Afterthoughts on Recent God Post
The recent discussion around religion, God, spirituality and Rational Philosophy was extraordinarily thought-provoking for me. Thank you to all who participated.
I have given much thought over the last 25 years to reconciling the meaningful and practical spiritality I choose to make of central importance in my life with my deep grounding in Objectivism and related thought.
Inspired by the recent discussion I have made and attempt to streamline and essentialize the framework I have come to (as of today...ever-evolving).
I want to share it here, and humbly request response, feedback, support and challenge. I believe it contains some good quality thinking. You tell me:
GOD
At any rate, how to streamline and essentialize this...? Ok, I define God as capital R Reality, as a whole in it largest all-inclusive sense. All-that-is. Not each part, process and subset thereof, but EVERY part, process and subset thereof, taken as the single fundamental greatest Unity.
In my spiritual practices (everything I do to build, maintain and grow my relationship with God = my spirituality), I consider 2 aspects of God.
One is what I call Presence, which is the very quality of Beingness which pervades and is shared by Everything That Exists. Through meditation and prayer (not in the traditional sense of that word) and other spiritual practices, I can feel and connect to that infinite reservoir of power and energy to recharge and turbo charge myself to rise above and perform beyond my own finite store of power and energy.
The second aspect is Grace or Spirit or Flow, as you will. This is the intricate field of interlocking beginningless and endless causual connections - The Way of Things. This is where I seek guidance, data and direction beyond my finite store of knowledge and understanding and my limited capacity for wisdom, insight, forsight, intuition and creativity. It is the realm of everything that I don't know that I don't know. It is where what I need to know - when I need to know it, to live at my peak performance and direct
my actions and my life optimally - unfolds as I need to know it in every next Emerging Reality. (My job is to pay attention [LOVE that phrase!], let go of the best-guess snapshot in my head of how reality should be, and continually integrate that data into my ever evolving strategies and next steps.
I have given much thought over the last 25 years to reconciling the meaningful and practical spiritality I choose to make of central importance in my life with my deep grounding in Objectivism and related thought.
Inspired by the recent discussion I have made and attempt to streamline and essentialize the framework I have come to (as of today...ever-evolving).
I want to share it here, and humbly request response, feedback, support and challenge. I believe it contains some good quality thinking. You tell me:
GOD
At any rate, how to streamline and essentialize this...? Ok, I define God as capital R Reality, as a whole in it largest all-inclusive sense. All-that-is. Not each part, process and subset thereof, but EVERY part, process and subset thereof, taken as the single fundamental greatest Unity.
In my spiritual practices (everything I do to build, maintain and grow my relationship with God = my spirituality), I consider 2 aspects of God.
One is what I call Presence, which is the very quality of Beingness which pervades and is shared by Everything That Exists. Through meditation and prayer (not in the traditional sense of that word) and other spiritual practices, I can feel and connect to that infinite reservoir of power and energy to recharge and turbo charge myself to rise above and perform beyond my own finite store of power and energy.
The second aspect is Grace or Spirit or Flow, as you will. This is the intricate field of interlocking beginningless and endless causual connections - The Way of Things. This is where I seek guidance, data and direction beyond my finite store of knowledge and understanding and my limited capacity for wisdom, insight, forsight, intuition and creativity. It is the realm of everything that I don't know that I don't know. It is where what I need to know - when I need to know it, to live at my peak performance and direct
my actions and my life optimally - unfolds as I need to know it in every next Emerging Reality. (My job is to pay attention [LOVE that phrase!], let go of the best-guess snapshot in my head of how reality should be, and continually integrate that data into my ever evolving strategies and next steps.
However, if you read all the way back through, you will see that I have acknowledged and appreciated almost all of those and similar criticisms in each instance and have no problem hearing specific responses to specific things I have proposed, when offered with reasons and suggestions. I have remained open minded, even-handed and collaborative in all my responses - even toward those who have not been so with me.
I have used the label hostile toward only 2 people - both warranted, if you look - and only when the comments devolve to name-calling toward myself or my ideas or heated sweeping generalities and condemnations or judgements either of me, my ideas or my assumed motives.
Debate is one thing. Ranting, label-tossing and disrespectful communication - something else altogether. I enjoy the first and will not accept the latter.
for my neighbor to say
there are twenty gods, or no God.
It neither picks my pocket
nor breaks my leg."
