God is a Metaphor

Re: # 154

Zeemax , I noticed you ignored my last post as well as Raw_Dust question. Just wondering since you are on the topic of disgust. Does a 54 yr old man marrying and having a sexual relationship with a nine year old while having other ongoing sexual relationship sound pleasing to you. If a 54 yr old devout Muslim proposed to your seven year old niece would it delight you. Would you attend the Nikah and have a Suhaag ki Raat for them. Please answer.

GT:
Gill was talking about postmodernism (not ``science``) which is a niche-subject considering the grand scheme of things (``Philosophy``) starting from Socrates. The question you should be asking Khurram is whether the philosophical enterprise starting from Socratic dialogues till Russell and Wittgenstein et al. that concerns itself crudely speaking about ``What is Good`` and ``What is Beautiful`` without referring to the dogmatic ``Truths`` is also an exercise in futility?

rephrasing it a bit:
Can there be a way to define Good and Evil without referring to some guy`s Idea of what he thought divinely sanctioned definition of ``Good``? i.e., without bringing ``GOD`` into the equation?

later

PS: [i remember the russell paradox]

I came across this last week in Thomas Mann`s DR. FAUSTUS, thought it`s kinda relevant:


``I should be sorry, after what I have said, to be taken for an utterly irreligious man. That I am not, for I go with Schleiermacher, another Halle magician, who defined religion as ``feeling and taste for the Infinite`` and called it ``a pertinent fact,`` present in the human being. In other words, the science of religion has to do not with philosophical theses, but with an inward and given psychological fact. And that reminds me of the ontological evidence for the existence of God, which has always been my favorite, and which from the subjective idea of a Highest Being derives His objective existence. But Kant has shown in the most forthright words that such a thesis cannot support itself before the bar of reason. Science, however, cannot get along without reason; and to want to make a science out of a sense of the infinite and the eternal mysteries is to compel two spheres fundamentally foreign to each other to come together in a way that is in my eyes most unhappy and productive only of embarrassment. Surely a religious sense, which I protest is in no way lacking in me, is something other than positive and formally professed religion. Would it not have been better to hand over that ``fact`` of human feeling for the infinite to the sense of piety, the fine arts, free contemplation, yes, even to exact research, which as cosmology, astronomy, theoretical physics, can serve this feeling with religious devotion to the mystery of creation - instead of singling it out as the science of the spirit and developing on it structures of dogma, whose orthodox believers will then shed blood for a copula?``

Re: # 163

The `science of religion` is hogwash.

Religion would nt exist if not for the organised brain wash engaged in, by people who have been not only brain washed themselves, but probably stand to gain from such acts as well.

If not for religious brain washing of children were abandoned, religion and god will die within years if not months.

All religions depend on brainwashing youngsters for their survival.

Re: # 132

Hello Zeemax, First of all thanks for clearing which sentence of article you are talking about and what point you are making.

So my straight answer is they are right about their struggle.

why i am saying so.
Since i believe what dr. Sohail said, and i also give you one example. One more thing, God name has been used for this purpose, but if we see from the Darwin`s Theory point of view we can better look into this how all this happen and it is not because some divine scripture that you do these things,
and if it so What Egypt was doing, actually they were also obeying some divine scripture so how you can defend them.

One more thing, how we can do some test editing while writing, can you help me in this regards

Thanks.

Fine. Deny god all you want ...

There is a downside to being an atheist though.
You have no one to talk to what you are getting a blowjob ...

There, I have said it. This should end the debate for at least half of us …

@ zeemax,

``My position is that morality springs from ancient scriptures, and not mental growth and cultural evolution``.


People can be moral without learning it from scriptures.

Take stealing, for example:
Basic instinct would have you steal.
REASONING would make you stop, because that would hurt someone else, and continue the cycle.

Or are you saying that if it wasn`t for scriptures, then people would have continued to steal from one another unchecked? How can that state of affairs continue to work? Would`nt the ensuing mayhem automatically force people to stop and reconsider?

I srongly submit that it would. Not all of us need scriptures that need to tell us which way to face, whilst having a shit. (No offense meant. I just think it`s absurd).

---

@ sattar2,

Have you never heard of a 3-some; or a 4-some; or a 5-some?
You only need one female to give you a BJ. The other girls can talk... or recite.

;-)

---

Regarding having sex with a close female relative:
I`ve always found my close female relatives to be UGLY and REPULSIVE!
Yet I have been told that they are VERY nice looking!

This `feeling` seems to apply to most us, if we are given the freedom to choose.
All of us, prefer someone DIFFERENT.
Just because people tell us, that inbreeding is wrong, doesn`t mean that our genes didn`t know this from millions of years ago.

The whole evolutionary process can only proceed if it`s allowed to diversify.


Marrying first cousins:
Marrying first cousins has fuck all to do with preference and it being `acceptable`. Kids are forced into them; Usually to keep the family`s monetary/bodily `assets`. (bahain).

Re: # 167

How do you edit your posts at CHOWK?
Is there a guide on how to add bb code etc?

I srongly submit that it would, should read :

I strongly submit that it would

sattar:
i get mad-retarded in those moments, i can`t even think straight, let alone to call up my imaginary buddies from childhood. (but i got you)

Aricle with some brief exposition of abstractness but sufferred from pshycological dilemma of falling fr the same trap mr.Sohail accused less abstract minds fall for when they try to literally interpret God and his doings.

