Reflections on the "god question"

[Mindwheeel]

Fore some reason or other I seem inclined to want to discuss the questions of "higher dimensions of reality" today. This includes "the god question", what it could mean, and how it relates to the evidence and facts at hand, which can be examined by anyone. I will try as much as possible to steer away from all traditional approaches, theories etc...and analyse this straight from the beginning. I will try to approache this question with as little preconceptions as possible, but instead try to review this mystery totally seriously.

 

 

The first point I want to make in regards to this question of "God" is a quote I`ve heard which I think says quite a lot about this question, about the very premise for what this whole discussion is about. The quote I heard was from a physicist called Ravi Ravindra, who is also an expert in comparative religion.I dont know if the qoute originally arose from him, but it doesnt matter. It goes like this:

 

A GOD OF WHICH I COULD HAVE ANY IDEA WOULD NOT BE WORTHY HAVING AS A GOD

 

 

When i heard this expression it immiediately seemed to make sense to me. Because when we are speaking about this "god", IF we want to speak about this question seriously...not just as some kind of joke...but to think really: What could this mean? IF it was seriously meant? Then I will claim that the very premise for this whole conversation is:

 

THE ONLY SENSIBLE WAY TO UNDERSTAND THE IDEA OF GOD, IS AS A REFERENCE TO SOMETHING INFINITELY MYSTERIOUS.

 

 

I will even take it further than the mentioned qoute, and say: If I could have any idea about it, or any sort of mental representation, or any sort of image or any sort of even feeling about what it is... THEN THAT WOULD DEFINITELY NOT BE GOD If I could explain what the idea really meant, then IT WOULD NOT BE GOD.

 

And I claim that this is a self evident truism which has been seriously underestimated from all sides. If we are going to take the idea of God seriously, the whole point is right from the beginning that it is a reference to something BEYOND what we can understand. It is reference to something BEYOND everything we know. BEYOND everything we can visualize. BEYOND everything we can explain. It is a reference to something which is practically speaking infinitely impossible to grasp with our present limited mind.

 

And this means that when trying to approach this idea, the idea of trying to grasp this intellectually collapses right from the beginning, your orwellian language notwithstanding.

 

Language will collapse way before we even get to God.

 

I feel this fact is completely necessery to mention and has been very much underestimated generally speaking. The fact that we can not view this idea of God in the same way we view other ideas. We can not view this idea in terms of descriptive purposes. This is an idea which refers to something absolutely mindblowing. IF it is to be taken seriously. And if not, if it doesnt refer to something mindblowing, then it isnt god. It that is the case, that it could be understood, then it will have no relevance to this discussion. No relevance whatsoever. In this context I dont care what you call yourself. But if you are speaking about a kind of god that you can represent in your mind, then I`m not interested. Because that isnt god. It couldnt be. A god of which I could have any idea is a god one could not even begin to take seriously.

 

 

This further relates to the general situasjon of human beings in the world today. What is the general situation?

 

Now I will claim that the general situation for the average human being, including the average professor or scholar or smart guy is: That he is in a situation of extreme information overload, around him, with extremely limited oversight as to what is actually going on. You might want to ask yourself at this point: Do you know what you are going to think in the next ten seconds? Can you even control your own thoughts? For the next ten seconds? If you decide to think about one thing, could you actually do it?

 

 

If I asked you to think only about a certain mathematical equation for the next twenty seconds, and if your life depended on it and the life of your family and the future of the planet depended on it: Could you do it? Could you control your thoughts for that extremely short period of time?

 

Now if the answer is "no", then this puts this whole discussion into an interesting context. IF the reality is that human beings dont know anything about what they are going to think about in the next ten seconds, and they certainly dont know even one percent of a percent of everything thats going on in the whole planet at this particular moment in time...even less what is going on in the whole universe at this moment in time, and even less than that what actually happened in the universe before, lets say a couple of hundred years ago, a couple of thousand years ago, a couple of million years ago, when life so called started?

