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There is no evidence to show that man was created and accoutred to serve as God's viceregent upon the earth.
There is no reason to believe that he is naturally good and kind, brave and wise -- or that he ever was.
On the contrary, there is much to show that he was a beast who took a strange turning in the jungle and blundered rather aimlessly into a mental world in which he was certainly not at home.
There is much evidence that man is by nature cruel, cowardly, lustful, avaricious and treacherous.
He holds dominion over these terrible internal enemies and defends against the other predators (his fellow men) by virtue of his ferocity, his cunning and his indomitable will.
This is his beauty and his significance: that out of the blind primordial forces of sex and the survival urge, he has forged reason and science and spun the splendorous web of art and love.
If there is no other reason and no other significance, man himself has on occasion created reason and significance, standing as the maker of his gods in a garden made fruitful by his own creative power.
We think in terms of ourselves relative to the external universe.
It cannot be shown, however, that this external universe is other than an extension of our own perception.
But if we differentiate the internal from the external, we are still part of and not separate from the entire process of nature.
We are made from the nova by way of the sun and built from the air, the rock and the sea, animated by the primordial fire of life.
There are filaments in our consciousness that reach back to the first ancestor and extend to all other men and all other life with which we share a common creation and a common destiny.
Here is the totality that the Greeks called "Pan"; all-devourer, all-begetter -- life and death, good and evil, pain and pleasure, unity, duality and multiplicity; all things and beyond all things.
The Soul of Night and the Stars.
If in our folly and fear we will ascribe moral qualities to the lightning that strikes, to the star that shines, to the tiger that kills, then we will not hesitate to assign them also to the woman who gives and the man who takes.
Thus we will define god and found a religion.
And thus we degrade the living universe into a bewhiskered and irascible character endowed with immortal omnipotence and a hatred for our enemies, or with those nature lovers who catch cold communing with "The All" in the park at night, we sink into the platitudinous sitz baths of various 'religious science’ systems on our way to the catalepsy of middle age.
All nature partakes of the eternal sacraments of life and death, of ebb and flow, of creation and destruction and regeneration.
These are the harmonies of eternity that change forever and never change.
The cry of the baby is echoed in the tumult of the nova.
Men suns and seasons pass and return again.
The spate of semen is one with the jet of stars men call The Milky Way.
The mind that comprehends these immortal processes in love and in worship is an immortal mind that soars beyond time and death.
We are of one age with Aeschylus and Sophocles and Shakespeare, of one blood with Moses, Lao Tse and Newton.
The body changes and decays while time cuckolds all shapes of desire and all transient things.
But the shapes of desire, although transient, are the very vehicles of man's adventure.
He cannot attain by denying these steeds but by strengthening them -- by training and bridling them with love and creative will until their wings are revealed.
Sex and hunger are the raw stuff of art.
Out of his passion, fury and despair the artist transmutes the shapes of terror and wonder into an eternal beauty.
All ways are the right way when will and love are the guides.
The grace and bounty of life are free to all, saint and sinner alike, who desire them.
The voice of the wind, the poignancy of music, the shout of thunder all cry out to man, daring him to know himself.
Sunlight, sea and stars and the splendour of a naked woman are the signs and witnesses of a covenant that is forever.
We know these things; we know them with the only certainty that is ever given us.
This is the beautiful-pitiable knowledge of childhood and first youth -- that the world denies and necessity circumvents.
This is the knowledge of the poets, artists and singes who are beloved and outcast by men and of the mystics whom the world calls mad.
And man, self-castrated and self-frustrated, flees down the corridors of nightmare, pursued by monstrous machines, overwhelmed by satanic powers, haunted by vague guilts and terrors -- all created out of his own imagination.
He escapes into absurdity, drowns his spirit in pretense, worships brass gods of power and tin gods of success.
Then, shamed by his pretenses and frustrated by his self-denial, he projects his horror on imagined enemies, seeks release in scapegoats and false issues, thereby propitiating those bestial gods who have arisen from the shattered eidolons of his spirit with sacrifices of blood.
Nothing is of its nature, evil -- and nothing is of its nature, good.
Evil is only excess; good is simply balance.
All things are subject to abuse and likewise susceptible to beneficial use.
