Good points made, but what I was talking about was somewhat different. I perceive something internally coherent in my understanding of what I denote by the word G-d; however even if we were able to predicate this understanding in a way that facilitated an understanding of the conscious dynamics of it, the fact still remains that there seem to be in this world as many different definitions of the divine as there are people. It seems more relevant when discussing concepts of truth with people to use a specific framing which is understood by both parties, rather than using a term specially set aside for "the infinite" to mean multiple things. Not all people can philosophise about a sole-cause, and may therefore have a more restricted or angular view of a Creator.
In this sense I find things such as the Divine Names to be a potentially very helpful tool, as anyone who has experienced the station corresponding to that name can understand the relationship of the concepts surrounding that station with the subject matter. We can prove that consciousness exists, we can prove we were created *in some way*, etc (whether through slow course of evolution, panspermia, pure consciousness or whatever), there are certain objectivities that everyone can agree on. Proving rationally how or why these things occur is another matter. But I don't see the position that *X* exists as fundamentally unproveable or irrational. In the same way, something causes the experience of the color blue in your consciousness, but whether it is the flying spaghetti monster or a chain reaction of random marbles of low diameter bumping together chaotically is up for debate and difficult to prove.
Sigh... this comment is at once both too long and too short to explain what I mean... the real issue probably hinges on whole Kantian notion of where knowledge comes from, and the problem of measurement which existed before him. But even in that attempt at measurement, there is ratio and something definitively perceived which is internally self consistent, even if language fails it. If that makes any sense.
There is definitely a physical effect of specific sets of frequencies of light that our eyes register to our brain and that we denote by the word "blue". But here is where language fails us, just as it does in the case of G-d. Multiple different colours are perceived by our brain as being "blue", even under normal conditions of the eye. Admittedly, after effects of light of specific colors can also create blue in our field of vision. But just because this is true, it doesn't deny the fact that there is a real, physical, tangible influence out there which our brains register and denote as blue.
We can be reasonably certain that, if our body is in a optimally functioning state and we have an experience of the color blue, without having, say, stared at the sun, then we are not perceiving a hallucination of Captain America... unless we ingested a hell of a lot of LSD :P.
Even hallucinations are a measurement by our consciousness of something that "happened" which our brain interpreted and provided to our consciousness. A good example of this is the Tibetan "yidam", which is initially self created by sustained thought and visualisation, but eventually appears to be external to one. Whether the image and voice of this yidam is a measurement of some process occurring within the brain of the person, or within the person's body, or outside them, it is still not produced by their conscious brain, and yet it is consistent in its actions which we register as external. It produces knowledge which the original brain did not have that can be proved.
We all measure reality by our interaction with it, there is no way we can get around this even in remote viewing. The signal must still be interpreted visually, or in words, etc, and that requires our brains.
Same with a conception of God, however it is less restricted to a visual sense. Someone might say they spoke to God or had a vision, and while they had a real experience, what *they* mean by God, and the source of that vision (perhaps conversion of sensing of subtle electromagnetic fields to other sensory data - a kind of synaesthesia?) needs to be ascertained. It doesn't mean that they didn't have that experience, or that real information was not obtained, it just means they can't explain what they think they were talking to, and so for lack of a better term they rationalize it.
Also, I can be totally rational in considering consciousness to be omnipresent and not restricted to the region of the physical body, thanks to the fact that it can pick up information which can be validated by other people (remote viewing). My brain stays in the same place, what is doing the measuring? If I then infer that something we know exists - say, a set of light frequencies constituting "blue", or consciousness itself, is all around us and can be accessed, and is not just "internal" to us (whatever internal means), and I call it by a name ("God"), this does not make this irrational. It merely makes it bad use of the English language. Someone may criticize my wording, but the fact that I recognise something that can produce/provide knowledge which can be validated externally by other people cannot be explained away. If you get my drift. "Concepts" are internal representations of something we've experienced, that need to be expressed in words. If someone uses the word "God" in a way that I do not use it, I would normally perceive them as insane. But they are not, it just means there is a communications disconnect. Thats the point of NLP.
Actually, I thought we were trying to have a philosophical discussion (something people on LJ/FB usually no longer do these days), not chasing tails.
