What is your belief?

Regarding the issue of belief in a deity or deities, I am most definitely an Atheist. Philosophically, my world view most resembles that of the Stoics, and I also embrace many of the tenets of Buddhism and Taoism.

 

Why?

 

A fair question to be sure. I am an Atheist because of the decided lack of empirical evidence regarding the existence of God, god, gods, etc ad nauseam. All arguments for such an existence are based on faulty logic, and ultimately rest upon a foundation of faith- a quality I have been fortunate enough to lack since my earliest childhood. Some might deem this luck, but I am not at luxury to enjoy even that simple delusion. It has been my curse (some might say) to constantly seek the unequivocal truth, and, while I certainly am not possessed of all the answers, and likely never shall be, I do feel I have garnered enough data to safely dismiss entirely the notion of deity. And, please bear in mind, this answer was not arrived at easily. It required much thought, research, and many years of just being alive and absorbing data. Were I to be presented with additional, non-subjective, logical, and indisputable proof in the future, I would of course alter my view to include the new information (though very little would cause me to label something “god“). Rather, I would utilize Occam’s Razor and draw up a new theory altogether, one that accounts for all facts involved an rejects the ones which no longer apply. The world is not subjective, it does not answer to wishes or whims, to dreams and wild fantasies. And there is no democracy on the truth. The sheer number of religions, coupled with the similarities inherent in each, if not the insane claims and outrageous “miracles,” should be enough to give even the most illogical person pause before accepting the veracity of any of these religions. They are all of them so obviously crafted by men, for men, as to render faith in them a matter worthy only of incredulous laughter (or at least a perfunctory roll of the eyes).

As to why I consider myself a Stoic, while simultaneously rejecting belief in god, it is merely because I am in agreement with the basic tenets of Stoicism. Additionally, the philosophy is a secular one, and does not require a belief in a deity. Among the Stoic teachings are: self-control, aligning oneself with nature, removing negative emotions from one’s life, equality for all, and the practice of meditation (similar here to mindfulness in Buddhism). It is a magnanimous, noble system, and one I found myself instantly in tune with. Basically, I was a stoic before I read the first word about the philosophy. There are no rituals, other than being mindful of one’s surroundings and situation, exerting rational thought and simply existing in the moment. It is remarkably similar to Buddhism, though it developed independently, and it does not include notions such as reincarnation. Personally, I cannot quite buy the idea of reincarnation except on its most rudimentary level, that we are all energy and to energy we return, though not the sentient part of us, which I am fairly certain dies with the body (at least according to all available evidence). For me, this life is enough, and it would not do for me to accept a creed which offered eternal life merely to relieve myself of a fear of death. Far better to analyze that fear and do away with it, to realize that it is a natural part of life, to accept it, and to move on. The former is by far the easier route, though the latter is the more satisfying (and the only one that is true). Taoism is quite similar in many ways, and, after many years, I am at last able to approach some tentative understanding of the Tao Te Ching, to get past some of the hurdles my western mode of thinking had erected in my mind.

 

'Theist' - I have a more of a Spinoza-ish view of God; Although I believe in free will, but it does have its limitations, and I don't know what this limitation is. That there is one God that encompasses everything in the universe, that gets involved in our lives at least at SOME level; At which level that He gets involved with, I don't know. But every time that you tap into this presence, you learn a little more about reality and your place within it. This isn't to say that if you don't tap into this presence, then this presence isn't already a part of you, but to say that becoming aware of such can be beneficial for growth.

"God is in the rain".

Spiritual intuition exists and with that you can explore the 'supernatural', and become aware of your connection to this 'supernatural' presence. The only limitation to this is your willingness to let go to what you always envisioned to be real. It can be a scary and uncertain step that not many are able or have to take. And not many are willing to accept that this step actually exists, because doing so would mean weakness of mind - This is where I give no blame to the individual.

Reason is important, but so is intuition, and both should be explored for a better understanding of reality.

