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

[Nick_A]

Greta

Again, please explain what "the pearl of great price" is - and with clarity, rather than ambiguous flowery poetic language.

* Again, also please explain why you judge innocent, well-meaning people whom are just more mentally simple than us.

Yes, this is the kind of worthless nebulous gumph I'm talking about. "Greater reality", "higher values", "false gods" - that's not philosophy, it's competitive poetry!

You are closed to the concept of levels of reality and objective qualities of being so whatever I explain is worthless to you. The pearl of great price describes two qualities of being” the Kingdom and earth

Matthew 13:45-46 New International Version (NIV)

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

Man on earth identified with and functioning as a part of society collects what provides meaning symbolized as pearls. For some reason a person becomes inwardly aware that in the process of adjusting to society the person is sacrificing what is really important to them by their attachment to these pearls. The pearl of great price is the quality of consciousness which enables freedom from attachment and opening to help from above. So the person loses their attachment to lesser qualities previously felt as the source of meaning, for the sake of the pearl of the great price, conscious awareness connecting above and below, which has become a greater pearl leading to the kingdom.

I am not judging anyone as good or bad. I am supporting the concept of conscious evolution as the natural continuation of mechanical evolution along the great chain of being which you seem to deny.

If you feel no need to properly explain yourself in a broadly understandable way then you are just preaching and do not belong on a philosophy forum as you are effectively treating the forum as a means to create a mini blog without cost or administration in which you can preach.

Your apparent desire is to eliminate the philosophy of those like Plato and Plotinus who help awaken us to consciousness and the great chain of being in favor of secular philosophy which is based on one level of reality and limits Man’s need for meaning to what the world can provide. In short you seek the destruction of eros. Spirit killers do not belong on philosophy forums since they contradict the awakening purpose of philosophy in favor of self justifying superficiality. One doesn't need philosophy for that. All one needs is television.

[Greta]

Man on earth identified with and functioning as a part of society collects what provides meaning symbolized as pearls. For some reason a person becomes inwardly aware that in the process of adjusting to society the person is sacrificing what is really important to them by their attachment to these pearls. The pearl of great price is the quality of consciousness which enables freedom from attachment and opening to help from above.

So what is your problem with me? I have talked about exactly the same thing with different language. That is, I noticed that during my decades in the workforce my life consisted of human relationships, human work and keeping up with with my human responsibilities. Now, in retirement I have the space to attend all the questions I put aside in childhood to survive in the adult world. I have rediscovered my love of nature and existential thinking, and now I am constantly batting around similar concepts to both you and many others, but I tend to use scientific and regular expression rather than poetic language.

Increasingly I become more conscious of greater and smaller movements and their relations with how present is shaped, both internally, externally and the nature of the connective feedback between those domains that is life.

I just think it's wrong to judge people for being "of the world"; there are phases of life when one is established oneself when one needs to follow the path of Hesse's heroes and dive headlong into the muck, and in doing so we then understand why it's desirable to move on from the hurly burly. Rest assured, the most hard headed types tends to melt when they face the Reaper - there's no need to keep up the shields at that point.

If you feel no need to properly explain yourself in a broadly understandable way then you are just preaching and do not belong on a philosophy forum as you are effectively treating the forum as a means to create a mini blog without cost or administration in which you can preach.

Your apparent desire is to eliminate the philosophy of those like Plato and Plotinus who help awaken us to consciousness and the great chain of being in favor of secular philosophy which is based on one level of reality and limits Man’s need for meaning to what the world can provide. In short you seek the destruction of eros. Spirit killers do not belong on philosophy forums since they contradict the awakening purpose of philosophy in favor of self justifying superficiality. One doesn't need philosophy for that. All one needs is television.

Many speak about Plato's ideas without preaching.

Of course I don't seek "destruction of eros". That's especially silly talk to a musician of many decades. Further, you don't consider the great visceral motivation and pleasures of philosophical thinking. The "death of eros" effectively equals AI. I am not an AI, no, but I'm realistic that biology's time on Earth is not unlimited.

[Atla]

secular philosophy which is based on one level of reality and limits Man’s need for meaning to what the world can provide

People didn't ask for a one-level-reality, and it does go against man's need for meaning, but looks like it's simply how things are, so you can't blame anyone for it. People didn't ask for this you know, it's what we have to work with.
A one-level-reality has its own kind of awakening btw and also includes a few things from your "higher reality".

