I do agree with you and Bertrand Russell and think our original faiths are still there lurking in the background. I have never called myself an atheist, and have even told some people that I am a post Catholic. I can see that so much of my own reactions and things I say are clearly influenced by the way I was taught to think as a child, but that is not to say that I have learned to think very differently. I do go to church with a Catholic friend sometimes, but I do find the experience extremely difficult, especially going through the whole ritualistic approach.

My friend finds church so comforting but does also has an affinity with the ideas in, 'A Course in Miracles'. I find this book extremely helpful because it does work more as a psychological way of seeing many of the ideas, especially the idea of forgiveness, on a psychological level.

I would agree that without religious ideas it is sometimes easy to fall into nihilism. I do have some affinity with the philosophy of Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre, even while I was still more religious. It is probably easier to cultivate depression when seeing life from the angle of those kind of thinkers. Personally, I try to keep a more balanced perspective by reading a lot of other ideas, especially those from Eastern Europe and ideas within psychology which have a focus on transforming, such as the tradition of transpersonal psychology. Generally, I like to read as widely as possible and be able to draw on as many different forms of philosophy and thinking as possible, but this does mean that reading is a main part of my life. Perhaps, the idea of a reading life has replaced religion for me.

The thing to remember is that people from all religions often find religions comforting, from the Parsi to the Muslim. Psychological help via Buddhism has also been massive in Western psychological services for some years. People also find social and sporting clubs really helpful. People are social creatures. Hardly a surprise.

Just joking, but pornographers never used the telegraph, as far as I know, but they did pick up on the potential of photography pretty quickly. It took them something like a century to devise phone porn -- the "1-900 XXX xxxx" call-in numbers introduced in the 1980s — Bitter Crank

I am sure the first telegraph message was something like...

"Can I meet you behind the barn tonight?" :)

I do think that many people would prefer the conventional life you describe of family and employment, but I think that so many don't have this any longer. There are so many who live outside of these conventions. When I think of the people I went to school with who did go on to the more conventional lifestyles, a lot of them do appear to be the ones who did not challenge their religious backgrounds. It is perhaps hard to see whether the lifestyle or the challenging of beliefs comes first. I know that even though I was still religious in my final couple of years at school I was clearly stepping outside my religious background in my reading and it was probably inevitable that I would question deeply, although the need to do so psychologically didn't present it to me at the time.

The idea of a God who doesn't wish to be prayed to and is accepting of atheism is an interesting radical alternative to the picture of Jahweh of the Old Testament.

I went to the funeral of a family friend about 10 years ago. He was a prominent citizen and all around great man and also a devout Catholic all his years.

The priest related how he used to often come up to him after services and quiz him about this or that aspect of the homily he had given that day.

But the point I wanted to make is that I found the imagery and liturgy of the service quite profoundly meaningful, even though I’m not Catholic. I’ve come to understand how the archetypal forms of religions are represented in such services, and I think that Catholicism does that more effectively than the Protestants, as they’ve preserved more of the ancient imagery and symbolism.

I’ve read some of the Catholic, specifically ‘neo-Thomist’, philosophers, and I feel they too retain some elements of the ‘perennial wisdom tradition’ which incorporates the Greek philosophical tradition. It’s an uneasy alliance, there’s a strain in Christianity which is hostile to the Greek philosophers - ‘what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’

As a consequence, I’ve become quite sympathetic to Catholic philosophy, although I don’t feel I could ever convert to the Catholic religion, especially after the dreadful scandals that have plagued the Church of late. But I do sometimes envy them their faith - it would be a source of great comfort to those capable of accepting it, I sometimes feel.

There are so few people who really delve deeply.

About fifteen years ago, I took two years off and devoted myself to full-time meditation practice. I became a resident at a Zen center in Northern California (there were eight of us). Of the all the people who do this sort of thing (very, very few), a minuscule amount of the them are actually willing to do what it takes to go for it.

In my experience, most people just want to live a nice, simple, balanced life (and who can blame them).

Of the all the people who do this sort of thing (very, very few), a minuscule amount of the them are actually willing to do what it takes to go for it. — synthesis

In my experience also, very few people have the available resources to do this.