Balance does not consist in denial or excess in indulgence.
Balance can only be obtained by exceeding.
The elemental forces in man's nature are so tremendous that they can only be balanced by an ultimate self-expression.
To place limitations and restrictions on this nature is to build a wall of plaster around a sun.
If we clip an eagles’ wings or feed carrots to a lion we will not uplift or improve either species.
The fundamental purpose of religion is to attain an identity with a power which we believe to be greater than ourselves, whose omnipotence and immortality we can share.
Having achieved some sense of this identity, we then feel that we can cope with problems and attain ends with more confidence.
The reliance on religion as well as the reliance on property can indicate a lack of self-reliance.
We ourselves create this 'God of Power’.
It is from our own individual 'self' that his power is drawn and this self is greater than any god which it creates.
Therefore to know ourselves is the highest form of wisdom and to believe in ourselves is the highest form of faith.
Science which seeks to know and art which seeks to interpret are two forms of love which constitute the only availing way of worship.
That these two greatest expressions of the human spirit should be subservient to religion, politics, nationalism and war is the ultimate blasphemy.
We are now in the midst of a tremendous battle of forces contending for domination over the mind and spirit of man.
It is not, unfortunately, a battle between good and evil, between freedom and tyranny but rather a struggle of dogma against dogma and authority vs. authority.
The contenders are fascism and communism.
Each is a doctrine alien and hostile to the ideal of freedom.
Each says that we must choose between one or the other and each is, in reality, identical.
Each demands the absolute enslavement of the individual, the abnegation of the intellect and the subjugation of the will.
The authoritarian is right, absolutely right, so right that every extreme of falsehood, suppression and tyranny is justified in the accomplishment of his 'divine' ends.
Behind his benevolent paternalism lurks the star chamber and the concentration camp; behind his morality looms the stake and the inquisition of the "Old Time Religion" so many profess to long for.
All these systems are old; older than human history.
Freedom and democracy are the only new things under the sun and they offend alike the slaves and the slave masters.
"Come unto me," goes the old harlot's song.
"Come unto me you weary and heavily laden.
Surrender your intolerable burden of freedom and I will fill your mouths with miracles and your bellies will be full of food.
Come with me and I will confound your enemies and show you paradise.
Look, you do not even have to change a name, only keep the letter and deny the spirit, for the letter giveth life."
She is harvesting the nations now, that old whore, for an appointment in the place called Armageddon.
There will be a hunting of free men in the name of freedom and there will be prisons and pogroms in the name of democracy, murder and slavery in the name of brotherhood, and all for the sake of dominion over the minds and bodies of men.
There is a choice: the choice of freedom which has no other name and no other cause.
Man, freed of his demons, without the need of a dogma or the use of a creed, can, of and by himself, avail, triumph and achieve significance.
This is the faith of a liberal; belief in himself and belief in man.
There is no other way to the full status of manhood.
It is the long way, the hard way; through trial, error, failure and heartbreak -- but it is the way guided by science and inspired by art; leading at long last to the stars.
This is our choice: we may believe in ourselves, believe in our fellow men and in freedom and in brotherhood.
We may start to achieve here and now that paradise which has so long been relegated to the hereafter.
Or, with the dogmatists, the positivists, the authoritarians we can return again to the ape-hood from which we have so late arisen.
If we wish identity with a greater power, let us seek union with ourselves -- our total self, raised to its highest potential of wisdom, knowledge and experience.
If we wish to unite with the universe, let us court the whole of nature, all experience, all truth and the splendour of the awesome cosmos itself.
For 'out there' lies the great campaign that comes first and last; the ultimate adventure of the individual into himself.
He must go down like Moses into his unknown self, out into the new dimension, out with Orpheus and the barque of Arthur, with Tammuz and Adonis, with Mithra and Jesus, into the labyrinths of the Dark Land.
There he will meet The Mother and hear Her final question:
"What is man?".
Thereafter, close by the heart of the cryptic Mother, he may find the Graal; ultimate consciousness, total remembrance, instinct made certain, reason made real.
For it is he, wonderful monster, embryo god who has swum in the fish, shed the skin of the crocodile, peered from the eyes of serpents, swung with the apes and shaken the earth with tramp of the tyrannosaur's hoof.