The belief in the supernatural isn't always a way to relieve the fear of death, because not all that believe in the supernatural believe that anything of yourself remains within the universe - Not a linage, or a soul - Terror Management is the theory that emcompasses the false idea that all that believe, do so to alleviate an innate fear. None of this is to say that fear is the reasoning for belief, but that fear can somehow awaken the spiritual, and that cause and effect can be a very fickle reality within all scientific inquiry, which should be explored - A lack of fear of death is to bring you closer to God, and not that fear IS God, or that mode in which He is believed in.


Best way I can describe my beliefs.

 

my belief is that whatever else exists, and we haven't even begun to imagine what might and probably does, most if not all, or very nearly all, of what is important, remains entirely up to us.

=^^=
.../\...

 

What point are you speaking of?

An atheist does not pretend that 'God' is anything more than word and concept.

How is the word 'god' or even an idea associated with this word in any way universally transcendent?

Not true.

lol, What, the tone death and atheists?! Essentially the same thing?

Only the atheist truly understands reality beyond our words for it. Consequently it is always the atheist who has to CREATE the words for it, the atheist is the value-giver.

 

i am an atheist. i do not believe in any supernatural forces or beings. however, i try to accept others and their positions on theists issues. that is the main problem with "believers". they do not seem to accept that there are other belief or non-belief systems. it is their way or the highway and other views are incorrect.

 

that is the main problem with "believers". they do not seem to accept that there are other belief or non-belief systems. it is their way or the highway and other views are incorrect.


bkc ~ I accept others for who they are and what they believe in. I may not worship or follow another's beliefs or religion but i do acknowledge that there are soooo many other beliefs and religions other than Christianity, Judism, Islam, etc. I accept that there are other beliefs and "non-beliefs." It's not my way or the highway either. I believe in let people live and let them live believing in whatever their heart desires.
So that last part of that post does not apply to me. Just wanted you to know ~ Blessings brother. I dont want to argue just expressing my opinion on that.

 

Good question.

Before you can really say anything about all of this you have to humbly accept ambiguity on its own terms. You have to understand the difficult fact that reality is not necessarily defined by what you or I can identify. This is the same creative mindset that allows a musician to believe his greatest song has yet to be imagined.

Then you have to consider the fact that there is this human sense of the divine that has been expressed in virtually every recorded culture throughout history. There is something to the fact that the mystics of every one of these cultures have consistently made parallel statements about their experience.

Their experience is not yours to deny. If it were your experience, then maybe you would know why Atheism is ultimately illogical.

And as far as anyone knows, this may be absolutely true. But that word, the abstraction it names, may be at least as good as anything you (or I) can imagine. You may experience it as nothing more than an intellectual process that allows you to transcend your everyday state of mind, but if you do so then you have to admit that this process exists.

This existence, however undefinably conceptual, can be experienced in any number of other ways. This IS the mystery for those who seek further understanding.

This is a very good question. Keep asking it.

People who are honestly searching for insight to this question will tell you that it is a path to enlightenment.

In my experience it is true.

However, I sincerely hope that your truth is truer than mine on this one, believe it or not.

I hope "tone death" is just a typo.

Tone deaf is an inability to hear differences in pitch. It's the aural equivalent of color-blindness.

I think maybe Athiesm is one result of an inability to perceive a quality of reality (admittedly abstract and undefinable) that is seemingly obvious to others.

Countless mystics would disagree.

Peace and Love

 

Congratulations again.

 

Ambiguity has no terms of its own, if it did it would not be ambiguous. Are you saying you don't know what you are saying?

And what is that something?

I have had what many would call a mystical experience. How is atheism ultimately illogical? What do you mean by God?

Then what is the human height of its meaning?

This word ceased to be a path to higher ideas long ago. It is overburdened with history.

Treat it as a christmas gift!

Yes, sorry, I wrote in haste.

I know, not from direct experience however.

