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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Religious Experience
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And "there is no God it's all me" or "all human" is as much a faith position as the opposite.
I know what you mean of course, but there is no equating the two. There are billions of years of evidence for life and for the existence of we evolved humans, but only conjecture for God. The latter requires 100% faith, the former as near to 0% faith as makes no difference, I think
That's not quite right, is it? The idea of 'all me' does't just say that the human is involved in various ideas, but that nothing else is. It's that last bit that is a guess, just as 'God did it' is a guess.
But then most atheists of my acquaintance are careful to say that they don't know that there is 'nothing else'. But there is simply no evidence for 'something else', hence their lack of belief. Hence, they are agnostic atheists, since knowledge and belief are being distinguished.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
what intangible grounds are there outside the text?
As I said here (new emphasis mine, now): quote:
a subjective sense of "knowing" that goes beyond logic and reasoning alone
As far as Christian "experience" goes, it is of course text-dependent in that we rely on the Scriptures to give us some hint of what this "experience" might be ("the Spirit bears witness to our Spirit that we are sons of God"), but the text points beyond itself to something more dynamic. As you and I have discussed previously*.
The text also serves as ballast to preserve us (well, at least hopefully...) from rabid gnosticism or delirium.
==
(*and you wouldn't believe how long it takes me to find that post each time I want to quote it).
[ 26. October 2016, 14:59: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Indeed, but if the text weren't there, we'd have no grounds at all.
We didn't see, but heard, we read. First. That's tangible. Nothing less. Or more. The hope, the belief evoked in us is intangibly ... felt.
[ 26. October 2016, 15:05: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
We are in complete agreement SusanDoris. No faith is necessary to realise that existence needs no further explanation, no faith whatsoever. It explains itself in that it is.
Thank you for your post beginning thus. I will come back to it when I've caught up!!
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
Examples of things that do not fit neatly in the rational:
[*]spontaneous healings - no not miracles but people who get well when medical knowledge says they should not. It's more common than people think and one of the reasons why I want to know more before I claim a miracle.
It is a known fact that people quite often recover , so although doctors might not be able to analyse completely why a person has done this, there is no need to consider any answer except the evolved human body's ability to cure itself. If this had not been happening for an extremely long time, humans wouldn’t be here to think about it!!
quote:
[*]various reports in ethnographic diaries which are distinctly odd and excluded from official reports because of this e.g. lights happening, spirits becoming visible etc. There really seems to be a state where if you seek to be as close as possible to societies which do not rely on our model of rationality you start to experience things that do not fit our rationality.
All such anecdotes would fall down when it came to verification. If there were any factual truth in such ideas, then detection should be possible. If there is no means of such detection then the likelihood of their being in any way objective is extremely small. I cannot think of any advantages in putting aside modern scholarship, science and medicine in favour of believing in ghosts etc etc.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
No, as it is beyond our imagination that God may be both immanent and transcendent at the same time, which is why so few people may accept as much as the possibility that it is the truth. And yet it is, by observation.
Via which of our five senses? There is no limit to imagination. Anything that is beyond it does not, for all intents and purposes, exist, since it cannot be imagined. quote:
It also fits with the one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the Trinity is truly mind- blowing, if we try to use our imaginations.
I think even many who believe in god would perhaps agree that the Trinity was a product of the human imagination in the first place.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Susan Doris, I still can’t quite understand your position. You say quote:
Originally posted by Susan Doris
I love to listen to Poulenc’s Stabat Mater and Gloria, where some of the music is, for me, very spiritually uplifting.
but I can’t see how on your terms that statement can have a meaning. What do ‘spirit’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘spirituality’ mean, if there is nothing in the universe except that which is amenable to observation, experiment and science?
That is quite a hard question! When I listen to wonderful music, with particular points where combinations of notes produce feelings of – let’s call it ‘rapture’, I am experiencing sensations which other people would experience in a very similar way. I do not consider labelling it as being other than entirely from my physical brain. Others may give the credit for it to God and categorise it as spiritual because of that association. quote:
Seeking to get round this by examining the derivation of the word, doesn’t really get us any further. Yes, the Latin, Greek and Hebrew words for spirit are all breath related. Interestingly, that is despite their not being etymologically connected. However,
'I love to listen to Poulenc’s Stabat Mater and Gloria, where some of the music is, for me, very breathily uplifting',
wouldn’t mean anything. Besides, what determines what word in English means isn’t its derivation but how it is used now.
