Before people imagine that "foreign"="more correct" and launch themselves off into Eastern religious thought, I think one might consider the book "Truth in Religion", and "How to Think About God - A Guide For The 20th Century Pagan", by Mortimer J. Adler. In the former he examines various religions for the claims each make with regard to "Truth" and makes, a good case in my view for a rational analysis of religion as opposed to making affirmations based on emotion. In the latter, he makes an analysis of various ways to examine what is meant when people talk about God.
Interestingly, I find that most people theist, and non-theist alike really don't know what they are talking about when they imagine that they are talking about God. What most do is imagine a demiurge and call that "God" and affirm or deny the existence of this demiurge.
I used to talk to atheists at the door who would ask questions like "Why did God create the universe?", and though this seems at the outset to be a rather simple question, it really isn't.
Though JW's would say because of Love, which is really begging the question because with no external objects or entities of the non-Jehovah class in existence (we're all of the non-Jehovah class, despite the number of times we've been referred to as Jehovah's at the door) there could be no Love as love is contingent on at least one external object. (Perhaps Jesus being referred to as being 'the son of his love' makes a bit more sense in that context.
If it was self-love, then of couse we have Jehovah loving himself and this so much so, he decided to do something for himself which heretofore he had not done, which raises more questions still because if that were the case one would find Jehovah in an eternal love-loop driving the whole show and of course of a class of love which we would be unfamiliar with because it would be the sort of love that failed to have an object which could benefit from the ministrations of this love.
I'm sure you see the difficulty.
The difficulty, is that the fallacy of the complex question is committed by the questioner asking "Why did God create the universe?" because it assumes first of all that a transcendent being must have motive inspired by need because that mirrors the reasons why we do what we do.
Since God is NOT a contingent being, he necessarily does NOT require anything including actions of any sort. No needs to fill. Complete all of a piece and in peace. There could be nothing to perturb self except self, and that with no reason at all.
What's interesting is that the Bible itself gives a circular non-answer of the sort a transcendent being might give in Genesis 2:3 - "And God proceeded to bless the seventh day and make it sacred, because on it he has been restiong from all his work that GOD HAS CREATED FOR THE PURPOSE OF MAKING. God created the earth to make it. That's it. Because he decided to. No rational or causal chain to be explored. Jehovah may as well have said "I AM" (whoops! HE DID), or "I will prove to be, what I will prove to be" (OOPS! he did, didn't he), or even "What I do is a function of who and what I am. I can no more escape being the me that is perpetually coming to be than you as the creation can stop being contingent."
Moreover, what I find attractive about the God identified by the tetragrammaton is that the name means "he that causes to become", is in fact the perfect name for a transcendent creator, one who both is and is not because to exist is to be finite, and obviously to fail to exist is equally nothing, however a God who is COMING INTO EXISTENCE as a perpetual and self-sustaining actor fully qualifies as God with a capital 'G' because this god meets with all the requirements that the transcendent, noncontingent Creator of the universe would require.
The problem of all religions is the problem of the human need for closure. God is a wild thing which must be tamed and he must conform to our expectations or we're simply not comfortable with this being. Some on the other hand reject all closure and instead embrace wholly unverifiable ideas about possible creators, imagining that they are embracing freedom when they do so, and yet if they were to carefully examine their own existence, isn't their existence contingent on following the rules for an existing creature? Do they really wish to be "free", "free" from their own individuation? That's nonexistence, joining the Godhead, returning to the dust, ceasing to be as the one whom they happen to be.Seaching for religious freedom in that latter realm is truly a striving after the wind and a vanity. (which by the way means simply 'a lie')
No, I don't think either group realizes that Jesus was right when he spoke of his coming death and resurrection that he was describing a path of "coming to be", a path of finite, yet unbounded transcendence wherein we might grow within the realm of contingency without feeling contingent.
Note John 12:23-25 -
The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. 24 Most truly I say to YOU, Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just one [grain]; but if it dies, it then bears much fruit. 25 He that is fond of his soul destroys it, but he that hates his soul in this world will safeguard it for everlasting life.
In the end I find most don't realize that a few atheists have at the very least identified God through their determined faith in denying the existence of God. How so? They know what God isn't and in knowing this, the mirror image of what they deny becomes clearer for them to grasp so that these rare atheists actually are rejecting not God, but all the idolatrous conceptions of God.
