A question for believers

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You tell me.

Jon

I think i am right in believing that your post was suggesting that there is nothing to a belief in god/religious faith or belief which could not be expressed in perfectly acceptable fashion without recourse to religious terms, and that using the words "god" etc is just wilful jargon to display membership or status/play power games etc. i think it is undeniable that religious vocabulary does get used like that.
But i also believe that perhaps the word god is essential precisely because it does not mean anything that can be generally agreed on.
that perhaps it is the use of the word god itself which makes the difference, because it resists a final definition. ( it is an invitation to discussion! and/or an admission of weakness, aswell as many other things; it is permanently subjective).
and so if you do not use it you do not mean the same thing.

but that's just my take on it. more experienced believers in god might have a very different reaction/reason. to me it's like a magic word.

No. If you think that, then you misunderstood me. That may very well be my fault. But that wasn't my intention. In any case, perhaps you could rethink what I wrote with the idea that I'm telling you that I was NOT trying to say there is no need for recourse in religious terms... but instead was speaking directly to the feelings within you that you discussed ("I find it very diffficult to transport/convey my own, necessarily subjective, experience of relationship/connection...") See if that helps.

If not, I'll assume it's my failure and try again and see if I can't get the point across. I have a further point to make, once we feel we have a reasonable level of agreement on this. But no point going there, just yet. (And that point, also, is NOT what you think it is.)

Jon

Magical thinking is a common feature of the human species.

Jon

please explain what you meant by "encouraging my superiority response" ? Seeing as it doesn't seem to be to do with my distinguishing belief in god from your awe/love for natural world.

So i had heard, but that wasn't what i meant. I just meant to say that the word in itself is important. Like a poet who has to use one word rather than any other. The word god seems like that to me. No other will do as well.

If your post was NOT intended to prove/suggest that there is no need for special religious terminology then i don't understand what it was doing in a thread about the difficulty of talking about/referring to god/religious faith in public. You say You'll have to give me a clue.

Last edited by ouinon on 08 Feb 2008, 6:38 pm, edited 7 times in total.

how can you get back in your mothers womb?

Sure.

You had mentioned the difficulty you were having. Remember?

You wrote, "i find myself slipping into one of two equally partial positions, of either superiority ... OR of "inferiority ..."

I was thinking about that and I felt myself understanding the quandary you expressed. On the superiority side, you had continued, "... that is i have found out something wonderful here ..." I took your use juxtaposition of "superior" and "inferior" here to mean that on the superior side of things you feel some sense of specialness because of your discovery. That in finding something wonderful, you have been selected out and graced and that was why you used that word.

Jon

ahh, thank you. Actually the feeling of specialness/chosen/blessed etc is less connected to feelings of superiority than to inferiority , because it is when i think of it as being related to me and some others in particular ( a minority of people with certain cognitive issues), thus as a kind of "aid" for a disability, which is not the whole story either. Whereas the feelings of superiority surface whenever i forget the way i came to belief in god,( through "need", recognising that it, might be right for me,) and instead think that everybody could do with this, so a missionary style superiority, not very sound!

Last edited by ouinon on 08 Feb 2008, 6:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I had also worried a little about the idea that you might also personally imagine that finding something wonderful that is "god" must be in some fundamental way more wondrous perhaps than something wonderful another discovers about nature. Of course, I couldn't presume to know if you'd feel that way. But it crossed my mind to wonder if your gut reaction might lean that way. Then you also wrote this: "Awe in face of the intricacy of the natural world is not the same thing." Which really made me worry a lot more that in fact you had fallen into this fallacy.

A visceral reaction to deny that discoveries within reality can be just as wondrous to an individual as discoveries of the supernatural may be is common, in my experience. But I assure you that this is not the case. It may be the case within individuals. I have no right to speak for you or anyone else on that score, of course. But I can say that between different individuals, and so far as any of us are able to adduce, all the same earmarks are present either way and I don't think a valid claim can be made here. In fact, I've been on both sides of the fence within my own experience and I can tell you quite firmly that they are both an equally profound experience.

