In-betweeners, sound off!

[sprunkner]

The typical religious discussion around here seems limited to the hardcore atheists (Smooth, Emvee, Impy) and those who progress faith to some organized religion. (Blacksword, Yaya.) Not to leave those guys out--sound off on this, please--but I'm curious who else considers his or her self to be agnostic.

I've been going back to church, mostly because I like the people and I've got an academic interest in Mormon history. But I'm still not sure about the big G or lack of, and I don't buy the Mormon party line at all. I pray and I meditate and I feel like something's there. Most of the time.

I've been reading a lot of stuff by mystic types (mostly just Rumi) and it seems like the experience of God, the divine, the ultimate vision is such a subjective personal experience that I'm not sure whether what we call God is just a greater awareness of our own unconscious, our selfhood. But maybe that proves it? I dunno, tell me your thoughts.

[Shanti418]

My personal religious dogma takes from a wide variety of religions.

Basically, I believe that "God", if you'd like to call him that, is a force that acts upon the world metaphysically, just as something like gravity acts upon the physical world. I don't think God is a person or a being or even has conciousness, but is simply a force of order in the world. God is the opposite of Chaos. God is anti-entropy. "God" is manifested in the world through things like conscience and karma.

Taking things a bit further, I subscribe to the Buddhism/Babylon 5 school of thought in that we are on one plane of existance, that we are here to learn and experince, that reincarnation occurs, and that at some point, your soul/conciousness/whatever moves on to a higher plane of existance when your lessons here are complete.

Re: kinda what sprunkner said, here's some interesting thoughts on the origin of that feeling of "something being there" from one of my boys, Emile Durkheim. Unfortunatly, I'm lazy, so they're just cut and pasted from some notes I found in my inbox. And they're shrunken, so cut n' paste if you want something readable, because otherwise they'd take up way too much space.

Religion
All religions create distinctions between sacred & profane
All religions have a “transcendent force” that is quasi divine
This force sacrilizes the sacred
Durkheim says aboriginal tribes are one “source” of human religions
Totemic Religion
Representatives of Divine Forces
Represented by natural figures, like birds
Animal has quasi-divine source that it shares with clan
Lizard clan doesn’t kill lizards. They and clan share divine force
Where does this quasi-divine source come from?
Naturalism from unexplained phenomena?
Durkehim: Nope, Lizard wouldn’t inspire that
The (totem) representation is THE most revered object, more so than the lizard itself, therefore power can’t come from animal
Totem represents
Divine Force – symbol of divine force
Clan – symbol of community; flag
Maybe God IS Clan
Most of the year, clan are scattered
Mostly “profane time”, trying to survive, not pray
But they come together intermittently
“Sacred time”, the normal becomes revelatory
Liminal Moments: Spring Break, Mardi Gras
People throw a big bomb ass party
In this, the people dissolve into collective, into a force greater than they that compels them to act out in abnormal ways.
Collective Effervescence
Feels like a force greater than you: intraindividual
This would be fleeting if NOT for figurative representation
Sentiments and feelings can be attached to objects, and these objects can evoke feelings again
Humans use symbolic representations to “store” their memories
So…
Clean believes this force emanates from totem (represents God)
But it’s just collective effervescence! (category mistake)
Totem expresses clan to itself
Development of Religion
Begins with Totems and Lizards
As population grows in volume and density, objects become less generalizable
Sun and Moon
More generalizable objects
One God
So abstract, it can’t be represented
Religious development mirrors MS → OS
Even here, we must have gatherings to “recharge” sacred
Sunday Mass
Religion in Summary
In Religion, Durkheim explains…..
Where divine force comes from
The collective effervescence of society
The division of sacred/profane
Collective effervescence concentrated into symbols, which become sacrilized
Totem Represents…
A Category Mistake
Totem does NOT represent God/Lizard, but group
The Collective Experience of the Collective to other Collectives
#2 NEVER goes away
Everything is religious to an extent (patriotism)

[Obfleur]

I'm atheist.
I don't believe in any higher power or anything like that.
We're just here for some random reason - and then we die. Adios.

[Kaylee]

I studied Buddhism for a long time until I eventually rejected it. Maybe I'll return to it at some point. I couldn't reconcile the Buddha's word that the only way to avoid pain is to avoid attachment- whilst it is, I don't doubt, a truism I just cannot live my life without aiming for things. Failure, the inability to obtain what we desire, I would argue is one of the greatest driving forces of mankind and helps us to better ourselves. To do otherwise is to stagnate. imo of course.

I try very hard to be a rational and logical being but I can't separate that from my very spiritual nature. I think it would suffice to say that I think there is more to the world than we perceive and that I am unsure of the nature of human consciousness.

As an associate of mine put it, I don't believe in God as such. Certainly not an old man with a long beard and a white gown. That is a human personification of the 'elder' figure, a figure of authority to be obeyed. I don't discount higher beings than ourselves but I see no evidence that they exist or interfere in our lives (which does not obviously preclude their existence but that is not proof they do exist).

I think there is more to the world than we see. We may find one day that it comes down simply to a couple of tweaks to the laws of physics and a new quantum particle or two, who knows.

Certainly organised religion tends to be a crutch as far as I can see. It does some good, it does some bad (mysteriously, all capacities of the people who follow it rather than the God who supposedly drives them). Using a crutch to get through life, to leap beyond the drab world of order and cause-and-effect we see, is something I can understand and I'm sure I do myself to a degree. Of course for that to work, the people involved can't ever accept that it is a crutch, it must be 'proven' in their minds.

Here entereth faith.

The belief in something you can't prove. Then why believe it? Because you need to believe it. Sort of a self-fulfilling criteria for it being something to lean on rather than anything else.

