Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Nick_A
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Nick_A »

Dubious
So you invent (hypothesize) a source amounting to a myth of some sort to make your existence feel more comfortable by having a meaning supplied by the source you invented. Of course the hypothesis you mention remains a hypothesis during your life and forever after. Not a problem if that's what you want to believe but why keep on preaching it through thousands of posts? Are you lonely?
First of all I didn’t invent Plotinus’ concept of the ONE or Plato’s GOOD. I didn’t invent perennial philosophy. I merely discuss their ideas as far more reasonable for appreciating universal meaning and purpose as well as the purpose of man within it.

It seems ludicrous at this point in history that so many people still believe the virtual infinite functioning machine we call universe has no objective purpose and has only one planet supporting life. It also seems foolish to believe that universal laws somehow came into existence by accident. It seems strange that so many still believe this.

It is natural for early Man to feel his mortality and experience his inner contradictions and wonder why all this is happening. Over time the most foolish explanation and the most accepted in modern society is the idea that there is no purpose in it. You adopt this position. I don’t see the sense in it.

The greats of the past like Plato and Plotinus had acquired understanding. Over time understanding has devolved in general society into eternal arguments supported by beings called “experts” whose chief attribute is the volume of their denials. I’ll stick with those with understanding and leave the experts to motivate you.
Theists never seem to tire in affirming their naive and sentimental views separated, by Can or Cannot's, as if they were actual mandated laws! Who says science and religion must be reconciled for man to have meaning and purpose? You keep preaching that what's true for you must be inferred as being true for everyone else or be considered a secular heretic within the armies of the Great Beast. If that isn't preaching and proselytizing then what is.
No. As we are now in secular society we only argue SUBJECTIVE meaning and purpose. Without first appreciating the purpose of our universe, we cannot discuss OBJECTIVE meaning and purpose for man in a way that can satisfy the logic of science and the hearts of Man. What is there to preach about? Proselytizing is asking for belief but I advocate developing the qualities which can allow a person to “know thyself.” You are content with following those who preach blind denial.
What comes across as especially egregious after a few thousand posts is not your anorexic spirituality but the certainty by which you proclaim it causing a 100 % trade deficit in debate; your canonical statements to be accepted without any infringement of collateral views which may force further analysis. DAS IST VERBOTEN. One must defend one's precious spiritual imperatives and claim superiority in having done so.

Purpose presupposes meaning; it's created through accomplishment from the bottom-up and not by some bargain basement edition of grace to supply your spiritual necessities. Purpose is an ongoing act of discovery, not some cheap source of enlightenment engendered by quotes.
So debate me. I advocate objective meaning and purpose as initiated by what Plotinus described as ONE devolves into Nous and further devolves in objective quality creating the lawful levels of reality which sustain our universe. Sustaining the flows of forces by the complimentary processes of involution and evolution provides universal meaning and purpose. Universal meaning and purpose for me begins with no-thing. You contend that meaning and purpose is a subjective creation by Man. As such it has no perennial beginning but begins with nothing as opposed to no-thing. You would have to explain the origin by accident of universal laws which is clearly impossible. You prefer loud denial supporting the concept of nothing which isn’t meaningful philosophical discussion which should pursue the love of wisdom and opening to the interaction of universal laws initiating with no-thing within which all potentials exist as ideas..
Nick_A
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Nick_A »

Reflex
Personally, I don't think the expression "Great Beast" is useful. However, the rest of this paragraph is right on.
Out of curiosity, why don't you think Plato's description of the Beast is useful for understanding an individuals relationship to society?

From Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace:
The Great Beast [society, the collective] is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatzof God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.

It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence, my fellow man as an end, since he is my fellow. Nor can I take a material thing, because matter is still less capable of having finality conferred upon it than human beings are.

Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective.
Do you disagree with what she wrote? Isn't it useful to begin to admit what society is?
Dubious
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Dubious »

Dubious wrote:So you invent (hypothesize) a source amounting to a myth of some sort to make your existence feel more comfortable by having a meaning supplied by the source you invented. Of course the hypothesis you mention remains a hypothesis during your life and forever after. Not a problem if that's what you want to believe but why keep on preaching it through thousands of posts?
Nick_A wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:47 pmFirst of all I didn’t invent Plotinus’ concept of the ONE or Plato’s GOOD. I didn’t invent perennial philosophy. I merely discuss their ideas as far more reasonable for appreciating universal meaning and purpose as well as the purpose of man within it.

Correct, you didn’t invent Plotinus’ concept of the ONE or Plato’s GOOD. Also, I never notice you merely discussing anything. Instead you merely appropriate the sources of these ideas or hypotheses as something fixed, final, not to be disputed only defended! Your mind seems incapable of realizing that by this acceptance, you've breached the essence of what a hypothesis signifies since in your all of your subsequent treatments they are no-longer treated as such; instead you affirm these ponderings as a specie of Platonic absolutes immune to any debate which any hypothesis would find indispensable...being also the most flagrantly dispensed with in just about every line of your enlightened scripture.
Nick_A wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:47 pmSo debate me
That requires someone to debate with! Your thousands of posts is a testament that no "foreign material" is allowed to enter the crystalline structure of your 3rd dimensions of thought which may in the slightest disrupt, disorganize or contaminate it. You only preach and apply absolutes on all that by nature is conditional avoiding real debate like any unoriginal, uninspired sermonizer, recycling the same expressions and phrases unceasingly as if they were called-up subroutines in a computer program.

Instead of using the "moving parts" of the human brain to analyze and debate - where right or wrong is not always so explicit - your preachments amount to the It Is Written variety of sermonizing reverting to constant quotes to leverage your assumptions into a state of infallibility...techniques all middling preachers depend on.

In summary; It is impossible to debate with someone who speaks on high as from a pulpit looking down on secular sinners, the abortive children of the Great Beast! For once, lubricate the hinges on your own "Doors of Perception" before you ask to debate with others...the impossibility of which you've demonstrated as beyond debate. Everyone who opposes or questions your hardened precepts based mostly on airy speculations is defined by you as either intolerant or ignorant. You should be on a site where people are less intolerant or ignorant and more agreeable to your views with hardly any debate required.
Reflex
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Reflex »

Greta wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 6:08 am
Well, what people believe is one thing, what actually is is another.
True, which is why I said on several occasions quoted the line from The Cloud of Unknowing: “By love he may be gotten and holden; by thought never.” It’s not just about beliefs.
Like Dubious, I personally find it frustrating that I have been so conditioned by the God concept that it seems to narrow one's conceptions to always lead to a One.
Get used to it. Questions pertaining to Ultimate Reality lead nowhere else.
There is no logical reason for this, though, when you question the notion. Maybe there is no God of the universe - maybe the godlike entities are galaxies, stars, black holes, solar systems or worlds? Just because polytheist cultures were invaded by the greater military aggression of monotheist armies does not mean they were proved "wrong" by their captors.

A lot of ‘maybes’ there, none of which lead to answers.
Why not stay open to all manner of possibilities?
You mean like pink unicorns?

Like movies, theism only has explanatory power if one suspends their judgement and ignore the plot holes. Fair enough, if one's aim is to enjoy the ride without probing too much but not if one is curious about the "plot holes".
Plot holes like what? Pink unicorns?
Scientific conceptions today do have much more rigorous explanatory power IMO regarding possible early universe scenarios that resulted in today's situation. However, the subjective human emotional situation - how does one optimally live a life and what does "optimal" mean in context? - requires a more intuitive approach. This is because researchers cannot access a huge part of reality, ie. many billions of simple and complex animal and human minds that are largely opaque to all others. So intuition is far more important in the personal than the public domain.
I agree, but science is limited to the study of processes. It cannot, even in theory, tackle the why.
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Greta
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 2:18 amGreta, you still miss the essential point which serves as the basis for all the ideas I have presented which repulse you.
I remain open to all feasible possibilities. You personally can be pretty repulsive, though :lol:
Nick_A wrote:It is natural for you to build a philosophy from the bottom up. Anything else appears naïve. A belief in God from the bottom up invites all sorts of self deception and you assume God can be nothing else but self deception. I take the opposite approach. For the God concept to have answers for the essential questions of the heart, a top down approach is a necessary beginning with the hypothesis of a source. Without this source the paths of science and the essence of religion cannot be reconciled and Man cannot have any objective meaning and purpose. There can be nothing other than the eternal arguments over opinions that you so cherish as the glory of the Great Beast.
Why limit one's inquiries for the sake of a formula? Why not consider them all - bottom-up, top-down, outside-in and inside-out - all of it?

