Christian slander - who gave god such a bad name?

Redeeminator
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Christian slander - who gave god such a bad name?

I'm gonna stick my neck on the line in a forum full of atheists and state, for the record, that I believe in god. Now before you all start with the flaming, allow me to state my case. Disclaimer: This is not a troll - I merely post this because, in my experience, in denouncing the faithfools representation of god, a lot of athiests I've spoken to have thrown out the baby with the bathwater as it were.

So what the hell am I takling about? Firstly let me define, in my own terms, what I mean by 'god'. What is god to me? Well I'll tell you what it's not. It's not a guy with a beard. The reason so many people, quite logically IMO, are completely opposed to god is not because of anything god has done, but rather because of the anthropomorphic picture painted by the religious establishment. "God is jealous", "God says things out loud", "God gets a virgin up the duff", "God scratched his huge big god-nuts"...

I've done a lot of investigation into religion, since it picked a fight with me in my early teens. (That's another story entirely) suffice to say I'm 37 now and I've looked quite closely into a lot of it by way of deploying the - know thy enemy - tactic so quintessential to modern warfare. In every instance, without fail, which I have examined, there is a common story, a chain of events which leads from a profound discovery and set of notes and directions, to empire building, systematic genocide, mind control and exploitation of the congregation.

"Why does god do this?" I asked myself. From Jehova, to Admiral Akbar, all the way back to the roman, greek and egyptian pantheons, its a common thread. The simple answer is - god doesn't do this. People do this. By now I'm singing to the choir right? But wait a minute - just because god isn't what power hungry empire building greedy little popes and ayatollahs say it is, does this mean there's no god? To apply scientific rational argument, logically speaking no - It hasn't been proven one way or the other. What the religious establishment has done is given the word a negative connotation. And this is the real crime that religion has perpetrated - they've put people off exploring the concept of god on their own terms.

If I were to say to an american "911", on september the 10th 2001 they would think "he means some kind of emergency", but if I say it now I'm talking about a bunch of turbaniacs flying a plane into a building right? Lo and behold a bunch of faithfools have been responsible for shifting the connotations of a word (or in this case a number) to something dire and negative. Well it's the same thing with 'god'. And one of my pet missions in life is to shift the connotations of that word back to what it meant originally or what it really means to me and a bunch of others like me. Why not just choose another word? Simple - if I can hijack the word god and make it mean something reasonable I'll have neutralised one of my enemies main weapons. Yeah it's ambitious and idealistic but I guess that's just the kind of guy I am.

I guess it's about time I explained what I mean by 'god'. Now this is going to get messy I'm asking you to bear with me while I take you on a mystery tour of belief systems and superstitious nonsense both occult and mystical, pushed to the fringes and demonised largely, ironically, by the religions that grew, like cancer, from those very same seeds. In the beginning was quaballa, the ancient jewish mystical system which has enjoyed popular cult resurgence lately due to celebrity involvement. Take it from me the quaballa as it's portrayed by madonna or tom cruise is pretty much the same deal as god portrayed by gerry jerry falwell - namely a crock.

There's dispute over where quaballa came from, possible egypt, possibly somewhere else, possibly the jews thought it up all by themselves, point is somebody thought it up and IMO it's not that shabby, especially considering it was was a bunch of neanderthals who did it. So if it's not a bunch of mumbo jumbo for the purpose of seperating the rich and stupid from their hard earned moolah, what is it? Put in simplest terms its a system employed by way of acessing levels of consciousness that your average man in the street never explores. Modern psychology is pretty much agreed that the normal waking ego-consciousness is the tip of the iceberg with regard to the whole picture of the human psyche. Quaballa is a system one can, if one desires, employ in order to explore much deeper regions of your own mind.

Now quaballa aint the only system available, tantra, buddhism, shammanistic and a whole bunch of others are out there waiting to be discovered, but it's my favourite and, subsequently, the one I'm most familliar with so I'm using it as my example. I'm not telling you to do the same (telling people to do things is religions bag - it's how we got into this mess in the first place) All I'm saying here is that if you're interested in examining 'god' on your own terms, without all the superstitious, "thou shalt do this and that or be punished", crap that religion is so keen to ram down your throat, it's possible and the jewish system carries my recommendation, for whatever that's worth. Try it, don't try, I'll pretty much guarantee that you wont get damned to eternal oblivion either way.

"So come on dude, cut to the chase - What the hell do you think god is?"

God for me is a very simple mathematical and metaphysical conundrum. 0=1 or to be more succinct, zero becomes one. Something comes out of nothing. In reality, the entire universe manifests, from nowhere. That's it, plain and simple. It doesn't want anything from you, because it isn't a person. God is the great quantum singularity, the mathematical paradox that created the entirety of existence. You can't describe this in mathematical terms because the equations don't balance so the ancient hebrews tarted it up in all sorts of metaphorical and allegorical symbolism. These metaphors were subsequently canibalised, bastardised and synthesised, over thousands of years into the perverted dogmatic opressive propaganda they call the holy bible and the koran and a myriad other 'sacred texts'

But if that's all god is then what's the point in paying it any attention? Well here's the sneaky bit. It's a little known fact that your consciousness extends all the way to the origin, the eye in the triangle. And following the path, all the way up there is an awesome experience. Give it a bash you'll see what I mean. Go meet god, face to face. But for the sake of your sanity leave your dogma and your preconceptions at the door, cos if you dont you're in serious danger of having a religious experience and that really isn't a healthy midset to adopt.