[Dubious]

A lot of excellent insights and questions in this OP. Somewhat unusual since god most often is discussed by means of proclamation rather than explanation which the present age is more adapted to.

People speak about God as if the notion is obvious. In truth, we could readily dispense with the notion of God altogether and, in terms of understanding reality, nothing would be lost. We could simply consider what is without running it through the distorting filters of mythology.

Clearly expressed the key words being in terms of reality, nothing would be lost.

God just may be the simplest entity ever created. What's complicated is how we define and ritualize our relationship to that which speaks only when humans have something to say ex cathedra. The OT god is a splendid example; a warrior god with the agenda to create a Jewish nation. So kings, prophets and the semi insane project their voices into an infinity which rebounds with the same accent sanctioning the Will of those agents who sent it.

Even if the universe is an all-infusive meta-mind, why associate it with a deity who started out as a childishly absurd anthropomorphism? Why not start with a fresh slate?

Because many people are mental midgets who still believe that around 3000 years ago an absolute was identified meant to be valid for all time. During that period the old ogre in the OT actually had a function...a historical one long expired. Expressed in Wagnerian terms the gods of power will eventually encounter their own Götterdämmerung if only because the gods are doomed to have a much shorter lifespan than the human race.

So the only promising aspects of theism lie in where there is commonality of beliefs. However, they seem to be few and those commonalities also significantly overlap with "secular" people's experiences and observations. Thus, any religious ideation that does not overlap with all other major faiths is necessarily culturally specific, of historical, not ontic, interest.

A valid observation! Put another way a god of one is a god of none which depletes to no god at all.

Today, the God of the Gaps is fashionable because all of the prior anthropomorphic forms were rendered ridiculous with increased understanding of nature's processes. So now God's most credible guise tends to be posited as the ground of being. However, many theists will disagree about what that means too. So why not simply call it qualia?

As a general description of the multitudinous, qualia is far too amorphous and vast a concept to be contained within the catechism of any theistic entity. Qualia denotes a surplus which dismembers god into particles...not amenable to any pious worship; in short, out of bounds.

Gods were created as proprietary entities to establish and serve a specific power structure; consider the very first commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. How clear can it be?

When God is thought of as an it, everything changes, including the need to associate It with a middle eastern Iron Age war god. It becomes simply everything, The All, or rather, The All of Us, given our own infusion within the larger web of being.
And no scientific evidence points towards an all-infusive meta-mind. So it is likely just another anthropomorphization, we projected our own self-awareness and our belief in limited consciousness onto the universe.

I think consciousness, once it achieves escape velocity beyond its own critical self-interest, attempts to guide itself into realms of speculation; mind voyages, going beyond its current ability to actually know or understand thus projecting the "anthropomorphizations" that you mention. If consciousness could be described by one word, for me that would be momentum as an entity that strives to expand but never contract. By its nature it lusts for greater luminance remaining terrified of the lights going out contracting to zero!

Is this meta-mind also a form of God-belief?

Perhaps so when considered as a consciously created inflationary entity.

[Greta]

A valid observation! Put another way a god of one is a god of none which depletes to no god at all.

Certainly not a monotheistic one.

Consider prayer, an attempt to get in touch with ... subjectively God, objectively deeper layers of one's psyche, and many would posit that it's the same thing. Back when I had no money plus mental problems (now I have money hehe) I could not afford to see a shrink regularly. Instead, I aped the approach of a psychiatrist I'd seen and realised that all one needed to do was think of the questions I'd least like to be asked and face them off. That's all he did. I saved thousands of dollars and many hours with that "inner shrink" and I am not sure there is a significant difference between that and what many might consider to be God. It seems to me that prayer is basically tapping into one's inner shrink and life coach*.

* Disregarding the usual simplistic idea of petitioning a deity to change the laws of physics, given that theists on philosophy forums usually lean towards the metaphysical "ground of being" God rather than the anthropomorphism.

So now God's most credible guise tends to be posited as the ground of being. However, many theists will disagree about what that means too. So why not simply call it qualia?

As a general description of the multitudinous, qualia is far too amorphous and vast a concept to be contained within the catechism of any theistic entity. Qualia denotes a surplus which dismembers god into particles...not amenable to any pious worship; in short, out of bounds.

That's intelligence rather than qualia. In a sense, the stuff of the quasi-singularity that preceded (or was) the universe is all still here today in the centres of atoms, stars and black holes, just that it's now separated by the space that allows complexity to emerge. God within! (aka unbelievably dense plasmic packets of energy).