Nick_A wrote:You must remain closed to perennial philosophy which begins with the premise of a Source. You are with the majority content to argue opinions. A minority seek to experience the essence of religion or the reality which transcends opinions.
Yet you are far more closed than I am towards any alternatives to your personal views.

I remain agnostic, as you well know. You continue to only make assertions without the reasoning that underpins those assertions. Please provide reasoning for assertions.

Nick_A wrote:All of the major traditions beginning with a conscious source and with a God concept similar to the ONE which you must deny to sustain your secularist philosophy must be denied at all cost.
Incorrect information. Only Abrahamic religions start with a conscious source. Buddhism remains agnostic to the idea and it has various creation myths. The Tao has no deity, and Hinduism is polytheistic.

Aside from appeals to authority, do you have any other basis for believing that the first fluctuation of reality was conscious?

Nick_A wrote:Man is at the beginning of a potential reconciliation between science and religion. Science will become more sophisticated in its exploration of facts concerning the laws of the earth. Those who explore and practice techniques for opening the mind to the vertical third dimension of thought and experiencing objective conscience and the higher values natural for Man not caught up in defending cave life will experience the natural relationship between science (facts) and the essence of religion; higher values natural for Man who has escaped the confines of Plato’s cave.
Incorrect.

The schism between science and religion in the west is increasing and now organising politically, with the far right increasingly claiming to have God on the their side, the far left claiming to have the planet on their side, and the centre and centre-left claiming the scientific angle.

Rather, it seems that there is a growing link between science and spirituality while while religions are becoming ever more political and social and less spiritual.

Nick_A wrote:Of course you must hate this God concept since perennial philosophy begins with a premise and the process of deduction rather than scientific induction for the cause of meaning.
Putting aside the childish petulance of this posting, I do have resentment but not against the concept per se . In fact, that's the emotion (but not the intellectual meat) of this thread.

I do somewhat resent that I was conditioned into the God meme and how this has has coloured and tainted my views. It's so indelibly ingrained in my mind that it interferes with my capacity to see reality without that filter. It's frustrating but I don't apportion blame; religion was more dominant when I was young and it was simply a matter of course for kids to be indoctrinated.

So I don't care about removing the concept, as you think. I simply want to engage in a thought experiment of imaging how we might see reality if we'd never heard of the God concept. Have you ever tried it, Nick? Imagining how reality may appear if you never knew the God concept? Just out of curiosity to see what it might seem like?

When I do that I find that the awe and love one would normally associate with a deity shifts to nature, the Earth and the cosmos. One might say that Spinoza sits neatly between theism and atheism - where the grandeur, complexity, beauty, creativity and mystery of universe and nature evokes spiritual ideation, feelings and sensations, and especially so when one sees humanity as a part and expression of the emerging edifices rather than a divinely corrupted antagonist.

So, in the sense that humanity is a part of nature, I do worship this "beast" because I find nature impressive in all of its forms, including the human ones. Under inspection, the nature of reality is simply breathtaking and extraordinary, deity or not.
Reflex
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Reflex »

Nick_A wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 8:42 pm Reflex
Personally, I don't think the expression "Great Beast" is useful. However, the rest of this paragraph is right on.
Out of curiosity, why don't you think Plato's description of the Beast is useful for understanding an individuals relationship to society?

From Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace:
The Great Beast [society, the collective] is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatzof God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.

It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence, my fellow man as an end, since he is my fellow. Nor can I take a material thing, because matter is still less capable of having finality conferred upon it than human beings are.

Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective.
Do you disagree with what she wrote? Isn't it useful to begin to admit what society is?
I absolutely agree, but the term “Great Beast,” although accurate, is off-putting IMO.

Please note, Greta, if you have a feasible alternative to what must be in order for what is to be as it is, I’m all ears.
Dubious
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Dubious »

Reflex wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 11:54 pm
Like Dubious, I personally find it frustrating that I have been so conditioned by the God concept that it seems to narrow one's conceptions to always lead to a One.
Get used to it. Questions pertaining to Ultimate Reality lead nowhere else.
Really! Has your God person or personal god or some other advanced state of all-knowing confirmed that by email OR are you so personally privy to what ultimate reality is or leads to. What a great age to be in! The precursors of ultimate enlightenment finally walk among us! :shock:

Anyways, please let us know more about it so we can all get used to it :twisted: :lol:
Reflex wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:01 am Please note, Greta, if you have a feasible alternative to what must be in order for what is to be as it is, I’m all ears.
...not doubt replacing the rest of what's missing!
Reflex
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Reflex »

Greta said:
Incorrect information. Only Abrahamic religions start with a conscious source. Buddhism remains agnostic to the idea and it has various creation myths. The Tao has no deity, and Hinduism is polytheistic.
Incorrect information:

“Consciousness” in the Abrahamic religions is not used anthropomorphically (note the doctrine of divine simplicity).
Hinduism is NOT polytheistic: all gods are manifestations of Brahman (the One).
If you read the Tao Te Ching, the word “Tao” is interchangeable with “God.”
“Creatorship is hardly an attribute of God; it is rather the aggregate of his acting nature” is 100% compatible with Buddhism.

In my experience, someone who has invested resentment towards bad information will not regard any correction as being credible.
Reflex
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Reflex »

Really, Dubious? Is that all you got? Sneer pressure? No observations that undermine the hypothesis that motivated the first scientists?
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Greta
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Greta »

Reflex wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 2:08 am Greta said:
Incorrect information. Only Abrahamic religions start with a conscious source. Buddhism remains agnostic to the idea and it has various creation myths. The Tao has no deity, and Hinduism is polytheistic.
Incorrect information:

“Consciousness” in the Abrahamic religions is not used anthropomorphically (note the doctrine of divine simplicity).
Hinduism is NOT polytheistic: all gods are manifestations of Brahman (the One).
If you read the Tao Te Ching, the word “Tao” is interchangeable with “God.”
“Creatorship is hardly an attribute of God; it is rather the aggregate of his acting nature” is 100% compatible with Buddhism.

In my experience, someone who has invested resentment towards bad information will not regard any correction as being credible.
Incorrect again:

The God of the OT was unambiguously anthropomorphic.

Hindus worship and pray to a wide range of deities, thus the religion is polytheistic. An overarching deity does not change that fact.

The Tao is certainly not necessarily equivalent to God, just that believers interpret it that way and some interpretations can accommodate that.

Have you ever tried to imagine how reality would seem to you if you'd not even heard of the God concept? Have you ever questioned your belief?
Last edited by Greta on Tue Apr 24, 2018 2:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reflex
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Reflex »

Greta wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 2:43 am
Reflex wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 2:08 am Greta said:
Incorrect information. Only Abrahamic religions start with a conscious source. Buddhism remains agnostic to the idea and it has various creation myths. The Tao has no deity, and Hinduism is polytheistic.
Incorrect information:

“Consciousness” in the Abrahamic religions is not used anthropomorphically (note the doctrine of divine simplicity).
Hinduism is NOT polytheistic: all gods are manifestations of Brahman (the One).
If you read the Tao Te Ching, the word “Tao” is interchangeable with “God.”
“Creatorship is hardly an attribute of God; it is rather the aggregate of his acting nature” is 100% compatible with Buddhism.

In my experience, someone who has invested resentment towards bad information will not regard any correction as being credible.
Incorrect again:

The God of the OT was unambiguously anthropomorphic.

Hindus worship and pray to a wide range of deities, thus the religion is polytheistic. An overarching deity does not change that fact.

