Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

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Nick_A wrote: July 31st, 2021, 10:49 pm
Sy Borg wrote: July 31st, 2021, 9:14 pm Nick, you believe that we belong to God. Many don't, and it's not enough to pass them off as hopeless denizen's of Plato's cave.

God is a matter of interpretation, and every other theist will have a unique conception.

Then again, I don't necessarily see atheists floundering in life, lost without a sense of connection. All the "tribes" seem to be doing roughly as well and as badly as each other.

I don't think any of these beliefs matter. They are just "cheats", ways of traversing the many challenges of life. Whatever works for you.

So God works for you, Nick.

It's the universe for Poetic Universe (unsurprisingly, given his or her moniker).

I don't think so grandly, myself. I find the scale and scope of the Earth and Sun completely mind-melting in themselves (itself??). I look into the sky and know I am like a fish looking at the top of the water, not on the Earth but in it, a part of it. Such a perspective grounds me morally, as I like the idea of being a relatively harmonious part of the Earth that respects and tries to get along with other parts of the world, be they human or otherwise. That's my "cheat", I suppose.
Nick, you believe that we belong to God. Many don't, and it's not enough to pass them off as hopeless denizen's of Plato's cave.

God is a matter of interpretation, and every other theist will have a unique conception.
The word God seems to have a negative and personal connotation. Try using the word "meaning" instead of God. Most experience meaning by societal conditioning. Fame, fortune, pleasure, and prestige satisfy the psychological need for meaning. They belong to the world.

However there is a minority in which these societal attractions are insufficient to supply the inner need for meaning. A person can have acquired fame, fortune, pleasure, prestige, and still have a need to feel meaning. They are attracted to the inner light that originates beyond the world. For want of a better word, they belong to God.
I have no issues with the word "God". I was raised with such beliefs so "God" has the feel of a security blanket for me, and while I am open to the unproven, I see no reason to believe without proof.

What satisfies the need for meaning will vary according to the individual. I do not buy your loose broad-brush approach to classifying people. Unlike you, I don't see two "tribes". I see a minority of powerful people playing games to divide the little people, to distract them from the fact that they are creating a new, elite economy that will be decoupled from the plebs (a big shout out to Rupert Murdoch and Fox). Meanwhile, the plebs will continue arguing amongst themselves about religion, gender, sexuality, flags, anthems, and other exaggerated divisions.

I see that divide manifesting in a new species, one being rapidly enhanced by technology and a larger group lagging behind. (Reminiscent of humans splitting from, other great apes). That larger group of humans will continue to bicker about internal rules of engagement and petty politics while becoming ever more unwittingly servile to the empowered minority - complicit in, and deserving of, their fate as underlings.
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

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Nick_A wrote: July 30th, 2021, 9:48 pm
PoeticUniverse wrote: July 30th, 2021, 6:47 pm
Nick_A wrote: July 30th, 2021, 4:32 pm Could you elaborate on what it means to be spiritually blind…
‘God’ hasn’t been established and most likely can’t ever be because what is supposed to be everywhere is found nowhere, at first by sight, and so the wishing believers turn to another sense, that of feeling/sensation to find the pervading ‘spirit’, and so for some whose wires fire together quite often in this endeavor toward what is hoped for may, to no surprise, obtain a ‘spirit’ answer forthcoming from what’s now been strongly wired together.

‘Spiritually Blind’, then, becomes a kind of desperate claim upon those, such as Mother Teresa, who never felt the spirit of God, turning this supposed ‘handicap’ much towards being a bad label.

And yet, feelings and sensations are but second stories, they being colored by the neurotransmitters of the neurological first storey, whose existence is totally opaque to awareness and introspection.

However, all can have what they want; live and let live! It is only when they preach ‘God’ as fact and truth that they open themselves so widely to being referred to as misleading at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.

Even so, well, they have to, as must we all, although abilities vary, since the Cosmos does us, not the other way around, as we are reminded by

“Note that Another resident of Plato’s Cave who believes they are free and able to consciously choose.”
Parmenides held that the multiplicity of existing things, their changing forms and motion, are but an appearance of a single eternal reality (“Being”), thus giving rise to the Parmenidean principle that “all is one.” From this concept of Being, he went on to say that all claims of change or of non-Being are illogical.
Does it follow here that "I AM GOD?" Spiritual blindness is being unaware of it. The relativity of being which is essential to my philosophy is actually an illusion since all is one. I'm not being critical but just trying to understand your position.