Yes, I agree and have seen and heard people saying that the word spiritual is pretty much ‘owned’ by believers. Well, I dispute that and reserve the right to use it in a secular sense! quote:
quote:
You say to Jengie John
Transcendence is one of those words whose definition is somewhat elusive I find.
On your terms, aren’t ‘spirit’ and ‘spiritual’ equally elusive? If you say that some of Poulenc is very spiritually uplifting, what would be conceptually different, on your terms, between that statement and saying that you found some of Poulenc transcendent?
Fair point. Yes, I certainly could use the word ‘transcendent’, but for me that word has too many religious overtones, and I’d find myself explaining that I didn’t quite mean that every time I used it!
The next point in your post about ‘committed faith’, I think I have answered in a post to LC. quote:
You may also be making assumptions as to how Christians do actually understand the cosmos, and whether they draw the same distinction in the same place between the scientifically amenable parts of it and its more mysterious realms.
Humans have always loved a good mystery, but in reality, any ‘mysterious realms’ would be better designated as unknowns. This does not detract from the value and enjoyment of fiction, especially when the distinction is clear.
I think atheists are less likely to have ‘existentialist difficulties’, but am probably on very shaky ground here. quote:
For an atheist, once one allows these three words to have any possible meanings at all, one has to allow space for the possibility that reality might include other 'dimensions', 'aspects' or whatever one prefers to call them.
I understand that some mathematics can show this, but it seems to be a very remote possibility and I certainly don't think it will affect my remaining years!
Thank you, that kept me thinking for quite a while!.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
No, as it is beyond our imagination that God may be both immanent and transcendent at the same time, which is why so few people may accept as much as the possibility that it is the truth. And yet it is, by observation.
Via which of our five senses? There is no limit to imagination. Anything that is beyond it does not, for all intents and purposes, exist, since it cannot be imagined.
We have more than five senses, if we tune in to our spiritual dimension.
There is a limit to our imaginations, and far more in the universe than we can ever imagine.
quote:
quote:
It also fits with the one God as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. And the Trinity is truly mind- blowing, if we try to use our imaginations.
I think even many who believe in god would perhaps agree that the Trinity was a product of the human imagination in the first place.
I disagree, of course, as I am convinced that the one living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit is as real as you are, as have and do billions of people worldwide past and present to whom God has been revealed.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
If you have never experienced or believe you will never experience your beloved in this lifetime, then all you are left is an infatuation with a self created image of who they are.
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
It's not possible for God to be absent. So if God is ever present it makes no sense for me not to experience that.
I don't care about eternity, I want to believe and be with a God of the now! No parent hides their face from their child. If it's a case of 'wait and see' then I give up!
Actually, we parents do that all the time. Usually for the sake of the child--for example, when we are getting them accustomed to preschool or a babysitter, and the sight of a parental face will induce crying and set the whole process back immensely. But it can also happen later in life--I had to excuse myself from the room last night when my teenager was working himself into a fit of worry rather than going to sleep as he ought. I knew from long experience that if he has no audience he will stop emoting and drop off in about 30 seconds. Which he did.
The parallels with God are real. There are cases where a felt sense of God's presence would set us back rather than forward spiritually speaking. In my experience these are mostly cases when I need to learn to do what's right based on my own will to obey God rather than being lured into it by spiritual/emotional inducements. God withdraws the sense of his presence (though not the reality of it) so that I can learn to walk on my own instead of clutching his two fingers like I did in spiritual toddlerhood. The goal is that I will be able to walk with God whether he's holding my hand or not at the moment. I hope I haven't totally screwed up this metaphor.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And "there is no God it's all me" or "all human" is as much a faith position as the opposite.
I know what you mean of course, but there is no equating the two. There are billions of years of evidence for life and for the existence of we evolved humans, but only conjecture for God. The latter requires 100% faith, the former as near to 0% faith as makes no difference, I think
I really don't want to hijack this thread into yet another go-round of the game "how do you know anything?" In my previous post I was addressing the question of whether it is reasonable to object to a X (here X is religious experience) on the grounds that "It's all you, after all," i.e. you are the one whose senses are reporting all this, and X is therefore untrustworthy as we cannot get at X in an unmediated state.