Faith in something that is not tangible has inestimably impacted humanity in horrible, awful, terrible ways. Whether belief in a God, in a girlfriend who is something she's not, in an authority such as the state... all beliefs in things: not real will, at best, waste time and energy in fruitless efforts, and at worst, promote genocide.
Just because incorrect thought doesn't itself rob you or break your leg... it plays its role in the mind of the thief and thug.
I'm afraid, your favorite chord is "You're hostile and abrasive". I wouldn't mention anything about it, but when i see someone use the same argument as an almost form response to every critical reply, we can see that your favorite chord is getting in the way of you actually listening to the ideas being presented.
In debate terms, you constantly focus on the ad hominem and irrelevancies, but your efforts would be better focused on the content those replies.
Do you not see that it is intellectually dishonest to use the terms you do, knowing that their interpretation by others will only misconstrue their meaning?
Three people so far have told you that your language is difficult to follow. Wouldn't the humble thing be to internalize those critiques instead of defaulting to a defense mechanism? (No offense intended, only challenging ideas.)
Man has no obligation to making his dealings with others more harmonious... but most of us consider it helpful and pleasant to do so. It's often worth the effort.
I can't find it scary to think that we as humans have the only potential to make reality work to our advantage. It's an empowering thought, that improvement, advancements and self-betterment are in our hands instead of being placed on the back of a metaphysical scapegoat. Accomplishment by the individual gives life deeper meaning. In this you can relish and lead a fulfilling life.
Man wears happily his blindfold to reality since Plato's cave.. and will remain until some large-scale evolutionary selective pressure backs homo sapiens to a corner, where only those who accept that A=A will survive and allow man to reach his full potential.
Here here! to tearing down skyhook fables.
Just an exceptional example of an enlightened participant.
Somehow, "open-minded dialogue" is somehow of more use or perhaps better in some other quality than debate?
I would agree that debates that become heated and inflammatory are certainly less productive discussions. However, debate format where someone puts forth a claim, and others challenge that claim, exposes ideas to a much more rigorous process of refinement than vague sharing of information without clear definitions of terms or natural inclination to avoid criticism.
Poetry is surely an enjoyable aim, but artists/writers are most worth reading when their words are used to convey meaning in a deeper/funnier/insightful way. Forgive me if I come on strong, but I had a hard time relating to your initial post because the meaning of your words are unclear. For example: "I can feel and connect to that infinite reservoir of power and energy to recharge and turbo charge myself to rise above and perform beyond my own finite store of power and energy."
I'm a chemist by trade and understand words like "energy" differently than you. How can anyone "turbo charge myself to rise above and perform beyond my own finite store of power and energy"? What is this energy store? How can it charge you above your capacity?
Can you expand upon the second aspect you mentioned?
A lot of it is pretty but I would not want to live there.
Too many libtards are running things thanks to the votes of too many more libtards.
At the end you'll see them meet and talk of voices caught on recordings and of stuff mysteriously moved from one spot to another..
So do you see any news stories that scream of a spirit world being scientifically proven?
Not unless it's on the front of those grocery store rags near the checkout counter.
Even the bulk of straight news reporters are not paid much. I know that for having been one for 7 years.
Ghost hunting does not pay unless you are a comic movie star.
Answer: for purpose and value judgment. They seek to answer the age-old question each of us must confront: What is my relationship to everything and everyone else in the Universe. What is my purpose? If I accept that I am self-directed, I accept that my future is mine to control, so what options are open to me and in what timespan? Look at every religion's definition of "god" and it will be tied up in how they see themselves in relation to the rest of the universe.
What is reality? Existence. The sum of existents. Therefore, your definition becomes god is the sum of existents. The sum of existents is finite. Therefore, according to your definition, god is finite.
Even considering the possibility of an apt characterization, one can still misunderstand that characterization. Allowing for the possibility of erroneous characterizations, one can commit a factual error about god. Since man is neither omniscient nor infallible, does this hold true for his knowledge of god as well?
The writings above form an idealistic, Platonic understanding of metaphysics, quite unlike the Aristotelian metaphysical model. The last sentence sounds more like the mechanisms of a process control system than an integrated understanding. This is not meant as a slight.
As you can see below, I did do enough research of old aerial photos to see there used to be houses along the bayou that are no longer there.
But check this photo out. In 1948 there was nothing there. The most recent and only color photo shows new houses or at least buildings of the 1957 photo completely gone, including my "haunted house." That strikes me as far more unusual than that sailboat marina or whatever it was going out of business on the opposite shore.
http://www.pbase.com/pzo/image/146777....
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