Does God make us or do we make God?

[aldousburbank]

Sorry but I find the whole god conundrum to have less value than do we really exist?

I agree with the value and relevance of the reverse spin you apply to your query. I am agnostic in this regard, believing that if we really existed, I would have already met me and we would all have personal jetpacks and superpowers and I would have already landed on the White House lawn proclaiming peace, prosperity, and free joints for all!

[Tarbaby]

Perhaps the original post should have been does god create religion or does religion...

I scratch my head and ask what is god? Please give me a definition. Is god a sky being that talks to a select few and shoots lightning from his fingers?

Sorry but I find the whole god conundrum to have less value than do we really exist? If one finds comfort in that, fine. But don't expect it to comfort me.

Yes, that is the implication of the thread question. Does man define God with his own projections and assumptions? Or is there some sort of gestalt entity that exists independent of man's projection. Similar to the way a hive mind exists in an inset colony  but they Far more macrocosmic level. and possibly linked to all life or all energy. And therefore all matter since matter is a form of energy.

Your question, do we actually exist is also a very good question. And maybe related. But as to how much solus it offers that's beside the point I would say. The idea of establishing the reality of any sort of God entity is not motivated by a search for "comfort". That would seem to come under the category of "ways to resolve existential angst". I noticed this isn't the first time you've mentioned "comfort" I guess as if to say the only reason man searches for any sign of God is because he needs comfort? Which doesn't seem reasonable to me since any evidence seems to point to the fact that this anthropomorphic God is mostly laissez faire.

As I mentioned in a previous post respected scientists throughout history have seen signs of tinkering in the mechanistic scheme of things. I cited Pierre de Chardin for one. If you had any time to track down leads like that or de chardin himself it might give you food for thought and reasons for looking for this godlike entity. Even on a purely scientific or materialistic level. i'm open to these ideas also because of findings in quantum mechanics which I follow.

And it isn't about a Zeus throwing lightning bolts from the heavens, it's about uncannily beneficial turns and unexpected development's in the evolutionary path of life.

[aldousburbank]

Aside from the hating and the yuks I so enjoy on this forum, Onan and Tarbaby's interchange here is why I stay. Thanks MV and everyone for keeping it real, odd.

[Tarbaby]

Onan,could you elaborate on why you feel comfort is related to a discussion of God. Life is not fair, life is a struggle, that sort of thing? By the way, I assume you know that these are the top two questions that patients of psychiatrists bring as the complaints that cause them the most emotional turmoil.

Pain, struggle, unfairness, death, tragedy, etc. are you suggesting that these are what man has invented God to help with?

[b_dubb]

Perhaps the original post should have been does god create religion or does religion...

I scratch my head and ask what is god? Please give me a definition. Is god a sky being that talks to a select few and shoots lightning from his fingers?

Sorry but I find the whole god conundrum to have less value than do we really exist? If one finds comfort in that, fine. But don't expect it to comfort me.

I don't necessarily believe in god/God.  The easiest explanation is that we create a 'Great Parent In the Sky' to comfort us since we're aware that someday we'll cease to be.  I don't dismiss the possibility that there is a god or that there is an afterlife I just don't think the question is very interesting given that we're talking about something that can't be proven / disproven. 

[aldousburbank]

From my experience(s) it is my understanding that you can't prove existence or absence of god/God to anyone other than oneself.

[onan]

Onan,could you elaborate on why you feel comfort is related to a discussion of God. Life is not fair, life is a struggle, that sort of thing? By the way, I assume you know that these are the top two questions that patients of psychiatrists bring as the complaints that cause them the most emotional turmoil.

Pain, struggle, unfairness, death, tragedy, etc. are you suggesting that these are what man has invented God to help with?

It is real simple, man is a learning machine. What he learns first and foremost are coping skills. Everything we do is a coping skill to relieve some form of stress. How we breathe, how we sit, stand, speak to another is to relieve some stress, be it physical or emotional. We strive to understand the world around us, to control it, all for our personal comfort. Giving a supernatural being powers to make things happen that we do not understand gives comfort to lack of understanding.

