Philosophy Now Forum

God is ineffable (undefined). If X is undefined does it make any sense to say, "X exists"? There is ultimately no difference between an atheist and a theist. Or at least a theist that understands intuitively what God is.

It reminds me of a Hindu parable.
A particular Hindu sect (Hinduism is like Christianity in that a Baptist and a Unitarian are both Christians) believes that thinking about God is the quickist path to God.
An atheist says,"there is no God". He does that everyday for 80 years. He dies and goes straight to heaven. He asks," I was always an atheist. Why am I here?" You never stopped thinking of me!

That's an interesting perspective. The Bhagavatam has lots of quirky stories like that.

raw_thought wrote:God is ineffable

Is that why he can't be effed revealing himself to people who don't believe he exists?

bobevenson wrote:Obviously, it's impossible to connect with you people on spiritual matters.

Forget the spiritual level. Why does God need prophets?

raw_thought wrote:It reminds me of a Hindu parable.
A particular Hindu sect (Hinduism is like Christianity in that a Baptist and a Unitarian are both Christians) believes that thinking about God is the quickist path to God.
An atheist says,"there is no God". He does that everyday for 80 years. He dies and goes straight to heaven. He asks," I was always an atheist. Why am I here?" You never stopped thinking of me!

. In Hinduism, belief in God is not mandatory to go to heaven. So the parable is not really based on true Hinduism, though it could have come from a Hindu sect. But these things happen.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
From the mystical perspective, and those who describe a vision of reality seen from an exalted (or 'enlightened') platform, they describe God's 'play' or 'lila'. The mystic poets of India talk about God playing hide-and-seek with man, or with the seeker-philosopher. The implication seems to be that man has to arrive at some basic platform of awareness and consciousness, and then to hone it and work it, preserve it, increase it, and through this process different levels of revelation come to man. Also from that 'mystical' perspective, they describe revelation and understanding as unifying vision/understanding and in seeing and understanding that all is God. In yoga-philsosophy of certain branches yoga as a psycho-physical practice is a science of weaning oneself from the incarnated state. That would of course entail the awakening of revelation about how it is that one came to be here. That is (according to this view) how one has chosen the specific material level of incarnation in which we exist (Hindu thought recognised various levels, both more material and 'deadly', and less so and 'lighter'). But all this is part of an epistemological system, a way of interpreting reality. As it pertains to the yoga-schools, they all deal on the question/problem of incarnated existence, and they propose a way-and-means of being here, living here, carrying on here, which will allow for ascent in understanding to an eventual decision to graduate to another plane.

IF the purpose of all this is to help man reach an understanding, why is he making it so tough that only a few actually reach there? Again, seems like a very inefficient system. I would think it would be easier to simply give that understanding to all mankind so that that job is done and we can move forward. This system of God has now been in place for thousands of years and does not seem to have resulted in any real learning in mankind. So why does he not revise the system?

bobevenson wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:I'm puzzled why you are not an atheist.

I'm puzzled why everybody does not subscribe to "The Ouzo Prophecy," which cuts across all religious and spiritual points of view.

Because it is complete shite.

bobevenson wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:I've already told you to count me in, Bob, but I'm still waiting for my tinfoil hat and my AK-47.

Just sent the money via Western Union for the AK-47, and I'll include your hat at no charge, OK?

Sadly an AK-47 has no intrinsic value in excess of the shipping cost, so it would not make economic sense to sent it - just like your economic theory does not make economic sense.

By definition an AK-47's intrinsic value is the same as the scrap value of the metal and wood of which it is comprised.

Lacewing wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: I'm puzzled why you are not an atheist.

Well, have fun with that puzzlement which you know very well is your own fabrication.

SInce you don't believe in god, then you are an a atheist whether you like it or not.

sthitapragya wrote:

raw_thought wrote:It reminds me of a Hindu parable.
A particular Hindu sect (Hinduism is like Christianity in that a Baptist and a Unitarian are both Christians) believes that thinking about God is the quickist path to God.
An atheist says,"there is no God". He does that everyday for 80 years. He dies and goes straight to heaven. He asks," I was always an atheist. Why am I here?" You never stopped thinking of me!

. In Hinduism, belief in God is not mandatory to go to heaven. So the parable is not really based on true Hinduism, though it could have come from a Hindu sect. But these things happen.

The atheist (he did not believe in God). went to heaven. I do not understand your objection.

Hobbes... what am I missing in your communication? First you claim I'm not an atheist. Then you say I am. ??

Hobbes' Choice wrote: I'm puzzled why you are not an atheist.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:SInce you don't believe in god, then you are an a atheist whether you like it or not.

Are you just trying all angles to get a reaction out of me? Or was it a typo? I figured your first statement was a taunt, since we had already discussed that I don't believe in any gods... and that it seems to me that everything is connected, and NOTHING is "separate". Some (including myself) might consider this somewhat spiritual in nature. I know a lot of people like this who do not believe in gods.

Do you think there are just two categories to divide everyone into: theist or atheist? Does such a label determine much of anything about a person, really?

Sthitapragya wrote:If the purpose of all this is to help man reach an understanding, why is he making it so tough that only a few actually reach there? Again, seems like a very inefficient system. I would think it would be easier to simply give that understanding to all mankind so that that job is done and we can move forward. This system of God has now been in place for thousands of years and does not seem to have resulted in any real learning in mankind. So why does he not revise the system?

I suppose the question you are asking, fundamentally, is where will the evolution of thought, science, and understanding lead us eventually? I see this as connecting to another dimension of the same question: Since time is infinite, and that therefor an infinite number of civilisations have arisen in the cosmos and gone through all the processes of discovery, what is the 'pattern' if you will that knowledge and knowing must take for existent beings? It seems to me that we would not, in fact, need to turn to the future for the answer but rather to the past - in the sense of the already existent. What I mean is that the 'pattern' we seek is already existent, has already occurred, is already occurring: it is therefor a question of rediscovering it.

