then I don't see how it could be responsible for the origin of matter. And I use the word belief synonymous with faith.

Even theistic religions that make testable predictions that fail are not necessarily false. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you also imply that Gods must be logical in order to exist.
You write so sure of yourself; why are you certain of this? Demons and angels can be explained away by sleep paralysis and other pehnomena, but only by assuming they are not spuernatural.

Is this what Marmalade means by 'archetypal". Because I tend to think og God as 'out there'.
Very intruiging beliefs you have, albeit many of which I didn't umderstand.

__________________
And on we walked. Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.
And my soul said, "Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment."
—Gibran Khalil Gibran, “The Greater Sea.”

Og

Existence predicates logic. If it exists, it must be logical. Otherwise, nothing can be communicated, perceived, or experienced, even the notion of "otherwise" which I used to start this sentence is gibberish without logic. The concept of "beyond logic" that many apologists like to throw about is silly. There is not a boundary where you can say "logic" and then "beyond logic"..

Other religious supporters like to make the claim that scientists are "limited by their logic" or other such nonsense. It is not some bound entity. It is a basis set that necessarily spans all things. It is a way of expressing ANY thing necessarily.


Supernatural is a null word. See above comments about logic. If it has existence, it is natural.. If its a god or an angel or a demon and it has existence, it is natural. The notion of supernatural is a cop-out.


Yes. This is the jungian view of dream elements and the campbellian structure that informs all of modern art in theater and otherwise. For example, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the members of the crew are archetypes of the human consciousness.

Riker represents the Masculinity and has a relationship with the female
Troi represents the feminitity (emotions, counseling, etc) and has a relationship with the male
Laforge represents how technology is part of our lives and literally SEEs the world through technology
Data represents the logical/scientific mind and is a being that is purely logical and devoid of emotions

Etc.. And the ship's captain is the reanaissance man through which these archetypes are expressed.

The Demons in the TV show are represented by the evil things they face in terms of archetypal alien races such as the ferengi (pure capitalism) and the romulans (totalitarianism) etc..

The crew of the starship enterprise are a modern day greek pantheon, and most shows follow this structure in some form or another.

This is the function of mythology and gods and demons. It's so clear to me due to the body of evidence both historical and literary that illustrate this and the way it continues to express itself today. The fundamental threads of this notion are common to all religions. It's only people myopic to their own little cultural interpretation of the images that think it's some concrete interpreted notion.

It wasn't up until the last century that we understood that Schizophrenics were the way they were based on actual chemical imbalances in the brain. This applies to all manner of natural phenomena. It's from the dark time before modern science that all modern religions derive. Of course we were prone to fanciful anthropomorphic explanations of natural phenomena.

To me, it's clear that gods and demons are archetypal representations of elements of the human psyche. Your god is your avatar for your personal identity. Understand someone's god and you understand a great deal about that person. This is the point of an archetype. Your god is the god you are capable of having.

I hope that everyone moves towards this understanding. It seems to be the only way to move out of the dark ages of humanity's fractured past into a globalized world of one nation.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

marmalade

That is a tough question. As a conscious and intelligent human, I'm somewhat biased towards consciousness and intelligence in anthropomorphic form. How could I not see them in the world since I can't know the world without them? Knowing a world without them is as impossible as being able to know most coneptions of God. Anything we say about thew universe we are simultaneously saying about ourselves. If someone believes the world is mechanistic and materialistic, it is because they perceive themselves as fundamentally this way.

I'm also biased because I've read tons of work of Jung or related writers. Jung seemed to think their was some form of intelligence and consciousness to archetypes. This conceptual framework that has become embedded in my psyche. I could argue it on the conceptual level and use those concepts to analyze certain observations of reality. But that wouldn't prove anything. If you believe in memes, I'd say that 'archetype' is a very powerful meme as it has existed for a long time. However, beyond being an attractive idea, is it real? And do they have the traits that I suspect of them?