If "all is one," does human existence have an essential purpose or is the need for purpose also an illusion?
People reject stepping up to --- I am god.

It is admitting to being a sheeple and ends their efforts in competing for supremacy.

Many are called etc.

We are all born thinking we are the fittest of our line, and we are, till we become sheeple, or the less fit, in evolution language.

Over time, they are the many that are called, from which the few fittest rise.

Regards
DL
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by Nick_A »

Sy Borg
I have no issues with the word "God". I was raised with such beliefs so "God" has the feel of a security blanket for me, and while I am open to the unproven, I see no reason to believe without proof.

What satisfies the need for meaning will vary according to the individual. I do not buy your loose broad-brush approach to classifying people. Unlike you, I don't see two "tribes". I see a minority of powerful people playing games to divide the little people, to distract them from the fact that they are creating a new, elite economy that will be decoupled from the plebs (a big shout out to Rupert Murdoch and Fox). Meanwhile, the plebs will continue arguing amongst themselves about religion, gender, sexuality, flags, anthems, and other exaggerated divisions.

I see that divide manifesting in a new species, one being rapidly enhanced by technology and a larger group lagging behind. (Reminiscent of humans splitting from, other great apes). That larger group of humans will continue to bicker about internal rules of engagement and petty politics while becoming ever more unwittingly servile to the empowered minority - complicit in, and deserving of, their fate as underlings.
You have described the many attempts to find and feel meaning in the world or the prison of Plato's Cave. The human personality is constructed by all these conflicting earthly influences of family, friends, society, and education. All these personalities are different and attracted to and fight over their psychological interpretations of earthly meaning.

War is the ultimate conflict over opinions arising in the prison of Plato's Cave. Each side believes it is right and its attempt for meaning is justified. Simone Weil describes in the beginning of her poem how the real cause of war arises from outside the cave: La Force. How many have even contemplated La Force?

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library ... -the-iliad
The Iliad, or The Poem of Force

The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man’s flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to. For those dreamers who considered that force, thanks to progress, would soon be a thing of the past, the Iliad could appear as an historical document; for others, whose powers of recognition are more acute and who perceive force, today as yesterday, at the very center of human history, the Iliad is the purest and the loveliest of mirrors.

To define force — it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all; this is a spectacle the Iliad never wearies of showing us:

... the horses
Rattled the empty chariots through the files of battle,
Longing for their noble drivers. But they on the ground Lay,
dearer to the vultures than to their wives.
The hero becomes a thing dragged behind a chariot in the dust:
.......................
Only some from philosophy and those of the authentic religious traditions initiating with a conscious source are open to contemplate "force." Yet those who seek freedom from blind belief and blind denial are invited by those like Simone and others to think in new way which avoids the duality and the conflict it produces between blind belief and blind denial
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by Nick_A »

Pattern-chaser
Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Jul 30, 2021 3:13 pm
We both believe that the universe is the body of God. However you believe the universe is “an emergent property of the universe” while I believe the universe is an emergent property of the consciousness of our source beyond time and space which Plotinus described as the ONE. It is harmful to debate since it invites negativity but can be discussed by seekers of truth

There is no harm in co-operative debate, the only sort of debate worth the trouble. But I can't quite see what you're getting at. Could you expand on the text I've highlighted, please? In particular, is "our source" God?
The ONE or (God) as I understand beyond the limits of time and space.it is the ineffable source or unity for creation. It is pure consciousness consisting of all the potentials for the six dimensional universe and its levels of reality to arise.

Unity divides into its elemental three forces (active, passive, reconciling) to begin creation. The ONE and the division into three simultaneously exist. The first division into NOUS exists simultaneously and within the ONE.

The wholeness of a forest and its division into the multiplicity of trees is the same idea except that with creation worlds exist within worlds. A solid can exist within a liquid and a liquid can exist within a gas The levels of reality produced the universal potential for both involution and evolution.