I'm not making any claims about the existence or non-existence of God per se, my point is much subtler. Nor was I saying that the signals interpreted by the brain to produce "visions" were random or passive. What I was saying is that because no universal definition of what a God would be, should he exist, is in effect, people can interpret any unexplainable event as being "from God" to give it an arbitrary meaning.
I'm not arguing against what you've said that our seeing blue in relationship to particular sensory input depends on our unique biological makeup. What I am arguing against is that, because our consciousness interprets a signal as blue, that energetic signal which creates this blue effect doesn't exist "outside our brain". It clearly does. Similarly, a vision means something, a person reading an aura or "communing with the worldsoul" is having a real interaction with a real *something*, whether "out there" or "in here" (which are really just arbitrary definitions). The reason we cannot agree on what such experiences mean as human beings has much to do with the way the senses differ between individuals. Ultimately, we have a direct conscious experience of sensory input, and how we define "rational" or "irrational" is exactly what the word says: how that view interacts with that of other entities with sense organs. In other words, rational and irrational is a function of consensus reality, of how the majority see things. Seeing things in a different way or ascribing meanings that others do not see is not necessarily wrong, because the very word "wrong" implies that there is a restricted, rigid "right" way of interpreting the world to consciousness.
BTW: some people don't have brains within their skulls, they have mainly cerebral fluid, yet they can still think and act/reason (look up hydrocephalism). This suggests our concept of the brain as the organ of consciousness and interpreting data to consciousness is way outdated and not fully accurate.
Please feel free to ignore my comment if you want, but I'm not trying to proselytize or prove a point. The whole point of Socratic dialog is to determine, through comparing and contrasting what our minds understand, a more exact understanding of a topic, while enjoying yourself at the same time :P.
For the record, the word "pontificate" means "to talk in a dogmatic, pompous manner", ie to act like an absolute authority. I have done no such thing here. I merely want to reach an understanding of your point of view as opposed to my own. Perhaps this is not possible.
By the way, the words "abstracting relativity" do not mean anything together :).
LOL... interesting that you assumed that I assumed that I was relegating the pontificating to myself.
Words have meaning and relevance only within specific contexts. As a reason for "making [myself] difficult to understand", the words "abstracting relativity" mean nothing, unless one makes an assumption about what those two words represent, which I am not about to do.
But you can assume what you want about me and what I believe, and imply what you will in vague sentences that do not say what you want to say directly. I am sad that you feel the need to make such assumptions and jump to such conclusions on a thread which was supposed to have been about exactly such problems of language context, but oh well, shit happens.
I have given your regards to Kiana, I hope such regards apply to both of us as a couple. Maybe some day we can have a real face to face discussion about stuff like this and you can treat me more like a human being than an abstract "pontificating" (heh) mass.
In this sense I find things such as the Divine Names to be a potentially very helpful tool, as anyone who has experienced the station corresponding to that name can understand the relationship of the concepts surrounding that station with the subject matter. We can prove that consciousness exists, we can prove we were created *in some way*, etc (whether through slow course of evolution, panspermia, pure consciousness or whatever), there are certain objectivities that everyone can agree on. Proving rationally how or why these things occur is another matter. But I don't see the position that *X* exists as fundamentally unproveable or irrational. In the same way, something causes the experience of the color blue in your consciousness, but whether it is the flying spaghetti monster or a chain reaction of random marbles of low diameter bumping together chaotically is up for debate and difficult to prove.
Sigh... this comment is at once both too long and too short to explain what I mean... the real issue probably hinges on whole Kantian notion of where knowledge comes from, and the problem of measurement which existed before him. But even in that attempt at measurement, there is ratio and something definitively perceived which is internally self consistent, even if language fails it. If that makes any sense.
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(The comment has been removed)
We can be reasonably certain that, if our body is in a optimally functioning state and we have an experience of the color blue, without having, say, stared at the sun, then we are not perceiving a hallucination of Captain America... unless we ingested a hell of a lot of LSD :P.
Even hallucinations are a measurement by our consciousness of something that "happened" which our brain interpreted and provided to our consciousness. A good example of this is the Tibetan "yidam", which is initially self created by sustained thought and visualisation, but eventually appears to be external to one. Whether the image and voice of this yidam is a measurement of some process occurring within the brain of the person, or within the person's body, or outside them, it is still not produced by their conscious brain, and yet it is consistent in its actions which we register as external. It produces knowledge which the original brain did not have that can be proved.