[UnscreenedCaller]

I'll buy the comfort part of having a god who cares about us, but there also is a tremendous amount of awe over natural events, like the sky at night, fires, meteorites, lightening bolts. eclipses that probably moved early man to wonder who or what power was behind it and begin to worship it out of awe and also a sense of propitiating the powerful god who possessed powers of life and death. The gentler of these would be the early goddess worship, which also was a natural response to the eternal mystery of life and death, fecundity and barrenness. In some early religions, both were combined until the early goddess religions were suppressed snd demonized by the early forerunners of the Israelites. It's been a long time since I took comparative religion, so I forget how much 'personal' attention man expected from these early gods and goddesses, or comfort, but it seems that they were envisioned as a response to sweeping skies filled with stars, cataclysmic natural events and the mystery of life. Later on they seemed to evolve into the various gods who are personally involved in humanity's lives, giving comfort and reassurance as a response to the very profound and existential and ultimately, unknowable.

[b_dubb]

Even Stephen Hawking refers to "the Great Computer In The Sky" which I believe refers to the mind boggling sophistication and complexity of the universe.  He's an "atheist" but at times the language he chooses to use sounds vaguely spiritual.  The most annoying aspect of the divide between the spiritual and the scientific is how people let language get in the away and suddenly the two become mutually exclusive.  If you're a fundamentalist you dismiss science out of hand because the language in the Bible contradicts evolution.  Are you a Christian or a lawyer?  "God" (Parent in the Sky/miracle of evolution) gave you a brain.  Use it.

[Tarbaby]

It is real simple, man is a learning machine. What he learns first and foremost are coping skills. Everything we do is a coping skill to relieve some form of stress. How we breathe, how we sit, stand, speak to another is to relieve some stress, be it physical or emotional. We strive to understand the world around us, to control it, all for our personal comfort. Giving a supernatural being powers to make things happen that we do not understand gives comfort to lack of understanding.

You are assuming this alleged gestalt entity would be interested in responding to man and/or filling his needs for comfort. God: the ultimate stress reliever. Projecting attributes onto a God entity has nothing to do with the actual attributes of a got entity, unless man actually IS creating this entity. It might exist independent of man's needs and be more subtle, part of the life process itself. Rather tough to understand and explain God when we can't even understand and explain life. or the way life evoles in an otherwise mechanistic universe, and an upward more sophisticated direction. Or the way life repairs itself in a material universe where entropy should prevail. And all motion is predicated upon a previous motion all the way back to the original "prime" motion.

Grin! With all due respect I'm afraid I don't find it "real simple ". With all these huge unresolved mysteries in front of us.

[Tarbaby]

I don't necessarily believe in god/God.  The easiest explanation is that we create a 'Great Parent In the Sky' to comfort us since we're aware that someday we'll cease to be.  I don't dismiss the possibility that there is a god or that there is an afterlife I just don't think the question is very interesting given that we're talking about something that can't be proven / disproven.

Good post. Well stated.

[Tarbaby]

Unscreened caller: very nice post.
Cheers to all and a nod to Aldous!

[onan]

You are assuming this alleged gestalt entity would be interested in responding to man and/or filling his needs for comfort. God: the ultimate stress reliever. Projecting attributes onto a God entity has nothing to do with the actual attributes of a got entity, unless man actually IS creating this entity. It might exist independent of man's needs and be more subtle, part of the life process itself. Rather tough to understand and explain God when we can't even understand and explain life. or the way life evoles in an otherwise mechanistic universe, and an upward more sophisticated direction. Or the way life repairs itself in a material universe where entropy should prevail. And all motion is predicated upon a previous motion all the way back to the original "prime" motion.

Grin! With all due respect I'm afraid I don't find it "real simple ". With all these huge unresolved mysteries in front of us.

I am not suggesting that a god is interested in anything. I am telling you, human beings are nothing more than a bunch of coping skills trying to achieve comfort. You can ascribe any and all facets to a god if you wish. What I am describing can be proved, yours cannot.

[Tarbaby]

I am not suggesting that a god is interested in anything. I am telling you, human beings are nothing more than a bunch of coping skills trying to achieve comfort. You can ascribe any and all facets to a god if you wish. What I am describing can be proved, yours cannot.

Mine cannot? It's pretty clear to me that you have no idea what my position is. Because you just stated it as the opposite of yours. I am agnostic. But I do have an open mind. you clearly do not. And in my posts to you I have pointed out tremendous metaphysical mysteries. But they are completely lost on you. You don't even acknowledge them. Nor do you include them in your ideological or philosophical belief system.