Jon

what fence?

Last edited by ouinon on 09 Feb 2008, 1:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

Jon--I can totally emphasize with you about your experiences with the church and its lack of support because I have felt that too. It was one of the reasons I ended up walking away. I needed to go on a "retreat" to clear my head and evaluate everything that I have been told.

In my case the core issue was sex. I was brought up to save sex for marriage, and I guess in some way I still do believe that is best. But it bothers me to hear some of the nonsense the pro-abstinence folks preach, most of whom are married (I was going to say happily but we don't know that). When I hear them tell young impressionable girls that yes you can have your cake and eat it too, that you can practice abstinence and still have a successful dating life, I just have to shake my head. See, I bought into that lie too. What they did not tell me and what they are not telling those girls is that 99% of the men out there don't buy into that, and they are not going to politely disagree either, they are going to try to take by force what they think is their right to have. Unless you are very, very lucky to be part of a faith community where BOTH sexes agree to that premise (here we are with agreeing again!) you are going to have a miserable time attempting to date. Abstinence and dating just don't mix. Sorry folks, but as someone who is still out there in the trenches, it's the truth. If you want to tell the truth about abstinence, tell them it requires just as much committment as becoming vegan, and it will affect your social life in much the same way. It is not for sissies. It is a real tough lifestyle.

Where the Church and its lack of support comes into this is when I was struggling with the desire to remain faithful to its teachings yet trying (and failing) at the dating game--over this one issue alone--there was no one who really understood what I was going through and could help me. Over and over again, I would say to the people around me, show me just one single Catholic (or Christian) man who really believes and lives this teaching, who is not studying for the priesthood or religious life. How about your sons, your brothers, is there anyone, anyone at all that you know that you could introduce to me? They could not. Now I hear that there are not just a few priests, but hundreds, men who took public vows of chastity (I took no vows!) who over the years raped and molested young boys, and the Church hierarchy just looked the other way and quietly shipped them around. As far as this ex-Catholic is concerned, the Catholic church no longer has any right to teach on sexual ethics and I no longer need to listen when it does. If I practice chastity it is for my own personal reasons, not any one else's.

It's not the Sermon on the Mount that I have a quarrel with; if more people put it into practice there would not be half as much hostility towards Christianity and religion that there is today. I doubt if its founder would have many kind words to say about those who claim to follow him. Or the nonsense taught in his name.

I don't mean to suggest a duality. In fact, quite the opposite. I think there is no difference, at all.

Jon

I value the time I had with the Church. It's given me a perspective that is a part of me, now, and I wouldn't want to lose that part. I certainly got a good education in many ways and my fill of ritual behaviors. If I had to pick some interpretive part of Catholic theology that more closely mirror my own soul, so to speak, it would be those who align themselves with 'liberation theology,' though for me it is a moral/political thing and not a religious one. The core values in Jesus' own words in scripture tend to transcend specific religious beliefs, to me. (And, in fact, were already figured out by Greek charismatic teachers centuries beforehand.)


Thanks for doing me the honor of talking about your own circumstances, here. I wasn't expecting this and I do have some thoughts, but I'll respond to them, separately.


I'm with you word for word in this, I think.

Jon

So, IS there a difference between the experiences? DO you mean that there is no need for religious terminology, or don't you? Your post again suggests ( perhaps inadvertently) that there is no need, because "there is no difference, at all" between the experiences.

OR do you mean that the word god, and/or other religious terminology, may be necessary, for people who cannot access this experience of the universe by way of profound scientific understanding? Is that what you meant by your feeling blessed? That the poor in "spirit" ( french "esprit", for mind, therefore the less able mentally) need to believe in god to get to the same place as you do with science.

I believe that there is a difference, something to do with what it applies to, where it reaches. But maybe i'm wrong.

Maybe god is just a prosthetic device for the "poor(er) in spirit" whereas some/many other people can manage the "same thing" without recourse to god. Certainly, as i said before, a thought which keeps me humble. And also helps me feel connection with god so maybe true... It's difficult to hang onto all the time, as a perspective though.