It is he who has cried out on all crosses, ruled on all thrones, grubbed in all gutters.
It is he whose face is reflected and distorted in all heavens and hells -- he, the Child of the Stars, the son of the ocean; this creature of dust, this wonder and terror called MAN.
This series of posts will insure that these free thinkers' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
There is a reason these books are not taught in the modern skools.
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I have heard before this supposition that man creates God(s). I find it unconvincing, no matter the florid language it is expressed in. We know with surety man fabricates all manner of falsehoods, and polities subjugate minions expertly and without ceasing.
But the universe is here, within and without, and none claims men have crafted it. The heavens themselves declare the glory of God, and what men say is fraught with falsehoods, hemmed by hubris, diverting always from knowledge to produce political power. Men clamor for lies but the truth is heard in silence.
Thanks!
Why would there have to be a 'god', perhaps the universe has rules without hierarchies.
We are a product of the rules, no need for some omnipotent ruler to oversee us.
We just are, as the universe just is.
No gods, no masters.
IF god did exist s/he would have to be destroyed, unless s/he granted us our freedom.
Which does appear to me to be the case.
Perhaps the explanation that everything is a cosmic coincidence is the worse of the two. While God is undefinable, just like the universe (uni = all in one) is undefinable, since we know neither its origin nor its space. Making a person out of God seems as nonsensical to me as making the universe a bunch of randomly colliding bodies.
Although the destruction of God is in full swing and very successful, an existence without God is merely depressing. To believe that we can explain the creation of the universe by an explosion seems to me to be a superstition. It leaves us with nothing but a fearful existence, after which all the planets drift apart and leave us in eternal darkness. I share the view that we are all God, like the widely dispersed parts of a soul unable to remember itself, but in constant search of it. If we destroy this, it means destroying ourselves. Similarly, just as parents do not have an omnipotent influence over their children, however hard they try, they cannot precisely direct their paths. Therefore, children who, as adults, do not refrain from accusing their parents of their misdemeanours and omissions are as futile as accusing God.
As close as I could come to some kind of philosophical basis.
I'll stick to 'All I know is that I'm wrong about what I know.' I know that's true.
Thank you.
That is helpful in being in conversation about external topics, in particular in the natural sciences. I very much share it.
It is less helpful to find a stand within a relationship, though.
There, I need better to know what I want, what my goals are, what I need to take responsibility for. Or, to put it differently, to make a strong commitment to my man or woman and those near me (or far away friends).
This separation mindwarp that the controllers of the ideas allowed to us have put on us has left us blind to the reality of nature around us, imo.
When we shut out the reality of magnetic/electric influence on our own magnetic/electric resonances, finding solutions is near impossible.
This explains why control freaks would restrict the knowledge of that to us, they don't want us to escape their plans.
But, should we remember that we are all one with all the other stardust around us then so many questions go away.
There is no need to answer the questions about is there a god, there is only the need to follow the rules set for our selves by the magnetic resonant frequencies around us.
Some people are naturally, organically, correctly serial killers, while others are intended to be their victims.
Were we 'god' we could decide who is whom and what to do about that, but, as we are equally stardust to those around us we have no authority to do so.
We can only make the choices for ourselves.
I can't write my rules down and force them onto you, nor you me, nor can we delegate to some other an authority which we don't have.
'All authority comes from the barrel of a gun.'
Mao Tse-tung
Ergo, all authority is false.
I challenge that notion. How I see it, it directly results from thinking of God equal to a human being. But if you try not to define God as a person and see him not as omnipotent, you cannot by any means decide who is whom and what to do about that. The idea of omnipotence is very human. But as parents cannot fully predetermine the life-path of their children, we cannot determine the path of our cells in our bodies. If I were able to control them, I might become immortal. Since I can't, I find it easy to say that even though everyone is God, omnipotence cannot be present. Though potency is.
Magnetic resonance frequencies give me no indication of humanly rules. As we are relational beings and put ourselves in each other's shoes, there are no human rules to be found in electromagnetic frequencies. You don't talk that way every day, don't you? At most, I find linguistic confusion. The term "human" does not need to be replaced by other terms, it is as appropriate as it is old.
I answer that that's an incorrect logic.
