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The Mystic Perspective

Re: The Last Bastion

Postby AllanS » September 29th, 2007, 11:50 am

“And turn their grief into song?" he replied. "That would be a gracious act and a good beginning."

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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby salanor » September 29th, 2007, 10:54 pm

My good fellows

When will this babble end? It seems that whatever you think is great, pure or wonderful is by definition God. Adam tells us that the history of Judeo-Christian religion is worshiping beauty (or is it joy - I think it changed along the way) Alan S is suggesting "depth". Mmm. That's novel. Anyone else got an advance on what God might be / mean? Do I hear the "ultimate cause" ... any advance, "the true essence of colour" on my right ... "love beyond understanding" down the front ... the lady in the red dress has "intrinsic nature of all things" going, going, gone.

I know, lets get straight to it. God is everything, including every concept, every utterance, every life, every object, every otherness, everybody. Saves time just to get in early and book God for everything.

There, a much more meaningful proposition. I hope you are seeing God in these words and I think you are just being obtuse if you can't recognise your thoughts as God and did you wash behind God's ears last night?

In the end your God is meaningless because you just make up the meaning, like a child makes up pretend words. If none of us agrees on what God is, the word is meaningless, by definition.

"The name of all cow burps is God. That burp is what the word God means. (Oh, I see you are now calling me ridiculous) And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the burps of your life, of the source of those burps, of your ultimate indigestion, of what keeps you awake at night seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means cow burps, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an non-burper or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no burps! Life itself is burpless. Being itself is devoid of burps. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an non-burper; but otherwise you are not." Sillich

The reason for atheism is that most people grow up and don't believe in sky daddies and santa, even if they still attend church to get the warm fuzzies.

The reason for atheism is that the human brain is a wonderful orgn for generate lots of ideas completely unrelated to its context and that this brain needs a reality check every now and then to keep it "grounded", so to speak.

The reason for atheism is that everybody is an atheist, its just that some people cross off all the Gods (2500+) they could believe in, not just all except one (or two or three).

My sincere apologies for these confronting words. I do not mean to spoil your party. You go right on and talk about whatever it is you are talking about. I think I will go hum a tune.

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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby Adam » September 29th, 2007, 11:11 pm

If there exists anything in this world that may come from a source more powerful than nature, or that deserves to be protected by a force more just than nature, then those things, whatever they may be, stir hope that there may be a God. And that hope is expressed in belief, a life lived as though it were true.

Some people experience their entire lives without ever seeing these things, without ever loving anything outside of themselves with such force that it's mortality, if it were final, would be enough to condemn all of existence as unjust and idiotic.

But autumn brings no frustration to those who do not work the ground, and winter brings no sorrow to those who have never held a rose.

For such a tragedy, there is no argument, only compassion, and sorrow, and hope yet still.

There are many possible gods and many possible worlds, but only one that I hope for: a world that will not return to dust, and a god who will not let it; if life is meaningless, then my false fantasy will be merely another drop of idiocy in an already idiotic world. It will do no harm, least of all, to you.

Adam

"Reasons" are all that atheism has. No one ever hopes and dreams for a world where there is no God. Atheism is the comfortable cynicism of those who have given up on their dreams. I understand why people feel the need to do so, but I do not understand why so many are so proud of themselves for it.
"Love is the only art that poorly imitates nature."
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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby AllanS » September 30th, 2007, 2:19 am

“And turn their grief into song?" he replied. "That would be a gracious act and a good beginning."

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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby salanor » September 30th, 2007, 6:48 am

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Postby AllanS » September 30th, 2007, 7:32 am

If there's no God, theists won't be disappointed. They'll be dead.

If God's bad, we'll all be dead, or we'll all be disappointed.

Lastly, if God is good, our relation to him will be a matter of utmost significance. A good God would take human freedom very seriously, even our freedom to reject him. Even more terrifying, he would hold us in such high regard that he'd deem us responsible. If a good God exists and we reject the light, we will suffer darkness (perhaps forever). Those who refuse to drink will be thirsty.

Clearly, the hypothetical atheist risks a unique loss. An infinite loss. Bizarrely, he risks literally everything on a fashionable hunch.

The most important question isn't "Is there a God?" In point of fact, this is a ridiculous question to ask since only God can answer it definitively. Rather, we need to ask: "Since being in wrong relation to the good God is laden with infinite risk, what does it mean to be in right relation?"
“And turn their grief into song?" he replied. "That would be a gracious act and a good beginning."

Quid and Harmony: a fund-raising project for the Fistula Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. www.smithysbook.com
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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby salanor » September 30th, 2007, 8:58 am

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Postby AllanS » September 30th, 2007, 2:03 pm

“And turn their grief into song?" he replied. "That would be a gracious act and a good beginning."

Quid and Harmony: a fund-raising project for the Fistula Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. www.smithysbook.com
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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby Adam » September 30th, 2007, 10:04 pm

Last edited by Adam on October 6th, 2007, 4:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby Kolbitar » October 1st, 2007, 1:34 am

::Kind of you to invite me on your adventure, but I'm busy soaking up Bach, drinking a fine wine, gazing at a beautiful woman and wondering about the world around me. The search for the Holy Grail is clearly for those of more noble birth.

