I've always suspected that people long to learn what I think about most anything, but am shy.

The "one" I was referring to was purely psychological in nature. It means that there is only one "I", rather than a cacophony of different Is (hungry I, jealous I, generous I, etc). So, the human race being "one", burning, stoning, and hanging people are totally irrelevant to the point that was being made.

I've been thinking a lot recently about how it seems that most people are incapable of thinking outside of their social context. Reading these replies has reinforced that idea.

I got one answer which quoted the first two sentences in the essay and claimed that I made an unverifiable ontological claim about God, when the first sentence of my essay started with "God, as experienced..." which clearly indicates that I'm making a phenomenological claim and not an ontological one. Another reply said that I ought to have defined God before talking about him, when again, that was covered in the first sentence of my post.

Now Ciceronian's' recent reply quoted me talking about monotheism and psychological unity as if I were talking about social unity among all mankind, and stoning or burning outcasts. I wrote right in the first sentence he quoted, "...from a psychological perspective...", later in the quote I talked about one's conscience, and much of the original post and nearly the entirety of the later discussions were focused on psychology and phenomenology (how things seem to be from a personal perspective). So, I see no reason why he would have had the idea that I was talking about social unity when all these other things would point to me talking about psychological unity within one's self.

You all came into this with preconceptions about what I was going to talk about, and didn't understand a thing I said which was outside of those preconceptions, which includes most of what I said.

Well, consider you may be less than clear. Your wrote:

I thought of another thing I could have put in the essay. I have heard that from the psychological perspective, the conversion from polytheism to monotheism meant that people imagined themselves to be one (at least in ideal) whereas they had not thought like that before. — Brendan Golledge

The second sentence seems to include a statement that "the conversion from polytheism to monotheism meant that people imagined themselves to be one (at least in ideal) whereas they had not thought like that before."

I'm not sure how "from a psychological perspective" impacts the meaning of those words, nor am I sure what it is people thought when they did not "imagine themselves to be one." Did they imagine themselves to be many, or at least more than one, when polytheistic? Did they imagine themselves to be one, but in a lesser or different sense than they would once converted to monotheism?

So let's say that for many god is experience and metaphysical speculation, what of it?

Is it this?

God is an expression of what we think is most important. What we believe is important drives how we feel about things, and how we feel about things drives what we think about, and what we think about drives what we do. Finding God, in a sense, is the same thing as finding yourself. If you can decide for yourself what is most important to you, and get a good-enough working theory of how the world works, then everything else will sort itself out. God is an expression of what we think is most-important, and nothing is more important than that. — Brendan Golledge

This seems to come direct from Peterson country. I'm not trying to be rude but this paragraph seems to be a bundle of not very illuminating Californian style pop-psychology statements. 'Finding god is finding yourself' is a bit of a 1970's cliché. But what does it actually mean? What are you finding when you are finding self/god and what is the significance?

So are you an atheist in the slightly slippery Peterson mode, and have you also felt the need to redefine god in order make the idea more palatable to a modern sensibility and make god a psychological journey rather than a set of facts?

it seems that most people are incapable of thinking outside of their social context. Reading these replies has reinforced that idea. — Brendan Golledge

Another reply said that I ought to have defined God before talking about him, when again, that was covered in the first sentence of my post. — Brendan Golledge

Defining concept of controversy before discussion is an important and critical step in philosophy.  I am surprised that anyone would find unfamiliar with the request.
Definition has always been the main interest in philosophical tradition since the time of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.

Defining the concepts makes sense, because it will be the case, when one starts talking about a garden, and what he meant was his backyard grass patch and plant and tree ground, but the other could be insisting that his garden is always and must be his favourite Chinese restaurant.  The discussion would end up somewhere in nowhere.

You say, your definition of God has been made already in the post as "your experience of highest value".  I didn't accept it was actually a definition of any God in philosophical sense. In philosophical debate and discussion, you must bring something that is objective and concrete, then try to convince your readers and audience to agree with your points. 

