66 posts tagged “god”

The phrase "God is love" is quite a popular phrase among Christians. It's an interesting phrase that doesn't make too much sense at first. But after thinking about it for a bit, one simply understands that God is considered to be the ultimate example of love, which, theologically speaking, makes sense. The thing is, love is supposed to be limitless, without boundaries. It is universal in that all can concretely experience it and see it in action. There is no presupposed truth that is necessary to make love valid. Love is simply love.

But there must be some presupposed truth in order to make God valid. And, well, God essentially lives in a box made out of limits and boundaries. (The box is called theology.) Plus, isn't our understanding of God finite, thus we will never be able to comprehend him fully? That's a huge limitation. So exactly how can something--that is, God--with limits and boundaries, and not really universal (there is a zillion concepts of God, all differing in some sort of fashion), be the ultimate example of love?

When it comes down to it, we shouldn't extend the most important human characteristic to a supernatural concept. In my humble opinion, humans should be the ultimate example of love. But I know what you are thinking, "We aren't perfect." Well, first, is love supposed to be perfect? Probably not. Second, if love is supposed to be perfect, and God is supposed to be the epitome of perfection and love, can we honestly say that God is perfect? After all, we can't exactly know that he is perfect if we can't fully comprehend him. Moreover, what good is perfect love if we can only experience and represent love that is far from perfect? This doesn't belittle our human love. If anything, I think it shows that we may not be as "imperfect" as we think.

Perhaps what I want to say the most is this: the only thing that can represent love is love. Love is love. Not God is love. Not cake is love. Not orange is love. Love is love. Why? Because only love itself is limitless, separate from our beliefs, non-beliefs and narrow-minded perceptions. 

So, I graduate tomorrow (Saturday). Yay me! I have a year of graduate school left, but graduating with my undergraduate is pretty cool (I guess). As part of graduation weekend, my parents made me attend the baccalaureate service tonight. I didn''t really want to go. Singing hymns, reading scripture, and listening to a sermon--not my cup of tea. Nevertheless, seeing how my graduation seems to be more of a thing for my parents, I went ahead and attended.

The service was interesting. As a nonbeliever, I somewhat felt out of place: what they were doing (singing hymns, reading scripture) aren't things I find any meaning in whatsoever. Part of me enjoyed the community that the service brought, but the other part of me just thought of Nietzsche's herd concept. But these things didn't bother me as much as they annoyed me. What bothered me what was the bishop said in his sermon.

His sermon was about the ABC's of life. A stands for attitude. Basically, we should have the right attitude throughout life. Cool, I can agree with that. C stood for committment, committment to one's self and others. Cool, I dig it. What bothered me was B--belief. He said it was extremely important that one have belief in God. Naturally, I started asking questions in my mind: "Why does one need God? What type of person needs God? How does belief in God help me in my search for truth?" Most importantly, "Why is belief *so* important?"

It isn't. It isn't if you find the highest level of value in yourself. It isn't if you don't believe in the fear doctrines of heaven and hell. It isn't if you see that you are both the problem and solution to everything. It isn't if you have confidence in yourself and your abilities. It isn't if you reject a degrading concept of human beings. Most importantly though, it isn't if you are strong. Strong in the sense that you realize that living life means positively dealing with uncertainty, fear, cosmic nothingness, and maintaining the highest level of responsibility for one's actions.

If only we were stronger...

I'm not one for labels: they almost always never accurately or meaningfully describe the individual. However, I'm fine with labels as long as they aren't used as pejoratives and represent me, to some extent. Sadly, I consider "atheist" to be a pejorative. What does the atheist label represent? Let's see: intelligence, skepticism, anger, bitterness, unfounded harshness, antitheism, immorality, selfishness, among others. While the last two may not be accurate representations of atheists, I'd say the first five are spot on.

New Atheists--led by the Four Horsemen--are, as defined by an interesting NY Times column,  "polemicists who set out to counter in-your-face religion with in-your-face atheism." Pretty much true. New Atheists are usually mocking, express their anger with the absurdity of religion in the form of silly arguments (Celestial Teapot), and antitheists. While I see the dangers of religion, I'm not sure I would/should spend my time complaining about religion's falsity. Religion isn't going any where for a while. This isn't to say that we shouldn't argue with the religious, but we should do it in an honorable fashion. Ultimately, there is more to life than arguing.