God is on average a largely misunderstood cleche and not strictly a scientific metaphor. Only if linguistic diversification is an outcome of metaphor, indeed then word god is a metaphor symbolising a phenonmenon.

Unfortunately Law, legal or social, follows law of averages. If every one is so logical to understand the abstract philosophy of God and not only that but act in the society with utmost coordination and good faith, no authoritarian cleche`s and interpretations to the Man`s intellectual contact to Nature (GOD) be needed.

As a researcher one needs to look into patterns to understand the emphasis on theology in older times which ended up being one of the key contributions to human society and its developments (I am talking about prophets: again a metaphor in the context of this discussion).

Now if athiest believes in nature in contemprary times he believe in God (the misunderstood cleche cum metaphor). Nature is an expression which brings more such Words, expressions and feelings only to define the abstract phenomenon in a different yet more scientific manner.



The expressions ``Messenger of God`` or message of God sounds the same as law of nature or natural event.

Now God /Nature does not work in complex and mostly contradictory manner but human society does follow exactly such trends. Less scientific mind or a scientific mind but a politically twisted mind may manipulate, complicate, misrepresent or confuse simple ideas for some self interest. A quality exercised by most human beings irrespective of power or no power, and this is just one of the practices of futile complexities, just as a matter of routine, one may witness every day.

I listen to Bulle shah, and his poetry shows that his abstract understanding about life was something of extraordinary stature and exceptionally well defined. He was a philosopher of extreme logic. Now if every human being reaches this level I agree with Mr. sohail humans would not need to practice less abstract, much defined, many times repressive and mostly confined ways to reason nature.

I agree these days scientific innovation has helped many of us to have a well developed understanding of GOD. But first only few could benefit but most still live in repressed environments where explaintions of their plight are merely utterances of confusion not only by the repressed ones themselves, be it the repression of mind or body, but the confusion entail socalled doctors of the system too.

So in my view believing in nature is again believing in the metaphor God, which is a philosophy of life, rather than an identity, but mostly embracing the new cleche/and less of a metaphor than GOD is understadning the secrets of this universe and our own existence though in a less abstarct manner than what some thing a poet like Bulle shah would believe in.

So let us not confuse God the metaphor while trying to make a comparison of philosophy and ignorance, and our behavioral constraints which makes many of us less logical sometimes consiously and sometimes unconciously.

Regarding your article God is a Metaphor, true, I too learnt metaphors in language class, English language to be exact. Not from psychiatry books, and never from psychology books. Though why should you make it seem as if ” concrete” was directly opposite to a “metaphor”! There could be variations of softer image in the “ concrete “reality . However a metaphor does take away the heavy weight from such words like “ faith” and’belief’! If you take away the ‘concrete’ way of looking at certain higher thought; faith and belief start flying around like mere clouds around a simple ‘metaphor’! Now I’m really interested in the use of “abstract Thinking” as a measure of mental and emotional maturity. Really now there otta be a proper psychological test to ascertain whether a patient can take it. I mean if a patient is really mature and Can take it when he is told the truth about say, a fatal disease! Just See how people blindly follow the demands of modernity. They all wear a certain “positive-ness” and as if it is a fashion they challenge the Doctor, “ C’mon Doc, tell me how long do I have to live!” and the doctor just as main stream, honestly tells the patient how short he is expected to live. Then the carefully cultivated veneer of being positive, collapses. The patient is a nervous wreck. Each sign and symptom is that of impending death. How many deaths will such anxious patients die! ? Such patients who we couldn’t see through behind their apparent maturity modernity and even responsibility, attitude? Imagine what-happens to the family who depend upon such personalities, life has such a flat effect when such charming personalities, crash and agonisingly go into oblivion....

Re: # 171
dear foggy1....can you share your belief about GOD.....and HIS/HER role in your life and

how your philosophy is different than the belief of family and community you grew up in....

sincerely sohail

Dr Sohail,

Great article, thanks

Re: # 173
rf786...thanks for the appreciation....sohail

Enjoyed this deeply. What I`d like to add is also that no matter whether we see ourselves as believers or unbelievers, agnostic or atheist, we create God. It isn`t just the prophets who create God, but we all do. God is not just an abstract idea of an external entity, it is a name for what we do not know. How we react to the unknown, with what courage we face uncertainty, how we do it, is our definition of God. The definition of a personal God, overlooking our lives, (like an icon on our desktop) helps to connect with our deepest sense of self and consciousness. Religion is delightful because it is like a riddle to solve the great mystery of life--which is a gigantic puzzle about the nature of physical, mental and spiritual reality. I hope that before I die, I am one step closer to experiencing my true self. I know that it does not lie within this body, but somewhere close, like a computer program is distributed between interfaces and memories, I too am distributed in the various experiences of mind, body and emotions. Perhaps spirit is the synergy between these. To find ourselves is to find God. Different religions have a different myth but the connecting feature is spirit. There are many such ideas and features e.g.:
1. Spirit
2. The idea of goodness
3. The idea of sacrifice
4. The idea of being irrevocably connected to God.
5. The experience of love
6. The sense of separation from the True One

Re: # 175
Dear Saimashah...thank you for your thoughtful comments. When you use the word `spirit`

are you using it as the essence of human beings or as a separate`entity` that existed before

birth and will survive after death. What do you consider the basis of your life choices...your

own experiences and your own truth or faith in religious doctrines presented by prophets

hundreds of years ago as their truth? thanks once again....sincerely sohail