A Statement To Be Evaluated

There is a third option that I can come up with, there may be more yet. What about the land of radical pragmatic empiricsm, where our individual conception of reality is the mutable sum of the concrete experience and knowledge gained added to belief in that which cannot be proven (i.e. whatever works for you is, for you, "Truth").

 

well, jumbo, that is my point- if it is not a being with motivations and intentions it is not technically a deity. A deity would necessarily be a manifestation of divinity in some communicable form, not divinity itself, or at least that was the sense in which i was trying to imply it. Can a deity be trusted by beings inferior to it, in power? an interesting question. we must of course be pawns for such a being. but nothing more? is it wise to swear allegiance to such a being, let alone our eternal "soul", whatever that be? not to mention that any antithetical being that might be at least playing the pretense of enemy, the feared scapegoat, would be equally as untrustworthy. The possibilities here are endless. I guess it comes down to what you are willing to accept. I accept nothing. In doing so, am i helping to leave the possibilities open, despite the narrow avenues i must travel in my flesh? In accepting any one ideology over all others, are others limiting the possibilities? A kno1 is saying, it seems to me we may be the sum of many aspects of mind. One cannot simply say "it is all illusion and perception" but anyone viewing it from conscious perception yet consulting others pov's and finding such disagreement cannot think it all merely empirical. well, they can think whatever they choose, but...

we are starting to get to something here. please keep on.

much love

 

Perhaps we are unable to determine a single answer to the "Deity" problem BECAUSE we have not taken polytheism into account as a serious theological theory.

I don't mean to throw a wrench into the works here, but polytheism doesn't fall into the trap of having every deity claiming to be "The Creator." It simply recognizes that there are many forces at work in the universe and that we human beings cannot easily wrap our minds around the concept of a single deity when it seems so obvious that these forces work in different ways which to our minds are often contradictory.

We are trying to see the forest as a whole and forgetting that it is made up of trees. We recognize that the universe is a highly complex system made up of inter-related systems. Polytheists (at least modern ones) give each system a mask and a name and ascribe to it certain "personality traits" which describe it's relationship within the whole.

There are several distinct archetypes which can be seen at work both as forces within the universe and as aspects of human personality. Polytheists recognize a mirrored structure between the outside (physical) and the inside (psychological) forces.

Such a system often breaks down into irrational nonsense, if overanalyzed, of course, but then, so does every other belief system. That is the existential conundrum. Yet is it another view of the universe, a different window from which to see the workings of reality, and as such it shouldn't be discarded outright. There may be something to learn from this.

 

With polytheism, so it seems to me, the trust issue is compounded exponentially. it also begs the question, what is a god, really? hm? just a being superior in power. but in compassion? sounds like tyrrany to me, or if not outright tyrrany, too much opportunity for it. oh, i understand polytheism quite well, but i will leave that, an enigma.

much love

 

Yes it does. Have we given enough time to this question? What is a god, REALLY?

Can anyone define "deity" to everyone else's satisfation? I doubt it. Again, we are left with a concept which trancends our ability to comprehend. Like Plato's "Forms," we are discussing a thing without any real clue as to what that thing is. Why do we concern ourselves with this?

It cannot be observed directly, tested, proven, etc. "Deity" is a matter of faith alone. The existence or non-existence of such a trancendent concept is a matter which will not be solved this side of the grave. Period.

Which brings us back to pragmatic empiricism, eh?

 

Have you noticed that, the more deities there are in a religion, the more like humans they are? Pretty strange. If there is one god, he is absolute in all aspects (absolute love, everything good, sometimes everything evil also). If there are many, they are limited in who they are and what they can do.