Actually atheism is only a falling out that certain people have with the word 'god'. We're over it. We want new words, and new understanding. We want the unknown. We want to approach it with words, seduce it with them, we are not ones to call it names!

God is a cover-up, a safe-guard for people who don't have the strength of will to articulate the depths of their experience!

Mystics, they remind me of me when I sought out the truth in "telepathy"!

 

No, I am saying something else.

Ambiguity does not depend on conclusions. Ambiguity recognizes a question as a self-existent thing, independent of any known answer. Ambiguity accepts that any number of things may be true, even when these truths appear to contradict one another.

Would a mystic call it that? If so, then, you should know what the mystics speak of.

Good question.

Atheism is a specific conclusion based on an absence of experience. It is the same illogical conclusion made by a deaf man who denies the existence of music.

An even better question.

Transcendence is undefinable. Transcendence is only one expression of the ultimate reality commonly named "God."

If it helps, then try to think of it this way, God is that primal, universal quality that is expressed as Existence itself, Love itself, Truth itself, Consciousness, Creativity, Wisdom, Life, Unity, Transcendence themselves (There are many more, of course). These "things" may be thought of as the Divine in disguise.

Believe it or not, regardless of whether you know it or not, this is what the enlightened are talking about. Those who help bring more of these "things" into existence (Gandhi, The Beatles, Your Mom) are good, while it is considered an act of evil to violate any of these things.

Who knows?

Only if you think history is a more immediate authority than your own experience of the divine.

Thanks!!!

Yeah, well, I WAS nitpicking, sorry about that.

Glad to hear it.

This is wise. This is also exactly what Mysticism actually is. This is what the enlightened seek (Regardless of whether one is orthodox or . . . freelance).

For some, Yes. But you can't say all people have exactly the same relationship to any word or thought or practice or . . . anything. There are those whose insight into all of this is probably far deeper than anything I will ever imagine.

Read something by Abraham Joshua Heschel, Martin Luther King Jr., William Sloane Coffin, J. Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, or Ram Dass and then talk to me about articulating one's experience.

That's funny.

Popular belief aside, Mysticism is something entirely different from the parlor tricks (Seances, Tarot Readings, Palmistry, etc.) of the Spiritualists. If you're getting your theology from Carnies, you should probably expect to be misled more often than just occasionally.

Peace and Love

 

There is much wisdom in your words Varuna. While I remain an atheist insomuch as the existence of an actual sentient deity is concerned, I have concerned myself to some degree over the years with spiritual matters- that yearning in humanity to become more, to arrive at a better understanding of the world. It is an issue I have wrestled with for many years, the attempt to distinguish truth from falsehood, to understand what is referred to as enlightenment. Maugham was correct in his evaluation of enlightenment in The Razor’s Edge in which he quotes the Katha-Upanishad: "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." I understand Salvation in this context, not as the Western concept of life after death, but rather an abandoning of suffering and attaining enlightenment. Not something to be had in the afterlife, but something to be enjoyed now, in this world.

The discovery of the notion of mindfulness, also present in Stocism (which comes as close to my beliefs as any system I have thus far studied) helped me to somewhat escape many of the preconceived notions and to approach at least an initial understanding of what you describe in your last post. This notion of “god” you speak of, at least as I understand it is not a sentient being, it is more like nature incarnate, it is nothing more than the “way and order of the Universe“. It is difficult to express really. It simply is. It is as water, fleeting and insubstantial, an ever-changing substance that changes even as you attempt to grasp it in your fist. From the Tao te Ching:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

As the origin of heaven-and-earth, it is nameless;
As "the Mother" of all things, it is nameable

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations

These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.