My rebuttal was that EVERY experience is mediated through the senses, and therefore to object to numinous or religious experiences on those grounds is in essence to reject ALL experience of any sort, however mundane. This applies to the experience of fossils, astronomy observations, microscope work, and the like just as surely as it applies to religious experience. If we are to mistrust anything mediated by the senses, we might as well give up on reality altogether. We're never going to get anything un-mediated.
So yes, on the point I was addressing it IS possible to equate the two. Every proposition about the outer world is ultimately based in a faith that one's senses are reporting things accurately, and one's reason is handling those things correctly.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The parallels with God are real. There are cases where a felt sense of God's presence would set us back rather than forward spiritually speaking. In my experience these are mostly cases when I need to learn to do what's right based on my own will to obey God rather than being lured into it by spiritual/emotional inducements. God withdraws the sense of his presence (though not the reality of it) so that I can learn to walk on my own instead of clutching his two fingers like I did in spiritual toddlerhood. The goal is that I will be able to walk with God whether he's holding my hand or not at the moment. I hope I haven't totally screwed up this metaphor.
I don't think you have. It's quite similar, actually, to something in the Screwtape Letters.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
If you have never experienced or believe you will never experience your beloved in this lifetime, then all you are left is an infatuation with a self created image of who they are.
Now this is really interesting to me as it points out a classic difficulty--how do I keep myself from creating a mental idol to suit myself rather than worshiping the real but invisible God?
IMHO this is why God gave us a) the Scriptures and b) other believers. There would be no easy correctives for a believer afloat on his/her own. But in my experience, any tendency I have to start mauling and reshaping my mental picture of God to suit myself--well, it gets blown to smithereens pretty often, either because of something I'm reading/hearing in the Bible, or because of something a fellow Christian says or does. That is my safety against drifting into what you call "an infatuation with a self-created image of who they are."
But as for experiencing God, there are plenty of avenues other than the classic "I got all shivery" thing. There is, as Mousethief points out, holy communion. There is baptism. There is reading the Scriptures or hearing good preaching. There is prayer and meditation, regardless of the emotional reactions you may or may not experience. A whole lot can be going on between God and me "behind the scenes" even when to my conscious experience there's nothing out there but desert.
I mentioned upthread that I'm in a desert phase right now. It sucks. And of course I keep asking to get out of it. I'd rather be having the sense of God's presence and attention, and I'm frustrated at the sense that I'm all alone right now.
But I'm not despairing or giving up, and I do not in fact believe that I am all alone now, no matter what my guts are presently reporting. That's because I've had desert spells before, including a really nasty one of about three years in my college years. By the grace of the unseen unfelt God I endured it even though it felt horribly boring and lonely, and eventually came out the other end. So I know now that these spells DO have an end sooner or later, and that the spiritual senses/emotions I may or may not have don't tell the whole story. God was not in fact absent just because I couldn't sense him. There was nothing wrong with me, either, to the best of my knowledge. This was a just a normal part of growing up in the faith--the experience of Isaiah (chapter 8):
quote:
I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.
tl;dr version: Times of spiritual dryness suck like a Dyson. But they are a normal part of growing up in Christ.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
mt--
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The parallels with God are real. There are cases where a felt sense of God's presence would set us back rather than forward spiritually speaking. In my experience these are mostly cases when I need to learn to do what's right based on my own will to obey God rather than being lured into it by spiritual/emotional inducements. God withdraws the sense of his presence (though not the reality of it) so that I can learn to walk on my own instead of clutching his two fingers like I did in spiritual toddlerhood. The goal is that I will be able to walk with God whether he's holding my hand or not at the moment. I hope I haven't totally screwed up this metaphor.
I don't think you have. It's quite similar, actually, to something in the Screwtape Letters.
The "Law of Undulation", IIRC. That it's normal for your feelings, faith, etc. to go up and down. It doesn't mean that you're bad, or not a Christian.
CSL also said--in his non-fiction, IIRC--that it's ok to wonder if you're on the right train (or bus?), as long as you don't get off of it.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Since we are apparently well into the realm of CS Lewis, and doubt, I was thinking of asking mousethief in particular what he makes of Orual's initial awareness of the gods in Till we have faces.
(I know it's a favourite book of his, which I re-read in the wake of Kelly's U.G.L.Y. thread in Heaven).
Orual belatedly knows the gods are real, on the basis of intangible evidence that goes well beyond reason and logic (the Fox could explain everything otherwise on the same evidence, but she knows just how far out of his reckoning he would be). But her experience was a long way from a "special warm feeling".
