Does God Exist?

We can't allow ourselves to know we are God. People would go absolutely batshit with power and theories on what it all means. People would start sacrificing each other. The people who think everything is all about power would leave the rest of us questioning if this wasn't the case. I don't know if the "unholy world" truly matters. Just let it be, I say. Careful not to wake the baby.

 

I am responding to your request, not preaching to the choir. Others are reading what is written and I think you miss our common thrust because you think I am pointing out a personal error on your part. Sorry for embellishing your position with the word inconsiderate, I mean only to consider more in terms of basic human experience rather than terms abstract or propositional. I am dissembling points of contention, knee jerk reactions on both sides, that we may get to the heart of the matter.

I don't see any fundies in this thread so who are you trying to reach?

One issue that you may not consider or that you have not expressed is whether there is any usefulness at all to myth. Ancient myth constitutes current vernacular of the time, so the experiential substance of myth is illumined by considering or translating with current vernacular or current modern understanding. Anthropomorphic creator god becomes the way energy works in relation to modern understanding. It is the insistence on preserving to the letter archaic terms that limits evolutionary/revolutionary understanding of the subject.

As for who I have over for dinner my invitation is open to anyone and my cooking has a way of soothing the savage.

There is the question of how do we relate to these things going forward. Is war or contention with ignorance the way out of ignorance? I think that a return to first premises is in order. A deeply construed archaic revival. We are all equal under the sun or in a more mythic vernacular we are all one in the sonship/sun ship alla carl sagans stardust.

I said there were no fundies participating but I neglect to point out that fundamentalist is the standard that all religion should ultimately compared to according to relaxxx so that is in fact a fundamentalists premise.

 

Knowing doesn't require the formulation of theories or any kind of speculation. To gain knowledge is a process of becoming familiar. Looking, tasting, and asking questions.

So what you have posited here is the fear of god. If god get loose the world will go to hell in a hand basket. The effect of the perspective is distrust of the power of your own mind and to denigrate it as though you needed to be suspicious of it.,

 

Yeah you're right. If everyone were told they were God everything would be swell.

 

I don't suggest that being told something is a remedy for anything. i suggest knowing or becoming familiar makes things easier to handle or manipulate in an effective way.
If you are the author of your own experience then you are the problem, the fear of god, but you are also the solution or genuine reward of god as well.

 

do you mean that any truth will set one free kind of thing there, thedope, in your last statement?

 

That is a good question and my brief answer is yes but I would expound by saying as long as it is true. Truth is relative but truth is only real to true terms and those are same, different, or purposeful. Is it the same, if yes than that is a truth about it. If it is not the same it is different and that is an additional truth about it. The next degree of truth is does it have a purpose and what is it. Is a tooth brush for brushing teeth, yes that is a true purpose. Can a toothbrush be used for things other than brushing teeth, yes, that is truthfully a use a toothbrush can be put to. If you say a blue toothbrush is not as useful as a yellow toothbrush you wouldn't be making a truthful statement because a toothbrush is the same as a toothbrush.Such a claim is a qualifying statement about toothbrushes not a truthful one. You might say we can find different uses or appeals in the color of a toothbrush as color is the difference between the two.

 

This reminds me of times I've read and heard the suggestion that jesus (or the person that a jesus myth was based on) listened to, or even studied with philosophers and other wise people of other cultures - possibly from far east and India.

Soma was a drink used for vedic ritual that some say contained entheogens. The Greek word for body is só̱ma (σώμα).

I used to think it was coincidence, but who knows. It's interesting to think about.

 

The anthropological evidence is that the spirit world was known or conceived through the shamanic relationship with plants. The burning of incense is an example or moses heard the voice of god emanate from a burning bush. Shoot, I toke up all the time. This in association with the observation of celestial objects is responsible for all the movement of science and religion through the lives of men and the power they have represented in the past and in the future. Note that all what we call advanced civilizations have calendars and those are based on astronomical observations. The priestly or powerful class worked in concert with technical facility and psychic agility. Today we have technical facility but agonize psychically. Our greatest technological advancement is the education of writing and ciphering in bringing elitist knowledge onto the sphere of knowing in common. In this modern age we have the internet, a mechanical version of the biological internet call the funghi. Funghi breath in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide as animals do and form a mycelial mat in the substrates of the planet that confer information across species lines in the form of symbiotic or mychorizal relationships with plants. Mushrooms have a reproductive relationship with humans in that they tend to follow human beings around and proliferate because of human disturbance. Certain species of mushrooms now are being found to have profound implications for the health of human beings and the health of the planet.

The suppression of spiritual experience for the sake of adherence to standardized codes has washed our recent memory of these things but eat the flesh of the gods and it will come back to you.

My personal spiritual model is universally, that is earthwise as well as celestially, gaian and that we are specifically endowed in that scheme.

 

This dynamic of how a knowledgeable elite exerts power over a less informed populace is dramatically emphasized in a scene from a popular movie called apocalypto.
You can see the smug private glances among the elite as they anticipate the effect of the solar eclipse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ULxjgF58dM

 

the big question, the REAL question, ISN'T whether there is a god, or how many of them can dance on the head of a pin,
but how are WE going to STOP screwing everything up for each other (and incidentally every other thing that shares this planet we live on)

and the one thing i know the answer to THAT isn't, is to invent yet another excuse for doing so, nor to continue killing each other over the excuses we already have.