When I read the article linked above, I was surprised to find a new label--"New New Athiests." Turns out that a professor, Mr. Aronson, isn't a fan of the new atheists or their books and is more concerned with what happens when one's faith ends. Essentially, the "new new atheists" pick up where the new atheists left off. Aronson recently wrote a book called Living without God that attempts to pick up the pieces and attempts to develop "a coherent popular philosophy that answers vital questions about how to live one’s life.” As he puts it, this philosophy "must answer questions about living without God, face issues concerning forces beyond our control as well as our own responsibility, find a satisfying way of thinking about what we may know and what we cannot know, affirm a secular basis for morality, point to ways of coming to terms with death and explore what hope might mean today.”

If I had to label myself, I would be considered a "new new atheist." I'm not really concerned with disproving religious dogma and truth; I'm way past that. In fact, it's almost boring to argue about religious maxims. It's something I'm just over. Believing, when I first destroyed my faith, this is all I wanted to do: prove the religious wrong and show them the Truth. But what's the existential point in that? There isn't one. It just made me feel better and was somewhat of a coping mechanism, both of which are characteristics of religion. I was not the person that I am to become. Fortunately, I got past this stage, but I have a feeling most of us don't. For some of us, that animosity towards religion will remain perpetual.

But we do not all need religion, something I think the religious are even beginning to realize. For an increasing number of us, it has lost its meaning and its truth. For me, and I think for many of us, I am concerned with filling the emptiness that destroying my faith has created, but with something more true than religion and without forgetting the facticity of ultimate emptiness and cosmic meaninglessness.

But this doesn't mean that I can't identify with the religious. We have so much in common--despite our contradictory beliefs--and I can learn a ton from them. We all can. As humans, we can work together to save our planet, spread love, help others, live good lives, and have fun. That's what we should be doing: transcending our beliefs to work together and have fun while doing it.  

Lightandstorm showed me this today. I found it to be very interesting. Here are a few snippets to entice your interest.

I do not believe in God; I have an understanding of God.

But the lesson here is if you can explain it in Sunday School, it's probably wrong. You end up with the same unsubtle, un-nuanced, and yes, immature understanding of the Mystery, regardless of which you choose. Whether you accept or reject outright the theology that's handed to eight year olds, you're still thinking like an eight year old. Atheism, literalist monotheism, and literalist polytheism are all wrestling unsuccessfully with the same Sunday School class that likely has nothing to teach you anymore.

Summary: 1) The God you grew up with doesn't exist. 2) God exists. Duh. You just need to think bigger. 3) If you don't have stories with God in them, you go crazy.

The myth of the risen Christ matters. It's not just fodder for cheap zombie jokes. It matters and we know it matters because we've been telling this story to ourselves and each other for thousands of years; thousands longer than Christianity. The triumph of love over death. The renewal of life in Spring. Hope after despair – after the acknowledgement of and victory of and incorporation of grieving despair, defeat, annihilation. The big, ugly suck.

Good stuff!

 “It is the weak nature of man that urns for explanations outside of the self. They create foolish, yet ingenious, concepts to explain good and evil, justice and injustice, love and hate. But, why? Why do they do this? Because man does not wish to be held responsible. Responsibility implies accountability, not to some supernatural concept, but to humanity itself; for it is far worse to answer to humanity than to answer to man’s worst creation—one is realized within finite time, the other is not. Consequentially, it is worse to understand that yourself is the foundation for evil, that you are to blame for the negative implications of your choices and actions on yourself and others, that you are the source of greed, hate, injustice, prejudice, cruelty, racism, addiction, animosity, corruption, insensitivity, hostility, murder, and poverty, among other things. And not because of some original sin, but because of humans’ inability to control emotions and their proceeding actions and consequences, because of man's selfishness. Does this mean that man is innately evil? Not at all. Does this mean that man is innately good? Not at all. Man is simply man: neither purely evil nor purely good, but capable of doing the most gruesome, inhuman acts, possible, as well as the most precious, selfless acts imaginable, and everything in between. To realize this is to realize that the problem of evil is not a problem; for humans are the foundation for and create evil. Thus, the problem is not evil, but the concept. If one lets go of the concept, one sees the truth: Humanity is the foundation of everything—wisdom, knowledge, injustice, good, evil, and, most importantly, love.”