Thinking out loud about God - searching concavities and convexities
by gubberningbody 10 Replies latest jw experiences
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gubberningbody
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avishai
Interesting post. Now I'm gonna go take an aspirin.
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gubberningbody
I thought I'd better think out loud here than elsewhere where I could be identified. Try some ginger instead. It'll take the edge off the nausea as well as ameliorate the pounding.
:)
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Narkissos
I like it. Actually I came quite close to that kind of thinking when I started to "drift away" from the JW circle. With a couple of friends we had come to redefine "Jehovah" as "absolute becoming" -- inseparable from any "thing" or "event".
Looking back, the most amazing part of this is not the "originality" of the concept, but just the opposite. How the 20th-century Zeitgeist eventually seeped through the walls or our subcultural isolation. We had not read a line of Nietzsche, Husserl, Bergson, Heidegger, Sartre -- never heard of theologians like Tillich or Jüngel (God's being is in becoming!). But there we were...
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gubberningbody
Narkissos, I believe that Socrates would have approved of the discovery in this manner because he never wanted anything to be written down. The truth was known by each individual but he or she had to decide to continue to believe that the shadows on the cave wall were really truth or he/she could turn around and leave the cave (and this process repeated from inner cave to inner cave adinfinitum). When we merely read what others have written without having "made the truth our own" we stay in the cave. We're like travelers who never travel, but only surf the net and read travel guides imagining that we know what it's really like to "being there".
I think that's why I've never liked "armchair philosophizing". I'd rather not bask in the "twilight of the idols", instead, I'd rather "philosophize with a hammer".
:)
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quietlyleaving
very interesting gubberningbody.
I got stuck on "contingency". According to the way I'm trying to understand becoming "God" is contingent like all else. But I don't claim to have anything like a full toolbox
And yes I too was very struck by God being "I shall prove to be what I shall prove to be". It must have been the literature I was reading and the songs I was listening to whilst a witness.
edit: omg we were both thing toolbox at the same time
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Narkissos
ql
On ne peut penser et écrire qu'assis [One cannot think and write except when seated] (G. Flaubert). There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life (Sitzfleisch) is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
Twilight of Idols, Maxim # 34.
Now there is a time to think and a time to read / write... Socrates would probably have laughed had he been able to read "himself" in Plato -- but he did survive (through) that. (Have you read Derrida's Pharmacy of Plato btw? it's a fascinating "commentary" of "Socrates"' judgement of writing by the logos in Plato's Phaedrus -- among other things.)
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gubberningbody
I've got ADD, so I read while on a stationary bike, or an elliptical or I'll convert text to speech and listen to it while I run. In any case, I haven't read Derrida, however there are a lot of things I'll be reading (once I finish writing a few books I'm working on). Until then, all the reading I'm doing has to do with those things. I'm planning on reading through the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds as well as that terrible writer Maimonides. (I've tried reading his Guide to the Perplexed, but it rambles worse than anything written by Freddy Franz).
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BurnTheShips
I find that most people theist, and non-theist alike really don't know what they are talking about when they imagine that they are talking about God. What most do is imagine a demiurge and call that "God" and affirm or deny the existence of this demiurge.
I think that I grok.
I also like the way Meister Eckhart writes about this.
BTS
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quietlyleaving
narkissos
On ne peut penser et écrire qu'assis [One cannot think and write except when seated] (G. Flaubert). There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life (Sitzfleisch) is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
Twilight of Idols, Maxim # 34.
Now there is a time to think and a time to read / write... Socrates would probably have laughed had he been able to read "himself" in Plato -- but he did survive (through) that. (Have you read Derrida's Pharmacy of Plato btw? it's a fascinating "commentary" of "Socrates"' judgement of writing by the logos in Plato's Phaedrus -- among other things.)
lol - thats why I prefer counterpoint and harmony.
I haven't read Derrrida's Pharmacy of Plato but understand what you mean as I've read Powell's introductory Derrida. Meanings are never fixed and differance does not exist.
edit: 2 other books by Derrida I've enjoyed reading are The Animal that therefore I am and Islam and the West. Both were great reads and very educational