An atheist pastor

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JewelSong
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Post by JewelSong »

not as God is Love but as God IS Love - and so Love IS God. That is meant more...mystically...than literally, but that does not make it, imo and in my personal experience, just clever word games
Yes. This is my belief as well - and I also have a great deal of difficulty putting it into words that don't sound like I am playing trite word games.

I think many people's view of God is that God is sort of like a human writ large. The "old man with a white beard" notion of God, if you will. God is like us, only...more. Which would mean (to me!) that God not only has our good points but also all our failings...but BIGGER.

I think that is where the idea of eternal judgment and punishment for the wicked/unbelievers comes from.

I do not so much believe in a God as an entity (on old man with a beard, of some other "thing") as 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.

Even that doesn't sound right.

God = Love. Love = God. Not the puny kind of small-l love we know, but Love as an all-encompassing state of being.

And that doesn't sound right, either. ;)

(*I* know what I mean, but it is very difficult to put it into words...)
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Dave_LF
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Post by Dave_LF »

yov and JS, do you mean that there is some mystical thing out there we will call God that people have experienced all through history, and that the bearded-man-in-the-sky stuff is just what happened when people who experienced it let their imaginations get a bit carried away? Is that what this pastor is claiming? (I know this isn't about words ultimately, but if I believed that I would call the force "the divine" and save the word "god" for a fanciful personification of the divine).
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Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

JewelSong wrote:(*I* know what I mean, but it is very difficult to put it into words...)
I think you've done an excellent job of doing so, actually. I, at least, know exactly what you mean
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Post by solicitr »

I'm with Lord M here. I wouldn't be troubled in the least if this 'pastor' led a Unitarian congregation or some New Age group or what have you. My problem is that he is in charge of what calls itself, specifically a Christian church, part of the Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) faith.

To go back to the food analogy, it's absolutely the case that a meal doesn't have to be centered on meat- unless it claims to be.

You can't have a vegetarian "steak dinner."
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Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

That pretty much sums up my views, too. It really does appear that this fellow is trying to have his cake and eat it too.
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Post by JewelSong »

Dave_LF wrote:.. JS, do you mean that there is some mystical thing out there we will call God that people have experienced all through history,
Yes.
and that the bearded-man-in-the-sky stuff is just what happened when people who experienced it let their imaginations get a bit carried away?


Well, the bearded-man-in-the-sky bit can be blamed on Michelangelo and his Sistine Chapel ceiling painting, actually. ;) Seriously, I don't think it's so much a question of letting your imagination get away with you as people trying to put the concept of "god" into terms that are understandable. The trouble with doing that is that then you have limited the concept of "god" to what you, as a human being, are capable of understanding...which is a contradiction of what it's all about. IMHO.
(I know this isn't about words ultimately, but if I believed that I would call the force "the divine" and save the word "god" for a fanciful personification of the divine).
I DO use the term "the Divine." But I don't think the word "God" is a "fanciful interpretation." Rather, I believe that most people's interpretations fall far, far short of what the Divine IS. The "ISness" (if you will) of the Divine. The best we can hope for is a glimpse, a momentary sense of what IS.
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Post by Dave_LF »

JewelSong wrote:But I don't think the word "God" is a "fanciful interpretation."
"Fanciful" might come off as overly pejorative. What I meant was that under this interpretation, a believer might use the word "God" to refer to a personification of the divine, but not to the impersonal divine thing itself.

Also, even if there is an impersonal divine force, I doubt that all historical gods are based on experiences of it. A lot of the gods are, IMO, just superheroes. And the stories are just the stuff people made up to amuse themselves before they had TV.
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Post by Túrin Turambar »

Still, the God of the Bible and the other Abrahamic texts is nevertheless a sentient being with a personality - he holds conversations with people, does things, is pleased and angry, etc. Other religions have a more mystic conception of God, but when you start to argue that God is not actually something that exists but is an experience or state of mind, then I think you're pushing the term too far.
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Post by axordil »

God is not actually something that exists but is an experience or state of mind
Non-empirical epistemology is not exactly brimming over with well-defined concepts. It's not like the physical world, where a sensory experience can, as a rule, be shared, described and analyzed in fairly precise terms.

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.
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Post by Dave_LF »

Lord_Morningstar wrote:Still, the God of the Bible and the other Abrahamic texts is nevertheless a sentient being with a personality - he holds conversations with people, does things, is pleased and angry, etc. Other religions have a more mystic conception of God, but when you start to argue that God is not actually something that exists but is an experience or state of mind, then I think you're pushing the term too far.
I still agree with this; I was just attempting to get past the words to understand what the pastor and the other posters actually mean. For my part, I use little-g "god" as a common noun meaning a divine person of some sort, and big-g "God" as the proper name of the god of the Old Testament religions (in English). I'm not sure what "divine" means. ;)
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Post by Túrin Turambar »

axordil wrote:
God is not actually something that exists but is an experience or state of mind
Non-empirical epistemology is not exactly brimming over with well-defined concepts. It's not like the physical world, where a sensory experience can, as a rule, be shared, described and analyzed in fairly precise terms.