The ONE is the source of energy for creation. Are you suggesting that the universe is its own source of energy which sustains it or that it always was so never dies? The fact that the universe is slowing seems to contradict Newton's first law of motion: "Newton's first law states that if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force."
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Nick_A wrote: August 1st, 2021, 1:49 pm The ONE is the source of energy for creation. Are you suggesting that the universe is its own source of energy which sustains it or that it always was so never dies? The fact that the universe is slowing seems to contradict Newton's first law of motion: "Newton's first law states that if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force."
The universe is unwinding, like a spring, the quality of its energy decreasing but not its quantity. The expansion of the universe is accelerating and so one day the photons as all that will be left will be so far apart that none of them will be able to ‘see’ another one, but the photons will still be moving according to Newton’s law.

From Isaac: Laws and Revelations:

There is a mote in space known as Earth,
A pale blue dot of fluff orbiting a hearth.
Due to Newton’s laws there’s no Spirit help—none:
No Godly hand guiding it safe around the sun.

God’s vanishing had now really begun—
The heavens and the Earth were one.
Stars and galaxies just went on puffing
And we became the center of nothing.

If energy has to come from a Higher Energy then …? The Golden Template again has to be thrown out of the stain-glass window after its one and only usage.

After the Stars Have Gone—The Final, Silent Dark:

https://theomarkhayyamclubofamerica.fil ... 50-dpi.pdf

All That Lies Between (as Energy):

https://austintorney.files.wordpress.co ... 00-dpi.pdf
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Nick_A wrote: August 1st, 2021, 1:49 pm It is pure consciousness…
As for consciousness, it can’t just float around independently, fully formed, nor can it be a Great First and Fundamental Complexity; consciousness is a brain process that has preceding parts and inputs.


Consciousness is

Intrinsic—My own, as independent;

Compositional—Structured with many phenomenological distinctions;

Informational—Particular and specific;

Integrated/Whole—Unified;

Exclusive—Definite content, no more no less.


Subjective Features:

Referral—The ‘projection’ of neural states with no perceiving of neural firings/states.

Mental Unity—Experienced as a unified field, whereas its sources are all over the brain.

Qualia—The subjectively experienced felt qualities of sensory consciousness.

Continuous—Seamless stitching of the ongoing changing contents from short term memory.

Mental causation?—How can consciousness—an intangible, unobservable, and fully subjective entity—cause material neurons to direct behaviors that change the world? Subconscious brain analysis, taking 300-500 milliseconds to complete, is all done and finished in its result before consciousness gets hold of the product.


Uses/Advantages:

Flexibility of Reaction—We’re better able to react to conscious content, beyond just the automatic reflex-like responses triggered by non conscious content.

Focus—Selective attention allows the brain to focus its activity on what’s important.

Evaluations—Feelings make one aware of what is good or bad.

Survival Value—Complex decisions possible.

Behavioral Flexibility—Unlimited associate learning combines multiple cues into a single perception.

Discrimination—Small perceptual differences possible, such as between good and poisonous food.

Diversification of Species—Such as the Cambrian explosion and a kind of evolutionary arms race in finding new ways to avoid detection, spurring predators to become more sophisticated.

Beauty—Such as plants evolving colorful flowers to attract pollination.

Actionizing—Pondering of the consequences of scenarios before a commitment to action.


The brain interprets reality, and puts
A face on the waves of sound, light, color, touch,
And a sense on molecules’ smell and taste.
Consciousness is the brain’s perception of itself.

Consciousness mediates thoughts versus outcomes,
And is distributed all over the body,
From the nerve spindles to the spine to the brain—
A way to actionize without moving.

Physics describes well the extrinsic causes,
While consciousness exists just for itself,
As the intrinsic, compositional,
Informational, whole, and exclusive—

As the distinctions toward survival,
Though causing nothing except in itself,
As in ne’er doing but only as being,
Leaving intelligence for the doing.

The posterior cortex holds correlates,
For this is the only brain region that
Can’t be removed for one to still retain
Consciousness, it having feedback in it;

Thusly, it presents a unified Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
A process fundamental in nature,
Or is the brain’s own symbolic language.