God is a religious concept, and one must at least make clear which God one is talking about - is it Judaism, Christian God? or is it Islamic or Hindu God? or would it be some Pagan Kabbalistic God?
You cannot bring something so subjective and a new age type definition of your experience, and expect others to see your points let alone understand what you are even talking about.

To someone, personal experience of highest value could be money, to others, it could be bodily pleasure, fame, power and authority,  friendship, health ... etc etc.  Your God as your personal experience of highest value sounds uniquely and excessively subjective to the extent to convince me that it couldn't possibly be a philosophical definition of God.

Defining concept of controversy before discussion is an important and critical step in philosophy. — Corvus

Good point. There's a reason mathematicians begin their proofs with definitions. I wasn't tempted to read the long OP without being clear at the start what was being talked about. .

Good point. There's a reason mathematicians begin their proofs with definitions. I wasn't tempted to read the long OP without being clear at the start what was being talked about. . — FrancisRay

:cool: :ok:

"If you doubt that truth for humans is socially constructed, then answer me this (I would genuinely like an answer if you have one): If truth for people is not socially constructed, then why are religious and political beliefs correlated to geography?"

Different societies have different languages to express spiritual matters but the differences are often secondary and not a measure of 'truth'. For example Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and Judaism have much in common.

"How did people believe that they experienced God? I have read that the word “unconscious” was used for the first time in Germany in the 18th century. If people didn’t even have a word for the thing, it’s likely that they didn’t have a concept of it either. But if there is no unconscious to make your thoughts and feelings pop into your head, where do these things come from? Ancient people believed that they came from polytheistic gods (Ares = anger, Aphrodite = lust …) and demons and angels. They believed in their gods because they really did experience them. We just do not today believe in their interpretations of their experiences."

You seem to be saying that 'the unconscious' explains things. But that is a tautology. What is the unconscious? To answer that you have to know what the mind is. It seems to me that the unconscious is 'knowledge beyond language'. That is, knowledge that enters our minds through awareness but is not yet translated into conscious language.

"It seems logical that there is a limit to what God can add to himself personally, since he is infinity, and anything added to infinity is still infinity. So, God does not add to himself directly, but creates an infinity (or at least a very large number) of finite things."

Not necessarily. You can have an infinity of odd numbers 1, 3, 5, 7,...

And to that you can add something different; even numbers 2, 4, 6,...

To someone, personal experience of highest value could be money, to others, it could be bodily pleasure, fame, power and authority, friendship, health ... etc etc. Your God as your personal experience of highest value sounds uniquely and excessively subjective to the extent to convince me that it couldn't possibly be a philosophical definition of God.

YES! YES! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT! SOMEONE READ THE FIRST SENTENCE OF MY POST, THOUGHT ABOUT IT, AND UNDERSTOOD WHAT I SAID!!! YES!

I suppose I could have elucidated upon this more, since I guess it's a new topic to most people. To religious people, it seems to me that when they talk about God, they are SOMETIMES really projecting their own values onto God, and then they claim that they are speaking with God's authority, when they are really just giving their own opinion. But I think I did elucidate in the 2nd paragraph, that when secular people are talking about ethics, they are also, in an abstract sense, talking about God. That's because to ancient people and modern religious people, God is like a personification of their ethics and morals. So, secular people are functionally talking about God when they talk about ethics, even if they do not recognize him as a person. A Christian would say that putting money, bodily pleasure, fame, power, etc in place of God is idolatry.

I'm just so happy that at least one person read the first sentence of my essay, and showed by his reply that he understood what I meant.

I suppose maybe this is more of a psychological than a philosophical approach, and I posted on a philosophy forum. I suppose that is a legit critique.

I don't feel like your response to the geographic correlation of human beliefs doesn't seem to really address the point to me. The fact that different religions have some overlap doesn't explain why people emphatically categorize themselves as belonging to different religious groups, and why these groups are geographically isolated.

I don't see how the "unconscious" is a tautology. I don't know how it comes about, but it's something we obviously have and experience. I was just asserting that this thing we experience was interpreted in a religious context in the past, whereas it is interpreted in a psychological context today.