 

well, now, kno1, if a god is just a being superior in power to a human being, than many gods may have existed, and yet all of them may have died. or maybe they were just extraordinary human beings. doesn't hercules strike you as the typical big dumb jock? strong, maybe with a big heart, fearsome to other men. they say we are larger as a race now than we once were... a man in those times that was six and a half feet and built like a brick shithouse may very well have been considered half a god... a guy the size of shaq, a giant, you know?

another thing that has crossed my mind is the amount of psychadelic hallucinagens people may have been unwittingly ingesting those days, via mold and fungi- what kind of bush was burning, when moses heard it talk? in all seriousness, lsd is just a concentrated form of ergot, a mold that grows on rye bread(i think it's rye). some have attributed the witch trial paranoia to that, why not the hebrew slaves... their myths are quite plainly at least partially rehashed from their egyptian masters and adapted to their own hopes and dreams... would they have understood then the psychoactive properties of certain mushrooms, or certain cactus buttons? eh? if i had a dime for every sykonaut that has told me about their conversations with "god"(or the "devil", or both) while on one or another drug, i would be quite well-off. and everyone of those were raised in a backround related to a certain monotheistic dogma, so they were pre-disposed to that. I'll go so far as to say programmed with it from birth. conscious hallucinations of subconsciously implanted ideological thought processes, catalyzed by the substance ingested?

and sky, you make an interesting point. that is kind of where a concept like jung's archetypes might come into play, though in a more loosely interpreted manner... one must consider as well the famed "mysteries". to me it seems quite obvious that these were literally programs meant to brainwash people. as to the intent of the initiators i will not venture, for that gets hairy, but if one studies what we know about the mysteries of ancient egypt, greece, freemasonry, the ismaelis, and countless others there are far too many striking similarities not to see a formula, a pattern, simply ebing adapted to different cultures... but again, here we are met with ambiguous origins. where, and more importantly, why did it begin?

and on pragmatic empiricism... there are far too many antithetical events to which i have been a party, and a vehemently skeptical one at that, to accept that completely. but they can be rationalized... yet in so many cases, the rationalizations are more fantastically improbable! we're stepping in shit now... lol.

much love

 

A pattern exists indeed, but why assume it has been adapted by people? You mentioned Jung's archetypes, and they manifest themselves very strongly in almost all religions, especially those that are very primitive (here I don't meen simple or inferior, but based on feeling rather than thinking).

 

death being a ceasation of tangable function, it is meaningless to say that anything nontangable ever does.

now i have no problem with the possible, even probable existence of nontangable forces and beings, there is certainly no natural requirement for them to not exist. what i seriously doubt is that they or their existence makes anything, even neccessarily themselves infallable, and likewise that anything in its right mind would ever have the slightest desire to be worsipped, whatever its form or power.
the comonality of archtypes neither proves nor disproves anything. though it is highly suggestive that a human mind works like a human mind, as much in one culture, time, place, way of life, and so on, as another.
now it does seems to me that the irrational nontangable beings with which priesthoods have always threatened us, must be either pretty rare or not especialy powerful, for us to have gone on existing as long as we have, that or our existence has up till now gone undetected by them.
on the other hand there is absolutely nothing to rule out the possibility of one or more nontangable beings, and possibly at least one of them unimaginably powerful, loveing us and wishing us well, whatever else it may or may not have created and or be.
it is also of course perfectly possible that everything anyone has ever believed may be in some way or sense at least partialy true, and just as possible that none of it bears the slightest resemblence to whatever nontangable reality may actualy be.
whatever may turn out to be the case with that, what seems to me far more likely then not, is that whatever actualy is, will turn out to be a whole lot wierder, then anyone has ever immagined.
wierder, but for anything to be any scarrier then we are capable of scaring ourselves would have to go a good bit of a ways.
so my heart goes out to the love i feel from what i don't know when i don't attempt to give names to it.

 

""The major failing of all religion lies in the attempt of those who interpret it to set something outside of existance that they may revere as its source. Yet all of this is, quite plainly, in and of it"self". If one can accept this, there is no reason to inflict suffering, but to refrain in "self" interest.""