If de Chardin is right, then something like God will evolve in the later universe (many billions of years, possibly a trillion or more) but at this stage, the universe seems more chaotic and formative than ordered, in which case God would only exist as an evolutionary potential. However, in considering human potentials then the retrograde approach of theism is not going to take us there, rather we would become ever more mired in rolling back women's and gay rights, abortion and science education, with an increase in sectarian conflict. If Nick's "pearls of wisdom" exist, religions seemingly sold theirs long ago for power and thus their basic ideas have been shown not to deliver as promised. Not n the modern world. It's a method that no longer works.

The idea of effectively "programming oneself" with an algorithm, ie. training or conditioning oneself, is to be "idiot proofed". That is, in moments of distraction our conditioning prevents error. This is a major aim of religion. As a musician, I practice for muscle memory, and theists practice a culturally specific form of "moral memory" what is moral to "the tribe". However, that "moral memory" failed to prevent rampant child abuse, bullying and corruption. Thus, it is ineffective, at least when dealing with large groups and populations. The strictures simply failed - the evidence is there. Therefore religion's messages have not been resonant or inspirational enough to deter theistic paedophiles or bigots from following their harmful atavistic tendencies, nor enough to embrace mercy for the vulnerable not to avoid potentially corrupting partisan political associations.

So why bother? Either the entire God project needs some serious adjustment, or the slate would ideally be cleared as much as possible to see what interesting ideas might emerge in God's stead. The Chinese Tau seems a more sophisticated notion but, again, it has not prevented extreme cruelty to humans and other species. Fail. Buddhism, and to a lesser extent Hinduism similarly tantalise with great perceptions but it didn't stop the cultures from tending towards misogyny and corruption. More failure to deliver as promised.

What may they have in common? What do you make of this list - fifteen notions all creeds apparently have in common: https://integralchurch.wordpress.com/20 ... religions/. I counted nine of them as being the kinds of lessons that responsible parents routinely tell their children. They are basically just regular human lessons about how to live reasonably in a society. There are a few esoteric ones that could be explored further, though.

I think consciousness, once it achieves escape velocity beyond its own critical self-interest, attempts to guide itself into realms of speculation; mind voyages, going beyond its current ability to actually know or understand thus projecting the "anthropomorphizations" that you mention.

These seem to be related to the mental projections described by Dan Gilbert in his TED Talk about happiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q1dgn_C0AU

[Greta]

Here's the thing: Crom doesn't care if you think He's necessary or not, real or not.

Crom is quite content (in a brooding sort of way) to let you go about your business, thinking what you like, doing what you like, letting you sink or swim.

In fact: goin' about your business is what He expects from you.

I think Crom finds all this musing about His nature, His purpose, His existence, irksome and unnecessary.

Hmm, I'm not sure who "Crom" but he seems strikingly like Henry Quirk. Exactly like him, in fact.

[Nick_A]

Greta

Our basic difference again is that you limit Man’s being to its connection with the world as it is with all animal life. You are closed to the concept that Man is dual natured having a higher part which devolved from above and a lower part which arose from the earth.

I just think it's wrong to judge people for being "of the world"; there are phases of life when one is established oneself when one needs to follow the path of Hesse's heroes and dive headlong into the muck, and in doing so we then understand why it's desirable to move on from the hurly burly. Rest assured, the most hard headed types tends to melt when they face the Reaper - there's no need to keep up the shields at that point.

You are concerned with how to react to life and I am referring to the potential for a person to consciously affirm, to experience, their life on earth from a higher level of reality. We change as we age so it is normal for our reactions to change but they are still just reactions.You are promoting a mechanical reaction and I am promoting our potential for conscious action.

Mechanical reactions lead to judgment. Conscious affirmation by definition doesn’t judge. It doesn’t have a denying part. It just experiences what it observes. As soon as one begins to judge, they are back in the domain of mechanical reactions.

Many speak about Plato's ideas without preaching.

Yes I advocate the use of the concept of the GOOD as a reasonable means to describe how values became a part of our universe. You call this preaching. You deny the concept of the GOOD with a lot of negative expression. This type of emotional denial is preaching IMO.

Of course I don't seek "destruction of eros". That's especially silly talk to a musician of many decades. Further, you don't consider the great visceral motivation and pleasures of philosophical thinking. The "death of eros" effectively equals AI. I am not an AI, no, but I'm realistic that biology's time on Earth is not unlimited.

