who is the we that knows?

Just because one follows a traditional line of religious thought doesn't mean they haven't exposed it to careful cogitation. After all, I probably know just as many individuals who have found faiths than left them, and I refuse to believe those changes are not a result of thought.

atheism is the summom bonum of a spiritual quest based on truth and reality

… which makes sense in the context of mysticsim and even of hinduism, brahman or god is impersonal and qualityless and s inseparable from the self.

Today is my first day in Peru. I arrived here to journey for a month, including ten days in the Amazon to do ayahuasca, which is a amazonian entheogenic vision medicine. I have been on a spiritual journey for years to find healing, clearing, myself, god.dess, etc….

The best I can say in response to your essay is that I think you´re on the right track. Stay true to your center, your body, your heart. What comes from direct experience is more important than any amount of indoctrination or dogma. Much love and gratitude to shiva shakti, pachamama, and the source of creation.

blessings on your journey.

sitka

Today is my first day in Peru. I arrived here to journey for a month, including ten days in the Amazon to do ayahuasca, which is a amazonian entheogenic vision medicine. I have been on a spiritual journey for years to find healing, clearing, myself, god.dess, etc….

The best I can say in response to your essay is that I think you´re on the right track. Stay true to your center, your body, your heart. What comes from direct experience is more important than any amount of indoctrination or dogma. Much love and gratitude to shiva shakti, pachamama, and the source of creation.

blessings on your journey.

sitka

I can’t pin down my understanding of God exactly — for most people who accept that the word ‘God’ is not meaningless that shouldn’t be surprising. But I have major problems with Brent Rasmussen’s over-the-top reductionism. We can discuss ethics rationally and dispassionately, but we cannot reduce it purely to physical phenomena observable by machines; we cannot discuss literature at the particle-physical level; there is no fundamental particle of philosophy. But that does not mean that these things are meaningless concepts. They are simply emergent properties of the system that can only meaningfully be discussed at the whole organism or the societal level.

My sense of the sacred, of wonder, of what is holy is likewise an emergent property of the system. My starting point for exploring what ‘God’ means is ‘the sum of everything I consider to be holy’ rather than ’some supposedly really-existing super-person who is somehow supposed to embody everything that I am supposed to consider holy’. Brent, and Richard Dawkins, may seek to explain away my sense of the numinous as physiological in origin; but that in no sense negates or invalidates the experience. A neurochemical analysis of how a work of great artistry might move me to tears does not explain away that response; it simply describes it more fully and at a lower, less humanly-meaningful level. The experience, and my ability to discuss it with other people, and possibly a desire to act in some way motivated by it, remain untouched by such explanation.

I can’t pin down my understanding of God exactly — for most people who accept that the word ‘God’ is not meaningless that shouldn’t be surprising. But I have major problems with Brent Rasmussen’s over-the-top reductionism. We can discuss ethics rationally and dispassionately, but we cannot reduce it purely to physical phenomena observable by machines; we cannot discuss literature at the particle-physical level; there is no fundamental particle of philosophy. But that does not mean that these things are meaningless concepts. They are simply emergent properties of the system that can only meaningfully be discussed at the whole organism or the societal level.

My sense of the sacred, of wonder, of what is holy is likewise an emergent property of the system. My starting point for exploring what ‘God’ means is ‘the sum of everything I consider to be holy’ rather than ’some supposedly really-existing super-person who is somehow supposed to embody everything that I am supposed to consider holy’. Brent, and Richard Dawkins, may seek to explain away my sense of the numinous as physiological in origin; but that in no sense negates or invalidates the experience. A neurochemical analysis of how a work of great artistry might move me to tears does not explain away that response; it simply describes it more fully and at a lower, less humanly-meaningful level. The experience, and my ability to discuss it with other people, and possibly a desire to act in some way motivated by it, remain untouched by such explanation.