Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[FrankSophia]

The problem is there's nothing but God yet you want a particular object labeled "God" to be pointed at.

[Lagayascienza]

I must be doing meditation wrong. I get a lot out of it - it's hard to describe but there is a sense of feeling at one with everything, peace, clarity afterwards, but no god. I practice a form of meditation taught to me by devotees of Advaita Vedanta. No god, no soul. Just unity, oneness.

[Lagayascienza]

My meditation practice and the way I live my life is not in conflict with atheism.

[Sculptor1]

As an atheist, I still find myself uttering phrases such as “Oh, my god!”, “God only knows!”, “Heaven help us!”, “Why the hell did you do that?”… I don’t think that this is an indication that I haven’t fully ditched religion; that I still harbor belief in god(s) or hopes of ending up in heaven and not hell when I die. It’s just habit, and an indication of how deeply these expressions, which denote shock, surprise, fear, etcetera, are imbedded in our language. I understand that they just express emotions and that they do not refer to anything that I consider to be unreal such as gods, heaven or hell. By continuing to utter them, I don’t think I’m subconsciously trying to keep a foot in both camps.

On the spectrum of belief in the supernatural, it seems to me that there are atheists like me at one end and, at the other end of the spectrum, there are fully practicing religious believers who organize their lives around religion, some of whom even go around knocking on doors in an effort to convert others to their religion. Between these extremes there are agnostics who just don’t know. I this middle area, I understand that there are also those who call themselves “non-religious but spiritual”. Some of these even say that they don’t believe in anything supernatural and yet they still call themselves “spiritual”.

It may be an indication of my own limitations, but I have trouble getting my head around this section of the middle area of the spectrum. If one does not believe in the supernatural then surely one is an atheist, no? What does it mean, what could it mean, to be a “spiritual” atheist? Is it just trying to keep a foot in both camps? Is there a way to be a spiritual atheist and still maintain a straight face? Are there any spiritual atheists here who could tell us how they manage it?

You cannot really say what is it. Such a thing is a vapourous concept. BUT I'd wager that whatever it is, atheists are probably more in tune with "IT" due to their more accurate appraciation of nature for what it is, and not what is wished for as we find in the delusional theist.
Science give you true wonder and even puzzlement, far better than having all the answers ready made by a fake concept of a"creator"

[Lagayascienza]

Yes, agreed. Our universe is wonderous indeed and there's so much more about it yet to be discovered. I don't see why people need to fill their minds with gods, devils and other almost certainly untrue and disabling concepts. What is true is enough to fill us with awe and wonder and whet our appetite for further discoveries about the universe and our place in it.

[Pattern-chaser]

If you engage reality through any related practice you will eventually come across what is called God...

I will tell you the position isn't necessary along the way...

Notions that God is supernatural are absurd...

It is just the nature of reality itself.

For me, reality is what I can arrive at through logic and what I can apprehend through my sensorium and extensions thereof. If God and the supernatural are absurd (as you say (as I believe they are) as an explanation for the universe, can you explain to me what the "nature of reality itself" is if it is not arrived at through logic and our senses. How can I study and come to understand this reality?

For the first time, I find myself in general agreement with Frank! For me, God is, roughly speaking, "just the nature of reality itself". All is one indivisible Whole, I believe, and God is part of that Whole, as everything is.

But what you say is not easy to comment on, and still remain clear. What I am about to write could seem sarcastic, or worse, but I offer it as a fragment of theatrical exaggeration, a joke-analogy, with only-humorous intent. You seem to have said the equivalent of this:

For me, reality is what is can fix with my Stanley hammer. All mention of mass spectrometers, air-brushes, and snow-ploughs is absurd. If Stanley don't make it, it's not a tool. Can you explain to me how I can come to appreciate fine art, using only 'proper' (i.e. Stanley) tools?

The only tool of which you seem to approve is logic, although I assume you intended to include reason alongside it. And these two suffice for many purposes, but not all. Your toolbox is incompletely stocked. I believe you to be a real human, somewhere in the world. So you participate in the astonishing lunacy of human culture, as we all do.

That participation requires a great deal more than logic, if we are to do it successfully. In fact, in that particular area of 'study', logic is likely useless. Who should be the next President of the United States? Why does Rihanna have so many followers on X/Twitter? Is this new radium-based face-cream guaranteed to improve my complexion? [OK, that's a bit of Victorian lunacy, but there was a time...] Is Banksy really a proper 'artist'? Is an American billionaire really above the law? Is it love that I feel for my new partner, or just infatuation/lust? What if we restore the planet and its ecosystem, and then find out we didn't actually need to? () ... Are there Gods, souls, or spirits?

Emotion and feeling, intuition and imagination, experience and stories, are all styles/tools of thinking that are useful in some circumstances, vital in others. Logic and reason have their uses too. It's not so much about the meaning of life as it is living it. For most of our lives, we are not impartial observers, we are active participants. We don't deny a 5-year-old of Santa and the Tooth Fairy, just because they don't exist, scientifically. There are many ways of looking at the world, and taking part in it, and logic-reason is only one tool, nothing more.

