If life is infinite, that might be true. I believe that life, like a god concept, ends at death.
Certainly art appreciation reflects a person’s life experience. There are technical applications and emotional responses to those applications. These emotional responses change as each person’s experience changes. Though I can see how a person could draw parallels regarding art and god belief, I don’t think they’re interchangeable terms.
Well, no. I’ve had to work to learn that my opinions are really only mine and not representative of a larger truth (despite diligent efforts on my part to base my views on larger principles) (sort of a combination of extreme arrogance and an unreasonable, unlivable burden). I still feel validated by a sense that I’m trying to make choices based on something more than just personal expedience – trying to do “good”. At the same time, I know I’m not responsible for ultimate outcomes or anything, I’m just one little person. That’s what I mean about the ego-check.
Yeah, I hear you - I love my New Agey friends, but they’re so romantic at times - that movement is not as simple and spare as they like to portray. There’s that “Indigo Children” b.s., too, which I cannot abide.
I dunno, maybe organized religion is people coming together to create huge, beautiful edifaces, either in bricks or words. And then of course, once you build it, you have to take care of that sucker, and that’s where the problems come in.
And meanwhile, God isn’t in the building itself, he’s in the act of building, which is now going on somewhere else (perhaps in direct defiance of the first structure).
Boy, that’s an interesting question to explore. Somebody’s probably already written a thesis on it somewhere. I’m just thinking about the ways that art history reflects our collective view of God. Take a look at the huge contrast between Western art during the height of the Church’s power, and that made in the last 60 years, during a period of decline.
I’m sure you would agree that much of the richer portion of life is lived someplace other than any objective truth. I have no problem with people rejecting the separate sentient being who created us and the universe. I do as well.
I’d like to encourage people to focus on the inner person, and that transformation that is the essence and purpose of the spiritual journey. I know for many religious people don’t seem to realize that. Here on the boards my goal is to express that part of spirituality as real, necessary, and positive. Too often it seems lumped in with mythology and religious tradition, doctrine and dogma. The meme that religion and everything about is is silly or bad is too simple and inaccurate. If we’re going to fight ignorance then let’s be more precise and sort out the bad bits from the positive.
Does that mean you don’t see “Love is the most important thing in life” as a truth.
In looking at the teachings of Jesus, Buddha and others who have attempted to describe the inner journey they do present certain things as truth. Even to the point of “the truth will set you free”
I think there are subjective qualities that are truth. Qualities that are consistently positive for our personal inner growth and in turn the progress of mankind. We’re still struggling to clarify within ourselves as individuals and within society, what those might be.
I’m not saying “art is God” although a case has been made for Brian Eno.
I’m saying art is like religion–the way that art produces perceptions of meaning in people is similar to the way religion does it. The human mind finds meaning through metaphor, making connections of meaning between macrocosm and microcosm. This is common to both art and religion, and at their origin they may not have been differentiated.
Like I said, I don’t think objective statements about personal religious experience are possible. Therefore it can’t serve as a basis for legislation or coercion. People who have shared similar experiences can still talk about them with each other.
Human life is a mixture of objective and subjective cognition. Everybody manages to agree on certain things like standard weights and measurements. Each individual also goes through life finding meaning in relationships and events. In order to do science, you have to abstract out the objective measurements and only look at those. I’m not sure what this has to do with the topic of the OP, though. No one here has made any objective truth claims about their religious experience. We’re talking about the way meaning lights up for us when we see things a certain way. As far as I can tell this is integral to being human. Kalhoun and lowbrass, are you suggesting we live by stripping all associations of meaning from our cognition of the world? That wouldn’t be human.
You sound like someone who has never liked music quizzing Led Zeppelin fans about why Houses of the Holy matters so much to them, when it’s nothing but air vibrations on their eardrums that can be measured mathematically. Maybe there’s no answer to this line of questioning except for “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.” Let me ask you–why does this subject interest you so much that you keep asking questions about it?
You mean why not have polytheism instead of monotheism? Yeah, why not? My own religious perspective uses both points of view at times, and it isn’t a question of which one is better. Does it matter?
I don’t thing he is describing polytheism. I thing he is pointing out the problem of using an undefined word to describe strong emotions. Adding the word “God” to the definition adds no more to understanding than does “Fleen”, “Blubger” or “Rapaboow”.
OK, gender definitions are diverse too, how about-- For purposes of communication, when I say woman, I use it in the traditional way: An inferior being who is subordinate to her father and husband.
Maybe this example shows why so many religious believers nowadays are doing their best to dismantle the traditional definition of God as authoritarian patriarch.
But if all definitions of “God” are dismantled, and/or everyone gets to pick their own definition of “God”, then “God” does mean the same thing as “Fleen”, “Blubger” or “Rapaboow”.
Sure, then you’ve got it coming and going – “God” has to mean (insert religious dogma of your choice) and that definition isn’t empirically verifiable, so therefore God can’t exist.
Instead, what if “God” is a word that represents a certain kind of event and emotion, widely shared by people. And say that political leaders wanted to influence those people - well then, of course they’d want to co-opt that experience. And they might have wanted to influence people for GOOD reasons - say, to stop them from fighting. Only then everyone wants to bicker about the definition itself.