The Whole can also be well spoken of
To communicate with others, as well as
Globally informing other brain states,
For nonconscious states know not what’s been formed.
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Nick_A wrote: July 31st, 2021, 6:39 pm Matthew 4
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.
The citing of scripture can serve to expose contradictions … that lead the reader into realizing them all the more.

The evil actions of ‘God’ in the Testaments reveal his invention by humans in the image of man, the Bible authors thus rendering myth-takes making for portraying a Very Bad Role Model to be followed.

‘God’ reportedly tolerates the greatest Evil of all—the Devil and his angel followers preying on man with temptation.

The light of Heav’n did the Earth illumine,
When He shaped human nature’s acumen.
Temptations He then placed everywhere,
But He’ll punish us for being human!

(A lucky conjunction above—of the word He’ll as also the word Hell)

‘God’ also seems to have an emotional system and in it is prideful to the max in his need and demand to be Worshipped and Served, which is also mentioned in the scripture posted as also a Devilish stance. ‘God’ as being ever and always never earned his throne.

His fully intended recipe for humans failed right off the bat, as, too, with some of the Angels. He irresponsibly blamed humans for the human nature he thought of, planned, designed, and implemented, casting them out of Eden. He didn’t even know that when one tells children not to touch something that they most certainly will.

He broke his own Commandment in killing all but Noah’s family.

The cover up is that he works in mysterious ways. (Read ‘mysterious’ as ‘insane’)

Etc.


The two Geneses are the Foundational ABCs of the Bible, and, yet, the supposed ‘Divine Revelation’ is as polar opposite as could be to what we’ve found in both Cosmic and Biological Evolution.

So, citing scripture may not be the best revelation of information … plus, it sways the discussion towards it.

The Hand of the Potter Shakes and Fails

UnTruths are but great amusements and fun,
As we are the undoing of the Perfect One:

At the crossroads of His human experiment,
God wondered how the human nature went;
“Damn! I formulated it so perfectly in the lab,
So why did it not turn out exceedingly fab?

“Adam and Eve failed in the blink of an eye,
So I sent Commandments down from the sky,
But ever did humans build the golden calves
Diminishing my needed adoration into halves.

“So I killed all experiments but Noah’s sake,
For they were all a big rainbow of My mistake;
I righted the human course yet once again to sail
Into those waters where it can not ever fail.

“What’s this, I see that all again has gone amiss;
I’ll have Jesus preach the other check to kiss.
Human nature failed for sure; they put him to death;
I must check my formulas once again to save the rest.

“I will send more prophets to shake the mixture up;
Oh, no, this life cast they still crash; I must give up!”
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by Ecurb »

Nick_A wrote: July 31st, 2021, 10:49 pm

The word God seems to have a negative and personal connotation. Try using the word "meaning" instead of God. Most experience meaning by societal conditioning. Fame, fortune, pleasure, and prestige satisfy the psychological need for meaning. They belong to the world.

However there is a minority in which these societal attractions are insufficient to supply the inner need for meaning. A person can have acquired fame, fortune, pleasure, prestige, and still have a need to feel meaning. They are attracted to the inner light that originates beyond the world. For want of a better word, they belong to God.
Why should we cater to all of our psychological "needs"? The sadist has a "need" to torture small animals. It is a "need" that he should suppress.

To return to the tripartate chariot (I'm trying to discuss the issue in your terms, Nick), let's describe them as "appetite", "spirit", and "logic" or "reason". Nick himself suggested that the charioteer -- representing logic and reason -- should guide the horses (appetite and spirit). Now he seems to have gone in the opposite direction. Those who have a "need" (surely an "appetite") for meaning are somehow superior to those who do not. Perhaps they are. But aren't they also allowing the chariot to be driven by the horses?

IN an earlier post I compared "reason" to "rationalization". The use of "reason" in support of satisfying a psychological "need" often becomes a rationalization. The lecher may rationalize his promiscuity; the sadist his cruelty; the lover his delusions about the beloved. So too, he who has a "need" for meaning may invent complicated rationalizations to satisfy that need, which may or may not include God or Plato's cave.

When Nick lauds those who have a "need" for meaning, he is suggesting that "meaning" refers only to the universal and eternal. What if no such "meaning" exists? What if the only "meaning" to which we humans have access is contingent and transitory? Should we continue to ignore those "meanings' to which we have access in favor of those that, like El Dorado, may not exist?