OK, it's fiction, and it doesn't correspond to anything I've ever experienced. But it makes a lot of sense to me (I think CSL probably has more to answer for in my thinking overall than any theologian).
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
It makes no sense to me at all.
I have no idea what "intangible evidence that goes well beyond reason and logic" could possibly be.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
There are things of which we are convinced, the correctness or otherwise of which cannot be settled solely by appeals to reason.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
[*]various reports in ethnographic diaries which are distinctly odd and excluded from official reports because of this e.g. lights happening, spirits becoming visible etc. There really seems to be a state where if you seek to be as close as possible to societies which do not rely on our model of rationality you start to experience things that do not fit our rationality.
All such anecdotes would fall down when it came to verification. If there were any factual truth in such ideas, then detection should be possible. If there is no means of such detection then the likelihood of their being in any way objective is extremely small. I cannot think of any advantages in putting aside modern scholarship, science and medicine in favour of believing in ghosts etc etc.
Yes, that is actually the problem and why the official write-up they do not occur but only in the unofficial (ethnographers keep diaries which are technically highly private (same level as a confessional) but some have been printed usually after the ethnographer's death, this is how we know. Evans-Pritchard has at least one such account). Rather troubling when this is a consistent behaviour. The requirement for verification has meant that a significant body of experience is ruled out from exploration by science and therefore can not be open to scientific rational.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
The trouble with stuff like that is that you open the floodgates to all experiences. My local shaman is very eloquent when talking about power animals - so should I demand some substantial verification, or should I be content with a nice subjective feeling about it, i.e. I like it? I suppose it doesn't matter really, as long as she doesn't start telling me that power animals ought to be important to me.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Well, use your critical faculties do not use the absolute denial or absolute acceptance. It is often quite useful to actually try and step into the perspective someone is inhabiting at that time. Some of these may be oddball; many will, however, have an internal coherency within the system of thinking.
You then have to decide whether their system causes them (they are a product of their system or a re-interpretation of things we understand differently), our system blinds us to them (they exist but our way of thinks means we discount them) or they are entirely illusory. My take is all three categories exist but our habit of discounting them because they do not meet the requirements of scientific data means we cannot determine between them.
By the way, popular culture often maligns them as malicious when there is no evidence for this. My take would be is most of this phenomena have zilch interest in humans either benign or malign.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I just take a friendly interest in stuff like that. I don't really care if it's 'true' or not, it obviously responds to a need. As I said, so long as nobody demands my agreement or lectures me.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
There are things of which we are convinced, the correctness or otherwise of which cannot be settled solely by appeals to reason.
My acceptance of Jesus seems to fit that bill, mediated by God the Holy Spirit, but I think we abandon reason too soon, that we don't stretch the paradigm of it enough. I'm happy for a reductionist, materialist critique of my acceptance of Jesus to be made, would value one. I'd do it for myself I'm sure, given three years of psychoanalysis. It couldn't remove the external Jesus story, which is as real as evolution, the history of World War II or quantum mechanics. The Jesus story stands appeal to reason.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
The Jesus story stands appeal to reason.
Yes, but I think there's more than reason alone going on in the life of a Christian, by virtue of the presence of the Spirit.
(Which does not equal heart strangely warmed, being caught up to the seventh heaven, falling on the floor, barking like chickens, or even Pascal's gripping Feu (fire), etc.).
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And "there is no God it's all me" or "all human" is as much a faith position as the opposite.
I know what you mean of course, but there is no equating the two. There are billions of years of evidence for life and for the existence of we evolved humans, but only conjecture for God. The latter requires 100% faith, the former as near to 0% faith as makes no difference, I think
We are in complete agreement SusanDoris. No faith is necessary to realise that existence needs no further explanation, no faith whatsoever. It explains itself in that it is. If you want to flesh it out it doesn't get any better than Alan Guth's cosmology.
If eternal, infinite stuff can only exist because God wills it pre-eternally, trans-infinitely that just pushes what is, back one self-existent entity, but something has to self-exist.
I had a look at some info about Alan guth and his cosmology, which seems to be fairly conventional. You start the next sentence with ‘if’, always a bit of a stumbling block! And then say that something ‘has to self-exist. You may be right, but I’ll stick to I don’t know the answer.
I think I am probably missing something, since I think it is unlikely that we are in complete agreement. ![[Smile]](smile.gif) However, it is a harmonious thought in the meantime. Thank you for post.