Since eros is between Man and God, if you deny our Source, you must deny eros.

Modern musicians are highly skilled in the destruction of eros because their musical expression is concentrated on their egosism. The attraction to eros requires sacrificing egosism, our opinion of ourselves, in order to become open to realistically experiencing an inner psychological direction or the attraction to eros. If a musician is only expressing their complaints, there can be no attraction to eros. Jacob Needleman concludes during an interview on his book “What Is God:”

https://www.watkinsmagazine.com/what-is ... -needleman

Q: How does our present confusion about the concept of God reflect a widespread psychological or spiritual starvation? How would you guide someone who is confused about the concept of God?

A: Every human being is born with an intrinsic yearning to understand, to contact and, eventually, to serve something higher in ourselves and in the universe. Plato calls this yearning eros. It defines us as human beings—even more than our biological nature, our social conditioning or our ordinary reasoning capacity. Our modern world-view tragically misperceives and wrongly defines what it is to be human. We are conditioned by our society to believe happiness comes from pleasure, or from getting things or power over people or money or fame or even health and survival. None of these sometimes very good things can bring ultimate meaning to our lives. We are born to be deeply conscious, inwardly free and deeply capable of love. The longing for these things is the definition of what it means to be human. At the present moment in our culture this yearning for meaning and consciousness, this yearning to give and serve something higher than ourselves, is breaking through the hard crust of our widespread cultural materialism and pseudo-scientific underestimation of what a human being is meant to be together with an equally tragic overestimation of what we human beings are capable of in our present everyday state of being. The intensity of the present confusion about the nature and existence of God is a symptom of this yearning within the whole of our modern culture.

As to how I would guide someone who is confused about the idea of God, I would suggest that he or she begins identifying what one might called “philosophical friends,”—people with whom one could seriously examine our thought about God through listening to each other, reading important and useful books together and trying to think for oneself while familiarizing oneself with the ideas of some of the world’s great thinkers. Cultivate openness without gullibility and skepticism without cynicism.

And, as soon as possible, be on the lookout for someone whose whole manner of speaking and being makes, as it were, a “sound” that draws your mind and heart. And then, little by little, try to see if that person can be of real help on the way to genuine self-knowledge and insight about what God is and is not. In this realm, more than any other even, the paradoxical marriage of both openness and scepticism is essential.

But dominant secularism in school systems will do what it can to deny such groups and insist if they are formed they be governed by secular experts. So these groups need to be formed in private and away from progressive education for the sake of sincerity in discussion. If the group is lucky it may meet a person who has experienced their questions and has not been indoctrinated into secularized religion, politics, or whatever. Such a person has grown to understand what it means to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Discussion of deeper ideas will inspire the attraction to eros and hopefully allow a person to avoid becoming identified with right and wrong in the world which the endless battle over opinions is sure to lead to.

[Reflex]

People speak about God as if the notion is obvious.

It is if your tools of perception are up to the task.

In truth, we could readily dispense with the notion of God altogether and, in terms of understanding reality, nothing would be lost. We could simply consider what is without running it through the distorting filters of mythology.

A groundless assumption.

Even if the universe is an all-infusive meta-mind, why associate it with a deity who started out as a childishly absurd anthropomorphism?

I imagine you started out crawling on on your belly, matured to crawling all fours and then later to standing on two feet.

Why not start with a fresh slate?

No such thing as a "clean slate."

The universe - a speculatively emergent meta-mind. Why isn't that that enough, given the limitation of an inside-out perspective? Blending a modern conception with ancient mythology can only serve to muddy the waters of inquiry, and that is certainly what has happened. Even an attempt to define "God" is fraught because no one agrees - and chaotic results in any given observation or experiment suggest a negative signal.

It can also signal a transition between paradigms.

So the only promising aspects of theism lie in where there is commonality of beliefs.

“It matters little what idea of the Father you may entertain as long as you are spiritually acquainted with the ideal of his infinite and eternal nature.”

However, they seem to be few and those commonalities also significantly overlap with "secular" people's experiences and observations.

That doesn't follow from above. Secular people's experiences and observations are, by definition, limited to the material order of things.

Thus, any religious ideation that does not overlap with all other major faiths is necessarily culturally specific, of historical, not ontic, interest.

True.

Today, the God of the Gaps is fashionable because all of the prior anthropomorphic forms were rendered ridiculous with increased understanding of nature's processes.

Anyone familiar with theology knows that the "God of the gaps" is anything but fashionable.

