A flaw in religion? (with diagrams)

Great Debates
1

The way I see it, the problem with all religions is that they are too narrow. They try to constrain God by viewing Him through the filter of one man (or one group of men).

This cannot work. The full range of God cannot be understood by looking at it through the biased prism of one person. It doesn’t matter who that person is, whether Jesus, Mohammed or anyone else.

Here’s some diagrams to explain what I mean:

First, this is the state of affairs with religion



_______________  <-------------   God
\             /
 \           /
  \         /
   \       /
    \     /
     \   /
       O         <-------------   One man (the filter)
      /  \
     /    \
    /      \
   /        \
  /          \
 /            \
----------------   <-------------  Humanity

So it’s kinda like an hourglass. All the wonder and majesty of God comes to us filtered through the distorted medium of just one person.

And yet we choose to do this to ourselves (since it is we who invented religion). It’s a kind of self-imposed punishment.

The reality (without religion) looks more like this:



___________   <------------  God
| | | | |  
| | | | |  
| | | | | 
| | | | | 
| | | | | 
| | | | | 
| | | | | 
| | | | | 
| | | | | 
| | | | |
-----------  <------------  Humanity

Note the absence of a filter.

Not only do we not need a filter, it’s essential that we don’t have one because a filter hinders a proper appreciation of God.

I have my doubts that anything at all can be known about God (if He even exists) but one thing I’m sure of is that if anything at all can be known about God, then it can only be known by considering the whole mass of humanity and NOT by basing all your feelings about God on one guy’s take on the issue.

Jesus, Moses, Mohammed are just prisms. Good and worthy people though they may have been, their perspective is no more valid than mine or yours.

We should not allow one prism to be more important than any other prism. Any knowledge of God can only come about via the prism of creation as a whole.

Considering things through just the prism of Jesus or Mohammed limits our understanding of the concept of God because we are filtering the whole God idea through a narrow window before it comes to us.

Why filter God? Why not just opt for the full-on experience instead?

Well, that’s what I think anyway.

2

Why should that be the case? (I have a number of other problems with your argument, but this one jumped out at me first)

3

Are you familiar with any Eastern religions?

4

Also, bear in mind that one of the more central Christian beliefs is that Jesus is God. Filtering the experience of God through God doesn’t seem like a huge problem to me.

(I do agree with your conclusions, btw, but I think your argument needs some work.)

5

Rhum Runner:

It’s the case because by considering the whole mass of humanity you get a bigger evidence-base. More evidence means a higher likelihood that you are right.

By just considering (say) Jesus’s take on things, you are limiting your evidence-base to the testimony of just one man.

Logically, in the interests of accuracy, you should use as big an evidence-base as is possible. In this particular case, the biggest evidence-base we have available is the whole of creation.

Therefore that is what we should use.

ultrafilter:

Yes, but even they are too limiting because either they still have a small number of founding fathers eg Sikhism has Ten Teachers or they use fixed ideas of what God is (like Buddhism).

Having a fixed idea of what God is is the same as having a one-man filter. All your ideas and perceptions have to come through the filter of the Fixed Idea.

6

Hmmmmm Interesting hypothesis…

Why dont you take this up with God and let the rest of us know how it turns out.

7

I tend to think all religions are combined together to form the God <-> Humanity link somewhat like this. No Human can completely know God, so we need helpers or (filters) who are visionaries that can help us to understand enough for us to be complete spiritually.



      *  <-------------   God
     / \
    /   o
   o   / \
  / \  o  \
 |   |\|\  \  
 o   | o \  \       (the filters)
/ \  | |\ \  o
|  | | | o \ |\
----------------   <-------------  Humanity

The God exists, but the religions never encompass the whole God, but give information/belief in the parts of God important to the parts of Humanity that need that info/belief.

Cheers, Bippy

P.S. thanks for showing me by your posting, how to get ascii diagrams to work on this board.

8

Jojo has clarified matters. Jojo has, in fact, caused that which was murky to be clear and has shed light as the sun beams down upon the meadow, and amidst his comprehensions which he hath passed on to us, he bids us pursue religion in a new and remarkable way.