  


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are you saying god is an

are you saying god is an extension of our consciousness, or we're an extension of god's consciousness, or something to that effect?


Redeeminator
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Ha! That's a whole

Ha! That's a whole philosophical can of worms right there. And I've debated both sides of that argument in the past, to no real satisfactory conclusion. There's all sorts of existentialist issues in there. What I'm really saying here is that our consciousness extends right to the infinitessimal point and, by the same token, the infinitessimal point extends right to our consciousness.

 The direct experience of this is a pretty mindblowing affair which, IMO, a lot of explorers past and present have mistakenly externalised and drawn the wrong conclusions. Namely - guy with beard. The point I'm trying to make is twofold:

 1) Have a look and see what you think

2) Let's reclaim the word 'god' and make it mean something sensible. Without the dogma and the anthropomorphic stupidity that gives rise to things like the Taliban and Waco 


Mordagar
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Redeeminator, I must say

Redeeminator, I must say that seeing a theist like you on these forums brings a smile to my face. You do not blindly accept that which has been fed to you. You took it upon yourself to do some searching, and the results you got were admirable. I have often pondered the conclusion you reached myself, as I too have done a great deal of research into Jewish mysticism that borders on the more occult side of things.

The only thing that I get hung up on is why we need to call such a thing "God." I understand that God can be what you define it, but it seems to me that the only reason would be to revive the term and to shrug off all the negative connotations it has accumulated over the millenia, as you said was your personal quest. What it comes down to, in my opinion, is playing semantics. When someone thinks of God today, the first image they usually conjure is that of a "bearded man in the sky." These anthropomorphic, personal God qualities are what I have my reservations about. That is why I call myself an Atheist, I do not believe in a God in this respect, and people know this up front when given the label.

I do believe the term could be redeemed, Einstein seems to have thought so. He used the term God throughout his life, while eschewing the anthropomorphic God meme.

Thanks for a great read. I look forward to more of your postings.



Edit: From what I gather, your God conclusion is based on the Kabbalistic (my preferred spelling Laughing out loud) concept of Ein Sof. Am I too far off base in my assumption? And yes, I admit it, I do like to read on Western and Eastern occult traditions. So sue me. Sticking out tongue

"The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously." [Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946]


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Redeeminator wrote:I'm

Redeeminator wrote:

I'm gonna stick my neck on the line in a forum full of atheists and state, for the record, that I believe in god. Now before you all start with the flaming, allow me to state my case.

 

Seriously, pleasant posters, such as yourself, are welcome here. If you run into any flaming problems, just let us know...

 

- Chris  

"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'


deludedgod
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Redeeminator, I must say

Redeeminator, I must say that seeing a theist like you on these forums brings a smile to my face.

Actually, technically he is not a theist. A theist accepts a theological concept of God, namely a jealous guy with a beard or anything that rings of anthropomorphism. As he correctly pointed out, this is totally ridiculous. The correct word is a deist (remember Dawkin's discussion about Einsteinian religion).

So for instance, even I, an atheist, could say that I believe in God. If we take the definition of the word God to be what it actually is once we remove the anthropomorphic theistic garbage. So if I said, God is pure energy, I could.

1) Energy cannot be created or destroyed

2) It lasts till the end of time and has been here since the beginning of time (not metaphorical, required for spacetime)

This in essence, is the correct definition of the word God.

I was only pointing this out cuz Im kinda nitpicky 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

Books about atheism


Redeeminator
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Mordagar wrote: Edit: From

Mordagar wrote:
Edit: From what I gather, your God conclusion is based on the Kabbalistic (my preferred spelling Laughing out loud) concept of Ein Sof. Am I too far off base in my assumption? And yes, I admit it, I do like to read on Western and Eastern occult traditions. So sue me. Sticking out tongue

Along those lines certainly. I see the negative veils as the setting, god IMO is what happens between Keter and the other two supernals Chokma and Binah - ie the 'holy trinity' Eye-wink but It's all semantics, once you make the connection god is pretty much the whole shooting match, right down to you. Crowley's beast formula if you like.

 They do say god's everywhere.


voltaire28
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Redeeminator wrote:

Redeeminator wrote:

Go meet god, face to face.

Isn't this sentence implying an anthropomorphic concept of god? I think that threw me off for a sec. Interesting post, though, and I commend your open-mindedness in making yourself at home in this forum and honestly contributing (not trolling). I must admit that my only exposure to quaballa is from the mystic that speaks with Elie Wiesel in his excellent memoir "Night". You might be interested in the chapter which Sam Harris devotes to spirituality in his book "The End of Faith". Harris, an atheist, does point toward what he sees as genuine spiritual experiences:

"Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is mysticism)." [page 221]

And if you look at Nietzsche's book "The Anti-Christ," you can see that he favorably contrasts Buddhism with nihilistic Christianity. So atheists are often much more respectful and open to such topics, especially in comparison with fundamentalist Christians!

I look forward to future posts from you.

 

 

 


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voltaire28

voltaire28 wrote:

Redeeminator wrote:

Go meet god, face to face.

Isn't this sentence implying an anthropomorphic concept of god?

 

Yeah you'll probably get used to my sense of humour pretty quickly. It's easy to spot on account of it sucks so bad.