The Tao is certainly not necessarily equivalent to God, just that believers interpret it that way and some interpretations can accommodate that.
Hence, my last sentence. :wink:
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Greta
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Greta »

Reflex, terrific use of rhetoric. You are too tricky for me. However, I'm interested in what's real, not which sly word games can appear to be won.

I added a bit to the end of my last post but you beat me to the send button. A couple of questions.
Reflex
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Reflex »

Have you ever tried to imagine how reality would seem to you if you'd not even heard of the God concept?


I've tried, but it's like a tree trying to imagine what life would be without roots. Like I said, there's no such thing as a blank slate.
Have you ever questioned your belief?
Perpetually. How 'bout you? Have any observations that undermine the hypothesis that motivated the first scientists?
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Greta
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Greta »

Reflex wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 4:42 am
Have you ever tried to imagine how reality would seem to you if you'd not even heard of the God concept?


I've tried, but it's like a tree trying to imagine what life would be without roots. Like I said, there's no such thing as a blank slate.

However, there is no way of knowing whether that is conditioning of the mind from an early age or not. Mine certainly was conditioned that way and my parents weren't even much religious - just what was fairly usual at the time. Yet a huge chunk of society was telling me about God - it was an assumed truth just about everywhere. It's not easy to shake off that kind of conditioning when it starts from early childhood.

So I too find it hard to dismiss the notion, which runs against my commitment to staying on the fence when I don't know something rather than allowing myself to only accept the ideas I like best. It's a discipline I demand from myself because sometimes no one is easier to fool than oneself. So I instead try to assess reality purely by what appears most likely and at this point it leads to to a naturalistic view along with the sense that nature has been very much underestimated due to a tendency to think of humans as not part of nature, rather either a divine or destructive addition. Rather, ideally humans will rethink what nature is and its potentials to take their own minds and achievements into account - we are part of the systems, no matter how powerful we may think ourselves.
Reflex wrote:
Have you ever questioned your belief?
Perpetually. How 'bout you? Have any observations that undermine the hypothesis that motivated the first scientists?
Ditto - I question myself and everyone else all the time, and happily change my mind when a counter argument resonates.

I actually think that the existence of a godlike intelligence (or whatever may succeed "intelligence") is plausible - or in multiples, for that matter. If a universe like ours can potentially support stars and life for a trillion years - whatever may evolve to meet the never-ending challenges thrown at them by cosmic events may conceivably even survive the heat death of a universe. It is hard to imagine a life-bearing universe not managing to be so extraordinary over such an unknown length of time - the same age of our current universe a hundred times over. Further, there is no evidence that says that this universe was the first. For all we know we may live in a universe of serial big bangs numbering in the billions. That seems at least as likely as ours being the first or only. Thus, the surviving godlike beings at the end of each universe might even accumulate for all we know.

Another feasible possibility based on the above "Omega angle" is that God is not yet existent, still just an emerging potential. It may be that the ideals that life dream up indicate an intuitive sense of the future - what we (or other life forms) may become (barring not being wiped out by asteroids etc at inopportune times).

Another possibility is that there's some strange dimensional activity underpinning our familiar dimensions, and a godlike entity exists at the most fundamental dimension. Or the godlike entity may not be fundamental, perhaps being subject to complete nothingness (or something else) in an even more fundamental dimension.

Or it may be that the arrow of time is a perspective effect rather than a reality, in which case a posthumous existence may be possible but seemingly says nothing about any kind of god.

So, while I question regularly, I don't have much in the way of beliefs to question, largely only potentialities. Persuasive information could have me add to or subtract from that list any time.
Nick_A
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Re: Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

Post by Nick_A »

Greta
Why limit one's inquiries for the sake of a formula? Why not consider them all - bottom-up, top-down, outside-in and inside-out - all of it?
I will consider it if you can express how the ONE can be created from nothing. If you can do that you can sell anything.
I remain agnostic, as you well know. You continue to only make assertions without the reasoning that underpins those assertions. Please provide reasoning for assertions.
It is pretty much agreed that the universe came into existence and will gradually run down and “die” This means that it didn’t always exist. Existence is a process that either began from nothing and evolved from the bottom up or began with no-thing and the conscious creation of universal laws involuting creation from the top down. I’d like you to explain the logical process by which creation develops from nothing.
Incorrect information. Only Abrahamic religions start with a conscious source. Buddhism remains agnostic to the idea and it has various creation myths. The Tao has no deity, and Hinduism is polytheistic.