All discovery is recovery. A twist in metaphysics. Turning progressivism toward traditionalism!

Once one has begun to dismantle the foundational belief or sense of or need for a 'divine understructure' that has to be 'discovered' and 'revealed' - and this is how I interpret your situation - the questions you ask will necessarily become as yours are becoming: simplistic, reductionist, inane really. I think it is inevitable, as the natural evolution of your thinking, to drop them. Again, you are required to organise and to present a radically new anthropology, a whole new way to explain man and his situation in biological form.

But I suggest that you will not do away with - you will not be able to do away with - what can only be called the 'mystic tendency'. Even a man with a full understanding of physical science, or physics and mathematics, will necessarily be provoked, sooner or later, to ask and to answer the larger questions that cannot be answered by those disciplines of mind in and of themselves (at least I do not imagine this as possible, some might differ or dismiss the problem altogether). If this is so, it points to a New Mysticism as possible. It is not impossible that this mysticism could be atheistic, i.e. showing no need for or concern with divinity either specific or general. Yet, it almost seems to me inevitable that the definition will be personalised in one degree or another. Our world of consciousness and awareness is one of interacting with (other) awarenesses and consciousnesses. It seems a part of our make-up. We find other awarenesses surrounding us, and we again find awarenesses inside of us. Atheism implies a surrounding composed of the unalive, to put it quaintly, and that is an untenable construct. It is a 'logical' one, true, but untenable.

Whether it has been 10 minutes, 100 centuries, or a zillion years, each of these segments are irrelevant in the face of infinity. But you do not believe in or accept any notion of an 'awakening' of human consciousness, nor in any story that would 1) give credence to the idea of a conscious divinity, or 2) a story which explained God's distance or (as you indicate) selfishness or inefficiency. But I can assure you that there are ways to understand evolution that sees man's emergence as rapid and sure (if the infinity of time is held in the mind), but which might not privilege specific material or scientific knowing as the measure of man. That is your position: that material science and material manipulation and also rational thought are the sole evidence of 'progress'. I agree in many senses, and also accept that 'obscurantism' and obstruction are real things, and negative things. But I do not think it fair to say that a religious or spiritual culture has no achieved anything substantial. Yet you cannot recognise anything outside of your spurious definitions it seems to me.

You have defined 'moving forward' and your view is in keeping with Enlightenment values.

In Hinduism, belief in God is not mandatory to go to heaven. So the parable is not really based on true Hinduism, though it could have come from a Hindu sect. But these things happen.

I won't attempt to correct you - you are the one qualified to speak! - but I have been under the impression there is no 'hinduism'. The term is a modern term when a pan-Indian culture attempted to define itself in relation to English conquest (in all or most arenas). Do you mean the Hinduism of Arya Samaj?

There is a playfulness and irony in Indian religious thought it seems to me that will allow for an 'atheist' to get to the superior world even though he behaved wrong. There are many stories of demons who by virtue of one act, consciously or unconsciously performed, that led to their liberation by the supreme being. There is the story of the Demon Pralat (sp?) who estranged from his wife went into the forest to get away. She repented their argument and went looking for him and as fate would have it when night fell they holed up in the ruins of an ancient Vishnu temple. He on one side of a wall and she on the other, ignorant of each other's presence. It was Ekadasi and they both had not eaten and so observed the required fast within the temple. Pralat I think swept the floor of the ruined temple and so performed a 'service' to the supreme lord. As a result of these 'pious deeds' he was awarded a better birth that led to his eventual liberation. These are the sort of folkish stories that express 'transcendental truths' within so-called hinduism.

What I note about Hindu beliefs is that it is often less about what one understands and more about what one does. This is in contradistinction with the European/Protestant model that only a man who understands what he does, and chooses it consciously, is actually performing morally.

raw_thought wrote:

sthitapragya wrote:

raw_thought wrote:It reminds me of a Hindu parable.
A particular Hindu sect (Hinduism is like Christianity in that a Baptist and a Unitarian are both Christians) believes that thinking about God is the quickist path to God.
An atheist says,"there is no God". He does that everyday for 80 years. He dies and goes straight to heaven. He asks," I was always an atheist. Why am I here?" You never stopped thinking of me!

. In Hinduism, belief in God is not mandatory to go to heaven. So the parable is not really based on true Hinduism, though it could have come from a Hindu sect. But these things happen.

The atheist (he did not believe in God). went to heaven. I do not understand your objection.

It implies that the atheist is in heaven because he never stopped thinking of God. And that is not mandatory.

Lacewing wrote:Hobbes... what am I missing in your communication? First you claim I'm not an atheist. Then you say I am. ??

Hobbes' Choice wrote: I'm puzzled why you are not an atheist.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:SInce you don't believe in god, then you are an a atheist whether you like it or not.

Are you just trying all angles to get a reaction out of me? Or was it a typo? I figured your first statement was a taunt, since we had already discussed that I don't believe in any gods... and that it seems to me that everything is connected, and NOTHING is "separate". Some (including myself) might consider this somewhat spiritual in nature. I know a lot of people like this who do not believe in gods.

Do you think there are just two categories to divide everyone into: theist or atheist? Does such a label determine much of anything about a person, really?

You are an atheist. The first quote means you are undeclared, obviously.

In the case of atheist and theist, yes obviously there are only two categories. People who won cars and those who do not. People who have a Y chromosome and those who do not.
If you have not decided that god exists, then you are not a theist. People who are not theists are atheists. Atheism is about not beleving: I don't expect you to have to conform to anything by being an atheist.
I'm surprised you have to ask.