BUMBLE BEE OWL
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Richard Dawkins: the Inner God Illusion
Posted by robertpriddy on March 17, 2012
Professor Richard Dawkins has given a quite thorough account of the weaknesses and redundancy of the conception and belief in God mainly considered as an external (creative) cause or force acting upon the universe and mankind. However, he has not confronted what I deem considerably more numinous and mind-twisting conceptions of God as the omnipresent inner motivator of the universe and mankind. Though this ‘inner’ or personal Christ is found in Christianity too, not least in its mysticism, these ideas of ‘inner divinity’ are already gaining prominence, both in so-called New Age religions and bizarre forms of supposed ‘spirituality’, but not least in India, from where it seems to have originated long ago.
This brand of pan-theism is complex and can employ the subtlest causistry, so that even highly educated people with good language analytical skills are very easily taken in by its convolutions. Various interpreters of Adi Shankara’s non-dual philosophy (Advaita ) – including New Age variants are ingenious (one good example is Sri Nisagardatta’s book ‘I Am That’). Meanwhile, a noted European exponent of a non-dual God conception was the metaphysician Baruch Spinoza. Witness also the Sathya Sai Baba movement – consisting in some millions of believers with organisations in over 170 countries of the world, a striking example of the popularity of this ‘God is within, I Am God, You are God, Everything is God’ conception as embraced by a whole series of India’s Prime Ministers, Presidents, High Chief Justices etc. The substitution of the ‘new spirituality’ for traditional forms of theism has well begun. Imported Eastern thought and its re-invigoration since the 1960s plus the consequences of psychedelic experimentation are particularly involved. It has also diverse vulgarized forms, (eg. belief in ‘Jedi power’ rather than any traditional deity).
The sophistication and explanatory complexity of such pantheistic theories of omnipresent divinity is wide-ranging, it addresses many deep issues about our supposed ‘true nature’, ‘solves’ philosophical teasers about mind and matter, and explains paranormal phenomena and/or reported extra-sensory powers of all kinds. Some variants show very considerable rational resources – though they remain chiefly mental and not demonstrable experimentally. All in all, they are seen to be speculative to a high degree, resting on assumptions that are not borne out to any degree by empirical evidence or science. Once one is able to penetrate the labyrinthine theological explanations to get a critical overview of the whole conception they are seen to be self-defeating – the ultimate in long-distance circular reasoning. Its winding theoretical dead-ends can, however, have serious consequences for a persons’ life, especially since the common religious requirement of total faith in the particular doctrine and its promises of release from all cares and suffering (if not now, then in the hereafter).
To exercise ‘spiritual practices’ is the be-all-and-end-all of this resurgent religiosity. Such practices include the simplest forms like constant repetition of the Name of God, of prayers, of mantras and other verbal or oral sounds – devotional singing included. One very popular version of a path to spiritual realization is the stringent Pollyanna-mysticism of ‘A Course in Miracles’). At a more evolved level we find the concentration on action as an expression of one’s inherent divine nature – offering up all one does to God and ensuring that one acts according to supposed ‘divine commandments’ of one tradition or another. The most sublimated form of these ‘spiritual practices’ are those of service to mankind (regarded as service to God) – that is, doing good work selflessly. The inherent purpose of all these forms of ‘spiritual practice’ (Hindu sadhana) is claimed to be the attainment of identity with the Divine – or, worded differently, realisation of one’s own inherent and true nature as God. (There are many difficulties with this concept, of course – such as whether it should be a part of God or God per se!). This mysticism and its impracticability is extremely difficult to penetrate, not least because the claim is that one must commit totally to it for a very long time to achieve its fruits- There is, of course, no way one can prove that such fruits – release from all suffering, never-ending bliss, consciousness etc are possible or can be achieved at all.
It seems that the expected demise of the ‘Church empires’ – partly because of their hollowness in the face of science, dryness in respect of personal daily experience – they may be replaced in much of the world by a much more personal (hence plastic and/or chameleon) idea of God which not only allows independence of worship but a wide range of personalised experiences of the supposed ‘universal omnipresent God’ through ritual, mediumism, channelling and other form of alleged religiosity. We are witnessing the start of what looks like a similar reaction as that which occurred when Roman civilisation and learning crumbled before the huge wave of fanatical Christian ascetics, anchorites and their supporters, as described so poignantly by Gibbon.
History shows that the predominant idea of God In societies and cultures within the range of history known to us has been of one or more animistic, theistic or deistic entities… a spirit, demigod or incarnation. These arose no doubt from a need to explain what (or who) rules over the environment and humankind – to supplicate and placate the imagined powers ‘outside’ the observable world or physical universe.
