The Supernatural Is What the Paranormal May Be: Real

shelley
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The Supernatural Is What the Paranormal May Be: Real

Adding to the discussion about Karma - I have to say I'm really disturbed by this article.  75% of people believing this crap?!  At a local (secular) group here we recently had a discussion on the supernatural and I was amazed at how many people voiced believe in this crap... ok, amazed is an understatement.

 

The Supernatural Is What the Paranormal May Be: Real

“Please leave,” said Mircea Eliade (editor-in-chief of the 17-volume “Encyclopedia of Religion”  ). With a question, he had just begun a lecture to a group of liberal clergy at the University of Chicago. His question: “Do you think that the sacred tree in the center of the clearing is not holy? If so, please raise your hand.” To the hand-raisers – about a third of us – he said, “Please leave.” The room became dead quiet; nobody left. Minds not open to the supernatural seemed to him subhuman: openness to experiencing the transcendent, the beyond, is a constitutive characteristic of human consciousness.

The great phenomenologist was talking about the supernatural, not the paranormal. The current “On Faith” question asks about the two: “Polls routinely show that 75% of Americans hold some form of belief in the paranormal such as astrology, telepathy and ghosts. All religions contain beliefs in the supernatural. Is there a link? What’s the difference?”

1.....The difference appears in the delightful, uproarious film, “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” Out of the open cockpit of a small biplane, somebody throws an empty coke bottle, which lands in a small village of near-naked primitives, overwhelming them with fear of the unknown and befuddling them with cognitive dissonance. We viewers know that the event was natural, almost normal. But to the primitives, the event was para-normal, preter-natural, beyond both expectation and explanation. What to do? The leader rose and supernaturalized the event. The gods had gone crazy and had dropped on them an evil that would destroy them if they did not destroy it by throwing it over the edge of the world. The remainder of the movie is the leader’s physical-spiritual journey through the jungle, and viewers can share his relief and joy as the coke bottle flies out of his hand and over the cliff. The sense the movie makes to the Enlightenment viewer is literal – not paranormal, preternatural, certainly not supernatural. But scholars like Eliade would have us read it also allegorically, making sense in the context of full human experiencing. The first guy to throw the coke bottle was, in a way, crazy; and the second guy was, in a way, not crazy.

2.....”You have 48 hours to write and hand in an essay defining the supernatural.” In 1941, those were the first words of the University of Chicago doctoral-seminar professor teaching a course titled “The Natural and the Supernatural.” I’ve been revising my essay these 67 years: what can’t be done must be done. “Transcendence” is Latin for “climbing across/down/up,” and we are climbers with ladders too short. But as we reach out beyond the end of our ladders of longing, the Mystery reaches and blesses us.

3.....It’s an old joke that if you pray you’re pious, and if God speaks back you’re crazy. But we supernaturalists say you’re crazy if when God speaks you don’t listen. Of course, God’s language transcends ours, and we translate his speech into the best sense we can make of it with the best sounds we know. We can’t expect our God-stories to match. The fact that they don’t is an argument not for atheism but for awed humility face to face with the divine transcendence and for generosity toward one another: “O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Bible: Romans 11:33-34)

4.....As parapsychology uses “paranormal” as an umbrella term for the trans-scientific, the rationally unexplained, religion uses “supernatural” as an umbrella term for the rationally unexplainable, for the more real than real, for what Browning called “beyond our reach, or what’s a heaven for?” But we would not reach if we had not been reached: the natural dimension is available to, indeed pervaded with, the supernatural dimension. The sky can reach us far beyond our ability to reach the sky.

5.....As philosophies compete to win our minds, God-stories compete to win our hearts. Nobody gets a pass to the truth, everybody must choose and should respect others choices within the bounds of human dignity. I choose the most astonishing God-story, the Bible’s: God so loved us that in and as Jesus he became one of us, to do for us what we could never do for ourselves – free us (as an ancient baptismal formula puts it) “from sin, death, and the devil” - free us to be fully human and responsible in love of God, neighbor, self, and the good earth.

 

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shelley
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more

here are some more - equally disturbing - answers to the same question

Spirituality is all in how you think

The Supernatural and Tradition

The Paranormal


jcgadfly
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Contrary to what Christians

Contrary to what Christians and other theists have said about atheists, it is those who look for the supernatural who seek to abdicate personal responsibility by hunting for and creating a "being higher than themselves" to blame.

"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin


Nordmann
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That belief in things

That belief in things outside the natural sustains many people who experience a deficit otherwise emotionally is obvious, but that this deficit can be filled very simply with education and realistic expectations is not. The problem with people is that they are encouraged - in the case of using their intelligence as much as in anything else - to opt always for the obvious. The extreme irony is that the religious mindset lays exclusive claim to have shunned the very thing it needs to thrive - an acceptance of mundanity and a blindness to and ignorance of the real capabilities of the human brain.

 

It is the religious person who has sold him or herself short. But like any satisfied customer of crap the suspicion that this might be so drives them to extraordinary lengths in defending their choice. An even bigger irony is that, for many of them, they had no choice.

 

But it begs a question - how does one sell rationalism with equal gusto? (I admit that telling all irrational people to leave the auditorium could mean that you have no audience left)

I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy


I AM GOD AS YOU
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I AM "THE SHIT" AS YOU ! 

I AM "THE SHIT" AS YOU !  100% gawed .....

    Now what ?!!!   Get dreamy ?!!!     .... please don't .... "AWAKE"

       


thingy
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shelleymtjoy wrote:Adding to

shelleymtjoy wrote:
Adding to the discussion about Karma - I have to say I'm really disturbed by this article.  75% of people believing this crap?!  At a local (secular) group here we recently had a discussion on the supernatural and I was amazed at how many people voiced believe in this crap... ok, amazed is an understatement.

That's one thing I noticed when looking up secular, atheist, humanist and skeptic groups here in Australia.  Just looking at the websites the humanist groups appeared to be people who wanted to say they were better than others, but everything else shouldn't be spoken badly of, just down to.  Elitists so to speak.  Secular groups were basically null and void.  Atheist groups seemed that although they thought all religious make believe was bunk, non-religious make believe wasn't.  Skeptic groups seemed that although they thought all non-religious make believe was bunk, religious make believe wasn't.  I couldn't really find something that seemed right. 

Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
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I AM GOD AS YOU
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Karma, the old basic simple

Karma, the old basic simple message of it, is indeed polluted by silly folklore .... same goes for reincarnation. Same thing happened to the Jesus buddha simple messages ....

   Sames goes for all messages , as the ATHEIST one .... "NO MASTER" .... therefore atheists have no morals .... sheezzzz    


shelley
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thingy wrote:That's one

thingy wrote:

That's one thing I noticed when looking up secular, atheist, humanist and skeptic groups here in Australia.  Just looking at the websites the humanist groups appeared to be people who wanted to say they were better than others, but everything else shouldn't be spoken badly of, just down to.  Elitists so to speak.  Secular groups were basically null and void.  Atheist groups seemed that although they thought all religious make believe was bunk, non-religious make believe wasn't.  Skeptic groups seemed that although they thought all non-religious make believe was bunk, religious make believe wasn't.  I couldn't really find something that seemed right. 

well put and an excellent summary of what i've seen locally.


thingy
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Hence my liking of the

Hence my liking of the RRS.  We concentrate on here more on the atheist side of things but the skeptic side is there too.

Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
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