Imagine if all the people who believe in god were seen to be doing so as a result of "special needs". Perhaps they already are, and sadly being mocked and dismissed in just the same way as so many people with disabilities. It's true that it doesn't help if many of the people with "disabilities" are saying how superior they are to everyone else!!

The word itself, god, seems to be a necessary or fundamental part of this experience I'm having. As your scientific understanding gained from years of reading may be necessary/fundamental to certain aspects of your experience of the universe for example, belief in god is turning out to be in mine. Whether this is because of cognitive differences i do not know, but it feels like what i have been needing, without realising it, for a very long time.

Perhaps religion should be provided from birth so that those with the cognitive issues requiring religious support do not suffer from increasing weakness in all areas of life during the formative years.

Last edited by ouinon on 09 Feb 2008, 7:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Relax. Don't you recall when you wrote that your experience was "completely amazing and stunning?" Me, too.

Jon

Thought I'd expand a little for you.

Who can say? I can only ask that you consider granting the idea you have no way discerning a difference and further suggest to you the idea that lacking evidence to the contrary, it is probably more rational to broadly assume that most humans share a very similar capacity of this kind. I think you and I are not so different here. Your claiming that a profound revelation arrives from supernatural inspiration, in and of itself, doesn't magically require me or anyone else to treat it with preferred status. And, in fact, I assert that some of the revelations to be found through making a life in science and mathematics are just as profound, if not even perhaps more consistently experienced, there.

But let me say that what works for me doesn't have to work for others, what works well for you doesn't necessarily work for me. I've no more right to say that choosing a life in science is any better than choosing a life of religious pursuits, than you have to say the reverse, for the purposes of experiencing profound revelation in life. Probably, both religion and science are very good paths for profound revelation. And I embrace the idea that a person is well-advised to choose either avenue, if the desire is to experience that kind of thing. Perhaps I even acquired a taste for it in my religious training, eh? Who can say?

In any case, I tried to communicate such a profound revelation to you. Not because I think it is any better than yours or someone else's religious experience. I don't feel I can say anything about that. But simply because I thought it might help you see that not ALL such profound revelation is the SOLE domain of religion. It most certainly is not. The revelations in science are every bit as profound an experience.

I recalled that particular I wrote about because, quite frankly, at the time I was literally in tears. I was attending a family get together at a park. I'd been working hard on studying global warming while developing a new Dobson meter of sorts and had been swamped with a lot of new understandings arriving rapidly on a more global interaction level. Beforehand, they were all bits and pieces being thrown at me, and I hadn't realized quite yet that these things were gradually coming together in my mind. So there I was, just thinking. I happened to look over at a flower in the nearby meadow and being reminded of flowers as part of meadow systems somehow caused the important interactions of atmosphere, ocean, land, plants, animals, sun, water vapor, ice, and so on that I'd been reading about to form up much more clearly. All that I'd been learning suddenly arrived in a profound sense of revelation that opened this up for me to see in a totally new integrated way. And I sat there, dumbfounded for a moment. It was so simple and yet beautifully complex. And I could actually _understand_ a good chunk of it!! Wow! Suddenly, I was filled up with the desire to share this inspirational insight. It was so beautiful, so majestic, so grand in scope and yet so complete down to its smaller details. I looked around me, searching for someone to share it with. And... there was no one who spoke the language there. No one. Not even close. I suddenly felt totally, completely alone. Isolated like I've never been isolated before. And I wanted so badly to share this. And then I just cried. The sudden loneliness hurt that much.

That profound insight is still with me to this very day and while it's gotten more detailed and even more interesting with time, it is no less beautiful or profound. And it helps me put the pieces together faster as I read new reports.

None of that takes anything away from others having their religious experiences, too. Nor the idea that their profound revelations might only improve with time, just as mine also have. But neither can you or anyone speaking about religious revelations take anything away from the equally profound nature of my experiences. Profound revelation in science does not take a 2nd position to profound religious revelation. They are equally life changing for those who have experienced them.

Jon