I'm sure the world will continue to surprise me. I'd like to think that everyone I care about will carry on or come back in some way (certainly we all reincarnate to one degree or another since our materials will be reused and eventually make it back into human form, or moreso than that if the gravitational attraction of matter is great enough to cause a 'Big Crunch' the universe will recycle itself through, recreating space-time as possibly infinite number of times. If it's infinite, then sooner or later I and my loved ones will be back, it's only a matter of time) but I remain unconvinced that all human consciousness is something ethereal. Some individuals appear to have progressed little more than animals who can talk and use the Internet, and if animals can't get into Heaven why should they?

But what do I know. I'm not God.

[Best First]

Hmm.

For me a lot of it comes down to arrogance and presumption. For me to claim to be in possession of a divine truth (whilst not actually being able to produce any evidence and no, books written by people of the same mentality don’t count) is just rather laughable, especially when its relatively easy to poke holes in the internal logic of such things (especially when you are as brilliant and wise as I am).

I know that reads a bit offensively to any one who is a believer but I think its probably a different kind of arrogance to just being a boastful tw@t who is better than you (like I am) – in that its generally more entrenched, almost subconscious conviction in a lot of cases (I realise I may be straying into some dangerous generalisations here) that essentially leads to this mental shell that logic happily bounces off.

Basically if you are a person of faith there is an aspect of you that is a bit irritating (there, I said it) , because at the end of the day you will probably at some point go ‘Ah, but that is for God to know’ when faced with a question you can’t answer. Which is a) vexing and b) marks you out as someone who I should probably try and sell insurance to at some point.

And what is vexing (to me) is that you can point to all the books and preachers etc etc but at the end of the day it is you that has decided that this is the divine truth because, essentially, you want it to be. That’s the very simple formula at the centre of faith, and it’s a bit snot nosed at the end of the day.

So that annoys me. You snot nosed religious punks.

HOWEVER

I can’t help but see a lot of correlation between that and people who say “Ah, well there is definitely not anything, its so freaking obvious, you God f*ck” (to paraphrase).

Now the thing is, I suspect that there is probably nothing, or at least nothing that is spectacularly interested in the bags of flesh roaming plant earth, but I am certain I am not in a position to say there is absolutely definitely nothing out there that is beyond our understanding or some kind of freaky higher purpose to such things in life as me beating off twice a day (man, that would be awesome, but anyway…)

So, essentially I would say I am agnostic by virtue of not wanting to be a knob who states with authority that there is no nothing ever thank you very much.

But an agnostic at the extremely atheist end of the scale.

So that being the case, things I will not say are certain, but I very strongly suspect:

- Humanity is not central or important to anything except entirely terrestrial matters involving humanity. We are not a key wheel in some big plan, and if we are then Space Monkey who’s plan it is is a dick for not filling everyone in anyway, so he can piss right off.
- There is no all powerful conscious source of everything. And again, if there is, it’s a wanker, I mean look around you, there is a lot of unnecessary sh*t going on, and if there is a totally all powerful bastard its all his fault as free will actually can’t exist within the context of an all powerful creator.

- So essentially, there might be something, but as far as ‘why we are here’ it in all likelihood has nothing to do with it. We are probably here because some passing alien did a sh*t on Africa a billion years ago. There’s your god people.

So I guess the other important thing to say is that just because I say that I don’t dismiss the idea of there being ‘something’ 100% that in no way lends credence to a lot of the dipsh*t ideas that are flying round on planet earth. Like, say, the guy that made up all the rules hand to send his son to die because we broke some of the rules that he made. Again, if that is his approach – what a rimjob.

Whilst I suspect that the more spiritual non –monotheistic religions are also at their core wrong they are generally less offensive (to me) as they largely subsume humanity to a broader sense of spirituality, monotheism on the other hand, even though some branches are god fearing and all that is essentially one big humanity big up – which having seen humanity is a hilarious concept.

“Hey, I believe humanity is central to a divine plan”

Is essentially saying “I believe I am central to a divine plan”

To which I can only respond “Seriously? Have you seen your hair?”

You’re not important, have a wank, get over it and get on with your allotted time free from the existential burden of trying to figure out why you are here.

And maybe help a granny cross the road or something.

Anyway, enough rambly swearing from me (ha, as if…)

Conversely i would love to figure out a way to maintian a sense of community and encourage people to do nice stuff en masse without some cock eyed lie at the centre of it all...

[Impactor returns 2.0]

These guys managed it:

[sprunkner]

I like how Besty's reply depends heavily on wanking as a source of enlightenment.

I'm struck by the correlation between the act of storytelling and seeking God--and the way that religious narratives have a very basic story structure in which the act of transcendence, be it crucifixion or the cherry tree, enacts the climax. Isn't that what a story is supposed to do, according to Aristotle--provide catharsis and transcendence?

The comparison gets weirder when you think what it might be like to have all the Transfans get together and read Target: 2006. Doesn't seem all that different from a Bible study, does it? Other than the story moves a hell of a lot faster and has not quite as many leaps in logic. But we would discuss aspects of the story as they relate to truth and empowerment, motivation and even place it within the time context: a children's comic written in the 1980s in Britain. Those are the same things Bible study groups talk about.

Is the act of storytelling very far off from the act of worship? Both often begin in despair or mundanity and progress to some act of transcendence; and the forms of transcendence are as varied as the seed of Abraham.

I don't think this viewpoint cheapens faith--rather, I think it deepens it when one realizes that they're all stories. It's easier with this to perceive myself, my faith, as its own story that interacts with other stories the same way authors interact with their influences.

More thoughts as they come. Come on, talk amongst yourselves.