So now God's most credible guise tends to be posited as the ground of being.

Why "now"? It's been that way for centuries.

However, many theists will disagree about what that means too.

Nothing of significance.

So why not simply call it qualia?

It often is. Qualia: an ineffable conscious experience, as distinct from any physical or computational process.

Why add the personification?

If it's appropriate, why not?

Is it not possible to feel tremendous love and gratitude towards the Earth, the Sun, the galaxy and universe - even to feel worshipful

No. Only a person can love and be loved. The concept of the personality of Deity facilitates fellowship; it favors intelligent worship; it promotes refreshing trustfulness. Interactions can be had between nonpersonal things, but not fellowship. The fellowship relation of father and son, as between God and man, cannot be enjoyed unless both are persons. Only personalities can commune with each other.

- without endowing it with a metaphorical grey beard and testicles?

That's just stupid.

When God is thought of as an it, everything changes

It sure does. (see above)

including the need to associate It with a middle eastern Iron Age war god.

Now you're being a total ass.

It becomes simply everything, The All, or rather, The All of Us, given our own infusion within the larger web of being.

How can the "larger web of being" be less than a person if it is infused with "The All of Us"?

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

― Meister Eckhart

[henry quirk]

"Hmm, I'm not sure who "Crom" but he seems strikingly like Henry Quirk. Exactly like him, in fact."

Man creates God in his own image.

In my case, I borrowed God...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crom_(fictional_deity)

As far as gods go, Crom makes more sense (to me) than any of the others.

Crom is incorruptible: there is no worship, no rites to observe, no way to profit offa Crom.

Crom is straightforward: he hammers into the individual drive and endurance and then leaves him to be make of himself what he can and will. Volumes of 'commands' (or even just ten) woukd enslave Crom to the world (and vice versa).

Crom is distant: he minds his own business, keeps his mitts to himself, expects you to do the same.

As I say: Crom makes more sense (to me) than any of the gods.

[Greta]

Reflex, you had a lot to say but do you actually have reasoning to refute the OP or only assertions. At this stage the only possible response to your post is, "Thank you for your opinions".

I do agree with your statement: "I imagine you started out crawling on on your belly, matured to crawling all fours and then later to standing on two feet". That's the path for all of us.

[Greta]

Man creates God in his own image.

In my case, I borrowed God...

Ah, I see I'm more familiar with Terry Pratchett's Cohen the Barbarian than Conan. Some catching up to do.

Obviously billions have borrowed God before you did. God does seem to uncannily echo the leanings and/or aspirations of believers.

[Greta]

Our basic difference again is that you limit Man’s being to its connection with the world as it is with all animal life. You are closed to the concept that Man is dual natured having a higher part which devolved from above and a lower part which arose from the earth.

More proof that you are yet read any of my posts. You seem to read the first sentence or two and then make up the rest.

I have long spoken - and at length - about the layers of human nature. You have clearly read not a word of it, but made assumptions in lieu of reading.

I just think it's wrong to judge people for being "of the world"; there are phases of life when one is established oneself when one needs to follow the path of Hesse's heroes and dive headlong into the muck, and in doing so we then understand why it's desirable to move on from the hurly burly. Rest assured, the most hard headed types tends to melt when they face the Reaper - there's no need to keep up the shields at that point.

You are concerned with how to react to life and I am referring to the potential for a person to consciously affirm, to experience, their life on earth from a higher level of reality. We change as we age so it is normal for our reactions to change but they are still just reactions.You are promoting a mechanical reaction and I am promoting our potential for conscious action.

Mechanical reactions lead to judgment. Conscious affirmation by definition doesn’t judge. It doesn’t have a denying part. It just experiences what it observes. As soon as one begins to judge, they are back in the domain of mechanical reactions.

There is no evidence for a "higher level" within your comments, though.

Humanity's "higher level" is wisdom. Your inability to understand others and their motivations makes clear that you are not ahead of the pack by any stretch. Wisdom requires that one actually pays attention to what others are attempting to convey rather than applying your preferred spin.

Many speak about Plato's ideas without preaching.

Yes I advocate the use of the concept of the GOOD as a reasonable means to describe how values became a part of our universe. You call this preaching. You deny the concept of the GOOD with a lot of negative expression. This type of emotional denial is preaching IMO.

