by Terry 105 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Thanks for the well said response. I've got to believe Terry would agree with all you just said. I think because he recognizes religion is inseparable from mysticism its fair to label religion as mysticism. I know youv'e tolerated a great deal of such generalizations from me.
It reminds me of the arguments between Dawkins and Gould over the technical vs. esthetic aspects of biology. Sometimes the smaller the battle the fiercer its fought.
Good analysis, nark. Reading about mysticism, i ran accross a comment once, to the affect that catholic mystics without those other things you mentioned would often go pantheist. As a nonreligious, atheological mystic, that is where i have ended up.
Perhaps the job of churches, from the idealist sense, should be to be mystical schools, leading people towards their own contact w 'god'. Most of them are failing, are even obstacles in that area.
S
ALL sensory information is purely subjective and filtered through a biological system that therefore renders "objectivism" an impossible state of knowledge
Balderdash!
If we can't be certain of the data we receive through our sense we cannot have technology which works. We cannot design and build enormous structures that stand or rockets that can hit infinitesimally remote locations.
You aren't even thinking about what you are saying, are you?
Objective reality is a CROCK, and the closest approximation we have is the data resulting from collectively agreed upon empirical experimental methodologies and the application of falsifiable hypotheses via scientific research. Even then, we are at the mercy of our limited perceptual filters.
Yeah, we call it science; it doesn't take as many multisyllables to say.
You are like the kid who sticks his finger in the clear water of the aquarium and stirs up the sediment and then pretends there aren't any fish because you can't see them.
Kant insisted that we always act so as to treat others as ends in themselves and never completely as means to an end. In other words, we are not to use other people or treat them merely as objects
Doing your "duty" (as the Nazi's did) means you follow orders for the "greater good" of the people. The trouble with Kant's irrational analysis is that individuality dies and tyrants gain control. The person IN CHARGE gets to decide what the "greater good" is and you better, by god, follow orders and do your duty because INDIVIDUALITY is not allowed.
Kant can kiss my ass.
Were any chemicals involved?
Yes. A low dosage of tetrahydracanabinol. Does that change something?
I hope so, or you didn't get your money's worth!
genuine mystic is not someone you can easily control.
...which I'd posit as the reason why new denominations constantly appear!
Perhaps the job of churches, from the idealist sense, should be to be mystical schools, leading people towards their own contact w 'god'. Most of them are failing, are even obstacles in that area.
HISTORICALLY the "job of churches has changed dramatically with the times and circumstances.
1.In Judeo-Christian-Roman times the church was protective cells of freedom fighters and mystics coalescing their agenda.
2.In Catholic times the church was a monlith of power and orthodoxy wielding consequences for alternative opinions.
3.In the Middle Ages the Church was a corrupt political protection racket wielding excommunication as a club of submission to bribes.
4.In the Protestant revolution the church was bi-polar in being a scourge against Catholicism and a purifying agent of humanity using sola scriptura theories and communes to create heaven on earth.
5.In modern sectarian times the church has become self-help clinics, socialist propaganda covens, mystical make-believe emotion-fests and a darned fine way for evangelists to become popular and rich.
Gosh, I sound cynical!
genuine mystic is not someone you can easily control....which I'd posit as the reason why new denominations constantly appear!
It's only part of the reason imo. "Denomination" is a Protestant word, a politically correct self-description of the endless institutional fragmentation in Protestantism, which Protestants cringe from construing as "religions" or "sects". To me this phenomenon owes more to the theoretical devaluation of church institution, magisterium and tradition in favor of scripture as the only source of authority (sola scriptura). The principle of division (or speciation) here is less "mysticism" (in the common sense of that word) than hermeneutics. Every Protestant who comes up with an original and popular interpretation of scripture has all he needs to create a new "denomination," and the older ones cannot object except on the same hermeneutical level, by questioning his interpretation. They can't appeal to institutional unity or tradition because those are the very first things Protestantism denied. The only real imperative is that of the market: will the new product meet a viable demand and stand free competition?
genuine mystic is not someone you can easily control.
...which I'd posit as the reason why new denominations constantly appear!
It's only part of the reason imo. "Denomination" is a Protestant word, a politically correct self-description of the endless institutional fragmentation in Protestantism, which Protestants cringe from construing as "religions" or "sects". To me this phenomenon owes more to the theoretical devaluation of church institution, magisterium and tradition in favor of scripture as the only source of authority (sola scriptura). The principle of division (or speciation) here is less "mysticism" (in the common sense of that word) than hermeneutics. Every Protestant who comes up with an original and popular interpretation of scripture has all he needs to create a new "denomination," and the older ones cannot object except on the same hermeneutical level, by questioning his interpretation. They can't appeal to institutional unity or tradition because those are the very first things Protestantism denied. The only real imperative is that of the market: will the new product meet a viable demand and stand free competition?
I'm sitting here thinking.....scratching my head.......
Your responses are always so refreshingly alive to ideas and history and specifics I often pause to bask in the intellectual beauty of it all.
I'd have to repond by saying this.
1.If Mysticism pits the mystic one on one with direct communication with God: where does scripture fit in (if at all?)
2. If God is open to such one on one communication with the mystic: why do we need Jesus, the church or ritual?
3.One-ness with God is a unity which has no lack. Humanity by virtue of its human-ness is non-god and non-spirit. Efforts to link chalk with cheese abound in religion/mysticism.
4.Religion and ritual are about "process". The means to an end. The end can be defined as god-union. Having the mind of god seems to replace having the mind of a human. After all, God didn't make a human as a seed that sprouts god-ness. Mysticism parlays floating concepts with dangling adjectives into a lifestyle that is rather vague. Either we are human as God made us or we are stuck in an egg-larvae-pupa-adult cycle on "rinse".
I blame the language on the confusion. The language of religion is not clearly defined under precise conceptual headings. Hence it is endlessly malleable. My chief point of contention with mysticism is the fast and loose way words are used which can mean practically anything.
Wouldn't you say the imprecision is a clue to the emptiness of the entire process?