My talk of infinity in that paragraph, I admit, was not precise. I had the idea that infinity + 1 = infinity. In that sense, God cannot meaningfully add to himself. But this is the speculative part of the essay, so I don't mind being proven wrong (or not very rigorous) in that respect.

It seems like you're not familiar with the idea that there are multiple personalities within the unconscious. This was the point I was trying to make. I was thinking that monotheism pointed at the Jungian idea of integration, whereas polytheists did not even see personal integration as a goal. This means essentially, ironing out all the inconsistencies within one's self. For instance, I want to love my wife and be loyal to her, but I also sometimes have sexual impulses which are not loyal. The monotheist idea that there is only one God, if we think that we experience God through our unconscious (although I don't think ancient people even had the psychological interpretation of the unconscious), means that we are not inwardly in the image of the one God when we are in inner conflict like this. The polytheists would have often not even considered it to be a problem, because their explanation of the world included many different conflicting forces in the world. Although in this particular case, cheating on one's wife might have violated an oath made to Zeus or something, so they would have had a reason not to do that. But it seems likely that they would not have seen a problem with the conflicting voices themselves. A polytheist tempted to adultery might think to himself, "Aphrodite is tempting me, but I made an oath to Zeus to maintain my marriage." A Christian would think, "A demon is tempting me with lust. I must reject this thought." In this case there is an obvious outward act that would be wrong, if it were acted upon. I guess the difference is that for the polytheist, the thought itself is not necessarily bad, whereas for the monotheist (if interpreted like Christians have interpreted it), it is. That's because if we have sinful (inconsistent) inclinations, in means we are not inwardly reflecting the image of the ONE God.

To religious people, it seems to me that when they talk about God, they are SOMETIMES really projecting their own values onto God, and then they claim that they are speaking with God's authority, when they are really just giving their own opinion — Brendan Golledge

That made me think of this video. I'd be interested in hearing what you think of it.

I saw that video shortly after it came out. It is probably one of the reasons why I came to view God this way.

I do think that Dark Matter often responds to a cartoonish representation of Christianity, which unfortunately, actually seems to accurately reflect a lot of Protestants. I have experience with more serious Christians, who are not so bothered by existence of atheists. I was actually astonished when I read the comments from those Christians who say that they should just shoot atheists. It had been a long time since I'd seen that video, and I had forgotten about that part. It does not fit with my experience of Christians.

I think to some extent, whether God exists or not, God is a figment of our imagination, because it is impossible to fully know the infinite. God inside our heads is always whatever we think of him. I do know, however, that some Christians genuinely do take, "thy will be done" seriously, because they inconvenience themselves to do what they think God wants. But there is indeed a kind of Christian who does not change their behavior to fit the Bible, or their own conscience, but imagine that God fits whatever they were going to do anyway. We must judge everything through ourselves, but I suppose the difference between these 2 groups is that one of them believes that there is an objective truth outside of their own wants, and they look for it, whereas the other group does not take anything outside their own wants seriously.

Edit: I suppose I do believe that there is a "God" outside our heads. I made a proof in my original essay (which I think is a legit proof) that SOMETHING exists outside of the realm of human reason. Also, science provides very good evidence that there is an ordering principle to existence. It seems reasonable to call this God. Now, it's a far ways from proving that this God is the God of the Bible, but it does not seem reasonable to say that God doesn't exist at all. From the psychological basis, we seem to associate God with our conscience. I cannot prove that there is a link between the 2 (the origin of existence and our conscience). But it does seem reasonable and good to me to do what seems morally most righteous to me, and to be interested in the ultimate origin and ordering principle to existence, and this leads inevitably to thoughts about God. As for the Bible, I think at worst, it was written by fallible humans who were extremely interested in moral righteousness, and that it therefore does contain a lot of wisdom about proper living. Jesus has not come down to clarify these things for me. But I think I do understand a lot of the wisdom described in the Bible, and it is worth it to me to take it seriously and to reference it as a guide when I'm in doubt.

:up:

I might respond further later, but for now I want to say I appreciate the thoughtful response.