No, I call your preaching, preaching. You present your "truths" and there is no possibility of reasonable debate or discussion - if one does not agree with you, then it's a fight. You have not come here to learn from others because you behave as though others have nothing to teach you. Thus, your own ego is implacably attached to your beliefs, and the end result is preaching.

Of course I don't seek "destruction of eros". That's especially silly talk to a musician of many decades. Further, you don't consider the great visceral motivation and pleasures of philosophical thinking. The "death of eros" effectively equals AI. I am not an AI, no, but I'm realistic that biology's time on Earth is not unlimited.

Since eros is between Man and God, if you deny our Source, you must deny eros.

Nope. Eros is not between Woman (or Man, for that matter) and God. That is a limited interpretation and thus incorrect. Eros refers to life's instincts, sensuality and with main focus on romantic or sexual love. God seemingly does not need to be there, and that's the point made in the thread.

Thing is, it would be good if God was there, but I can see no convincing arguments or ideas, only defensiveness from you and Reflex. Or anyone.

I am aware that both have you have fought many pitched battles for your God on forums. Let's not follow those dull circles.

Now I am opening things up for you to convince others. If you are defensive you can't convey ideas. What have you got? It looks like everything that happens can happen without this extra element - how do you argue otherwise and why do you argue otherwise? Why do you believe? Have you ever questioned your belief? What happened in that process?

Modern musicians are highly skilled in the destruction of eros because their musical expression is concentrated on their egosism. The attraction to eros requires sacrificing egosism, our opinion of ourselves, in order to become open to realistically experiencing an inner psychological direction or the attraction to eros.

If you are saying that a lot of musos today are boringly over technical - too focused on perfection and not enough on the "juice", then yes. Oh well. That's the Zeitgeist, with the music industry still excited about the possibilities of automation and imperfect humans expected to perform with the dull accuracy of machines. That is suboptimal for me, but most old people find that the modern world suits them less than the world to which they had been conditioned.

I note that you yet again want to criticise the hoi polloi for the sins of youth. Who are these egotistical musicians? Mostly the young. So, once again, you judge the young for going through growth phases where where they must focus on the earthly. Again you judge other people as "finished products", as though people cannot develop and mature with age.

[Nick_A]

Greta

I have long spoken - and at length - about the layers of human nature. You have clearly read not a word of it, but made assumptions in lieu of reading.

You have referred to how Man adapts but never to Man’s change of being. Consider Shakespeare’s “All the World’s a Stage:”

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/you ... rlds-stage

Shakespeare describes the normal change in a person’s life that occurs through aging. This is not layers upon layers, it is just adaptation in linear time due to hormonal and bodily changes. Changes in human nature is not the same as the human evolution of being. You are closed to the potential.

Humanity's "higher level" is wisdom. Your inability to understand others and their motivations makes clear that you are not ahead of the pack by any stretch. Wisdom requires that one actually pays attention to what others are attempting to convey rather than applying your preferred spin.

I know many have been hurt from the effects of secularized religion. What good does it do to join in the chorus cursing out religion? I cannot change what has happened. As Jacob Needleman described in a previous post, he was an atheist and turned off to religion and the Bible because of literal interpretations and what he had experienced. Once he had to teach a course in religion, his reading revealed that he was emotionally reacting but the depth of the ancient ideas are extraordinary. All I do is contribute philosophical ideas. I know they are hated but what of others and lurkers. Why not keep ideas alive for them? What if someone really reads Plato’s cave allegory, Simone Weil, Jacob Needleman, and others and begins to appreciate that there is more to the essence of religion and philosophy than they were aware of. It can open minds. You prefer to keep minds closed and fight windmills with the intent on somehow getting even.

No, I call your preaching, preaching. You present your "truths" and there is no possibility of reasonable debate or discussion - if one does not agree with you, then it's a fight. You have not come here to learn from others because you behave as though others have nothing to teach you. Thus, your own ego is implacably attached to your beliefs, and the end result is preaching.

It is only a fight because you want to fight. The ideas introduced into the world by Jesus and into society by Socrates must be hated. That is why they had to be killed by the powers that be. It doesn’t surprise me that they are hated here by you and others. There is a certain satisfaction in denial supporting the status quo. Opening the mind to what Jesus and Socrates introduced along with others threatens the establishment which must fight them to sustain its influence. Your need to fight is not at all surprising.