 

Have to agree with you there. Our previous learning is demonstrably suspect and a real overhaul is required because the prognosis for the continuation of current efforts is more environmental degradation. To have a future different from the past requires a different choice in the present. The excuse of the common man for continuing his behavior in these times is economic necessity without appreciating the fact that we are cutting the earth from under our feet. Absolute reverence for our surroundings might be a helpful trick in altering our behavior.

don't litter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM

 

Sorry about that, seriously. I was just trying to make a point that your so called myths are actually causing a lot of trouble in Europe.

and It's not just a few Muslims either, not by a long shot.

https://youtu.be/psZBaJU_Cvo

There is no easy solution. That ship has long sailed. The fact is that Islam has declaired war on western culture decades ago why we remain completely delusional and oblivious to the dangers of their religion. We will watch Europe fall for their naivety in political correctness and freedom of religion. By the time our society realizes that religion is a mental illness and supporting freedom of religion is tantamount to supporting freedom of viruses and diseases, we will be powerless to do anything about it. Integration is a joke, a poor assumption that they will integrate and our culture will diffuse their core religious directives, a false assumption that will be the end of us. They will burn every trace of our history off the face of the planet. Have satanists taken out any New York buildings yet?

Honestly, out of the main religious defenders I sort of figured you as having 'the most change in your pockets' sortta speak, while thedope's pockets being completely empty and asmo somewhere in between. The video he posted about Alan Watts is about the smartest thing he's never said and got me thinking, maybe I've got you guys in reverse order. I think I'll even go back and give him a like.

 

Don't be such a pessimist. History isn't over yet, and if you look back on it, I think you'll find some encouraging developments. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it seemed that Catholics and Protestants were locked in a struggle of mutual annihilation, for how could they ever reconcile their differences and live together peacefully? It would be a violation of conscience and the clear tenets of their religions. Yet today they seem to be able to get along, even in Ireland. One big reason is that they learned the hard way that peace is to their mutual advantage. More recently, we have the astonishing collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of China. Could anyone in the days of Mao and his "cultural revolution" have imagined that we'd have Marxist millionaires and a "Communism" that is state capitalism by another name? Marx and Mao are probably spinning in their graves. Not that we're out of the woods, by any means, but our problems with Russia and China are now those of more traditional international geopolitics. Despite the dire warnings of Senator Joe McCarthy, cooler heads prevailed and we cut short the witch hunt for Communists under the bed.

More interesting to me than the marchers in the UK depicted in your video is the video itself. Who made it? Why was it made? if we knew that, would we be more afraid of the cinematographers than of the marchers? The United States fought a prolonged and useless war to make Iraq safe for the Iranians, after Cheney and his neo-cons skillfully exploited such fears to whip up public hysteria. The 911 terrorists were Saudis, and we invaded Iraq. Does that make sense? Who, for that matter, are the demonstrators? Who organized them? Who led them? Were they paid?. Some Middle Eastern countries have a kind of "rent-a-mob" industry that turns out for events where the media is present. Demonstrations have agendas, as do people who put them on You tube to the accompaniment of hysterical rhetoric. Why is it that I suspect your posts have the agenda of playing up the activities of a relatively few niosy people exercising the rights of everyone in a free society to be obnoxious in order to convey the impression that "all Muslims are like that", and in order to suggest further that all believers are like that at heart? So far, the evidence is non-existent, and the appeal is to raw emotion.

As always, there are pitfalls and opportunities that statecraft can address if our politicians can refrain from being stupid. The history of our relations with the Middle East suggests that the rise of radical Islam is far more complicated than an unfolding of a plan for conquest written in the Qur'an. Colonialism, Cold War politics and the geopolitics of oil contributed heavily to it. Bin Laden was our Frankenstein monster, our secret weapon against the Soviets in Afghanistan. And without Bush-Cheney, there would be no ISIS. At the moment ISIS is the menace du jour, and its skill in manipulating the social media gives it a "larger than life" presence. The latest reports suggest that it's not doing so well on the battlefield, thanks to the efforts of Muslim Kurds, Jordanians, Iranians, and Iraqis, with limited backup from the United States. The rats are beginning to leave the sinking ship. I suspect that, for all his bravado, Al-Baghdadi will soon join bin Laden in Paradise, and then we can worry about our new Muslim allies. Now the prospect of Iran getting the bomb does worry me, and the fundamentalist character of Tehran is something to worry about. I don't think knee-jerk opposition to Islam is helpful there. The division between Shiia and Sunni is very real, making a united Muslim front very unlikely. Yes, there is a crater in New York, but despite all the hysterical warnings from Cheney and the neocons, nothing really comparable has happened since that tragedy fourteen years ago. Such incidents as we've had involve socially marginalized lone wolves like the Boston Marathon bombers. In fact, there have been fewer incidents in the United States than in Europe. I suspect that our constitutional guarantees of freedom are partly responsible. Unlike France, Muslim women can wear the hijab without challenge. As an atheist, you have too little faith in the power of secularization to manage the intensity of religious zeal. And since you're a member of a despised minority, you might be cautious about undermining religious liberties that also protect the irreligious.

 

P.S. The Twin Towers complex is now partially rebuilt.

 

Well that was a total waste of 10 minutes.

I can't believe that people consider such drivel to be so profound that they feel a need to post it as proof of their beliefs.

 

At this the serpent said to the woman, "you certainly will not die". For God knows that in the very day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and bad.

 

And your point is?

 

My point is this, people argue that they themselves are a God.
Which relates to the above scripture. The 1st lie in the bible.

Actually the 1st lie is that she would not die.