 

 

This all seems to lead me to one inevitable conclusion: That in regards to the bigger picture, the question of the bigger picture, where life comes from, where human beings come from, what is the real meaning of our existence, does there exist anything beyond this?

 

The only rational approach that can be taken in regards to these questions is an approach of OVERWHELMING HUMILITY.

 

It seems to me very clear and this is a case I will make, that anyone that is not god himself or herself, can not make any claims...neither for nor against...of a UNIVERSAL NATURE, about the universal situation which surrounds us...with anything even REMOTELY CLOSE TO CERTAINTY.

 

 

I am claiming that anyone who is not god, and who makes a claim about god or even what the word "god" supposedly means, or who makes a claim about the probabilities of "higher levels of existence"...outside of this, before this, beyond this...if such a claim is made then it seems to me to be absolute total speculation without any rational foundation whatsozever. Even if you base it on all the observed facts in the recorded history of mankind, all these observed facts are actually just a microscopic little fragment of the bigger picture.

 

And we have no way of knowing for sure what it is we are missing.

 

 

This leads back to what I would say is the basic rational position in relation the the question of gods existence. You may or may not call this the "agnostic" position, I dont care, I think that it corresponds somewhat with my understanding of the word gagnostic, if you have a different understanding of the word agnostic, forget about it. Try, if you dont mind, try to understand the position I am describing.

 

The position im describing is a position that assumes absolutely NOTHING.

Claims absolutely NO knowledge, no opinions, not made up my mind, dont claim to know, if there is a god, whatever it might be or mean, what the word might be or mean, what the probabilities might be or mean. This position is to say simpy: I DONT KNOW. FINISHED.

 

My next question is: what could be ADDED to this position?

 

 

This leads into the question of "atheism". To me "atheism" seems like an absolutely meaningless concept. Because unless "atheism" is this COMPLETE acknowledgement of I DONT KNOW ANYTHING about this question (the god question) and make absolutely no assumptions about this question, neither for nor against...

 

If "atheism" is not this, WHAT IS IT?

 

 

Is there some idea that they know after all?

 

If there is a claim that one considers it less likely that there is higher levels of reality or higher intelligence or higher consciousness or something beyond anything we can even speak about. If they claim that this is not the case or that it is "probably not the case"...

 

 

THEN I REALLY REALLY WONDER WHAT FACTUAL EVIDENCE THIS ASSUMPTION IS BASED ON.

 

Because unless that person claims to know all there is to know about the whole universe, this will necessarily be a claim about...the nonexistence...of "something"...completely unknown...outside of anything I know.

 

So not only is it an assumption which is not based on any kind of facts, but it couldt even IN THEORY be based on facts.

 

 

If this isn`t the very pinnacle of irrational speculations then I dont know what is. And I am now of course speaking about anything, in the atheistic sense, which is added to that core position I just described, the position of simply saying i dont know and make no assumptions for nor against in any way, shape or form.

What is it that distinguishes atheism from being an agnostic?

If an agnostic is simply someone who says I dont know and assume nothing. (in regards to the god question). I can not see that atheism has anything to add to the agnostic position. And therefore it remains a completely meaningless expression.

 

So what about faith?

 

 

Once again the question is: What could faith mean? Faith in god, faith in higher levels of existence? Once again I remind everyone that the premise for the whole discussion is that God is infinitely mysterious. It CAN NOT be explained and understood by thought in the normal way. So obviously any kind of belief in god, if it is to be anything serious and worth taking seriusly, MUST be something OTHER than believing in some readily defined idea, in the sense of believing that this particular idea happens to be true.

 

If perhaps instead this belief is experienced as some kind of emotional interest in higher dimensions of reality, some kind of "wanting to find out more" this is a possibility making a lot more sense.