This is starting to remind me of a discussion from 10 years ago, on the NY Times forum. The thread was around for several years, but last time I checked it had been deleted. It was an art thread and this really neat guy, Robert something, told a story about a traveler long ago who journeyed far away. The traveler saw wonders beyond imagining, beauty and nature, waters and mountains. Upon return he tried to describe it to his neighbors, but decided words were inadequate. So instead, he drew them a map, so that they might take the journey themselves.
His neighbors framed the map and hung it on the wall.
People around here would be arguing about his cartographic skills 
.
I disagree, though. I don’t believe one gains any moral certitude by surrendering one’s will to “God” or “spirituality” or whatever you want to call it. I think morality is better arrived at intellectually, since emotions can betray us. And intellectual decisions do not have to be based only on “personal expedience”. I can’t tell you how strongly I disagree with the notion that spirituality is a necessary prerequisite to morality. I just don’t see any evidence that that’s true. In my opinion, it would be far more arrogant for me to presume that I knew the mind of God, and that my morality is absolute, rather than admit that I am human and fallable, and that my values should be constantly examined and revised if necessary. I actually think we get into trouble most often when we pretend a decision is outside us. Name any terrorist in history who didn’t base his actions on some precept “outside of himself”.
Again, that’s religious jargon. In religious jargon, a “truth” is an important precept that people agree on. But I was talking about objective truth, and trying to describe the difference between objective and subjective statements, which people seem to be conflating here. Are you saying you don’t acknowlege any difference in kind between:
“Love is important”
and, say…
“7+7=14”?
I agree. I’ll discuss it, and I’ll explain why I disagree with someone, but I’ll never tell anyone what to believe.
Okay…I’m getting confused again. It appears you are saying there is no god. Are you talking about a heightened sense of awareness of emotions when you say “spiritual?” Because for most people (again, everyone does their own thing with regard to definitions) spiritual means an otherworldly being. I’m having a hard time understanding if god means emotion means spiritual or if you’re an atheist.
I like everything you’re saying with regard to perception and understanding and cognition. Those abilities and all the variations within are indeed the richest aspects of our lives. But Johanna…I can’t tell if you believe in a supernatural being. Do you? Do you see these things as human and wonderful or do you see them as traits that were given to us by a god (or gods, if you prefer). Are we thanking someone for the ability to enjoy John Lennon’s music or is this a human trait that is developed to different degrees by each of us depending on our life experience?
But we’re not talking about women’s roles. We’re talking about a supernatural being. If we’re not, then we have other words to describe it. LOTS of them. I certainly wouldn’t refer to the cat food as god. Why wouldn’t I use language that leaves no room for doubt? The fact is, the traditional definition of god is predominantly the one of the supernatural being. I don’t care if you think joy and god are the same thing; I just wish you’d use the word joy, as it is a better descriptor than the catch-all god basket.
I think they have. As I pointed out: “I had a very strong emotional reaction to Mozart’s Requiem” is a subjective statement. But, “The reaction I have to music is an entity, and it is called ‘God’” is an objective statement. An entity either exists or it doesn’t.
Or, if you’re simply saying that God is the emotional reaction itself, and nothing more, then we’re explaining to you that “God” is a superfluous descriptor that doesn’t add any meaning to the concept. Simply re-naming something that already has a name doesn’t increase understanding in any way.
Here again, you are using words in ways that don’t make sense to me. Your use of the word “meaning” seems equivalent to the way I use the word “emotion”, which is confusing, since “meaning” already has its own definition. I do not strip feelings from my experience of the world. However, I call them “feelings”, as opposed to referring to them by other words that already have their own definitions. It’s extremely confusing when people do this.
I get the impression that many of you believe your experiences are somehow diminished if you don’t add superfluous descriptors to them. I don’t understand what’s inadequate about simply saying you had a very strong emotional reaction to an event.
I don’t think it’s like that at all. Why do you think that because I don’t re-name music as “God”, that it means I don’t enjoy it, or that I don’t understand other people’s enjoyment of it? That makes no sense to me. Are you unable to experience anything unless you re-name it as “God”?
I don’t get this either. Why would you want to surrender to something you don’t even know exists? And if it did exist, would that make a difference? Would you really want to turn over your mind and heart and will to a supernatural being? Why? Why aren’t you good enough? What’s wrong with you that you feel you’re incapable of living a good life? I’m sorry, but this whole concept saddens me.
More than one, actually. The meaning of “meaning” I had in mind is in the dictionary: “Inner significance.” Like with the discussion of the word “infinite” above, I wonder if this debate consists of picking one definition out of several in the dictionary, and then saying the one you picked is the only permissible one.
By “meaning” I meant a sense of my existence in relation to the world, like I was saying before, awareness of a relationship between macrocosm and microcosm. You mean you don’t know what it’s like to experience that?
As I said before, joking references to Eno aside, I am not renaming music as God. I gave an example of music as an analogy to illustrate my point.
Triskadecamus put it beautifully
It seems that by attempting to explain, illustrate or defend a belief system that I find useful and meaningful, I wind up casting aspersions on those who believe otherwise. The above is a far wiser position to take.
I guess you’ll just have to trust me that I’m doing the best I can in this life.