Perhaps the "need" for the eternal is a step down the wrong path -- an appetite that must be reined in by the charioteer. St. Francis suffered stigmata, sickened and died. Did his "need' for meaning kill him? We humans are adept at manipulating reason and logic, and we can manipulate it in ways that temporarily support our strange psychic "needs", sometimes to our peril, and to the peril of Truth.
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by Nick_A »

PoeticUniverse
The universe is unwinding, like a spring, the quality of its energy decreasing but not its quantity. The expansion of the universe is accelerating and so one day the photons as all that will be left will be so far apart that none of them will be able to ‘see’ another one, but the photons will still be moving according to Newton’s law.
We agree that the universe is expanding. But how does it come together again so the cycle repeats? The East describes it as the Breath of Brahma. The universe expands through involution or the out breath. The process of return is evolution. Involution and evolution describe the cyclical process sustaining our universe. But if there is no God, no Brahma, what supplies the needed force to sustain this cycle?
As for consciousness, it can’t just float around independently, fully formed, nor can it be a Great First and Fundamental Complexity; consciousness is a brain process that has preceding parts and inputs.
The force, the spirit of consciousness permeates God and Man. Imagine a water soaked log floating in a pond. The log is in the water and the water is in the log.

Jesus said “ I am in the Father and the Father is in me” This is the same idea. Your quality of consciousness is within higher consciousness. Man just doesn’t know it yet.
The evil actions of ‘God’ in the Testaments reveal his invention by humans in the image of man, the Bible authors thus rendering myth-takes making for portraying a Very Bad Role Model to be followed.

‘God’ reportedly tolerates the greatest Evil of all—the Devil and his angel followers preying on man with temptation.
Was God made in the image of Man or was evolved Man made in the mage of God? Can it be pondered rather than argued?

I don’t believe in a personal God but do believe that the perfection of God must be unique. The universe for it to exist must be imperfect and its laws provide the means for life on earth to turn in circles. The imperfection of our universe is a necessity so what the devil symbolizes is also a necessity. The purpose of mechanical life doesn’t lie with results but the process of transforming substances
The two Genesis are the Foundational ABCs of the Bible, and, yet, the supposed ‘Divine Revelation’ is as polar opposite as could be to what we’ve found in both Cosmic and Biological Evolution.
Have you ever wondered what God is in Genesis 1 and the Lord God is in genesis 2
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Nick_A wrote: August 1st, 2021, 9:24 pm Have you ever wondered what God is in Genesis 1 and the Lord God is in genesis 2
How would it be if I, as your posting friend, were able to help you search for God in the only place that He could be? (After a round or two of some regular type replies).
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by Nick_A »

ecurb
When Nick lauds those who have a "need" for meaning, he is suggesting that "meaning" refers only to the universal and eternal. What if no such "meaning" exists? What if the only "meaning" to which we humans have access is contingent and transitory? Should we continue to ignore those "meanings' to which we have access in favor of those that, like El Dorado, may not exist?
Your God is what provides meaning. A person wants money more than anyting else so money is there God. Most of these Gods are associated with earthly conditioned desires. These can be outgrown

Diotimas ladder of love is a good example. It begins with the love of a body arising on the earth and evolves all the way up to a love of beauty itself which doesn't arise on the earth

https://www.thoughtco.com/platos-ladder-of-love-2670661

The need for meaning isn't a desire of the mind arousing ppetites but rther the need of the heart. Simone Weil offers a good example:
"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©
This need of the heart is different than the desires of appetites. This quality of meaning some can experience is their God
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Nick_A wrote: August 1st, 2021, 9:24 pm We agree that the universe is expanding. But how does it come together again so the cycle repeats? The East describes it as the Breath of Brahma. The universe expands through involution or the out breath. The process of return is evolution. Involution and evolution describe the cyclical process sustaining our universe. But if there is no God, no Brahma, what supplies the needed force to sustain this cycle?
There needn't be a cyclic universe; but, since our universe came to be so could another.

Or

The Eternal Source
(The first one is from Omar, the rest are mine.)

And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour’d
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?

The Eternal Saki has formed trillions of baubles
Like ours, for e’er—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
In the universal bubbles blown and burst.