Nope. Eros is not between Woman (or Man, for that matter) and God. That is a limited interpretation and thus incorrect. Eros refers to life's instincts, sensuality and with main focus on romantic or sexual love. God seemingly does not need to be there, and that's the point made in the thread.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/love/#SH1a

a. Eros
The term eros (Greek erasthai) is used to refer to that part of love constituting a passionate, intense desire for something; it is often referred to as a sexual desire, hence the modern notion of "erotic" (Greek erotikos). In Plato's writings however, eros is held to be a common desire that seeks transcendental beauty-the particular beauty of an individual reminds us of true beauty that exists in the world of Forms or Ideas (Phaedrus 249E: "he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it." Trans. Jowett). The Platonic-Socratic position maintains that the love we generate for beauty on this earth can never be truly satisfied until we die; but in the meantime we should aspire beyond the particular stimulating image in front of us to the contemplation of beauty in itself.
The implication of the Platonic theory of eros is that ideal beauty, which is reflected in the particular images of beauty we find, becomes interchangeable across people and things, ideas, and art: to love is to love the Platonic form of beauty-not a particular individual, but the element they posses of true (Ideal) beauty. Reciprocity is not necessary to Plato's view of love, for the desire is for the object (of Beauty), than for, say, the company of another and shared values and pursuits.
Many in the Platonic vein of philosophy hold that love is an intrinsically higher value than appetitive or physical desire. Physical desire, they note, is held in common with the animal kingdom. Hence, it is of a lower order of reaction and stimulus than a rationally induced love---that is, a love produced by rational discourse and exploration of ideas, which in turn defines the pursuit of Ideal beauty. Accordingly, the physical love of an object, an idea, or a person in itself is not a proper form of love, love being a reflection of that part of the object, idea, or person, that partakes in Ideal beauty.

Greta, you are content to keep values as expressions of secularism. However, the philosopher is concerned with the love of wisdom and what the essence of beauty is. It isn’t your concern. You are content to argue about opinions of what different people call beautiful.

Now I am opening things up for you to convince others. If you are defensive you can't convey ideas. What have you got? It looks like everything that happens can happen without this extra element - how do you argue otherwise and why do you argue otherwise? Why do you believe? Have you ever questioned your belief? What happened in that process?

I leave the need to convince others to secularism and techniques of indoctrination. I experienced metanoia or this inner change of direction Jesus and Plato spoke of. Philosophy has the ability to inspire anamnesis through contemplation of the essential contradictions of human nature. When this happens the mind opens to the vertical third dimension of thought. That is the purpose of philosophy; to enable awakening to the vertical third dimension of thought. I prefer discussing ideas while you prefer fighting and indulging in mutual denial. It is our difference.

If you are saying that a lot of musos today are boringly over technical - too focused on perfection and not enough on the "juice", then yes. Oh well. That's the Zeitgeist, with the music industry still excited about the possibilities of automation and imperfect humans expected to perform with the dull accuracy of machines. That is suboptimal for me, but most old people find that the modern world suits them less than the world to which they had been conditioned.

No, Sacred music enables a person to become temporarily free of their ego and open to contemplation of the reality greater than their own.

As music becomes more modern its purpose increasingly becomes to glorify egoism. At some point we will invent a way to put a selfie in a recording.

I note that you yet again want to criticise the hoi polloi for the sins of youth. Who are these egotistical musicians? Mostly the young. So, once again, you judge the young for going through growth phases where where they must focus on the earthly. Again you judge other people as "finished products", as though people cannot develop and mature with age.

No, I am saying that secular society as the Great Beast and no longer accepting conscious influences, becomes like any other beast. It is born, matures, and begins to die and finally dies. The arts are a good indication if a society is evolving or devolving. It is obvious because of the superficially of the arts that America is moving into the devolving part of its life cycle. It isn’t the sins of youth but just a normal progression for animal Man when it becomes closed to the conscious influences necessary to sustain a healthy free society. The Great Beast must die as does any other animal. Nothing surprising here.

[Dubious]

I saved thousands of dollars and many hours with that "inner shrink" and I am not sure there is a significant difference between that and what many might consider to be God.

...less to do with god than having some empathy with oneself; a process incipient to "knowing oneself" which begins by filling in the more obvious potholes. One only needs an "outside" (shrink) when critical parts of the inside (self-analysis) are missing or more often ignored as is the case with poor Nick who only moves externally led by others. How many more mantras, repeats and quotes does it take to prove that.

It seems to me that prayer is basically tapping into one's inner shrink and life coach.

For that to work depends on whether it's ritualized or personalized, the latter equivalent to interviewing oneself as mentioned.