I am at last able to being to understand this passage and much of the rest of the Tao te Ching. The whole notion of the yin and yang, where each aspect of reality has its counterpart that both opposes and compliments it. It is not some wild, new age concept at all (as I had thought for so long). It is no more complicated than saying that, without something to compare it to, a thing can not be said to exhibit certain characteristics. Strength cannot exist without weakness, else how could the fact that it is strong be ascertained? And as long as the two exist, and they do and must, there will be varying degrees of strength and weakness. It is the same as saying that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is also possible to cast the notion of reincarnation in this same light. Matter is never lost, everything returns to energy, a continuous cycle.

And none of these ideas are incompatible with Atheism, or with science for that matter. Both science and mindfulness are ways to understand the universe. Science consists of categorizing objects and phenomena based on certain criteria and in giving names to these objects and phenomena. Mindfulness consists of analyzing the universe, but in a manner that involves discarding the manmade nametags so that one can see each object in its true light, unhampered by preconceived notions, but no less rational.

While I lend little credence to theology, the monotheisms in particular, it is possible to look at the various religious texts as feeble attempts at understanding the universe, analogies made by people with imperfect tools for observing the mysterious history of the universe. While there are nuggets of truth, and wild exaggerations, there is also much evidence of various agendas and rather distasteful clinging to tradition in the face of the discovery of new evidence. Additionally, there is much evidence of man’s baser characteristics in them (greed, intolerance, the need to feel superior, etc). I believe that where theology errs is in assigning attributes to this “force” (read: god, Tao, Gaia etc). It is in the details, the specifics. Particularly in fundamentalism, where adherence to even minor details and differences can inspire hatred to the point of murder. In a more global outlook details about something as enormous and thus far mysterious as the universe would have importance only so far as their veracity is concerned. When these details are arrived at rationally, with right thinking and proper contemplation, one will see that there is no reason for contention, because everything is one, all part of the “Tao“, and ultimately all will return to it- even if one‘s conscious self is no longer in existence. It is less about faith and more about…acceptance. It is not a clinging, it is a release. It is about arriving at a point where faith is a null issue, where one no longer needs to have the final answers, even to the point of manufacturing them. It is simply about being. None of us are important enough that the universe would pause even for a nanosecond to accommodate us, and we are all of us made infinitely important by the mere fact that we are an insignificant part of the greater whole.

I think I may have come across as sounding vaguely “cosmic” and new age, which was not my intention at all. That is not at all related to my understanding. It is really just a matter of a rather abrupt change in perspective. I hope that I have conveyed my view in some small way.

 

Ambiguity does all this?! Treating something to ambiguity and finding something to be ambiguous, they are different no?

Experience that cannot be explained-- My knowledge of it counts for less than the expression of this knowledge. My love demands it.

Consider it carefully. No conclusion is based on an 'absence' of experience.

Infinite reality transcends 'ultimate' reality, infinitely.

And so god is just a word for whatever have you, which is why its use generally goes against my taste.

No. My own experience is not bound by the words that can be used to describe it. Of course a word can be given a completely new meaning, meaning itself given to revaluation, but to do this understanding must be gained, and while history may be nothing in itself, who will deny its weight in words?

I do. The human height of its meaning is nothing at all.
Poetic honesty, admirable or appalling?

This is true, but an order of rank must then be admitted for these different relationships to this specific word/thought/practice etc. Even when 'God' is used to mean the highest existing human being, a certain philosophic naivety or else an essentially stupid will to ambiguity is nevertheless betrayed.

Who?

Give me any passage on God by them and I will show you what is lacking in it. lol

Don't get me wrong. I love mystics, I only wish they were possessed of more intellectual rigor!

 

something big, friendly and invisible gives good hugs but leaves it up to us to avoid screwing everything up for each other.

=^^=
.../\...

 

The wind themnax. The wind.

 

there is indeed something called wind. the word wind like the word god, are words we have invented. in the latter case to pretend we know more then we do. neither prove the existence or non existence of anything, yet wind there is, and many more things then immagined are not prevented from existing. (the're just not required to resemble what we think we know about them either)

=^^=
.../\...