 

 

Belief in "something higher", if we are now speaking about the kind of belief that doesnt assume to know anything about the bigger picture, but is more a belief in "something more" that I cant totally explain. This relates to the question of revelations. The argument goes a little something like this:

 

CERTAIN HUMAN EXPERIENCES CAN BE VERY CLEAR, BUT IMPOSSIBLE TO COMMUNICATE.

 

 

A specific example of this is the experience of colors. If a blind person who has never seen colors, and actually even doubted the existence of colors very strongly, where to ask you for PROOF of colors, then you would have a very hard time giving him any answer which would in his ears sound like anything other than complete nonsense. Because he wouldnt have anything to refer it to. So without the actual EXPERIENCE of colors the whole idea of colors would make no sense whatsoever to this man.

 

Another striking example of the same phenomenon, the non-communicative first hand empirical experiences, is "The myth of the cave" by Plato. Of course these people in the cave had looked at the wall in the cave their whole life and only seen shadows, 2-dimensional forms. Combinations of those forms. Naturally their whole thought process and their whole worldview consisted ONLY of different combinations of shadows on the wall. Now if it then happened as described in this myth that one of them turned around, started seeing 3-dimensional figures, saw fire, saw wooden figures, went outside seeing trees, the sun, the wind on the fields, all kinds of stuff... If he then where to come back and try to explain this to the people who had ONLY seen shadows on the wall, they would necessarily interpret everything they hear as different combinations of shadows on the wall. And in other words they would not make any sense of it. I think the myth of the cave is, at least, a very clear example of the practical impossibility of communicating certain types of experiences to people who havent actually had these experiences themselves.

 

 

By the way, do you want to see a proof of gods existence? Here it is: GOD.

 

There you go. Feel free to repeat this experience as many times as is considered "preferable to other option pending". The existence of the idea "god" is indeed a reality. What people associate with this word is quite a different issue.

 

 

The idea of god is more than anything a movement. It is a moment of action. Something going on in this thing called life. This action takes place somewhere within everyday life. This action has certain effects, a spectum of functions. This spectrum of functions, the spectrum of functions which arise directly as a result of the sharing and contemplation about the idea of god, blends with life as unfolding.

 

This is the game. This is the spectacle. This is the place where life happens.

[Rosario]

This leads into the question of "atheism". To me "atheism" seems like an absolutely meaningless concept. Because unless "atheism" is this COMPLETE acknowledgement of I DONT KNOW ANYTHING about this question (the god question) and make absolutely no assumptions about this question, neither for nor against...

 

Idag er teknologien et "lysår" mer avansert enn Antikken

(obs. en PC kan ikke håndtere "vet ikke" - begrepet mangler i digital logikk

 

int China_population;

print China_population;

293475069494838

eller

0

)

 

Ateister foretrekker booleansk logikk, altså "293475069494838" eller "0"

Endret 7. desember 2012 av Rosario

[Mindwheeel]

Idag er teknologien et "lysår" mer avansert enn Antikken

(obs. en PC kan ikke håndtere "vet ikke" - begrepet mangler i digital logikk

 

 

Ateisme failer på to måter:

 

1) Det har null og niks av mening å legge til den agnostiske posisjonen

 

2) Det skaper i praksis et motsetningsforhold mot alt assosiert med religion, derunder både menneskene som på en eller annen måte verdsetter det, såvel som alt som er mulig å lære av dem. Kort sagt: En selvbegrensning man fint kan leve uten.

[Mindwheeel]

Åssen får jeg lagt ut en video her? Jeg har en video og til og ti av dem om dette temaet, men ser ikke hvordan jeg får lastet den opp. Jeg vet, jeg er en idiot. Men kanskje man kan være en idiot med potensiale

[Rosario]

Youtube - bare kopier inn adresse for video, bilde - egen knapp

[Mindwheeel]

Den korte forklaringen på hvorfor ateisme er dømt til å være enten 100% agnostisk eller 100% overtro

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxb-jDzrT_Y&feature=youtu.be

Endret 7. desember 2012 av Hamolinadir