We realize that life is ugly, painful, sorrowful; we want some kind of theory, some kind of speculation or satisfaction, some kind of doctrine, which will explain all this, and so we are caught in explanation, in words, in theories, and gradually beliefs become deeply rooted and unshakable because behind those beliefs, behind those dogmas, there is a constant fear of the unknown. But we never look at that fear; we turn away from it. The stronger the beliefs, the stronger the dogmas. And when we examine these beliefs--the Christian, the Hindu, the Buddhist--we find that they divide people. Each dogmas, each belief has a series of compulsions which bind man and separate man. So, we stat with an inquiry to find out what is true, what the significance is of this misery, this struggle, this pain; and we are soon caught up in beliefs, in rituals, in theories.

Belief is corruption because behind belief and morality lurks the mind, the self--the self growing big, powerful and strong. We consider belief in God, the belief in something, as religion. We consider that to believe is to be religious. You understand? If you do not believe, you will be considered an atheist, you will be condemned by society. One society will condemn those who believe in God, and another society will condemn those who do not. They are both the same. So, religion becomes a matter of belief--and belief acts and has a corresponding influence on the mind; the mind then can never be free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief, because your very belief projects what you think out to be God, what you think ought to be true.

I like to think that I have grown a lot over the past year or so: never have I read or thought as much as I have this past year or so. At this stage in my life, I am just beginning to embark on the continuous process of developing my personal philosophy, my perspective, the way in which I view the human condition and existence. Nevertheless, I think it is important to assess what philosophy I have developed thus far, even if it is only in its beginning stage.

Perhaps the most existential choice that I have made in my life thus far is the choice to not believe in a supreme being, the traditional monotheistic God. While this choice has been extremely important to me, I feel like what I hold to be valuable or existential is not a function of whether one agrees with this choice. I personally believe that believers and nonbelievers are living in the "here and now" trying to get the best out of the one life we all have. Some of us decide we need God, while others decide otherwise. Some of us find traditional religion to be a tragic lie, while others do not. There are always different means to the same end.

In line with existentialism, the concept of Nothingness is important to my philosophy. I believe that there is no intrinsic meaning to the universe, no innate, preset meaning to anything. In some sense, everything means nothing--originally. Existence precedes essence in that we existence and then we create meaning. In other words, meaning in one's life is not here to be discovered (essence precedes existence). Meaning in one's life must be created.

Truth is a matter of perspective, just like anything else. It is nonsensical to claim that one knows the way to live or the truth. While the natural tendency is to do so, we must overcome this dogmatic, insecure part of the self. Such a mindset breeds division (no matter how much you claim to cover it up with so-called "love". This type of "love" isn't true love), stupidity and dogma. While it is obvious that some truths are better than others, it should also be obvious that within each of our perspectives is some sort of seed of truth. We simply need to look for it through the barriers of language.

Objective morality is dead. Its death should be more apparent now, as we start to think of ourselves as global citizens rather than citizens of a specific country. In other words, morality that says "This is right and this is wrong" is foolish; we must move beyond such a false dichotomy. Build a system of virtues and act in accordance with it. Actions based on virtues exhibit who you really are, not actions based on a nonsensical concept of morality. Plus, look what morality has produced--immoral beings. That is, morality hasn't, and doesn't, work.  

Well, I definitely could write more. I probably will later. It's time to keep back to the family. Until then, I bid you all a good evening!  

Why do we all do this? Because the human instinct is to want certainty and security--we must know the truth. This fear of uncertainty is what creates religious and non-religious dogma. Perhaps a non-cliche example of this is contemporary atheists. They think they have the truth. Or think they have found the truth in science. But we all lie to ourselves out of fear: "Rationality will lead me to the truth. Truth for everyone! Faith will lead me to the truth. God for everyone!"  But truth cannot be evidenced simply by a nonbelief in God or the scientific method or faith or rationality.

Truth encompasses a variety of perspectives and experiences. Yes, faith, rationality, science, all lead us to some form of truth, though with varying degrees perhaps. Truth is created by a group of people, humanity, not just you. If such is the case, isn't it more probable that all of our perspectives include some "seed of truth" (like my friend says) rather than one perspective containing the truth? It is hard for us to realize the truth in others' perspectives because of the barriers created by language, arrogance, and the dogmatic, insecure part of the self. But we must remember, one's individual perspective never has a monopoly on truth. Truth is more than one individual, and odds are your version of truth is missing something, perhaps love, happiness, trust, or the acknowledgment of fate. You will only find out if you are missing something if you attempt to learn from someone, no matter how much you think they may be wrong. This implies a sense of tolerance and respect, of openmindness and inclusiveness.   

Some forms of truth are better than others, but, given the oneness of truth, it is undoubtedly embedded, to some extent, in all of our perspectives, religious or non-religious. We simply must look for seeds.