@Jack Cummins. What you described in your response to my last post (sorry: I don’t know how to “copy and paste” a quote, if that’s the term. I’m very new to the internet) is “reading the Bible as literature”, that is, as just another (great) book, to be dissected and analyzed and interpreted into something that becomes less harmful, less dominant in our thought.

But that is not the way it’s authors and the traditional readers looked at it. They saw it as “The Book”, literally, “The Bible”, THE roadmap to their lives; and though some few more enlightened souls realized that it was fantastical to believe God made the world in seven days, or that man was seduced by eating a forbidden apple, or that the sun can stand still, etc, they still believed in the god who could summon such divine metaphors from mere mortal authors made of clay.

As for the vast majority of Israel, they DID believe in the literalness of what they read...or, more likely, what they heard, since letters are the achievement of the minority intelligent enough to learn them (as can be seen clearly in this forum), and, that vast majority will always adhere to “the letter and the word” of their native religion.

Mixing various religious principles or ideas drawn from disparate faiths in order to brew an amalgamation that reconciles science and religion is a Chimera; for the two are like the Hatfields and McCoys: intrinsically at odds with each other.

But I can understand why you want to reconcile them, Jack, for that is your temperament; and you are willing to bend your thought away from what seems intellectually more reasonable if only you could somehow bring together in peace all the warring factions in this world...

...I think you would have made a fine politician; not the worse kind, but the better.

In my experience also, very few people have the available resources to do this. — Tom Storm

I don't know what your experience is, but it's generally not a matter of resources, instead, a matter of priority.

I don't know what your experience is, but it's generally not a matter of resources, instead, a matter of priority.

If you're saying that people can be full time mums or dads and work and do everything they need to do and be totally committed to this then you have a much friendlier idea of commitment. Which I welcome. I have not seen this in any of meditation communities I have known over the years; Hindu or Buddhist in derivation.

If you're saying that people can be full time mums or dads and work and do everything they need to do and be totally committed to this then you have a much friendlier idea of commitment. Which I welcome. I have not seen this in any of meditation communities I have known over the years; Hindu or Buddhist in derivation. — Tom Storm

When you are a mom or dad, that is your primary job. Before or after that responsibility, you might have the opportunity to pursue full-time practice. Even that being the case, "going for it," is not very much about where you practice (although it can be). It is about your commitment to the practice (as I am sure you must be well aware). Those truly committed to practice are very, very rare indeed.

Interesting. I kept up a regular daily sitting practice for decades but haven’t been able to maintain it the last few years. I attended a Pureland Buddhist sangha last year before it was suspended by COVID, their teaching is not to practice meditation at all, they say it’s the ‘way of sages’ and only suitable for a very small number of practitioners.

But I’m intending to return to a sitting practice (even though as they say ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions), along Sōtō lines, there’s an interstate Sōtō sangha that I’m considering affiliating with.

sorry: I don’t know how to “copy and paste” a quote, if that’s the term. I’m very new to the internet) — Todd Martin

Select the required text by click-and-drag, then a black Quote button will appear, click it and the selected text will appear in your Reply box.

Indeed, you're correct in pointing out the rather narrow Abrahmic triad version of God I seem to have written about.

It appears that some folks have a different idea in mind by god, god as a principle that ties everything together into a unified whole, god as a the universe itself, god as even a deus deceptor, god as a mischievious Cosmic Joker, god as something not to be discussed, but all of this variety in the way god is viewed have something in common viz. inconsistencies between a priori definition (omni-powered god) an a posteriori observation (evil) and our struggle to harmonize the two into a picture of god that makes sense.

Unfortunately, as the Epicurean dilemma proves, the OOO (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) god is untenable and the fact that we have refused to let go of the OOO god despite all the hard evidence that seems to tell a different story and making only minor adjustments to the god concept points to, even as we've learned, as the adage "trust in god but keep your powder dry", over countless generations that "god only helps those who help themselves", a very deeply-rooted desire for a loving, powerful, knowledgeable protector of sorts which some might construe as veering on or as a full-blown case of pathological obsession cum delusion.