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Posts: 3083 | From: UK | Registered: May 2007
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Since we are apparently well into the realm of CS Lewis, and doubt, I was thinking of asking mousethief in particular what he makes of Orual's initial awareness of the gods in Till we have faces.
(I know it's a favourite book of his, which I re-read in the wake of Kelly's U.G.L.Y. thread in Heaven).
Orual belatedly knows the gods are real, on the basis of intangible evidence that goes well beyond reason and logic (the Fox could explain everything otherwise on the same evidence, but she knows just how far out of his reckoning he would be). But her experience was a long way from a "special warm feeling".
OK, it's fiction, and it doesn't correspond to anything I've ever experienced. But it makes a lot of sense to me (I think CSL probably has more to answer for in my thinking overall than any theologian).
It's been a while since I read this, but if I recall correctly, she had rather a negative experience of the gods. I find that entirely plausible and can parallel it (well, not with the real God!) from my own life.
Not all spiritual experiences are pleasant. Some say "get the hell out of here."
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And "there is no God it's all me" or "all human" is as much a faith position as the opposite.
I know what you mean of course, but there is no equating the two. There are billions of years of evidence for life and for the existence of we evolved humans, but only conjecture for God. The latter requires 100% faith, the former as near to 0% faith as makes no difference, I think
We are in complete agreement SusanDoris. No faith is necessary to realise that existence needs no further explanation, no faith whatsoever. It explains itself in that it is. If you want to flesh it out it doesn't get any better than Alan Guth's cosmology.
If eternal, infinite stuff can only exist because God wills it pre-eternally, trans-infinitely that just pushes what is, back one self-existent entity, but something has to self-exist.
I had a look at some info about Alan guth and his cosmology, which seems to be fairly conventional. You start the next sentence with ‘if’, always a bit of a stumbling block! And then say that something ‘has to self-exist. You may be right, but I’ll stick to I don’t know the answer.
I think I am probably missing something, since I think it is unlikely that we are in complete agreement. However, it is a harmonious thought in the meantime. Thank you for post.
There's no may about it. If anything exists something always has existed. Here we are. Therefore ... Because it can. It either can because that's the opposite of null, not can't. There can be null or something. So there is.
Or it can because it can't of itself, unlike the eternal aging infinite growing physicalist cosmos above, but someone thinks it.
There is no evidence of that whatsoever.
Apart from Jesus.
And the evidence of elegance. The argument that stuff exists because it can, that a null is the ultimate vacuum that mathematical or other philosophical or some ineffable non thinking nature abhors, feels ... meaningless to the point of ... silly. Bad taste. Arbitrary. At best whimsical.
Whereas eternal infinite creation in the mind of an ineffable creator has ... elegance. Grandeur. The promise of transcendence. The certainty of immanence.
The God revealed in Christ is peerless. The ultimate in awesome. Is the best story there can be.
Saying that stuff exists meaninglessly, of itself, because it can, it might as well instead of null, 50:50 is a paltry 'explanation'.
And that's all you've got.
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It makes no sense to me at all.
I have no idea what "intangible evidence that goes well beyond reason and logic" could possibly be.
God does not make sense, totally belong our comprehension, and I would imagine that direct experience with the One would only confirm that. Reading Merton this morning he makes that point that in 'knowing' God we realise that we know nothing, for God is not a 'thing' that can be known even as we are known.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Since we are apparently well into the realm of CS Lewis, and doubt, I was thinking of asking mousethief in particular what he makes of Orual's initial awareness of the gods in Till we have faces.
(I know it's a favourite book of his, which I re-read in the wake of Kelly's U.G.L.Y. thread in Heaven).
Orual belatedly knows the gods are real, on the basis of intangible evidence that goes well beyond reason and logic (the Fox could explain everything otherwise on the same evidence, but she knows just how far out of his reckoning he would be). But her experience was a long way from a "special warm feeling".
OK, it's fiction, and it doesn't correspond to anything I've ever experienced. But it makes a lot of sense to me (I think CSL probably has more to answer for in my thinking overall than any theologian).
I'm not sure (a) which point in the book you're referring to, or (b) what exactly you're asking me about it. As for (a), can you point me to a chapter? And maybe the first sentence of the paragraph where your passage (the one you're asking about) starts?