It is essential that we have no prisms! Brothers, it has come to my attention that the physics lab at Oneonta State is teaching optics this semester and they are using…yes, prisms! Rise with me! They know not what they do, for each of us is a distorted medium and we try to constrain God, but we must go to them and tell them the Good News about our brother Jojo who posted the thread and drew the Holy Diagram for the first time…

:: sketches out the symbol of the Holy Diagram with index fingers and followers do likewise ::

Come! We must lead them away from their prisms and show them to the Full On Experience

::crowd cheers for the Full On Experience::

…possible to us by accepting Jojo into our hearts and gall bladders as our sole prism of Creation as a Whole.

::everyone does an Amen ::
(your assignment, should you choose to accept it: figure out how to found a religion based on the idea that each person should seek and find God through the lens of their own experience; and popularize this perspective without the popularization process shifting attention from that message to the trivial trappings of belonging and, later, the hero-worshipping of the messenger.)

9

Hinduism has no single founder. The religion is too complex for me to go into all variations here, but the idea more or less is that all knowledge was released into the universe at its construction and exists everywhere. There are people who pop up from time to time who seem to have some special ability to discern this knowledge. These people can be referred to as seers, saints, yogis, gurus, sadhus, pandits, whichever word is applicable. It is your choice whether or not to follow the teachings of a particular person. There are a few saints who teachings or interpretations are well known by the majority of Hindus, but there is nothing intrinsic to the religion that says you have to follow it. Many Hindus don’t even agree on what constitutes the literal “Word of God” and what are merely interpretations (although I think a significant portion would adhere to the supremacy of the Vedas).

10
  1. As ultrafilter pointed out, to the Christian Jesus is not a man, but the embodiment of God Himself.
  2. Talking about logic and accuracy in the context of religion doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and more evidence, in the case of religion, does not mean you are closer to being “right.”
  3. Your argument presupposes that God did not create the world specifically so that, and I use your term, prisms would be a part of the way that people would come to know Him. Of course there is no reason to believe that is the case either, which is why religion is a matter of faith. There are no irrefutable first principles to which you can reduce the question.

I think your idea is interesting, but I think ultimately this approach is not going to get you very far.

11

These are two particular quotes I have taken from the OP. It’s a long OP, with diagrams, so I have spared a repeating here.

In the first area, let’s say that there isn’t a God at all. That reduces the discussion of a filtration person to a simple mental exercise.

So, let’s assume that there is a God. The nature of this God being undefined promptly inhibits any analysis. Since the OP refers primarily to Jesus, Mohammed, and Abraham(I know you said Moses, the Hebrews will forgive you.) Let’s look at the commonly held position of God in these faiths.

This is a singular God, existing alone, who created the whole of the universe. This God is omnicient, omnipresent and all powerful. Given that this God created everything these characteristics can be assumed.

This God is viewed, in each case, by what the OP presupposes to be a filter person. In the case of Abraham and Mohammed there is no opinion of witnessing the glory of God or reaching an understanding of Him, but a claim that this God has contacted them, (i.e. ‘spake unto’) and informed them that they are chosen to represent and inform the world of the intentions and laws of said God. Dubious claim, sure. Filter? No. In each case the person was a selected representative of the Almighty God, Creator Of All Things. As this God is omnicient and omnipresent it can be supposed even further that this was the best choice, and should therefore be accepted by those wishing to join with God.

In the case of Jesus, a claim is made that Jesus was the God of Abraham born to the world of men, as a man, or an aspect of said God. For the sake of simplicity we will refer to him as a son, although this hardly covers a definition of Him(He gets a capital now.) In this case, the Almighty God, Creator Of All Things, has not selected a representative, but changed his state of existance for a period, thus allowing Him to deliver his own message as he wishes. Once again, however, we can assume this was the best choice.

If, however, you believe that God is what He is, and that Jesus, Mohammed, and Abraham were lying, which is certainly possible, all of that goes out the window.

  1. God must have contacted Abraham and informed him as Abraham claims for Abraham’s line to be valid.

  2. Point 1 must hold true, and in addition, Jesus must have been born to Mary as the son of God in order for his deity, and thereby his message, to be established.

  3. Mohammed must have been contacted by the Archangel Gabriel and given the tenets of faith in order for his message to be valid.

A similar argument can be made for most filter persons. So, taking the step from the belief in a persons message as the chosen person to deliver that message by the Almighty, we see that there is no filter, and no possibility of a filter exists, save one (If you wish to refer to it as a filter), and that being the one chosen by God.