I'm ranting.

About fifteen years ago, I took two years off and devoted myself to full-time meditation practice. I became a resident at a Zen center in Northern California (there were eight of us). Of the all the people who do this sort of thing (very, very few), a minuscule amount of the them are actually willing to do what it takes to go for it.

In my experience, most people just want to live a nice, simple, balanced life (and who can blame them) — synthesis

:razz: That’s a funny way of putting it. It suggests that those willing to “go for it” are out of balance (forsaking a nice simple balanced life), and makes me think that the those going for it are merely attempting to get where others are naturally.

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. — Zeny proverb

:lol:

I've been a dedicated Soto Zen student for the past 30+ years and came to it from a very intense philosophical crisis. What attracted me to Soto Zen (in particular) was its tie to the Tang dynasty's Chan masters (through Soto's founder, Dogen Zengi, who brought Zen from China to Japan in the 13th century), of which many seem to enjoy. I would highly recommend his writings if you pursue a sitting practice. Anyway, these Chinese masters had a "shit or get off the pot" style of teaching which appeals to many serious students.

Why sitting? It's what The Buddha taught so who's to argue? One of his rationales was that sitting produces pain and pain is our greatest teacher (learning the nature of pain).

I have found the practice life-altering, but if you do pursue it seriously, you will be on your own.

That’s a funny way of putting it. It suggests that those willing to “go for it” are out of balance (forsaking a nice simple balanced life), and makes me think that the those going for it are merely attempting to get where others are naturally. — praxis

Seeking a nice simple, balanced life intellectually is a whole different situation than realizing it non-intellectually. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the former, but the later holds something very different for those willing to do the work necessary to make it back to the beginning.

... but the later holds something very different for those willing to do the work necessary to make it back to the beginning. — synthesis

Supposedly, chopping wood and carrying water is entirely exempt of suffering. Is that your experience???

Context counts for a lot.

Context counts for a lot. — Wayfarer

I completely forgot about atheistic religions the only one of which I'm somewhat familiar with being Buddhism. The Buddha's refusal to discuss god is legendary, at least in my eyes. I suppose the Buddha didn't wish to throw away a good idea (Buddhism) by including in it subject matter (here god) that would prove to be difficult to talk about and keep one's credibility intact. Perhaps he realized that the doctrine of Karma was, in and of itself, speculative enough to preclude more speculation which would've been the case if he had made room in his philosophy for a deity not to mention what the Epicurean dilemma would've done to his idea of how to live the good life (Buddhism).

I like to say that Buddhism is not atheist - in the Western sense, anyway. It is obviously not based around ‘the God idea’, but in many later forms of Buddhism, the Buddha assumes the role accorded to God in Christianity. So, non-theistic, rather than atheist. And besides, even in early Buddhism the universe is occupied by devas and other supernatural beings (not all of whom are benign. See Buddhism and the God Idea, Nyanoponika Thera, and also Principled Atheism in the Buddhist Scholastic Tradition Richard Hayes. )

Besides that, I was commenting on @praxis question about the saying ‘chop wood, draw water’. As a bald statement, it means nothing much. Many of those kinds of aphorisms were taken by the popular Zen literature of the 60’s and 70’s and entered popular discourse. But outside the cultural context in which they were meaningful, they can easily be nonsensical.

In the context of Zen pedagogy, it has a specific meaning about the appropriate attitude to take towards Zen practice, i.e. not ‘idolising’ the idea of enlightenment but treating everyday activities as an expression of bodhi-mind. So the ‘context’ is not only the cultural context which makes such phrases meaningful, but also the context of the monastic life.

I don't want to split hairs but devas as gods seem to be a misnomer of sorts for they are nothing like the god we encounter in the Abrahamic triad. I think those who translated the Hindu/Buddhist scriptures were just too lazy to think of a better term for devas. They're definitely not gods who would be moral exemplars, a necessity if Buddha wanted a divine aspect to his teachings.

