What God Means To Me...

Just a couple of quick thoughts here...

Or maybe more than a few quick thoughts...as I get going...

I went to a church tonight....a seemingly unorthodox one that I have been looking at for a while...

It used to be a movie theatre...

And it just happened to be beside my favorite bar...

I walked inside and it was empty....

Or so it seemed...

I was partly in when a young, middle aged man...I'm guessing about 35...

Came out of an office....

To see what I was up to....

What I was up to was a place to teach...

Hegel's Hotel....

But I didn't tell him that...

He showed me the place...

A smaller forum that used to be a movie theatre...

And then a larger forum where the main services were/are held...

On Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights

(During the summer when people go away for the weekend)

I said I had a background in philosophy...

And was interested in the history of his particular denomination...

We got into some discussion about the religious history...

Of his particular denomination....

A name I can't remember because it was three large words...

That I was not familiar with...

Sounded like it was a deviation from the Catholic Church...

Then the Protestant (United) Church (that was my denomination as a child growing up)...

Maybe a couple more deviations off of that...

Kinda like deviations from Freudian Psychoanalysis...

He called it a conservative church, casual and contemporary...

I said that sounded more like a 'liberal' church -- flexible....

Which sounded good to me...

We found out we had different definitions of 'conservative' and 'liberal'...

Relative to religion...

We got into a rhetorical argument around the parable of Abraham...

And both agreed that we didn't want to get into a righteous argument...

I asked him who the priest or minister of the Church was...

And he said he was....He was the Pastor....

We both agreed to disagree on our Biblical differences of opinion...

The only one I get passionate about -- like Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) --

Is the God, Abraham, and Issac Parable....

I get very passionate on that one...

I have no place for a betraying father...

I have to look partly into my own conscience on that one...

And the ambivalent love-hate relationship I had with my father...

Growing up...

Nor, do I have any place for....

An arguably 'anal-sadistic' God...

Who values 'submission to authority'...

Over independent, critical thought...

And a father's supposed love for his son...

We left that argument...

He introduced himself as Fred...

And I may take in one of his Wednesday night...

Or Sunday morning sessions...

I will simply punctuate this brief little essay...

By saying...

That for me...

Religion should be...first and foremost...

About caring for people....

Engaging people....

Helping them to find...

A more involved...

And meaningful, spiritual place in the world...

All the arguments in the world...

About how to interpret the Bible...

The Scripture...

Or any other sacred manuscript...

From any other religious denomination...

Is worth nothing....

If we don't care about...

And engage with people...

This fits with my 'Attachment-Detachment Theory'...

The first and foremost goal of any psychotherapy...

And/or any religion...

Should be to 're-attach' people...

Who have become 'detached'...

Who have lost their place in the world...

Their relationships in the world...

Their meaning in the world...

And that comes, first and foremost...

From caring about people...

And re-engaging people...

Into productive, meaningful relationships...

In a world of narcissistic, unethical...

Capitalism Gone Mad...

We need something...

And someone(s) to help restore their trust...

And faith in people...

 For me,

Trust and faith in God...

Is a secondary, arguable, issue...

Personally, I don't believe in...

Submission to anyone...

Submission is counter-productive to...

Self-empowerment....

And critical, independent thinking...

Submission to authority invites...

Self-exploitation by the dominant authority figure...

I now prefer to call myself a...

Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential-Pantheist...

Like Spinoza...my main mentor here...

In conjunction to Schelling and Hegel...

I believe that there is a piece of God...

In everything and everyone...

Which of course includes...

The person...

Standing...

Or sitting...

Right beside you...or me...

Seek and ye shall find...

A piece of God in yourself...

And in the person...

Right beside you...

Of particular importance...

Is the person who has lost his or her...

Particular way...

Not in the usual religious sense...

Of losing faith in God...

As in losing faith in any God above us...

For better or worse, a lot of people have done that...

That's why we have heretics, atheists, agnostics, pantheists, deists...

And the list keeps going

In the realm of 'meta-physics'....

Everything is speculative...

And beyond any normal sense of the word 'provable'...

No, when I am talking about 'lost faith'...

I am talking about having lost faith...

In one's self...

And in one's relationships...

And in one's life....

And in one's meaning and passion...

For life....

Here, from my perspective...

We all need to re-connect...

At least to the extent that...

We have lost this connection...

With our Spiritual-Congruent Self...

Our Phenomenology of Spirit...

The God in each of us...

The God between us...

I and Thou...

Here and now...


-- dgb, Aug. 14, 15, 2012

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From Wikipedia...

Pantheism....