So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Source from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

What though the sky with its blue canopy
Doth close us in so that we can not see,  
In the etern Cupbearer’s wine methinks
There float a myriad bubbles like to me.

So, as thus thou lives on yester’s credit line,
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl our cup of brew is mixed
Into the state of being that’s called ‘mine’.

Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
The Eternal ‘IS’ has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to have any guide.

Whatever is eternal and is so well defined 
Could never be as so, for it was never defined
In the first place, for that there never was 
To define all that it forever did and does.

What ‘IS’ never began; it’s the causeless,
For you can’t get anything from none-ness;
Yet, there’s a zero-sum balance of things,
Since still naught to make the things of, no less.

We are the beings of the everlasting light dream,
As products time and time again, by its means,
Of the eternal return, as baubles blown and burst,
Though draughts of time that quench life’s thirst.

Nick_A wrote: August 1st, 2021, 9:24 pmThe force, the spirit of consciousness permeates God and Man. Imagine a water soaked log floating in a pond. The log is in the water and the water is in the log.

Jesus said “ I am in the Father and the Father is in me” This is the same idea. Your quality of consciousness is within higher consciousness. Man just doesn’t know it yet.
No comment on the scripture part, but I can offer a good view of Earthly higher consciousness:

Higher Consciousness

The three lower consciousnesses that are
Obsessed with the securing of objects,
With the chasing of sensations, and with
Power/control will never ever be enough.

There are NO actions of people that can
Justify our becoming irritable
Angry, fearful, jealous or anxious if
We give them our unconditional love.

Stress is the difference between what we
Expect to happen and what does happen,
Especially when we put our needs ahead
Of other, oft resulting in needless anger.

If we don’t accept the unacceptable,
Then we lower our level of consciousness
Our response will mirror their uptightness—
Which can spread the bad moods onto others.

Conscious Awareness, which can but witness,
Is a safe haven from which to observe
The drama of our lives playing in our minds,
Granting us a sobering distance from it.

From a safe subjective place that’s free of fear,
Our soul, our conscious awareness, can witness
The strange thoughts and emotions that surface
On the mind, sent by the subconscious brain.

Putting ourselves in the place of others
When hurtful things are done to us,
Expands our consciousness, compassion, and love,
Since we can come to know why they did it.

When we converse with ourselves, it is our
Higher Consciousness—our Conscious Awareness
Or I, that questions our lower consciousness
Impulses toward securing, sensation, and power.

Seeing the big picture of life and its stages
And connections lets one not get annoyed, say,
At being cut off in traffic, for s/he
May be old, learning, lost, growing, or angry.

Putting the needs of others ahead of
Our own produces the byproduct of
Happiness and reduces stress, for we
No longer have unrealistic expectations.

Some fall for their thoughts, hook, line, and sinker:
Conditioned responses, reflexes, or
Overwhelming emotions, some spurious,
Or ancient, planted by evolution, or unbalanced.

Emotions are slow to react to logic,
Like molasses or slow forming crystals,
Or not at all, like rocks, blocking them.
Unless and until they change, progress halts.

Reason and emotion are hard to coordinate,
Each having a separate pathway to the mind,
That, perhaps, is all there is to tell about the
Miseries and follies of human history.

First-level thoughts are beliefs and desires,
But second-level thoughts are beliefs
And desires about the beliefs and desires,
Becoming able spectators of the scene beneath.

This detachment allows
The ‘thinking about a thought’
Without the thought itself
Trying to steal the show.

More responses in the next post; I don't want to make this post too long.
PoeticUniverse
Posts: 638
Joined: April 4th, 2015, 7:25 pm

Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Nick_A wrote: August 1st, 2021, 9:24 pmWas God made in the image of Man or was evolved Man made in the mage of God? Can it be pondered rather than argued?
Pondering doesn't show up here all that well.

God Made in the Image of Man

The ancients found themselves here of nowhere,
Yet to fathom earth, fire, water, and air,
Asking why life was not square, as unfair,
So invented the Bad Role Model’s Care.

They looked unto their calamities,
Their powerful rulers and enemies,
Toward their olden family structure’s way,
Of strict father, and mother with no say.