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
In chapter XII, a few pages in, Orual first catches a glimpse of the god's house - which she later doubts.
Indeed, in chapter XIII, she finds the Fox can explain away all she relates to that point in the story by wholly rational explanations (basically, that Psyche is the prisoner of some outlaw living in the wilds), while her trusted servant Bardia is convinced of the existence of the gods. She cannot decide between them in the absence of her own experience.
Then in chapter XV Orual is confronted by the god and all doubt vanishes. The chapter concludes quote:
now that I'd proved for certain that the gods are and that they hated me
A few pages on in chapter XVI, she tries as best she can to explain her experience to the Fox - within limits: quote:
There was no use in telling him about the god; he would have thought I had been mad or dreaming
The inability of argument, or belief devoid of any experience at all, to have the final say in Orual's journey resonates with me; I suppose my question is, does it not with you?
And to everyone who hasn't read Till we have faces, rush out and buy it now.
[ 28. October 2016, 06:48: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It makes no sense to me at all.
I have no idea what "intangible evidence that goes well beyond reason and logic" could possibly be.
God does not make sense, totally belong our comprehension, and I would imagine that direct experience with the One would only confirm that. Reading Merton this morning he makes that point that in 'knowing' God we realise that we know nothing, for God is not a 'thing' that can be known even as we are known.
I love Merton and the genius who penned The Cloud of Unknowing. If God chose to give me a direct experience of Himself in this life, it would have to be interactive, conversational, real not immersive like a dream or virtual reality game. With me sitting in my underwear on my laptop with BBC 24 on TV. Some of the prophets, Peter, Paul had such. Nobody else.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
The inability of argument, or belief devoid of any experience at all, to have the final say in Orual's journey resonates with me; I suppose my question is, does it not with you?
Not immediately upon reading this, because I've never seen the god. What does resonate is the futility of trying to argue religion with people who have already made their mind up that nothing beyond the five senses exists. You get tied up in so many circular arguments and straw men it's not worth it.
quote:
And to everyone who hasn't read Till we have faces, rush out and buy it now.
On this we agree 100%.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Resurrecting this thread to say that yesterday, Mrs Eutychus discussed this somewhat with an Orthodox priest who is part of the same ecumenical working group as her.
He said that the concept of antimony, or paradox, was central in Orthodoxy (for example Jesus being fully man AND fully God) and that it was important within Orthodoxy not simply to mentally assent to any such two paradoxical ideas but to experience the antimony.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
How exactly, one wonders, does one experience the two natures of Christ? Asking for a friend.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Vicariously in the accounts of His transcendent acts whilst human? The epitome for me above all being the woman caught in adultery. Rendering in to Caesar. Cana. Lazarus. The woman at the well. The Syro-Phoenician woman and her demon possessed child. The feedings. The eyeless guy who needed TWO healings. Walking on water: By the (Spirit mediated) hearing of the word?
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Those seem to be, from the majority point of view of this thread, precisely not experiential. I've read Bible passages. All of them, actually, but that is not the same thing as a personal experience in the way it has been defined here. If receiving the very body and blood of Christ doesn't count, then surely reading a book, even THE Book, is not enough.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Agreed and that's all we have. What more could we possibly need? What could possibly help?
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If receiving the very body and blood of Christ doesn't count
My insight here is that perhaps Orthodoxy in particular views this experience as being largely aided/fuelled by externals; all the various liturgical flamboyancy, icons, etc., whereas nonconformists tend to identify it as something internal. Each may look paltry to the other.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If receiving the very body and blood of Christ doesn't count
My insight here is that perhaps Orthodoxy in particular views this experience as being largely aided/fuelled by externals; all the various liturgical flamboyancy, icons, etc., whereas nonconformists tend to identify it as something internal. Each may look paltry to the other.
No. What an odd thing to say. Orthodoxy views this experience as being fuelled by the Holy Spirit. I have this feeling that non-Os, particularly low-church non-Os, look at Orthodoxy and what they see are bells and smells and icons and robes and fancy music, and think that's what matters to us the most. Because it's most obvious, I suppose. But you could lose all those things and still have an Orthodox service, and it would still mean exactly the same thing, and effect exactly the same thing(s) in the participants (if any, YMMV).
The Eucharist is about God, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, changing bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, and the faithful communing with God by partaking of this feast.
What others think about the Eucharist is for them to say.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Agreed and that's all we have. What more could we possibly need? What could possibly help?