And by the way I am absolutely sure you cannot prove that all man is is a handful of coping mechanisms. Insisting that we are nothing but coping mechanisms is like the condemned man boasting about the size of his cell. I mean, if we believe that why not just kill ourself tonight?
One of the problems is we shouldn't be using the word "God". It brings along with it too much baggage, assumptions, pre-definitions. It is your own conscious or subconscious definition of God that you are fighting against.

Atheists are every bit as dogmatic and close minded as are zealots.

[onan]

Mine cannot? It's pretty clear to me that you have no idea what my position is. Because you just stated it as the opposite of yours. I am agnostic. But I do have an open mind. you clearly do not. And in my posts to you I have pointed out tremendous metaphysical mysteries. But they are completely lost on you. You don't even acknowledge them. Nor do you include them in your ideological or philosophical belief system.

And by the way I am absolutely sure you cannot prove that all man is is a handful of coping mechanisms. Insisting that we are nothing but coping mechanisms is like the condemned man boasting about the size of his cell. I mean, if we believe that why not just kill ourself tonight?
One of the problems is we shouldn't be using the word "God". It brings along with it too much baggage, assumptions, pre-definitions. It is your own conscious or subconscious definition of God that you are fighting against.

Atheists are every bit as dogmatic and close minded as are zealots.

If you were to look over my posts on this subject, not that I expect that, you would see that I have stated many times: I don't know. But what I do know is I can explain all of man's behavior with coping skills. That isn't a limiting factor. Humans, hopefully, learn when a coping skill becomes limiting to expand their behaviors. Again, there is nothing limiting about coping skills... absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact our mutual terse discourse is a coping skill. Both of us, having a belief system in place, wish to out argue the other. Perhaps you would state that in different terms... I am not trying to one up you.

It seems, at least to me, for you to be human you need to believe in something outside of yourself and find my perspective limited. If you wish to believe behaviors and experiences you have been part of or have heard of are of some metaphysical origination... I am not going to change your mind. I will however express my perspective which may counter your explanation.

Again, everything we do is prompted by a coping skill. Everything.

[Tarbaby]

Oh, I don't mind reviewing your posts. You are one of my favorite posters. But let me add a few things about coping mechanisms:

People have beliefs, they are not their beliefs. To the extent our beliefs contradict each other this is called "cognitive dissonance".   We make conscious decisions about which beliefs we are going to hold or identify with but once that decision is made the belief largely sinks into the subconscious. The criteria we use to select our beliefs are our values.  Coping mechanisms serve to resolve these cognitive dissonances. And and, it works both ways, our values are. also shaped by our beliefs. the coping mechanisms exist soley in the conscious daily waking mind. But a man is not simply a coping mechanism. And our conscious mind is but the tip of the iceberg of our psyche.

Bottom line: we are not our coping mechanisms but they can help us, when they begin to fail and we develop a neurosis or worse, identify cognitive dissonance and areas where our values need to be re-examined.

And those metaphysical issues you cite above, which I had mentioned, having largely to do with state-of-the-art findings in quantum mechanics, the nature of reality, the nature of matter, space time continuum, etc, need to be taken into account as part of our reality as well as those minor tools of the psyche called coping mechanisms. I have also noticed the ubiquity of life, the way that lifefights against entropy and heals itself etc. these are the kind of metaphysical references I referred to when thinking about the nature of man over and above coping mechanisms. Or a got entity for that matter. You Brust them all off as if they were airy fairy ghost stories, unrelated to reality. In other words, the fact that matter itself is basically Andalusian has no bearing but the mechanism of copingskills to resolve cognitive dissonance in the conscious daily mind you focus on as  all important.

And by the way as Ouspensky and Gurdjieff noticed, and we can readily see, there are two kinds of people, those who go through life on automatic pilot and those who are aware and thinking throughout the day about their value convictions and beliefs. The people on automatic pilot, by far the great majority of people, have much more problems with cognitive dissonance and clashing struggling coping mechanisms. because they latch onto beliefs almost Willy Milly and never examined them to see if their outdated or obsolete are simply not wanted anymore. Maybe sometime later we can talk about the feedback loop between values, convictions, beliefs. And that Freudian need hierarchy I had mentioned last month.