This Father Notion they based on themselves,
As the best answer that was ever delved:
The demanding Male Mind who was called ‘God’,
An idea for some to this day, well trod.

Answers were needed for them to persist:
They extended the Notion with more myths
And legends into lore layered upon,
Inventing all the scrolls of scripture on.

‘God’ brought both fear and comfort in those days,
Making people better through fearsome ways,
Although worse for some—the unchosen tribes,
Protecting their notions, as taught by scribes.

A wasteland of superstition plod,
Instantiates the meaning for ‘God’.
Emotion e’er sets up a firm blockade
When thoughts fired more build a stockade.

There were various modifications,
Yet the Creator concept remained one;
But natural understandings progressed,
Leaping ahead of the dogmatical rest.

Thousands of years came to pass, in stories,
But then we solved much of the mystery,
Irrefutable now, as gone beyond—
Utterly not of God’s magical wand.

The basis is forever, no creation—
Energy being the primest potion,
And Entirety is seen that it can be
No way but than it is, eternally.

Claims of Revelation in Genesis
Of all of Nature’s species made, as is,
Have been demolished, obliterated,
By evolution and data liberated.

Nature finds no requirement for a ‘God’,
Growth naturally forming in the sod.
The organic ‘comes of the mud and slime,
Formed within billions of years of sweet time.

A trillion lights shine through, of depths of the deep,
Stars afire, with us the souls from their keep.
Man oft spouts the ‘truth’ of a Creator,
As did proto-men, near the equator.

Scrolled into scripture, ‘God’ brought rapture,
Enough for sad hearts to wholly capture;
Yet, there can’t be First Complexity’s shove,
As there wasn’t such to make the Thing of.



God offered Adam a perfect version of woman,
One who would even paint ceilings, cut grass…
But this would have cost Adam an arm and a leg.
So, Adam said, ‘What can I get for just a rib?’
PoeticUniverse
Posts: 638
Joined: April 4th, 2015, 7:25 pm

Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Nick_A wrote: August 1st, 2021, 9:24 pmI don’t believe in a personal God but do believe that the perfection of God must be unique.
A personal god, or personal goddess, is a deity who can be related to as a person,[1] instead of as an impersonal force, such as the Absolute, "the All", or the "Ground of Being”. (Wiki)

So, no more of a Jesus Person God (or us) communicating with Father Person God.

I’ll employ this in aiding your search for the One/God/Absolute. One could also call it 'G.O.D', for 'Ground of Determination'.
Nick_A wrote: August 1st, 2021, 9:24 pmThe universe for it to exist must be imperfect and its laws provide the means for life on earth to turn in circles. The imperfection of our universe is a necessity so what the devil symbolizes is also a necessity. The purpose of mechanical life doesn’t lie with results but the process of transforming substances
Ok, so let us slightly amend the Garden of Eden story to add in the imperfection scheme:

With flora mystical and magical,
Eden’s botanical garden was blest,
So Eve, taking more than just the Apple,
Plucked off the loveliest of the best.

Thus it’s to Eve that we must give our thanks,
For Earth’s variety of fruits and plants,
For when she was out of Paradise thrown,
She stole all the flowers we’ve ever known.

Therewith, through sensuous beauty and grace,
Eve with Adam brought forth the human race,
But our world would never have come to be,
Had not God allowed them His mystery.

When they were banished from His bosom,
Eve saw more than just the Apple Blossom,
And took, on her way through Eden’s bowers,
Many wondrous plants and fruitful flowers.

Mighty God, upon seeing this great theft,
At first was angered, but soon smiled and wept,
For human nature was made in His name—
So He had no one but Himself to blame!

Yet still He made ready His thunderbolt,
As His Old Testament wrath cast its vote
To end this experiment gone so wrong—
But then He felt the joy of life’s new song.

Eve had all the plants that she could carry;
God in His wisdom grew uncontrary.
Out of Eden she waved the flowered wands,
The seeds spilling upon the barren lands.

God held the lightning bolt already lit,
No longer knowing what to do with it,
So He threw it into the heart of Hell,
Forming of it a place where all was well.

Thus the world from molten fire had birth,
As Hell faded and was turned into Earth.
This He gave to Adam and Eve, with love,
For them and theirs to make a Heaven of.

