Every Possible God

Dissident Heart · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 4:58 pm Post subject:

Combobulated: Antonymn of Discombobulated...v. to wrestle order out of a chaotic jumble of bewildering incongruencies; n. a restless cease-fire between competing impossibilities vying for paradigmatic predominance and worldview hegemony.

Chris: Over the years I have seen people here on BookTalk.org attempt to define "God" in all sorts of vague and meaningless ways. I've never understood why they feel the need to avoid straight answers about their God.

Perhaps that is because all attempts to define God end up crooked: meandering streams of thought that simply wont straighten themselves out...like rivers and tributaries they roll with the terrain: being confined by their banks, cutting their way into the soil and rocks, occasionally bursting out in flood and storm, carrying all varieties of swimming, crawling, gulping and splashing things...finding their sources in frozen highlands where the air is thin and ice is the norm...and plunging downward, pushing and rolling and heading headlong into the sea. They are wet, muddy, smelly, and occasionally terribly destructive...and carry the fertile silt of enitre civilizatons as well.

GentleReader9 · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:19 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the clarification about how you see atheism as being misunderstood, Frank.

I am aware of the existence of atheism in the sense that you characterize and define it. There are at least two atheists in my fairly close acquaintance and I've never argued with them about things like this because on all the points we value most we're actually agreed. We're also not playing at a discussion website.

I do not always see such a pure, non-judgmental and open-minded version of atheism reflected in posts here where people have identified themselves that way. Or, maybe what would be more precisely true to say is that people have made posts where they equate "theism," "religion," "spirituality" with "Christianity" and "Christianity" with the most narrowly and hostilely defined versions of it.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:22 pm Post subject:

One type of God: completely available to the senses...evident and obvious to any clear thinking person by way of simple logic and basic scientific investigation...can be clearly described, simply articulated and discussed in rationally coherent ways.

Chris OConnor · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:47 pm Post subject:

Frank 013 · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 6:18 pm Post subject:

Interbane · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 6:22 pm Post subject:

DH: "Perhaps that is because all attempts to define God end up crooked: meandering streams of thought that simply wont straighten themselves out..."

LOL!! Here's your sign!!

"I think if you are going to tell everyone who says they believe in God that they are therefore accountable for events like witch hunts and Inquistions from the past..."

Accountable? Of course not, but their beliefs are of the same memetical family that is accountable. Or perhaps not. I hold contagious monotheisms accountable. Murderous brainwashing bloodthirsty paradigms. To clarify, I'm not holding anyone accountable, only a belief(s). Gun

"...you can also be asked to account for all the intolerance and torture and persecution and oppression which has been done by atheists who are a different kind of atheist than you are, or by the secular world for that matter."

Actually, this isn't true for atheism as it is for religion. My disbelief in a diety is the same as your disbelief in "googelplex=purple". Atheism in my book is a name that theists apply to people who could care less about a diety, let alone consider one existant. If you want to call me an atheist, so be it, but that isn't my belief, that's just a word that theists use to describe what I lack. You could also call me a non-female, or a non-5'6" person, or a non-dummy, or a non-fish, or a non-blue-eyed person... etc. The list is infinite. What "atheist" doesn't describe is what I believe is true. I haven't told you what I believe, so don't attempt to hold my beliefs accountable.

DH: "One type of God: completely available to the senses...evident and obvious to any clear thinking person by way of simple logic and basic scientific investigation...can be clearly described, simply articulated and discussed in rationally coherent ways."

Nope, that wouldn't be a God, you're abusing words again. Strike 47.

Frank 013 · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 6:32 pm Post subject:

Frank 013 · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 6:36 pm Post subject:

Frank 013 · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject:

Dissident Heart · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:43 pm Post subject:

Chris: I don't even understand what you mean by "types" of gods.

I am referring to the initial post of this thread:

Dissident Heart · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 10:40 pm Post subject:

Robert Tulip: I think this is relevant here, in that atheism often tries to live in finite security, while theology recognises that our ground, as creative moral beings, is infinite, and that authentic response to this infinite ground of being produces an insecurity which is an essential source of creativity.

Bonhoeffer is certainly relevant! Faith, as he lived it, was much more than an arsenal of well rehearsed arguments: it was a seriously considered, carefully examined, passionate love with real personal and political consequences: dangerous and deadly, but the kind of thinking that fueled a hopeless situation with extraordinary courage.

As I see it, the theist (in Bonhoeffer's camp) sees the infinite as something more than just a lot of space and time: it delivers a personal demand and calls for a certain kind of behavior...the distance between the infinite and the finite is bridged in human acts of justice, here and now in flesh and blood struggle against cruelty and oppression. So, the issue is not mystical union made possible by deciphering mysterious codes from God-knows-where for God-knows what...but radical action where love is key: a love that burns for justice and is willing to sacrifice its fragile, limited, incoherent and and broken finite existence.

Interbane · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 12:17 am Post subject:

DH, why don't you focus all that love on humanity where it would do some good? Loving something that has caused so much death and misery to humans makes me sick. It's symmetrical to a military fanatic who loves guns. I think similar thoughts every time you post your religious meanderings. If you're on a crusade to help us understand and accept religion or God, you incrementally do the opposite for me each post. You continue to solidify the reasons I dislike religion and the idea of God.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 10:13 am Post subject:

Interbane: DH, why don't you focus all that love on humanity where it would do some good?

I'll work on that. I hope you can do the same. What is good for humanity, and why should I follow your idea...why should anyone? I think we might get a clue about your particular pieties along the way.

Interbane: Loving something that has caused so much death and misery to humans makes me sick.

Life is full of death and misery: sickness, disease, misery and suffering...from the womb to the tomb, we are flush with sorrow, war, disaster and terror...why love life at all? Since there is so much rotten and despicable about life: why not give up on life? More clues towards the mysterious deity you love....

Interbane: It's symmetrical to a military fanatic who loves guns.

Or, more appropriately, a lover of life who has to make sense of the political madness, economic injustices, familial abuses, industrial waste, culutral chauvenism, militarist violence, fundamentalist terror, consumerist gluttony....and still choosing to love justice, seek peace and work for healing....which is what I think of when I think of loving God.

Interbane: I think similar thoughts every time you post your religious meanderings. If you're on a crusade to help us understand and accept religion or God, you incrementally do the opposite for me each post. You continue to solidify the reasons I dislike religion and the idea of God.

Perhaps you should try this exercise: say to yourself before reading my posts "It's not all about me...it's not all about me...it's not all about me". It could lift the heavy burden you carry, leading you to speak for the "us" that makes up the Booktalk community as well.

So, what kind of discourse would be necessary for you to like religion and adopt some sort of idea of God?

DWill · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:11 pm Post subject:


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