[onan]

Oh, I don't mind reviewing your posts. You are one of my favorite posters. But let me add a few things about coping mechanisms:

People have beliefs, they are not their beliefs. To the extent our beliefs contradict each other this is called "cognitive dissonance".   We make conscious decisions about which beliefs we are going to hold or identify with but once that decision is made the belief largely sinks into the subconscious. The criteria we use to select our beliefs are our values.  Coping mechanisms serve to resolve these cognitive dissonances. And and, it works both ways, our values are. also shaped by our beliefs. the coping mechanisms exist soley in the conscious daily waking mind. But a man is not simply a coping mechanism. And our conscious mind is but the tip of the iceberg of our psyche.

Bottom line: we are not our coping mechanisms but they can help us, when they begin to fail and we develop a neurosis or worse, identify cognitive dissonance and areas where our values need to be re-examined.

Our beliefs are built on our experiences. Our beliefs are very much part of our coping skills. And yes there is cognitive dissonance when our beliefs come into conflict. That often brings about common coping skills such as denial, avoidance, or multiple other behaviors. Cognitive dissonance, however, is not just a negative experience, it can prompt someone to improve in any number of ways. But coping skills are also our skills to operate in our day to day. How I am responding to you now, is part of a coping skill. Realizing we are a group of complex behaviors is not a limiting context.

Think about it though, every response anyone makes is prompted by some inner mechanism. Why is it important for you to engage in this conversation? There is some gain for you. As there is for me. We are attending to our inner beliefs for whatever emotional gain we hold as important.

[Tarbaby]

Our beliefs are built on our experiences. Our beliefs are very much part of our coping skills. And yes there is cognitive dissonance when our beliefs come into conflict. That often brings about common coping skills such as denial, avoidance, or multiple other behaviors. Cognitive dissonance, however, is not just a negative experience, it can prompt someone to improve in any number of ways. But coping skills are also our skills to operate in our day to day. How I am responding to you now, is part of a coping skill. Realizing we are a group of complex behaviors is not a limiting context.

Think about it though, every response anyone makes is prompted by some inner mechanism. Why is it important for you to engage in this conversation? There is some gain for you. As there is for me. We are attending to our inner beliefs for whatever emotional gain we hold as important.

Yes, yes, I see we are largely on the same page now and in agreement on these main issues. Yet here we are, you are the atheist and I am the agnostic. The problem I see with atheism is it's a form of intellectual dishonesty, closing off all further consideration of new incoming data or evidence. If there is no empirical evidence for or against a God entity then one must be agnostic, that is the word for it.

And by the way, I added another paragraph or so in my previous post. It could become relevant later. Or not.

[Jackstar]

In the Beginning

In the beginning, there is the Infinite One. This is the source of All That Is. Infinite consciousness. Intelligent infinity. There is unity. Infinite intelligence and infinite energy â€" the two are one, and the potential for all creation is contained therein. Infinite intelligence does not recognize its potential. It is the undifferentiated absolute. This state of consciousness could be termed as "being". Infinite energy, in contrast, recognizes the potential of "becoming" all things. Infinite intelligence can be likened to the central heartbeat of life, and infinite energy to the spiritual life-blood which pumps out from the Creator to form the creation.

In effect, the Creator is a point of focused infinite consciousness expressing infinite intelligent energy. On focusing its infinite intelligence, the One Infinite Creator manifests intelligent energy which you could call the great central sun. It then divides itself into smaller portions of itself that can, in turn, experience themselves as creators or central suns, thus beginning the next step in the creational spiral. In other words, each central sun or creator is a step down in conscious awareness (or distortion) from the original "thought" of creation.

Creation is based upon three primary laws or distortions of the Infinite One: free will, love, and light. In the first law, the creator receives the free will to know and experience itself as an individuated, though paradoxically unified, aspect of the One. In the second, the initial distortion of free will becomes a focus point of awareness known as Logos, or love, which uses its infinite intelligent energy to co-create a vast array of physical manifestations which will best offer the range of potential experiences in which it can know itself. To manifest this infinite spiritual or life-force energy into a physical form, Logos creates the third distortion of light. Wherever thus exists any form of physical matter, there is light, love, and divine intelligent energy at it's core.