One hopes for the demise of such unsustainable ideas and beliefs – particularly in the doctrines and dogmas of traditional organized religions – in the face of the ever-growing and all-pervading importance of science as both an explanatory and a practical instrument of mankind – however long that may take (and if our species survives etc.). The unprecedented opening of the world to communication interaction, however, is bringing the silent global majority of religious believers more and more into conflict with the advance of human knowledge and culture that was once thought to be inevitable. Perhaps the clashes of mainstream religious dogmas which must surely leads to doubts and disillusion within them will eventually clear the way for secular, humanistic and non-faith-based societies… it is obviously too early to say. The intermediate phase would seem to be the rise and spread of the pantheism of the ‘inner reality’ brand. The search for “self-realization” in this mystical sense is the alluring attempt to find “the true self” as the creative motivator of both ‘the mind’ (i.e. minds) and its products, in short Divinity. This does not exclude the theistic bias – namely, that God can simultaneously be believed to be ‘behind’ all that happens – what we experience as reality – acting directly or indirectly as its ultimate cause (i.e. through ‘internal creationism’, where spirit creates the illusion of matter – itself taken as but an illusive mental-spiritual product). This pantheism is even sometimes extended to evolutionism — as an evolution of reincarnating and evolving ‘souls’ passing through a series of separate (biologically evolving) bodily incarnations.
Further, according to mentalist theories, the universe is conceived as the self-creation of mind, not of matter. This implies a philosophy of ‘mentalism’ as opposed to ‘physicalism’, which is the basis of many Eastern religious streams and – though in considerably weaker versions – in Western philosophy and ‘mystical’ thought. This ‘inner spirituality’ can fulfil the same psychological, social and emotional needs that long caused society’s dependence on an external God. With mentalism, one can have one’s cake and eat it – for ‘God is everything and everyone, within and without’. While logically and otherwise wholly untenable, demonstrating this becomes very tricky in the detail.
Nonetheless, the difficulties of this pantheistic position are considerable. It makes God equivalent to all being – so one cannot distinguish anything or anyone from God, not can one distinguish God any more than one can distinguish energy per se. In fact, one could substitute the word ‘energy’ with ‘God’ and vice-versa… as some do. The obvious difference that springs to mind, however, is that the concept of ‘energy’ is so very thoroughly and precisely defined and demonstrated – not least through the Einsteinian and quantum theories… whereas the idea ‘God’ is totally non-pragmatic and non-utilitarian, without any distinguishable reference and ultimately nothing but an all-encompassing term of terminal vagueness.
Perhaps we thereby arrive at something meriting Bertrand Russell’s amusing description “a night where all cows are black”, or the amusing but undeniable tautology ‘Everything is Everything’. (Note: Advaita – a variant of philosophical ‘mentalism’ – holds that matter is a mind-created ‘illusion’ (Maya) which is actually emptiness, hence: “Everything is Nothing and Nothing is Everything” – Sathya Sai Baba)
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-- Robin Sharma
—David Guy, “Trying to Speak: A Personal History of Stage Fright”
Is faith or religious belief the result of an instinctive inheritance?
Posted by robertpriddy on April 19, 2018
It has been asserted that there is a ‘religious instinct’, some sense inherited at birth which arises from experiences of ancestors that are passed on in some manner. It is further imagined that this instinct develops into belief in some intelligent motivation which steers nature, the world or human existence. This assertion is clearly made in defence of a religious perspective, whether faith that there is a god (or many gods) who or which is benevolently intentioned.
For something to be an instinct it must be present (at least in a potential form) from birth onwards, it is inherited. There is no known or demonstrable instinctive basis for religious belief, that is entirely guesswork. The baby has an instinct to seek the nipple, but not to cry fro a mother (or father), for that develops later when it learns that the pleasing and stimulating touch and warmth come from a person. There is an instinct to seek pleasure, avoid pain….. religion cannot be inherited in any form whatever, however, but only an impulse to seek those things necessary to the infant’s survival and pleasure. Children grow up into an environment (unless they are deprived) where everything is controlled by their mother, and soon also father. This is not an instinct but a learned understanding, while beliefs are also learned not inborn in any respect. When they mature they realise that their parents are not gods, that their parents’ knowledge is really very limited. Besides, the forces of nature may prove to be anything but beneficially predictable. When the security of protection of mother and father assumes little or no further importance, the priest – wanting to create and if need be enforce social order – and probably gain personal security through power over his group, the spirits of nature, of the ancestors and so on until someone proposes an all-knowing protective (and also punishing) ‘holy spirit’. The assertion that an instinct for religious belief has led us to evolve and prosper flies in the face of humanities’ greatest achievements, understanding evolution and nature, which has had to fight against religious obscurantism tooth and nail. That we divide and conquer is also a result of evolutionary struggle, but religions divide people more than any political ideology… so conflicts arise, sometimes exclusively for religious beliefs (as we are witnessing these days increasingly again).
VILLAGE WISDOM SURVVL DANGER AVOID MEME
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BK Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples don't count on harvesting Golden Delicious.
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