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.
Still, I think that's confusing the cause with the symptoms, if you'll take my meaning. Having a 'definitive experience of god' implies that there is a god to have an experience of. And there certainly are people who claim to interact with god/s on a personal level – my religious education teacher in primary school told us about conversations she had with him where she would quote his side of the dialogue. But if you argue that there is no god (and I still think that is the easiest way to express, in English, what this minister and others like him believe), and that the experience is caused by something else (eg. love) then I don’t see how you can still call it an experience of god. It’s an experience of love, or wonder, or whatever, caused by the object of the love or wonder.
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Post by Túrin Turambar »

Forgot to reply to this:
yovargas wrote:
Lord_Morningstar wrote:
yovargas wrote:I disagree. :) 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?
Yes, because the sun is a physical object that you can actually identify, regardless of its characteristics (eg. sentience).
And asides from the "physical" part, I suspect something similar could be said about god.
So ‘god is an object that you can actually identify, regardless of its characteristics (eg. sentience)’?

But here we're not so much debating the characteristics of a thing as we are debating what the word we use to describe it should be applied to. The characteristics of things we commonly call gods (Thor, Yahweh, whatever) aren’t really in doubt. We’re questioning what else we can attach the signifier ‘god’ to.

It’s like were discussing whether an SUV or an APC or a utility can be called a car.

[ETA: Just noticed that I started that sentance in American English and finished it in Anglo-Australian English. Living in Canada has been doing that to me sometimes.]
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Post by axordil »

Still, I think that's confusing the cause with the symptoms
What I'm saying is that all one can be sure of is the symptoms. If this were not the case, there would be exactly one human religious belief.

I would in fact not say that having a definitive experience of God implies there's a God. 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. The experience is real--I will take my friends' collective word for it--but the cause is currently ineffable.

What it sounds like to me is that the pastor is saying that for him the experience, the feeling itself, is all that matters. If it is in fact the same feeling that his congregation of believers has (and without some MRIs we have no way of really knowing) there may well be enough commonality there to support the relationship with his flock.

Goodness knows, religion as a whole has had no shortage of bitter, burned out, cynical and/or skeptical figures who managed to serve their faiths and their people anyway. By comparison a simple lack of theism seems fairly benign. ;)
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Post by Cerin »

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.
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Post by nerdanel »

Cerin wrote:
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.
I can see the distinction that you are trying to draw, Cerin. I relate somewhat to what this pastor is describing, because I theorize that one way that this "divine essence" may manifest itself is in certain interactions between humans. In fact, those interactions between humans are the chief reason that I think there may exist any sort of "divine essence" at all. It seems to me that everything about the physical world is or will be rationally explicable (e.g., a god may have created a world according to the laws of science, but the laws of science will do a perfectly satisfactory job of explaining the physical world, whether or not their existence may be credited to a god.) But the interactions between people are not so straightforward. Medicine and biology only seem to take us so far; economic, legal, and other social science models can't capture the complexities. The concept of a "soul" (which is not only used by religious people) captures the idea, I think, that we humans are something more than our physical bodies dictate. If there is a "divine essence," then I think the way that it interacts with the world at all may have something to do with that human "something more," or "souls".

So that is where my ill-formed ideas on this topic connect to the atheist pastor's, and also, I suspect, where they connect to yov's and JS' ideas about "God as Love" -- because the love expressed between humans (and even from humans to other species or aspects of the earth) is one of the most important interactions that I'm describing.
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Post by yovargas »

Sorry if I don't reply to everybody's responses. I do not wish to attempt further clarification as I do not think I can do it justice. I just wanted to put my seeds of thought out there if anybody wanted to take them up. :)

And on a sidenote, parts of this discussion are, to my amusement, reminding me of some heated discussions I've had about "What is art?" :D
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Post by axordil »

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 would guess they would call that a false distinction to make.
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.
Thus the variety of human religious experience. As I said, there's no easy way to compare analytically non-empirical experiences between people. You feel something, I feel something, yovargas feels something, this pastor feels something...is it the same? Is it even close? When there's a direct sensory referent it's easier.

My point is, when people have whatever hard-to-define-and-describe experience people have, they look to the list of not-terribly-well defined terms that always get applied to such experiences. God. Love. Divine. Soul.
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.
I agree that it's unsatisfactory to most people. But I also think that any step beyond the experiential is by definition interpretation alone...and at that point what is satisfying for you may not be satisfying for me, or yovargas, or the pastor. So what the pastor is saying seems to be that he's accepted what for most people is an unsatisfactory state of ambiguity, so that he does not impose his own personal interpretation on anyone else. For him the personal satisfaction of having an interpretation is less important.
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Post by axordil »

yovargas wrote:And on a sidenote, parts of this discussion are, to my amusement, reminding me of some heated discussions I've had about "What is art?" :D
Interpretation and taste are common to both areas, are they not? :)
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Post by solicitr »

"Of course it's art! It's sitting on a plinth, isn't it?"

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Post by JewelSong »

Cerin wrote:
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.
I don't want to de-rail the thread, but I will say that the short answer is that I call myself a Christian because I subscribe to the teachings and philosophy of the man known as Jesus of Nazareth whom I believe was part of the the Divine. The Christ.

I also think that much of the "basic doctrinal elements of Christianity" were added later, by people with their own agendas and that Jesus' basic message was much simpler. Jesus never wanted to create a new religion.

I feel very comfortable with Christian worship and traditions and most at home and at peace there.

Now, I am aware that many more fundamentalist Christians may decide that I am not a Christian by their definition. But I am not concerned, really, about their definition. My relationship with Jesus is a personal one.
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