May I refer you to the words of Eutychus:
quote:
... a subjective sense of "knowing" that goes beyond logic and reasoning alone.
And again...
quote:
What is important for a Christian, in my view, is that belief in the Holy Spirit should make sense and, ultimately, have its root in some experiential knowledge on the part of the believer.
So apparently, dear Martin, there is something more we need. How much it helps, I dunno. It's never helped me a tinker's damn.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
How do you cope mousethief?! How do I?!? How do we?!?!? What's to be done for us second class Christians?!?!?!?!?
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So apparently, dear Martin, there is something more we need.
I never said that you "needed" anything.
And Martin60, I'll thank you for not taking this misrepresentation at face value.
I offered my perspective much as mousethief, you often offer Orthodox perspectives - and would be the first to react if those were taken by others as you imposing requirements on them.
The priest Mrs Eutychus talked to - not to "win" any argument here but out of a genuine interest in the subject - spoke in precisely the same terms as me of a "subjective sense of knowing".
I'd be interested to know what your own priest's take is on this idea of antimony being something that needs to be experienced and that this is a central part of Orthodox piety.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Eutychus. The magic word is 'apparently'. I don't see any misrepresentation. There is an implication that I am inferring, especially based on mousethief's second quote.
Jungian "knowing" I can cope with. But "experiential knowledge on the part of the believer" beyond hearing the word and being affected by it?
If God does not exist, I'm still affected by it. Even if He does, which of course He does, a good shrink could easily come up with a watertight psychological reason why I believe. I must research that mustn't I! And regardless of how perfect the shrink's story, I'd still believe. That IS a work of the Spirit orthodoxly. But the orthodoxy of the earliest Christian, New Testament messianic and pneumatological prophetic hermeneutic is invalid, so what else is? And I'll still believe. So will mousethief. So will you.
[ 04. November 2016, 12:01: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Eutychus. The magic word is 'apparently'. I don't see any misrepresentation.
The misrepresentation is the unqualified "we need".
quote:
Jungian "knowing" I can cope with.
Can you explain what you mean by that?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Knowing without being able to explain why. Strong intuition. Bias.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I can't slip a wafer of Bible-thin paper between what I'm saying and what you're saying, then.
From what I understand mousethief to be saying, he wouldn't go so far as what you're calling Jungian knowing, but that's for him to say.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Aye Eutychus. I am the bridge of this unholy trinity.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I'd be interested to know what your own priest's take is on this idea of antimony being something that needs to be experienced and that this is a central part of Orthodox piety.
I doubt I understand what you're saying well enough to convey it to someone else, particularly when I quote you, and you say I'm taking you wrong.
So let me see if I've got it straight yet. It's important for Christians to have "experiential knowledge" but it's not necessary. Have I got you now? Because that's the thing I just quoted ("important") and what you just said ("not necessary"). Or will you deconstruct your own words even further?
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
The bit you are constantly missing is that I was expressing my view alone; what I personally thought; and that I explicitly stated that others' mileage might vary.
Despite which you managed to interpret my words as imposing my take on everybody else here, and continue to do so.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
You don't seem to understand how language works. If you say "It's important that a Christian do X," you are NOT just speaking for and about yourself. If you said "It's important that I do X," then you are speaking about yourself. If you say "a Christian" then unless you are in the habit of referring to yourself in the third person in this manner, you are talking about people other than yourself.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
The full text of that part of my original post reads as follows, emphasis mine:
quote:
What is important for a Christian, in my view, is that belief in the Holy Spirit should make sense and, ultimately, have its root in some experiential knowledge on the part of the believer.
In my own experience, this is not necessarily spectacular, but it does prove to be pretty unbudgeable even in the face of doubt. Others' mileage may vary
Nowhere have I said "it is important that a Christian do X".
I expressed my personal view that Christianity involved some experiential knowledge, made it clear that was my view and not some sort of ex cathedra statement, went on to relate my own experience, and made it clear that others might not share this experience.
I'm not trying to dictate what's important, or necessary, or unnecessary, for you or for anyone else, and I'm tired of you repeatedly implying I have done instead of continuing with the conversation. I'm trying to have an exchange of views, not convert you to mine.
If you persist in taking offence at that, take it to Hell, but don't count on me to show up there in response.
I'd much rather you told us about your take on Martin's "Jungian knowing", for instance.
[ 05. November 2016, 22:12: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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