Aside from appeals to authority, do you have any other basis for believing that the first fluctuation of reality was conscious?
Buddha never denied God. He discouraged speaking of it since he knew it would inspire meaningless arguments getting in the way of the intent of Buddhism. He was right.

The universe is governed by both consciousness and mechanical laws. Mechanical laws don’t arise by accident. They are expressions of consciousness. If you disagree, show me how they can arise by accident.
The schism between science and religion in the west is increasing and now organising politically, with the far right increasingly claiming to have God on the their side, the far left claiming to have the planet on their side, and the centre and centre-left claiming the scientific angle.

Rather, it seems that there is a growing link between science and spirituality while while religions are becoming ever more political and social and less spiritual.


You keep referring to secular religious expression while I refer to the essence of religion which asserts meaning and purpose for Man while spirituality only admits a source for the logic of the universe. It is a step in the right direction but until universal purpose is admitted as well as Man’s purpose within it, spirituality will lack meaning for Man.
I do somewhat resent that I was conditioned into the God meme and how this has has coloured and tainted my views. It's so indelibly ingrained in my mind that it interferes with my capacity to see reality without that filter. It's frustrating but I don't apportion blame; religion was more dominant when I was young and it was simply a matter of course for kids to be indoctrinated.
It is unfortunate that you were harmed in this way. It does seem that you have become fixated on a personal god concept which makes you deny the god concept which refers to a source for creation itself. The God concept is not the same as the concept of a particular god..
So I don't care about removing the concept, as you think. I simply want to engage in a thought experiment of imaging how we might see reality if we'd never heard of the God concept. Have you ever tried it, Nick? Imagining how reality may appear if you never knew the God concept? Just out of curiosity to see what it might seem like?
As far back as I can remember I’ve always had the impression that a reality existed far greater than me of which I was a part. I cannot imagine not having this impression. My guess is that there is something deep within Man that is drawn to its source. When a person for some reason learns of God and begins to think of God it nourishes the seed of the soul. It is a natural rather than indoctrinated process.

When I do that I find that the awe and love one would normally associate with a deity shifts to nature, the Earth and the cosmos. One might say that Spinoza sits neatly between theism and atheism - where the grandeur, complexity, beauty, creativity and mystery of universe and nature evokes spiritual ideation, feelings and sensations, and especially so when one sees humanity as a part and expression of the emerging edifices rather than a divinely corrupted antagonist.

So, in the sense that humanity is a part of nature, I do worship this "beast" because I find nature impressive in all of its forms, including the human ones. Under inspection, the nature of reality is simply breathtaking and extraordinary, deity or not.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/plotinus/#SH2a
The 'concept' of the One is not, properly speaking, a concept at all, since it is never explicitly defined by Plotinus, yet it is nevertheless the foundation and grandest expression of his philosophy. Plotinus does make it clear that no words can do justice to the power of the One; even the name, 'the One,' is inadequate, for naming already implies discursive knowledge, and since discursive knowledge divides or separates its objects in order to make them intelligible, the One cannot be known through the process of discursive reasoning (Ennead VI.9.4). Knowledge of the One is achieved through the experience of its 'power' (dunamis) and its nature, which is to provide a 'foundation' (arkhe) and location (topos) for all existents (VI.9.6). The 'power' of the One is not a power in the sense of physical or even mental action; the power of the One, as Plotinus speaks of it, is to be understood as the only adequate description of the 'manifestation' of a supreme principle that, by its very nature, transcends all predication and discursive understanding………………………………
IMO you’ve experienced dunamis within our planet. It is a very meaningful experience. Some are satisfied with that. Others in need of meaning are drawn to philosophy to answer what it means to be human within dunamis. Why seek to destroy this natural impulse only to strengthen the influence of society as the source for objective human meaning and purpose?
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