We all measure reality by our interaction with it, there is no way we can get around this even in remote viewing. The signal must still be interpreted visually, or in words, etc, and that requires our brains.
Same with a conception of God, however it is less restricted to a visual sense. Someone might say they spoke to God or had a vision, and while they had a real experience, what *they* mean by God, and the source of that vision (perhaps conversion of sensing of subtle electromagnetic fields to other sensory data - a kind of synaesthesia?) needs to be ascertained. It doesn't mean that they didn't have that experience, or that real information was not obtained, it just means they can't explain what they think they were talking to, and so for lack of a better term they rationalize it.
Also, I can be totally rational in considering consciousness to be omnipresent and not restricted to the region of the physical body, thanks to the fact that it can pick up information which can be validated by other people (remote viewing). My brain stays in the same place, what is doing the measuring? If I then infer that something we know exists - say, a set of light frequencies constituting "blue", or consciousness itself, is all around us and can be accessed, and is not just "internal" to us (whatever internal means), and I call it by a name ("God"), this does not make this irrational. It merely makes it bad use of the English language. Someone may criticize my wording, but the fact that I recognise something that can produce/provide knowledge which can be validated externally by other people cannot be explained away. If you get my drift. "Concepts" are internal representations of something we've experienced, that need to be expressed in words. If someone uses the word "God" in a way that I do not use it, I would normally perceive them as insane. But they are not, it just means there is a communications disconnect. Thats the point of NLP.
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(The comment has been removed)
I'm not making any claims about the existence or non-existence of God per se, my point is much subtler. Nor was I saying that the signals interpreted by the brain to produce "visions" were random or passive. What I was saying is that because no universal definition of what a God would be, should he exist, is in effect, people can interpret any unexplainable event as being "from God" to give it an arbitrary meaning.
I'm not arguing against what you've said that our seeing blue in relationship to particular sensory input depends on our unique biological makeup. What I am arguing against is that, because our consciousness interprets a signal as blue, that energetic signal which creates this blue effect doesn't exist "outside our brain". It clearly does. Similarly, a vision means something, a person reading an aura or "communing with the worldsoul" is having a real interaction with a real *something*, whether "out there" or "in here" (which are really just arbitrary definitions). The reason we cannot agree on what such experiences mean as human beings has much to do with the way the senses differ between individuals. Ultimately, we have a direct conscious experience of sensory input, and how we define "rational" or "irrational" is exactly what the word says: how that view interacts with that of other entities with sense organs. In other words, rational and irrational is a function of consensus reality, of how the majority see things. Seeing things in a different way or ascribing meanings that others do not see is not necessarily wrong, because the very word "wrong" implies that there is a restricted, rigid "right" way of interpreting the world to consciousness.
BTW: some people don't have brains within their skulls, they have mainly cerebral fluid, yet they can still think and act/reason (look up hydrocephalism). This suggests our concept of the brain as the organ of consciousness and interpreting data to consciousness is way outdated and not fully accurate.
Please feel free to ignore my comment if you want, but I'm not trying to proselytize or prove a point. The whole point of Socratic dialog is to determine, through comparing and contrasting what our minds understand, a more exact understanding of a topic, while enjoying yourself at the same time :P.
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(The comment has been removed)
I'm sorry if you think this way.
For the record, the word "pontificate" means "to talk in a dogmatic, pompous manner", ie to act like an absolute authority. I have done no such thing here. I merely want to reach an understanding of your point of view as opposed to my own. Perhaps this is not possible.
By the way, the words "abstracting relativity" do not mean anything together :).
Respectfully.
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(The comment has been removed)
Words have meaning and relevance only within specific contexts. As a reason for "making [myself] difficult to understand", the words "abstracting relativity" mean nothing, unless one makes an assumption about what those two words represent, which I am not about to do.
But you can assume what you want about me and what I believe, and imply what you will in vague sentences that do not say what you want to say directly. I am sad that you feel the need to make such assumptions and jump to such conclusions on a thread which was supposed to have been about exactly such problems of language context, but oh well, shit happens.
I have given your regards to Kiana, I hope such regards apply to both of us as a couple. Maybe some day we can have a real face to face discussion about stuff like this and you can treat me more like a human being than an abstract "pontificating" (heh) mass.
Love to you.
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