I want to know what is objectively real, which for me is what is logically possible and can be empirically tested.

This is a good description of the incompleteness of your approach, IMO. I do not say that your approach, or your aspirations (as described above) are wrong, but only incomplete (and probably impractical too). And yet I also observe that "objective" truth is next to impossible to achieve, knowingly, if by that you mean that which corresponds without contradiction to 'that which actually is', mind-independently. You yearn for certainty, but the 'real' world, as we experience it, and live in it, is uncertain in many ways, or so it seems to us.



Logic and reason are necessary, but not sufficient, for the purpose of living our lives in our 'real' world. All IMO, of course. HTH?

[FrankSophia]

I must be doing meditation wrong. I get a lot out of it - it's hard to describe but there is a sense of feeling at one with everything, peace, clarity afterwards, but no god. I practice a form of meditation taught to me by devotees of Advaita Vedanta. No god, no soul. Just unity, oneness.

That oneness is God...

For instance Galatians 3:20 asserts it directly...

It doesn't really matter what you call it, but this is what the sages mean by God.

[FrankSophia]

For the first time, I find myself in general agreement with Frank! For me, God is, roughly speaking, "just the nature of reality itself". All is one indivisible Whole, I believe, and God is part of that Whole, as everything is.

I have said God is the whole, you take it to be part of the whole.

For me taking it as a separate entity is the primary mistake of the religious mind.

Every practice is about dissolving all separation, that is how you realize the one.

How can the result of this be another separation?

[Pattern-chaser]

For the first time, I find myself in general agreement with Frank! For me, God is, roughly speaking, "just the nature of reality itself". All is one indivisible Whole, I believe, and God is part of that Whole, as everything is.

I have said God is the whole, you take it to be part of the whole.

For me taking it as a separate entity is the primary mistake of the religious mind.

Every practice is about dissolving all separation, that is how you realize the one.

How can the result of this be another separation?

How did you read "All is one indivisible Whole", and understand "separate"/"separation"? There is no separation, but only one thing, whether we call it the universe, the world, God, or just "everything".

[Lagayascienza]

If you engage reality through any related practice you will eventually come across what is called God...

I will tell you the position isn't necessary along the way...

Notions that God is supernatural are absurd...

It is just the nature of reality itself.

For me, reality is what I can arrive at through logic and what I can apprehend through my sensorium and extensions thereof. If God and the supernatural are absurd (as you say (as I believe they are) as an explanation for the universe, can you explain to me what the "nature of reality itself" is if it is not arrived at through logic and our senses. How can I study and come to understand this reality?

For the first time, I find myself in general agreement with Frank! For me, God is, roughly speaking, "just the nature of reality itself". All is one indivisible Whole, I believe, and God is part of that Whole, as everything is.

But what you say is not easy to comment on, and still remain clear. What I am about to write could seem sarcastic, or worse, but I offer it as a fragment of theatrical exaggeration, a joke-analogy, with only-humorous intent. You seem to have said the equivalent of this:

For me, reality is what is can fix with my Stanley hammer. All mention of mass spectrometers, air-brushes, and snow-ploughs is absurd. If Stanley don't make it, it's not a tool. Can you explain to me how I can come to appreciate fine art, using only 'proper' (i.e. Stanley) tools?

The only tool of which you seem to approve is logic, although I assume you intended to include reason alongside it. And these two suffice for many purposes, but not all. Your toolbox is incompletely stocked. I believe you to be a real human, somewhere in the world. So you participate in the astonishing lunacy of human culture, as we all do.

That participation requires a great deal more than logic, if we are to do it successfully. In fact, in that particular area of 'study', logic is likely useless. Who should be the next President of the United States? Why does Rihanna have so many followers on X/Twitter? Is this new radium-based face-cream guaranteed to improve my complexion? [OK, that's a bit of Victorian lunacy, but there was a time...] Is Banksy really a proper 'artist'? Is an American billionaire really above the law? Is it love that I feel for my new partner, or just infatuation/lust? What if we restore the planet and its ecosystem, and then find out we didn't actually need to? () ... Are there Gods, souls, or spirits?

Emotion and feeling, intuition and imagination, experience and stories, are all styles/tools of thinking that are useful in some circumstances, vital in others. Logic and reason have their uses too. It's not so much about the meaning of life as it is living it. For most of our lives, we are not impartial observers, we are active participants. We don't deny a 5-year-old of Santa and the Tooth Fairy, just because they don't exist, scientifically. There are many ways of looking at the world, and taking part in it, and logic-reason is only one tool, nothing more.

I want to know what is objectively real, which for me is what is logically possible and can be empirically tested.

This is a good description of the incompleteness of your approach, IMO. I do not say that your approach, or your aspirations (as described above) are wrong, but only incomplete (and probably impractical too). And yet I also observe that "objective" truth is next to impossible to achieve, knowingly, if by that you mean that which corresponds without contradiction to 'that which actually is', mind-independently. You yearn for certainty, but the 'real' world, as we experience it, and live in it, is uncertain in many ways, or so it seems to us.