The reason I'm persuaded is because of my personal experiences, but I don't expect my personal experiences to be meaningful to anyone else other than me. All I can say is explore the matter and contemplate it within your own experience, and see what you discover. Its a life long endeavour.

I've had those kinds of experiences too. Those kinds of experiences are the ones that gave me a visceral sense of the world having intelligence and consciousness. I took mushrooms once and felt all of the world breathing together as one breath. That is the closest I've come to an experience of God. I don't feel a strong need to interpret(or, failing that, dismiss) these experiences. They are what they are.

I have read some Jung, but there is plenty of his books that I haven't read. The book that really hooked me was 'Answer to Job'. I remember him having said that this was the book where he expressed his most personal views. He was careful about what ideas he shared because it seemed he wanted to keep his professional respectability. He had thought about Christianity for all of his life, and in this book he gave his view of God.

http://www.amazon.com/Answer-Routled...343636&sr=1-17

I'm not sure which of his books would be the best introduction to his archetypes. Probably the best introduction to Jung's ideas would be some of the later Jungians. Jung had a rambling style and his ideas developed over his lifetime.

Its only through our experience that we have a sense of knowing something as a certainty. But even the mind is an experience. There is no real distinction between the rational and the mystical... just two different views of the same reality.

[quote]One could have a spiritual/religious experience and there would be no way to seperate a 'fake' experience from a real one. Supernaturalism lacks the epsiemology for knowing about the supernatural.[quote]

This is true of all experience... even everyday ones. You can't prove you experience anything the same as other people. However, if you find other people who describe their experiences similarly to how you do, then you can make an educated guess that their experiences might be similar. There is enough commonality between the descriptions of various mystical experiences to give us a clue that there is some amount of 'reality' to them. Interpretation is always where it gets tricky, but this is true even in science.


So, you mean God as a Creator Deity. And belief as the same as faith, but what do you consider faith? Anyhow, if I interpret you correctly, then I don't 'believe' in your definition of 'God'.

I'll add that its not clear to me if there is a real distinction between 'in here' and 'out there', what precisely that distinction means, or where it may precisely exist. This is where Jung's idea of synchronicity comes in. Synchronicity was closely allied with his understanding of archetypes.

marmalade

Here is a link to some notes on 'Answer to Job':

http://www.religiousworlds.com/fondarosa/jung04.html

Vinterland

I disagree and for instance; God is commonly defined as an omnipotent entity and consequently, is a paradox. This being cannot be known logically, yet there is entire philisophical branch created for the concept God. In order for things to be menaingful and conisistent, there must be logic and in theology that is where logic meets illogic quite a bit.
Ok, I've done critical thinking and realised that if God truly is above human logic, any logical conjecture made regarding God is futile based on that very assertion. Utilising any logic whatsoever to describe a God that is transcendant of such logic leaves humans unable to discover God intellectually. That only leaves one alternative, religious/spiritual experience. The problem with that is that all supernaturalism lacks the epistemology for knowing about that supernatural and there would be no effective way to seperate a 'real' experience from a 'fake' one.

Now, I make another assertion that according to the above, God, if it exists, has no impact of humans that rational people are aware. Since it is irrelevant to logic and science, it is irrelevant to my every day life, and to the agnostic- weak atheists life. Agree?

Now I better understand what GIT meant in his statement of the agnostic does not define God. I disagree with him, however and I still see the compatibility for agnosticism applied to theism.

Last, I noticed you didn't answer my question about Gods making predictions that fail does not invalidate them. I am interested in your response. Thanks.

What you say is mostly rationally compelling to me, but to demonstrate that this is only opinion, I can simply assert the contrary, that humans and their invented gods are reflections of God's character and sin. My opinion is illogical, but that is besides the point.

Can you please reccomend me a book that influenced your thinking of how gods are reflection of the human psyche?

__________________
And on we walked. Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.
And my soul said, "Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment."
—Gibran Khalil Gibran, “The Greater Sea.”