Pantheism is a word derived from the Greek (pan) meaning "all" and the Greek (theos) meaning "God". It is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing immanent God,^[1] or that the Universe (or Nature) and God (or divinity) are identical.^[2] Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, or anthropomorphic god. As such, pantheism denotes the idea that every single thing is a part of one Being ("God") and that all forms of reality are either modes of that Being or identical with it.^[3] The central ideas found in almost all pantheistic beliefs are the view of the Cosmos as an all-encompassing unity, reverence for the Cosmos, and recognition of the sacredness of the Universe.

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On Kierkegaard, Faith, and Religon -- I'm Not On Board

Prof Rev Fr. Philip Ogbonna • Presumably a Kierkaadian quote to follow...

It's only the aesthetic mind that will doubt it but are the majority not aesthetic in their outlook? It is not the paradox that constitutes the downfall but understanding by not understanding itself.

2 hours ago• Unlike• Like

David Bain • Not one of my favorite Kierkegaard quotes...I stay away from the religous side of Kierkegaard...My spirituality is more of a pantheistic-deistic spirituality and has been influenced more by the likes of Heraclitus, Plato, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Einstien....I have a much different take on 'Fear and Trembling' and the Abraham-Isaac parable. I do not hold any faith in a God who would tell me to murder my own son...Instead, i would tell God that 'He is dead' -- because it is only a sadistic, murdering God who would tell me to kill my own son. I would kill God instead -- at least this type of God. Kierkegaard betrayed his fiancee at the alter for this type of God? In this regard, yes indeed, Kierkegaard was left with an 'either/or' choice -- marriage or the worship of God -- and it is obvious to me that Kierkegaard made the wrong choice. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been such a miserable, sarcastic, arrogant, condescending person his whole life. Kierkegaard never found God or Salvation. He spent much of his life simply trying to justifiy and rationalize his own stupid choices....

David - the genetic fallacy has been rehashed ad nauseum in SK scholarship; surely the meaning of anyone's life could be reduced by this sort of deterministic logic. But is that the best or most charitable way to read the situation? The same for your read of the Abraham-Isaac story and SK's interpretation of it: you could make a case out of it, as many already have, but because your case lacks charity, it is neither the most cogent nor the most compelling case. If your own religious views allow you to trash somebody whom you've never met and likely not tried very hard to understand, how can you consider yourself any different than your own reading of SK? More to the point, maybe your reading of SK says more about the reader than the subject? Perhaps you should read Works of Love - or at least the Golden Rule.
7 hours ago• Unlike• Like

David Bain • You are right sir, my reply was rather short and curt, cutting to the chase
of what I do not like about authoritarian religion -- and Kierkegaard's
idea of 'faith'. If i were to go back and redo my response i might modify
one line.
My mom is very religous -- Protestant -- as is my dad. Both are great
family and community people. They would probably not like my idea of God,
spirituality, and religion which borrows, as I said, from the likes of
Heraclitus, Plato, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel and Einstein.
Regardless of how diplomatically or undiplomatically i were to write about
what i didn't like about Kierkeggard (his sarcastic arrogance, his
bitterness, and his take on the Abraham-Isaac parable -- it still comes
down to the same thing.

'Blind faith' without critical insight into what or who you are submitting
your faith and judgment to is a very dangerous, naive proposition,
especially in a very narcissistic world where there are some very ethically
bad people who would love to take advantage of this edge of power that they
would love to incorporate over you. Let's calling it taking advantage of
the 'herd mentality' (eg. Nazi Germany, and authoritarian religion).
So basically, the long and the short of what I wrote remains the same. My
point remains the same. And I don't even know who this 'SK' is that you
keep referring to.
Thanks for your feedback....appreciated....even if our points of view, our
paradigm, may differ.
David
Bain
2 hours ago

David Bain • I don't know what you mean, Kerby, by 'the genetic fallacy', ...All of my arguments are my own arguments -- even if they have been argued before me by someone who I haven't read....


To be perfectly clear on the matter above, I am certainly not trashing the altruistic side of religion and its sincere attempts to counter the 'narcissistic callousness and apathy' that makes up much of our society today....But you don't have to be religious to be altruistic and humanistic, and both religion and God can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people -- some good, some bad, some healthy, some pathological, some severely pathological...In the end, both God and religion are no better or no worse than what we project onto these terms and concepts ourselves....I believe that God lives in all of us and that we can 'become more Godly' to the extent that we all live more balanced, meaningful, passionate, assertive and socially sensitive lives....                    

I will stick with Kierkegaard's more existentially enlightening quotes (at least from my own perspective) like....

'Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.' -- Soren Kierkegaard 

And again, I believe that we all have to look inside to find God. Godliness is the ideal 'dialectic-humanistic-existential balancing act of all our internal and external interests, needs, impulses, desires, drives, paradoxes, contradictions, impasses, conflicts...actualizing our own potential to our fullest capability without trashing other people in the process.' -- dgb.