Logic and reason are necessary, but not sufficient, for the purpose of living our lives in our 'real' world. All IMO, of course. HTH?

You make it sound as though I've said that logic, reason and empiricism are all there is to life. But that is not what I have said, nor what I think. Far from it. My comments in the Philosophy of Art section and elsewhere should have made this clear.

In my posts I do speak often to the question of what is true and how we can discover what is true. In this respect, I argue for logic, reason and empiricism as our best tools. But, in your post above, you construct a strawman. You exaggerate what I have said in an attempt to show that I overrate the use of logic, reason and empiricism as tools for discovering what is true, and you infer that they are all I care about. I do not overrate them and I care about much more. I simply state that they are indispensable in finding out what is true and for making sure we don't fool ourselves in the process. In this they have indeed proven to be our very best tools. They have enabled us to discover an enormous amount about the universe and our place in it. For example, do you think that we would know that a hydrogen atom contains one proton and one electron in any other way. Or even that there are such entities as atoms? Knowing the structure of atoms and how they work would have been impossible without logic, reason and the empirical testing of theories. Chemistry, all our modern technology, and much more, depend on us knowing these sorts of facts. There's no point asking imaginary gods to tell us these truths. But I do agree that intuition and imagination can certainly be useful in constructing and testing theories of reality. One simply cannot do science without imagination. Without imagination one could not come up with scientific theories in the first place that could then be tested empirically to find out what is true. And, of course, all answers that science provides are provisional. We accept scientific theories only until they fail to match data or fail in predicting phenomena. Science, unlike religion, does not pretend to absolute infallibility

I agree that knowing what is true, and knowing how to find out what is true, are not all there is to life. But I have nowhere said that they are. I have just said that logic, reason and empiricism are the best tools we have for finding out what is true about the universe and that includes much of what is true about us as part of the universe. But, of course, there is much that is important to us that science science cannot tell us. As an example, whilst science, in the form of evolutionary psychology, explains the evolution and function of human morality, it cannot tell us what is morally right or wrong. We have to work that out with reference to our moral sentiments. (Some refer to imaginary god for this) And there are, similarly in art and aesthetics, things that science cannot tell us. For that we must rely on our evolved but varying aesthetic sensibilities. This means that there are no right and wrong answers in aesthetics. We can't ask science whether Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is a better painting than Vincent's A Starry Night. So, whilst science is our best method for finding out what is true, not everything in life is about what is true. And not everything in life can be true or false. Some things are simply not "truth apt" as they say. And I have never said otherwise.

[Belindi]

"spiritual" seems to imply the same as belief in a supernatural order of being, together with a mental exercise such as advaita vedanta, or robust scepticism, or aesthetic experience(please see Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa).
The idea of reality itself is a notion of God that is not a personification of God and as such may be regarded by some as atheistic. Experience itself is the only undeniable reality. That Lagayscieza experiences something that may be God or ultimate reality is undeniable. Also It's undeniable that I experienced belief in what I just wrote. Experience is the final truth about reality.

[Sy Borg]

But isn't that just making stuff up? I don't want to do that. I want to know what is objectively real, which for me is what is logically possible and can be empirically tested. If there is a spiritual "basis of reality" that is accessed by other means as some assert, I'd like to know about this basis of reality and how it is accessed. I want to know how one can be a "spiritual atheist" which, to me, seems like a contradiction.

Yes. If you want spirituality, you can't be passive. It doesn't just come to you but you have to actively engage your imagination. It seems that "imagination" is out of favour today, not only in the arts that are becoming ever more derivative, but many people cannot allow themselves to indulge in a private moment of mental mayhem, as if Big Brother was watching. I know. I was, and am, similarly straitjacketed (for now).

The fact that we have the evolved capacity to create God in our minds is objectively real. The rest of spirituality appears to be up for grabs - unknowable, unprovable and, based on current knowledge, unlikely.

[FrankSophia]

How did you read "All is one indivisible Whole", and understand "separate"/"separation"? There is no separation, but only one thing, whether we call it the universe, the world, God, or just "everything".

"God is part of that Whole"

[Lagayascienza]

I find it strange how some people think that it's up to those who dispute a claim to disprove a negative. For example, I don't believe claims such as "there is a pink teapot in orbit around Mars". I believe for many sound reasons that this claim is vanishingly unlikely to be true. And if someone then turns around and says, but you cannot prove it's not true, I don't feel it's up to me to prove it's not true. It's up to the person making the extraordinary claim to provide evidence for it. Saying simply that nobody cannot prove it is not true, is no argument in favor of the claim, and no reason for agnosticism on the issue. As I see it, it's the same for claims about gods, fairies, ESP, astrology, etcetera. If people want to convince others of the likely truth of such extraordinary claims the best way to do so is to provide evidence for them. They are never able to do so because there is no such evidence, and just saying, well, you cannot prove fairies are not true, is no argument at all. It's just a philosophically bad move. And it's childish.

[Gee]

And it's childish.

Oooh! Tell us how you really feel.

Gee