(nonsolopsist omnitheist? however self contradictory that may sound, not omnitheist in the solopsist sense of everything being god or gods, but rather in the sense of diverse unseen awairnessess, peacefully and happily residing everywhere but not out of any requirement for them to exist for anything else to. i guess in a sense you could call that polythiest except that i don't see or think of them as gods)

=^^=
.../\...

 

Maybe, but let's look at your phrase "Treating something to ambiguity." I don't know exactly what meaning you convey when you put these words together this way. Respect for ambiguity allows me to suspend judgement, to consider the existence of meaning beyond my ability to understand . . . whatever it is you meant by "Treating something to ambiguity."

If I were to think like a strict Atheist, I would assume that the apparent meaninglessness of this phrase is all there is to know, that it is, in fact, meaningless.

If, the Rabbis and Rishis and Mystics are correct, however, then meaning is expressed through all that exists. The apparent meaninglessness of your argument is, therefore, merely an illusory distortion.

I may not know what you "mean," but I trust there is some truth in what you say.

Fair enough . . . I think.

Experience exists.

It is good to be.

That is precisely the point.

I believe Atheism is exactly that kind of illogical conclusion.

What do you think "Ultimate" means?

See? Your response clarifies the whole conversation. Your conclusions about "God," what the name refers to, does not necessarily correspond to what anyone else is talking about.

One true thing (but not the only true thing) that can be said is simply - God is creative, omni-transcendent inspiration. Many think their first thoughts, their first impressions, and whatever limited experience they may have had with all of this is all there is to know. That same "intellectual rigor" applied to any other human experience (sex, relationships, drugs, school, music, science, politics, etc.) would get you laughed out of the room.

Yes, your taste counts, but I wouldn't suggest you let it be your sole source of information.

Yes, every word has history. It is wise to understand that.

But it is far greater wisdom to recognize every word as a name for something. That "something" is not necessarily synonymous with that word's history.

The name "DejaVu," for example. I have seen "DejaVu" used as a title for a book, a song, a strip club and a HipForums person. None of these uses tells you anything about that inexplicable sense of unprecedented recognition.

Once again, I trust there is some meaning in what you're saying. It doesn't make sense to me, however.

I think I need more information before I can say anything about "The human height of its meaning."

Why?

Only if "God" is nothing more than what you think.

Why would you believe that?

What is lacking is whatever YOU think about God, which may be priceless but probably no more definitive than those you refute.

For whatever it's worth, you could read:

Between God and Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel,
Strength To Love by Martin Luther King Jr.,
A Passion For The Possible by William Sloane Coffin,
Think On These Things by J. Krishnamurti,
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts,
Be Here Now by Ram Dass

Any Mystic you have ever heard of has had intellectual rigor, but within an intellectual framework (and accompanied by a cognative receptivity) that is far more extensive than the average layman seems to think it is.

Peace and Love

 

New Hampshire beat ya to it.

 

i really believe there are things that don't have to be known or even pretended to be known, in order to be felt, experienced or exist. just that they are under no obligation to resemble what anyone pretends to know about them.

that's it really. and i love these things. without pretending to know anything about them. the big one or ones some people call god, and all the little ones people have called everything from animal spirits to elves and fairies and angels and all that sort of things, to just, as i prefer to think of them, the little spirits that live down by the creek, or dance in the blackberry leaves when the breeze is blowing just right and what have you.

i think its cool that there are things we don't know. i just think it really screws up the wonderfulness of all that when people adamantly pin names on them and come up with all this stuff, usually atributed to whatever major belief they claim to subscribe to, that everything HAS to be how they, or their priest, or the book of their belief, or something says it is because it/they say so.

its THAT part of it that's a whole lot of crap.

there's not one person alive who can legitimately prove that anything they don't know "can't" be. so i don't subscribe to all this believing everything has to be as deffined by some priesthood or belief. and equally not to the idea that only what we can see and measure can exist.

=^^=
.../\...