The original singularity of our universe would be considered uncaused and self caused at the same time, according to how science approaches it. Nothing is posited before it yet it acts (expands) according to the laws of its matter, spacetime, ect. To visualize this you need to keep both in mind. There can be no separation between a god and the universe

The fact that different religions have some overlap doesn't explain why people emphatically categorize themselves as belonging to different religious groups, and why these groups are geographically isolated. — Brendan Golledge

The essential teaching of religion is The Way. I am the way. It is the Tao or Right Living as the Buddhists would say. The external forms of religion vary for lost of reasons but they are secondary and have many causes.

I was just asserting that this thing we experience was interpreted in a religious context in the past, whereas it is interpreted in a psychological context today. — Brendan Golledge

But what is the psyche? Ask a psychologist and see how funny the answer is. Spirit is the traditional word. Modern psychology has drained all spiritual reality of its substance and replaced it with abstraction. It is largely a tautology that has relabeled everything spiritual and convinced many that "it's just psychological" - an expression that tells us nothing. Semantics. "English is what Chinese would speak if Chinese was English" :confused:

The original singularity of our universe would be considered uncaused and self caused at the same time, according to how science approaches it. — Gregory

Why would the singularity be uncaused? Eternity precedes time.

So "god" is nothing but a primal euphemism for ego – in other words, a self-serving/flattering delusion (L. Feuerbach)? No wonder it feels "real" to many believers (i.e. symbolizing – idolatrous – primates); facing the inner cave wall, they bark at their own shadows and call that "prayer". Disbelievers, however, seem to concern themselves with the more-than-ego in which their mere egoes are entangled, or inseparable from, called "nature" – the garden that overgrows the graveyard of all idols. For us (i.e. our delusion): study, not worship; courage, not hope.

Eternity if not before time temporally because it is the absence of time. Although, philosophy can posit a Tao that acts without being acted upon, science is more positivist and speaks of what is in time. How the first moments of time arose is subject to debate by Hawking and others.

I'll repeat again, for a large part of the essay, I'm not concerned with God-as-such, but with God-as-experienced, which in one aspect means dealing with one's conscience. — Brendan Golledge

If there are phenomenological commonalities to be found across so-called spiritual or religious experiences, and a significant portion of those who apparently enjoy such experiences (for example Buddhists) do not interpret them as being experiences of God, then do you not see that you are already tendentiously presupposing God in some sense in speaking of "God-as-experienced'?

Eternity [is] not before time temporally because it is the absence of time. — Gregory

Suppose eternity is the ocean and time (i.e. our spacetime) is a wave on the ocean's surface ... Not "the absence of time" but rather eternity is the whole of all times (e.g. block universe, the bulk, true vacuum). :chin:

If somebody wants to call the psychological aspect of their religious experience "Tao" or "The Way" or "Conscience" or some other such thing, where a Christian would call the same or a similar experience "The Holy Spirit", then I do not have a problem with that. If we are using descriptive words, then we can understand what we are talking about, even if we use different names. God as creator of the universe, however, is not obviously interchangeable with "The Way", so, I guess someone from a Buddhist background would not have attempted to write an essay as I did which lumped these 2 things together.

Not a big Jung fan, I'm afraid, although I admit the thought of God defecating on his creation has a certain charm. Perhaps defecation represented the act of creation; I can't recall how he or others interpreted this vision.

It's odd how different the monotheism, if we can call it that, of the Abrahamic religions, led to an interpretation of God which differed so from the interpretation of the pagan philosophers who acknowledged that there was but one God and considered the many gods of traditional religion to be aspects of the one God. I tend to agree that those of the pre-Christian West were largely unconcerned with the notions that have bothered and worried us since, some of which you enumerate, and think they were better off for it.

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

... the interpretation of the pagan philosophers who acknowledged that there was but one God [Brahman, Dao, Void, Substance] and considered the many gods of traditional religion to be aspects [maya, ten thousand things, atoms, modes] of the one God. — Ciceronianus

:fire:

My point was only that whatever imagery is involved with and whatever is subsequently said about religious/ spiritual experiences is interpretive and usually culturally biased.

:up: This is the way I also see it.