Hello again Salanor.

What would you say if someone responded something like, The Holy Grail, for people like you and me who are birthed at least noble enough to be able to soak up Bach and the like, lies hidden -- so the saints intimate -- in the needy: in the very things such as misfortune, misery, pain, old age, retardation, etc.; in the very things we have to turn our backs on in order to enjoyably soak up and drink in the good life. Mmmm -- and in so far as we shelter ourselves from the tragic fates of our neighbors, stay fortunate ourselves, and feel good locked away in our own little island paradises, well, I suppose we'll have no need for that more "noble birth" -- "from above."

I would respond yes, I too often forget the unfortunate among us and I too often squander the good fortune I've inherited; I too often forget that happiness predicated on selfishness and luck is not the deeper, steady -- dare I say mystic happiness of the Saints.

Regards,

Jesse
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby salanor » October 6th, 2007, 3:37 am

Summary of Adam's reply:

Anything you say I said. I didn't.
If I disagree, you are inputing meaning into my words.
Even if I say I am something, I can always deny it 3 paragraphs down.
I will define anything the way I want to.

Cheers, mate, enjoy the beer
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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby salanor » October 6th, 2007, 3:55 am

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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby Adam » October 6th, 2007, 4:32 am

"Love is the only art that poorly imitates nature."
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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby Kolbitar » October 7th, 2007, 4:56 pm

Hello Sir Salanor.

I’ll be straightforward and possibly a bit vulnerable here. My working philosophical diet consists primarily of two things, which at the very least perhaps both of us can consider to have indispensable nutritional value.

To begin, everything I consume is seasoned through and through with a dash of Socratic common sense. The first thing I know is that I know there are limitations to my knowledge, and that there must be limitations to it no matter how intelligent I may be. I know this as an immediate deduction from the facts; first, that there are intrinsic limitations to the type of knowledge, which is first received through the senses; second, that I possess this type of knowledge. The natures of things which only partially manifest themselves in the extended world of our senses inevitably remain opaque to our understanding precisely for that reason. Huxley (who is inexhaustibly quotable) once reflected, "Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness."

If Mr. Harris wants to press the issue of epistemology to the point of Decartes mathematically “clear and distinct” criteria, i.e., “rationalism” – I say let him. But we have every right to demand consistency. When he makes a mockery not only of knowing the existence of God but, by the same method, of believing in the reliable nature of the ongoing universe and the reality of non-quantifiable thinking subjects (i.e., thinking, feeling persons existing beyond the scope of empirical science); when he rationally destroys practical common sense will he have the intellectual discipline to stick by his consequences, or will he rhetorically relate the absurdity of his logic to his opponents, who are merely pointing it out?

So point one: Socratic common sense.

Second ingredient – meaning, value, purpose.

Why does God let bad things happen to children? I don’t know. But children mean so much to me that I find infinite value in them, thus I seek purpose. You might think -- But how subjective! Is it really though? For, on the face of it, we “subjectively” seek purpose in the universe, “Science and technology (here goes Huxley again) could not exist unless we had faith in the reliability of the universe—unless, in Clerk Maxwell’s words, we implicitly believed that the book of Nature is really a book and not a magazine, a coherent work of art and not a hodge-podge of mutually irrelevant snippets” -- and so far we’re justified. We’re justified in practice. Yet there’s some need to be justified intellectually as well, isn’t there? That’s the whole basis of the atheist critique: that belief in God does not correspond to reality. Well, intellectually speaking, does the atheist belief that nature will continue to read like a book correspond to reality? Once again, we simply don’t know. That is, without recourse to a God in whom we can trust who is derived rationally (not rationalistically) – we simply don’t know and are reduced to blind faith.

My diet, therefore, consists of a healthy portion of intellectual humility together with acepting the natural impetus which both a-priori sets my course for faith in meaning -- period, and also increasingly whets my appetite to seek an ultimate purpose for my intellect. What about yours?

Everyone has a motive for his working hypothesis. The reasons I’ve acquired to confirm my hypothesis you might automatically see as self-justified, thus you would deny their truthfulness from the start according to your hypothesis. But what if I did the same with yours? Therefore we must admit that, in principle, our dilemma (contradiction of motives) is a matter of truth. But how would a confused third party desiring to get to the truth, but convinced he’s approached an antinomy; how could such a one proceed?

I’d say to him temper your intellect with the fact that life is a mystery, and choose to live like children have infinite value which they can only possess in the context of an infinite purpose (God), or choose to live like the value you find in them is really a subjective illusion, which because it could be otherwise thus contains no purposeful meaning. In other words, choose to live like Christ taught us -- which leads to hope, or choose to live a *consistent* atheism -- which, to a sensitive mind, logically ends in despair.

Sincerely,

Jesse
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

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Re: The Last Bastion

Postby salanor » October 8th, 2007, 9:52 am

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