I am a parent. I have authority over my young child. No gun involved. You need authority since the infant depends on it.
Now, because a lot of practiced authority goes into the wrong direction (putting the barrel of a gun towards one) it is a mistake to deny authority altogether. If you don't have authority, you cannot be free. That does not mean that your authority is omnipresent and omnipotent, right?
If you think the idea of "no authority" to the end, don't you find eventually out that it cannot be thought nor lived without it?
To hand over the ultimate authority to God is a very elegant move, I think, since we humans have found out that we cannot be the leaders of everyone on earth, since we are not infallible. To put the ultimate authority into God puts into perspective what we can and what we cannot. Now, if you take God out of the picture, all what is left is us. If you kill the ideal, all what comes after it, is less ideal, in fact, it becomes weaker and weaker since every following sub-ideal is replaced by another sub-ideal; until you cannot call it an ideal any longer. Where we are at, the new age of a confused language, if you ask me.
We certainly do, and in fact, cannot NOT do that.
Yes, for ourselves, but not for others.
Others must come to their own conclusions.
I we let them.
That is what the masters want you to think.
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I can't say that I definitively know one way or the other, but I will side with the side that provides maximum freedom for me.
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We are what we are because the universe is what it is. The universe is not what it is because we are what we are. It's sort of narcissistic to consider things otherwise IMHO. It's plainly obvious that the universe has a suite of rules and hierarchies, of which we know so little we suppose that most of it is dark energy and matter. We clearly aren't capable of perceiving it as it is, and profitably accord us little capacity to conceive of what it actually is.
All I am certain of is that anyone certain of anything being a certain way is absolutely wrong, and that includes me about that.
We change the universe by perceiving it.
Symbiotic when we agree and the opposite when we don't.
Dysbiotic?
There isn't a good antonym to symbiotic.
What's up with that?
We exist to do what we do, only we can decide what that will be, imo.
We can abdicate the responsibility of making our own choice by letting others do it for us, but the consequences will still fall on us.
Try on antagonistic. There are a variety of words that convey meanings opposite to symbiotic, that may better fit your use case. Personally, I like agonistic, a term I learned researching vaccines for a vaccine component intended to rouse the immune system so that it can become competent to alert on the active component of a vaccine, that accompanies the agonist. Symbiotic refers to a specific biological relationship, not physics more generally, and synonyms for what you mean by symbiotic in terms of physics may more precisely specify such relationships and be more clearly specified by particular antonyms.
I don't see how. Our perceptions are part and parcel of the universe. All I can see that can change through our perception is our conception, but that is clearly also part of the universe and as predictable as any other phenomenon. This is why I wrassled with the characterization of events as variable depending on whether or not we perceived them until I felt I had properly understood such perception and refuted such characterization satisfactorily. A bunch of woo woo spewed from Quantum physicists that claimed observing photons shot through slits changed their behaviour, when in fact the act of observing them entailed affecting them physically, which is what actually changed their behaviour.
While I completely agree we have free will, that doesn't mean our actions can't be predictable by those possessing fuller understanding of us and our environment. All my free will actions can be completely ordained by some scheming supergenius that has prepared the milieu in which I make decisions without my knowledge without affecting my freedom to make such decisions. There are analogies in research into consciousness using slime molds, where researchers create environments with certain features, such as food being concentrated in regions with trails of glucose leading to the food, that reveal slime molds learn and make decisions. The fact that researchers repeating this experiment will expect slime molds to take certain actions doesn't change the experience of the slime molds making those decisions.
Edit:
I recall Neil Peart of Rush making a definitive statement in the song 'Freewill' on this matter, writing the line 'We can choose not to decide, but we still have made the choice.'
https://wikiless.org/wiki/Observer_effect
There are more than just that one example.
What point is there to having a god, if your behavior doesn't change from being aware of being observed?
From that link, and agreeing with my prior research, and what I stated above:
There's no woo woo, magical change we effect by perceiving. We use instruments, such as bouncing particles off of other particles, in the process of observation, and these, obviously, affect our targets of observation.
Edit: regarding God, I also stated this above:
Nothing better understanding of the subject doesn't make entirely predictable is portended by these presents.
The fundamental purpose of religion is to fill the gap between the human and the supposed creator, which they imagine greater than all.