From His bolt grew the Hawthorn and Bluebell,
And He be damned, for Eve stole these as well!
So He laughed and pretended not to see,
Retreating into eternity.

“So be it,” He said, when time was young,
“That such is the life My design has wrung,
For in their souls some part of Me has sprung—
So let them enjoy all the songs I’ve sung.

“Life was much too easy in Paradise,
And lacked therefore of any real meaning,
For without the lows there can be no highs—
All that remains is a dull flat feeling!

“There’s no Devil to blame for their great zest—
This mix of good and bad makes them best!
The human nature that makes them survive,
Also lets them feel very much alive.

“That same beastful soul that makes them glad
Does also make them seem a little bad.
If only I could strip the wrong from right,
But I cannot have the day without the night!”
Nick_A
Posts: 3364
Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:45 pm

Re: Beyond the Duality of Blind Belief and Blind Denial

Post by Nick_A »

Poeticuniverse quoting Omar:
Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
The Eternal ‘IS’ has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to have any guide.

Whatever is eternal and is so well defined
Could never be as so, for it was never defined
In the first place, for that there never was
To define all that it forever did and does.

What ‘IS’ never began; it’s the causeless,
For you can’t get anything from none-ness;
Yet, there’s a zero-sum balance of things,
Since still naught to make the things of, no less.

We are the beings of the everlasting light dream,
As products time and time again, by its means,
Of the eternal return, as baubles blown and burst,
Though draughts of time that quench life’s thirst.
Yes, this is the point of the thread. The bulk of humanity argues the existence of God. But God doesn’t exist, GOD IS. Creation serves the process of existence within the isness of GOD. But who has pondered the difference so the debate between the duality of blind belief and blind denial of GOD’s existence persists
Higher Consciousness

The three lower consciousnesses that are
Obsessed with the securing of objects,
With the chasing of sensations, and with
Power/control will never ever be enough.

There are NO actions of people that can
Justify our becoming irritable
Angry, fearful, jealous or anxious if
We give them our unconditional love.
Using Plato’s Chariot analogy as an explanation of the human condition, the horse of the right or our higher parts is immortal while the horse on the left, our lower parts is mortal

Our higher parts work fine. The human condition is the result of its lower parts, the dark horse on the left, being out of balance and the adoption of negative emotions to compensate for human hypocrisy.

The fallen condition of the dark horse made receiving the impressions of higher consciousness or the white horse virtually impossible

So before thinking of higher consciousness the problem is first how to help a sick horse. The horse being corrupted by negative emotions interferes with the driver so the chariot plunges down to the earth.
God Made in the Image of Man

The ancients found themselves here of nowhere,
Yet to fathom earth, fire, water, and air,
Asking why life was not square, as unfair,
So invented the Bad Role Model’s Care.

They looked unto their calamities,
Their powerful rulers and enemies,
Toward their olden family structure’s way,
Of strict father, and mother with no say.

This Father Notion they based on themselves,
As the best answer that was ever delved:
The demanding Male Mind who was called ‘God’,
An idea for some to this day, well trod.
The Bible is like fine art. It appeals to the level of the receiver. As a person matures spiritually, the deeper messages of the Bible appear. This is the idea of Diotima's Ladder of Love

The Bible initially appeals to those caught up in the duality of blind belief and blind denial. The majority function on what is called the exoteric level. If a person is lucky they experience the absurdity of the world and yet feel the world is lawful. Then they can enter one of several authentic esoteric paths to work on their own imbalance and negativity so that they can become more human. Of course the lower horse rejects this and struggles against what threatens it. So the real human struggle is between Man’s higher and corrupted lower natures.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 8:24 pmThe universe for it to exist must be imperfect and its laws provide the means for life on earth to turn in circles. The imperfection of our universe is a necessity so what the devil symbolizes is also a necessity. The purpose of mechanical life doesn’t lie with results but the process of transforming substances

Ok, so let us slightly amend the Garden of Eden story to add in the imperfection scheme:

Some try to amend the Garden of Eden story and determine if they believe or deny it. Others try to contemplate it for the purpose of eventually understanding it through revelation.

“The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.” Simone Weil

She gets it but those like Simone are in a small minority. If this minority can grow is an open question.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
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