Well, that’s a valid point. A Christian might say that the Buddha never denied ‘the God of Abraham’ because the two traditions were culturally remote. A Christian also should say, I think, that ‘God’ is not a God at all - not like Shiva or Vishnu or Baal or Zeus, or any of the other pantheist deities, but is of an entirely different order altogether. Although that is a distinction that atheists are probably not inclined to recognise.

(Also notice that the Indian ‘deva’ and the English ‘divine’ both spring from the same Indo-European root.)

If you ever encountered the writings of Thomas Merton or his successors, or the Jesuits like Raymondo Pannikar, (e.g. here)they have very interesting reflections on the relation of God and Buddhism, but it’s a pretty long way off the beaten track.

Why should theism be limited to the description of deity in the Western world? The pantheistic description specifies a deity that is omnipotent, omnipresent. Maybe omniscient, since if we talk about actual pantheism, as opposed to theistically guised naturalism, there should be some proof that the cosmic organization appears sentient with I.Q. of more than 2, according to some generalization of our measure of intelligence to abstract behavior. This is where it becomes only a hypothesis to me.

In any case, I am reasonably passionate about dysthestic, henotheistic ideas, and would gladly subscribe to one if it was well factually argumented (without mythos). I do not support the idea that if there is some true belief in divinity, the believer has to reverent, the divine plan has to be anthropocentric and the divine being has to be in some sense (such as moral duty) antropomorphic. The omnibenevolence is as you said problematic. Why do you consider it necessary for general theology?

Well, that’s a valid point. A Christian might say that the Buddha never denied ‘the God of Abraham’ because the two traditions were culturally remote. A Christian also should say, I think, that ‘God’ is not a God at all - not like Shiva or Vishnu or Baal or Zeus, or any of the other pantheist deities, but is of an entirely different order altogether. Although that is a distinction that atheists are probably not inclined to recognise.

(Also notice that the Indian ‘deva’ and the English ‘divine’ both spring from the same Indo-European root.)

If you ever encountered the writings of Thomas Merton or his successors, or the Jesuits like Raymondo Pannikar, (e.g. here)they have very interesting reflections on the relation of God and Buddhism, but it’s a pretty long way off the beaten track. — Wayfarer

Thank you, as always. The etymology part about the word "deva" is telling indeed. I wonder how the concept of god evolved over time. My guess is that it started off realistic - gods with personal agenda bickering among themselves and humans getting caught in between - then it became unrealistic - the omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent god - and then it became realistic again but sporting a different look - atheism. What's your take on the history of the god concept?

Just throwing this out there: even if God exists, maybe he doesn't want us to believe or pray to him. Maybe God created us wanting us to be atheists. — Gregory

This resembles Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis:

He who loves God cannot [expect] that God should love him in return. — Ethics, 5p19

(emphasis, etc are mine)

What's your take on the history of the god concept? — TheMadFool

Something you could never condense down to a couple of forum paragraphs, that’s for sure.

But a couple of things to contemplate: the ancients did not have anything like the conception that we do of ourselves as atomic individual subjects in an impersonal material world. Their ‘meaning world’ was different in ways we can’t even begin to fathom. I think an aspect of that, was that they had an ‘I-thou’ relationship with nature. They didn’t see the world in terms of things and forces, but in terms of living spirits - the Gods - although our modern conception of ‘spirit’ might trivialise their intuitive felt sense of the reality, the awe-some nature, of the Gods. The basic sense was that nature was ‘you’, not ‘it’ - not through any intellectual contrivance, but because their sense of self was much more diffuse than our own; the sense of self-hood was much more attenuated in early man. Whereas for us, it is the perspective we see everything through.

The second thing is, monotheism was in a sense an effort to accomodate the ancient pantheisms by representing ‘’the One’ as ‘a God’. God was depicted as being like Jupiter - only bigger! Better! Stronger! Even more powerful! And recall the name ‘Jupiter’ is derived from ‘dyaus’ father ‘pitar’ father - so, Sky Father. Christianity was a strange amalgam of those pagan Gods with the Biblical God. That’s why there are Christmas trees and Easter eggs, and many other elements incorporated from the so-called ‘pagan myths’.

But there’s volumes and volumes that could be read about all of this, in mythology, comparative religion, anthropology and many other disciplines - it’s a big topic.