In other words faith

 

It suddenly occurs to me that I have been espousing pragmatic empiricism on this thread (and in a few on the old forums) with only the most cursory explanation of what it is or how it operates. Rather than post a long explanation/definition of it on this post I would like to turn your attention to a lecture delivered by William James, the greatest philosopher born in the United States and, incidentally, the founder of modern cognitive theory.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/james.htm

 

i tend to think archetypes are evolved from the first practical needs of developing humanity, and that our unwillingness to give up the ones that are now less (or ir)relevant to our current way of living reeks of what many people commonly refer to as addiction... not sure just where i am going with that, but i feel something...

much love

 

no. not just "faith", but "faith in what?" this will lead me into know1's pragmatic empriricism which i think dovetails nicely with themnax's comments, as well as the sidebar about archetypes mentioned above...

this is how pragmatic empiricism seems to me: evolution through the juxtaposition of revolution. i can't help but think of soundwaves, phase cancellation. what is rendered null and what is positively reinforced? does the result harmonize with our ultimate aims? indeed, what are our ultimate aims? is it "pragmatic" for us to externalize the source of existance, and therefore ultimately externalize accountability for our existance via hierarchal belief systems? Yes, you can say, god gave us the free will.... to choose to obey him or refute him, which will have one of these two outcomes: destruction or preservation. But immediately accountability for the ultimate outcome is shifted back away from us, and we are left with a mere ultimatum. This seems far less than pragmatic. If our evolution is resultant of the juxtapositions of the revolutions of our thoughts and deeds, than indeed it is barbaric, for we are shaping a world where possibility is limited. We are eschewing any possible failsafe against our annihilation. Where we have supposed to save ourselves from despair, we have relinquished any hope.

we have set the stage to cancel ourselves out.

that's my further contribution. care to add?

much love

 

Well, you can't just give up archetypes. Perhaps that's the reason why religion has always been and will probably always be a most important part of the human society...

 

i am suggesting transformation, not utter annihilation. though those things can be synonomous...

much love

 

I think I see where it is you are coming from. So it is the idea of an ultimatum which puts you off religion, Osiris, is that the case? “Believe or be damned,” just pisses you off. Makes you want to say “F*ck it, then, I guess I’m damned!” Well… I guess I can see your point there. That is tyranny, and I must admit to a certain “live free or die” streak which runs through my veins as well. I’m sure that there are many others who feel that way. What I gather from this line for reasoning is that (and I may be completely off base here) you see pragmatism as a sort of cowardice, then.

I, on the other hand, feel no such ultimatum. I feel purpose. When I look upon the universe it is with wonder at it’s beauty, not confusion at the meaninglessness of it all. My pragmatism is a philosophy of adaptation not as a response to any perceived threat, but an adaptation of my empirical understanding of the universe to the undeniable feeling of beauty and purpose and love which I cannot rationally or logically explain. I refuse to believe that feeling this way makes me weak or insane so I must believe that it comes from something else... my higher power(s).

I am not rendering up responsibility for my life or accountability for my actions, rather I am ascribing a stronger meaning to the choices that I make. I am an artist. My life is an art work. This universe is a cooperative art work, of which I am a part. A series of layered improvisations of incredible complexity and beauty which I do not claim to understand entirely, but with a power which I can feel and see and touch every time I learn something new. Every moment I am reborn from the experiences of the previous moment. And it is good.

Does that make any sense?

 

Dear Know1nozme,

Your thoughts are wonderful, you are a charming philosopher.
You are so rich in your analytical thoughts and writing !
Wish you all the best, may God fill you up with everything
that you wish.

With lots of love..........Kumar.