If de Chardin is right, then something like God will evolve in the later universe (many billions of years, possibly a trillion or more) but at this stage, the universe seems more chaotic and formative than ordered, in which case God would only exist as an evolutionary potential.

Yes. His overall description of it being cosmogenesis based on the involution of the organic from simple to complex which corresponds as a "correlative" increase in consciousness described by him as "interiorisation"; a sublime idea while remaining deeply questionable on both fronts, human & cosmic.

The idea of effectively "programming oneself" with an algorithm, ie. training or conditioning oneself, is to be "idiot proofed". That is, in moments of distraction our conditioning prevents error.

It may sound perverse, but I don't relish the idea of being "idiot proofed" and doubtless proved it a few times too. Programming preempts insight as to what caused the idiocy forgoing both the analytical and psychological lessons which normally follow. The brain was made to think and not groove itself to some autonomous algorithm which pre-decides response. It is certainly useful for functions like the one you mention and many others but only as a subset called into service when required.

This is a major aim of religion. As a musician, I practice for muscle memory, and theists practice a culturally specific form of "moral memory" what is moral to "the tribe".

Yes! What you denote is the difference between using a function as required by musicians and being controlled by one as supervised in virtually every practice of theism. There's the voluntary "training" function and the kind one involuntarily succumbs to.

So why bother? Either the entire God project needs some serious adjustment, or the slate would ideally be cleared as much as possible to see what interesting ideas might emerge in God's stead.

Cleared indeed but not forgotten because it's these that caused the vacuum. I often wondered how the human brain would manifest completely devoid of all god inclusions...or some alien civilization when upon mention of God would inquire, "who or what is God? We aren't acquainted with that concept!" What would their psychology and thus their civilization be like!

The Chinese Tau seems a more sophisticated notion but, again, it has not prevented extreme cruelty to humans and other species. Fail. Buddhism, and to a lesser extent Hinduism similarly tantalise with great perceptions but it didn't stop the cultures from tending towards misogyny and corruption. More failure to deliver as promised.

What has all that so-called "extended" Oriental wisdom really accomplished? Given its results there's not much missing in the index of human failure.

I think consciousness, once it achieves escape velocity beyond its own critical self-interest, attempts to guide itself into realms of speculation; mind voyages, going beyond its current ability to actually know or understand thus projecting the "anthropomorphizations" that you mention.

These seem to be related to the mental projections described by Dan Gilbert in his TED Talk about happiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q1dgn_C0AU

Interesting talk but it has little to do with happiness, misery or any such emotion. By "momentum" I'm referring to consciousness as an entity incapable of fathoming its own demise while realizing it will flame out at some point. If, in slow time, it doesn't eventually diminish itself, it will continue to strive beyond any of its current limitations by invoking the future in forging some grand collusion with the universe which de Chardin epitomizes as an Omega Point crescendo. Would it be an understatement to say it's much too early to tell!

But it all reeks of an inverted myth. Historically we created gods and now we attempt to become a semi-divine flavor of them by "projecting" ourselves forward and outward into a simulacrum of an advanced creature often denoted as "Cosmic Man".

My point simply is for something as complex as consciousness which always strives to transgress its confines, over-flowing its own pot so to speak, being forced into the unchangeable stillness of zero time and zero space, would be akin to flooring the gas pedal on a Ferrari while hitting the brakes at the same time!

I think the best we can do is to acknowledge and cope with some of our most dangerous fallibilities and know how inimical they can be in short-changing the future. It's an act of human discovery NOT an Act of God, which, even if such existed, clearly endorses the prime directive of non-interference. It seems God prefers to be ignored!

...this post is already much too long which often happens when my intent was to keep it short. Sorry about that! It's all just opinion anyways! I'm much closer to being on the other side of the universe than any hope of enlightenment while still within it!

[Nick_A]

At this point I should make clear what I believe to be the difference between the scientific and philosophic approach. The scientific method is a method for acquiring answers which in contrast, philosophy is a means for inspiring questions.

"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows." ― Plato, Phaedrus

Greta wants to apply the scientific method for philosophy and argue superficial answers or opinions. However the experience of understanding comes through intuition or remembrance. The value of the scientific method for philosophy is to isolate the question and open it to conscious contemplation. I try to share questions while Greta wants to argue superficial opinions. Secularism provides answers which is why it must hate those who question approved answers. Any kid questioning the beauty of the clothes the emperor is wearing with the insinuation that the emperor is naked will be shot on sight..