nel wrote:The meaning of the word "god" has not been static throughout history, however. For instance, the Bible documents the creation of idols, or physical human creations which were elevated to divine status by their human makers. Then, we have the Jewish concept of an otherworldly spiritual being who represents a sole divinity. The Christians postulate that a divinity (actually, the sole divinity) may have taken human form and lived for thirty-something years in utterly physical, human form. From a golden calf (which some referred to as "god"), to a burning bush inhabited by the otherworldly divinity, to a human carpenter claimed simultaneously to be divine, the Bible itself demonstrates to us that human beings have held widely varying conceptions of the word "god". It does not seem to me to be (more) far-fetched that there could be a "divine" essence out there that does not assume the defined form of a "powerful spiritual being worshipped..."
I'm not sure the 'divine essence' is what Nin's articles were talking about. It seems closer to what Lord_M called 'an experience'. In other words, there's an aspect of being human, when people are functioning together in a certain way, that this pastor likes to call god -- what was called an 'intellectual concept'. My interpretation of that phrase is that the intellectual concept doesn't name a thing, like a divine essence, it just describes a dynamic. I can understand the use of the word 'god' in the construct you described, nel, but I can't understand the use of it if the other concept is closer to what was meant.
yovargas wrote:And asides from the "physical" part, I suspect something similar could be said about god.
Do you mean, in an evidenciary way, there is a certain thing that is god, and we will one day be able to identify it, so that god will be something that can be known about like the sun (as opposed to that which can't be known and so is a matter of belief, or faith). Like, it could be some chemical or element in the air that we find we react to in a certain way? Or are you saying you suspect the existence of a mystical something, but you acknowledge it can never be established factually, like the sun, because it is in the mystical rather than the physical realm?
JewelSong wrote:I believe in God as a state of being...a consciousness outside of time and space that we can sometimes touch or sense in how we relate to each other.
In that case, I wonder why you call yourself a Christian, since that isn't how Christianity presents God. I don't mean to be intrusive, but I've always been curious as to why people who don't subscribe to the basic doctrinal elements of Christianity identify as Christians.
Dave_LF wrote:there is some mystical thing out there we will call God that people have experienced all through history
This isolates the question I have about the article. Is the pastor saying, there is some mystical thing out there we call god that we sometimes experience
something of, or is he saying there is a dynamic we sometimes experience as humans, because we're humans, that we like to describe as god?
Also, even if there is an impersonal divine force, I doubt that all historical gods are based on experiences of it.
I would agree with this.
axordil wrote:The only definitive experience one can have of God is exactly what you describe: a state of mind, a sensation, a feeling, without corresponding sensory input or physical interaction. Beyond that it's a matter of interpretation and taste.
But was the article talking about an experience
of god (which would make god some kind of thing or essence), or are they calling a certain kind of experience itself, god (which would make god an intellectual concept)? I'm with those who've said that calling the first 'god' makes sense to me, but not the second.
I would say it demonstrates only that there's a definitive experience, and that God, or the divine, or big L Love is what one latches onto in an attempt to understand that experience.
I don't think that's necessarily correct. I think it more likely that different people or groups of people are describing different experiences with the same word (god). That's why it's problematic to use a word so non-specifically. Someone like yovargas may well assume that someone like me experiences something similar to what he experiences 'of god', but it seems far more likely to me that we're talking apples and oranges, experientially as well as intellectually.
What it sounds like to me is that the pastor is saying that for him the experience, the feeling itself, is all that matters.
Whether it's attributable to a separate mystical something of undetermined nature, or whether it simply describes something that happens in human interaction? I think it would be unsatisfactory to most people to just leave it at that, without trying to determine which it is in their own mind. That's why I'd prefer to understand which was meant.
As someone who could have once written that post, I see a lot of basic misunderstandings going on. However, I don't think I can meaningfully clarify. I'll make one cheap, almost certainly enormously flawed attempt and then bow out - if some once thought the sun was a conscious being but then most people realized it wasn't, aren't we still talking about the sun?