 

"I am not rendering up responsibility for my life or accountability for my actions, rather I am ascribing a stronger meaning to the choices that I make. I am an artist. My life is an art work."
-know1

this is exactly how i feel. and you are off-base in your thinking that i have a problem with this pragmatism. i do not consider it cowardly in the least bit. seems very constructive, indeed. it is the empiricism part of which i am not so sure.

you see, i have come to believe(and am admittedly still skeptical of my own beliefs) that reality is malleable and amorphous, and is shaped by both random interactions of momentous causes and by the convictions of the conscious wills that have become existant as a result of those interactions. this all seems very paradoxical and will most likely aggravate both your empiricism and your pragmatism, but from this it must follow that in order for us to both preserve the possibility for change, and therefore the very stability of our existance, and for us to be able to transcend the inherent tyrrany of ideological hierarchies, someone must stand and take the beating that comes form saying "fuck that bullshit." someone must fuel the engine of revolution that drives the machine of evolution.

so therefore, in order for us to evolve to a better existance, some of us must take it upon ourselves to suffer for the greater good. believe me when i say i hate to admit this, but it seems unalienably true to me, from my experience as a spirit manifesting in many forms. what i am getting at is that it is all good for people to sit around and absolve their personal suffering in the absorbtion into "god", but it does not seem to me that this takes suffering away.

it seems to me, that this is only ignorance of suffering in general, a lack of compassion for our fellow human beings. it seems to me that despite how so many like to say "it will all be just fine, we die anyway, it's all part of god's plan, everything will turn out fine in the end," and any other number of comforting moral platitudes, no matter how pragmatic they may be to our apparent empirical needs, that if there is no beginning or end, if there is no almighty loving creator, and we truly are constantly shaping our own destiny, than, though this may be comforting for the individual that can disconnect themselves from it all, this does not stop children from starving, people from being violated, tyrants from assuming control of that collective destiny, and someone has to at least defy these things in thought, has to give up that physical body and mental well-being that you all seem to think is so meaningless anyway for the cause of the greater good. and from experience, i know it is a thankless job, and i expect no gratitude, but for the sake of the transformation of the "universe", "reality", "existance", "divinity" or whatever you want to call it, to something more than a bunch of passified, brainwashed animals being lead mindlessly to utter annihilation, i stand here, now, and forever give my energy, of which this mortal body is indeed a mere representation, to this:

FUCK IDEOLOGY.

sincerely,
many blessings, much love, healing vibrations

 

and mind you, if you read actual hostility in any of the above statement, than you cannot feel the utter passion of the love of my self-sacrifice. i have said this before: i am not looking for converts, for this would indeed be counterproductive to my goal. i am not looking even to change your mind. keep doing what you are doing. keep believing what you are believing. walk your path. you will inevitably see what this means, and through your own ministrations.

metaphilosophical engineer,
signing off.

much love

 

Kumar, thank you for your kind affirmations. Strange, but as I wrote my last post, I felt that I would be hearing form you soon.

Osirs, I do understand what it is that you are communicating, I think. Allow me to introduce you to another voice/mask/higher power whose art sometimes speaks to/through me:

I am Prometheus, chained to a rock - with foreknowledge of what is to come, but powerless to do anything about it. Daily an eagle tears out my liver, causing me great pain and removing my ability to filter out all of the poisons which seek to invade me; and although I am immortal and my liver will regenerate each night, the poison remains.



I fear that through the poisons, I am being subverted. I am inundated with the poisonous fear of what I see before me, of my own powerlessness to stop it, of the thoughts which invade me and tell me that when I do make the effort I will only make things worse for myself and for those whom I love. That although I carry in my head a possible thesis/antithesis/synthesis to that which causes my pain, that it will be turned to serve the purposes of tyrants. The dialectical process is fraught with dangers. Is there a difference between the poison which courses through my body and the chains which bind me to this rock? Sometimes I wonder…



Such is the tragedy of Prometheus, bound.


Make of that what you will. I am among those who must put a mask and a name upon those forces which affect my life and my perspective on reality. In the last few years, the symbols surrounding the plight of Prometheus have been particularly tangible for me. Despite the pain I often feel, though, it is the beauty... the love (with the help of voices like Kumar's) which keeps me going and gives me hope. Occasionally, the chains dissolve - if only for an instant - and I know why I must continue.