If you choose to believe that no such person has been selected, then you have no filter. If you choose to believe that any of these persons have been selected, as none to my knowledge have indicated a concious decision to contact and receive the message of God, then you must also presuppose that this message is therefore true and that the God who has chosen has chosen rightly. Each person can be right, but not all, save in the last possible context(Which I deem to be unlikely, ask me sometime. . ), which is that God is lying.

Now, if we ignore the supposition that this God is the Creator of the Universe, and instead suppose that he is an existing part of said universe, or perhaps one of many, that opens up a new area of discussion.

12

The OP is brilliant – but effectively meaningless. Of what value is a concept, even that of a supreme God, of which nothing can be known, except perhaps that held in common by all men (and that includes the views of Fred Phelps, Lao Tse, your atheist philosopher of choice, Benedict Spinoza, John Shelby Spong, Jerry Falwell, and Sir John A. MacDonald)?

A reasonable parallel to it is found in the Baha’i faith, where all the great religious leaders of history are seen as “mirrors” reflecting an image of God, with the Bab and Baha’ullah as the last in that series. But each image distorts God to some degree.

But what Copaesthetic points out is that for a Christian, we claim to have a situation quite different from anything else with the possible exception of Hinduism – God Himself (technically, one Person of a God with Three Persons) took human form and walked among us as teacher and Master. I.e., we’re not dependent on what Mohammed, Baha’ullah, Moses, or anybody else perceived of God and reported – we have (presuming for this discussion the accuracy of the Gospels) the actual words of God Himself spoken not as hearsay reports but in direct reportage of the actual utterances.

However, consider both discussions in light of the concept that even those who recorded Jesus’s words (and the very words that He used) are constrained by the Hebrew and Aramaic language’s concepts and those cultures’ concepts of who and what God is – The accounts cannot speak of metempsychosis or the role of a boddhisattva; the concepts just aren’t there to work with.

God is greater than any description we can make of Him – including this one.

13

By “they,” I assume you mean believers. Not all believers in the Sacred – not even all believers in Christianity – believe that all Truth has to be filtered through one being.

Some Christians believe that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human.

14

I’m not aware of any major group that denies this. In any case, if Jesus is fully divine, then Christianity isn’t just one man’s take on God.

15

Polycarp, good post, but my point went one step further. Under the constraint of the filtration theory, each religion cannot really be seen as a given individual’s take on God. Certainly as the argument applies to Christianity we do not have the choice of meandering outward into all faiths to derive a perception of God that is clearer, let alone into each person’s POV, or a consensus of all mankind. It’s like Clue, if God spake unto Abraham in the lounge with the Torah, the the Archangel Gabriel couldn’t possibly have spake unto Mohammed in the kitchen with the Koran. If enlightenment truly frees us from the cycle of death and rebirth and allows us to enter the state of Nirvana, then how can we follow along an everlasting path of the middle way into immortality?

Somebody’s wrong. So each person is not a prism, or a mirror for the divine, at least in the sense that the OP puts forth. Some religions must be false and thereby provide a false reflection. Certainly in the case of Christ if his divinity is stripped his message, aside from being heartfelt, must take on an adverse tone. Christ would then not be divine, but be a reflection of his own selfish will and insanity, and not a good pathfinder for those who seek God. Of course, as I have said before, one is certainly free to remove any and all of any religious theories while forming your own belief.
The weight of your beliefs will have whatever meaning they will have in the end. As I believe that God created man in his own image, however, I find that often the face of man can lead to the divine.

16

Gnostic Christians dispose of the prism and embrace the direct, personal experience of union with the creator as the ultimate Truth. Prisms are wonderful tools for manipulating and controling the masses who would prefer to be spoon-fed God second-hand or simply disown their own divinity. You’re on the right path Jojo. Follow the voice of your heart. I recommend Zen meditation to confirm your theory.

17

The “religion” already exists, it is called spiritualism.
Each finds their own path through their own experience. God is Love is what they commonly find.

18

What would you say Buddism’s fixed idea of God is? As written, that statement’s more than a little baffling to me–in the formulations of Buddhism I have some familiarity with, there is no such critter (such critter == a fixed idea).

19

Even if God came to your house and told you all about himself, the information would still be “filtered” by one thing; you.

_______________ <------------- God
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
. <------------- your ability to understand God
|
|
|
8====D <------------- you

20

stupid thing. That’s supposed to be a V shape from God to your ability to understand God.