So using the law of free will, the One Infinite Creator steps down its infinite energy to become Logos. Logos designs vast universes of space, stepping down and splitting itself into an array of sub-Logos, each of which becomes a co-creator of its own universe. Each universal Logos then designs and creates its own version of physical reality by focusing its intelligent energy to create, for instance, the form of galaxies within itself. Stepping down again, each galactic Logos can split itself into yet further co-creator portions (sub-sub-Logos), which can then design and manifest their own ideas of physical reality, as in the form of stars and planets.

[Tarbaby]

Oh oh! looks like I shouldn't have said that matter is an illusion. :-)
Jackstar, was all that a self realization Or  was it a copy and paste? I used to study non-duality so I rather enjoyed it. or 

[aldousburbank]

In the Beginning

In the beginning, there is the Infinite One. This is the source of All That Is. Infinite consciousness. Intelligent infinity. There is unity. Infinite intelligence and infinite energy â€" the two are one, and the potential for all creation is contained therein. Infinite intelligence does not recognize its potential. It is the undifferentiated absolute. This state of consciousness could be termed as "being". Infinite energy, in contrast, recognizes the potential of "becoming" all things. Infinite intelligence can be likened to the central heartbeat of life, and infinite energy to the spiritual life-blood which pumps out from the Creator to form the creation.

In effect, the Creator is a point of focused infinite consciousness expressing infinite intelligent energy. On focusing its infinite intelligence, the One Infinite Creator manifests intelligent energy which you could call the great central sun. It then divides itself into smaller portions of itself that can, in turn, experience themselves as creators or central suns, thus beginning the next step in the creational spiral. In other words, each central sun or creator is a step down in conscious awareness (or distortion) from the original "thought" of creation.

Creation is based upon three primary laws or distortions of the Infinite One: free will, love, and light. In the first law, the creator receives the free will to know and experience itself as an individuated, though paradoxically unified, aspect of the One. In the second, the initial distortion of free will becomes a focus point of awareness known as Logos, or love, which uses its infinite intelligent energy to co-create a vast array of physical manifestations which will best offer the range of potential experiences in which it can know itself. To manifest this infinite spiritual or life-force energy into a physical form, Logos creates the third distortion of light. Wherever thus exists any form of physical matter, there is light, love, and divine intelligent energy at it's core.

So using the law of free will, the One Infinite Creator steps down its infinite energy to become Logos. Logos designs vast universes of space, stepping down and splitting itself into an array of sub-Logos, each of which becomes a co-creator of its own universe. Each universal Logos then designs and creates its own version of physical reality by focusing its intelligent energy to create, for instance, the form of galaxies within itself. Stepping down again, each galactic Logos can split itself into yet further co-creator portions (sub-sub-Logos), which can then design and manifest their own ideas of physical reality, as in the form of stars and planets.

Oh I get it now.

[Jackstar]

Link to Source.

[pyewacket]

Interesting discussion! I've seen this crop up on other forums but they usually deteriorated into bible quoting, name calling, and other nasty behaviour- it's nice to see people able to debate it here without all that stuff.

I've gone from Catholic- to new age- to Buddhist in my pursuit of spiritual meaning in life. I'd have to identify as an agnostic. I'm impressed with the quality of your well thought out responses and I hope to do the same with mine.

I like the Buddhist concept of Samsara- continuous flow. The way I understand it, we, collectively or as collective groups create our future by our actions- good and evil. We can see some evidence of this throughout history- the dominate ideas and cultures either elevated us or caused a decline in our conditions.

I don't believe in organised religions. They are a tool of control and a way to elevate those who appoint themselves as the official conduits to their god/creation. As far as peoples' need for a deity-  I'm not sure if we, as a species, are suitable for monotheism. If you get a group of us together we can't even agree on what kind of food we want to eat, let alone settle on a single god. Maybe that's why the ancients had so many gods and goddesses.

I don't have a problem believing in something greater than us all, but I don't think it would resemble anything described in organized religion. Just throwing in my two cents.     

[Tarbaby]

Very nice. Nothing too add here.

As to the preceding civil discourse, Onan is a master of tact and diplomacy. And keeping things defused. I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with his training and vocation.

As for me, I don't belong to any political party nor any organized religion. The last field of study was nonduality. And at about that same time I became enamored with the works of Kabir, a 14th century Sufi poet.