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What does it mean to be spiritual? (1)


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6 hours ago, romansh said:

What strategies have you tried to answer the question of the existence of panentheism?

I tend to rely on logic and intuition- two totally unreliable strategies! 😆

6 hours ago, romansh said:

It sounds a little like akay's omnipresent god but without some Islamic attributes.

Yep, other than it comes with a clear disclaimer - i.e. “I have no idea of it’s veracity!”

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18 hours ago, PaulS said:

I tend to rely on logic and intuition

I did not think of these as strategies per se.

For example, logic is setting up axioms and seeing where the logic leads us. Of course the logic is not always intuitive.

p 1 a panentheism god is love and in everything or of everything.
p 2 do we find love in everything?

conclusion ... if we don't think love is in everything (eg cancers, various vicious parasites) then we can dismiss a panentheistic god/love (or play semantic games with what we mean by love and consider a panentheistic god of love a possibility). Personally I don't see creation as loving though bits of the animal world appear to be.

What other properties of a panentheistic god might we consider?

 

And to keep vaguely on topic, from Gulley's #4

Quote

Still, I know how these things work. If God did that to Vladimir Putin, then someone else would come along who would annoy me, and I’d ask God to kill them too

My objection is not that he he has a hope that someone might do something about Putin, (I have that too), but that he would pray for it. He will likely happily point out god does now work that way etc. The question for me is, does god work in anyway? I must admit i find his blog on spirituality a little vacuous. 

Any idea what he means by spiritual, other than everyone can have their own concept of what it actually is? I still don't have a clear picture.

 

 

Edited by romansh
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11 hours ago, romansh said:

I did not think of these as strategies per se.

For example, logic is setting up axioms and seeing where the logic leads us. Of course the logic is not always intuitive.

p 1 a panentheism god is love and in everything or of everything.
p 2 do we find love in everything?

conclusion ... if we don't think love is in everything (eg cancers, various vicious parasites) then we can dismiss a panentheistic god/love (or play semantic games with what we mean by love and consider a panentheistic god of love a possibility). Personally I don't see creation as loving though bits of the animal world appear to be.

What other properties of a panentheistic god might we consider?

I don't think 'God is love' is a necessary requirement for panentheism, but indeed it is an axiom that perhaps many would come up with.  For what it's worth, I can't imagine God being nothing but love - if one could ever accurately capture what that means.  To me, love is an emotion and when we describe love we can also be talking about lying, deceit, punitive action to persuade, etc.  But rather than judging creation as loving or not, I do presently see it as just 'being'.  Perhaps that's what a panentheistic God could be - a God that just 'is'?  

Of course this itself could be an axiom, so maybe we are no closer to the truth, but I have to admit it is beyond me what other strategies there may be determine the answer.

For me, I can only imagine such a God to be an existence and to be experiencing the universe unfolding perhaps.  I don't imagine a panentheistic to be an observer, but rather an experiencer of what is within it.  But again, this is not my held belief - I just find it a bit easier to imagine than most other concepts of God.

11 hours ago, romansh said:

And to keep vaguely on topic, from Gulley's #4

My objection is not that he he has a hope that someone might do something about Putin, (I have that too), but that he would pray for it. He will likely happily point out god does now work that way etc. The question for me is, does god work in anyway? I must admit i find his blog on spirituality a little vacuous. 

Any idea what he means by spiritual, other than everyone can have their own concept of what it actually is? I still don't have a clear picture.

Yeah, I have to admit that this topic didn't really go anywhere for me.  I've really enjoyed a lot of his other sermons, and I thought this one might go down a useful route.  But like you, I'm none the wiser as to how he defines spiritual.

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8 hours ago, PaulS said:

For me, I can only imagine such a God to be an existence and to be experiencing the universe unfolding perhaps.  I don't imagine a panentheistic to be an observer, but rather an experiencer of what is within it. 

A fellow experiencer? I am having difficulty distinguishing observing and experiencing something. OK observing something is generally light related, but we experience sound, touch, taste, smell, plus others. So what do we think are the properties of this experiencer? Here we can test this concept a la Sagan's Dragon.

Or are you referring to our own sense of consciousness with respect to experience?

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11 hours ago, romansh said:

A fellow experiencer? I am having difficulty distinguishing observing and experiencing something. OK observing something is generally light related, but we experience sound, touch, taste, smell, plus others. So what do we think are the properties of this experiencer? Here we can test this concept a la Sagan's Dragon.

Maybe, maybe, instead of observing 'us' doing stuff as though God is separate to the universe, somehow the universe is part of God and our experience is the experience for God?  I feel that is different to observing vs experiencing.

Sagan's Dragon isn't really helpful - it just makes the point that without being able to prove or disprove something, we are free to let our imaginations run free.  I fully agree with that.  But science also used to be convinced that the sun rotated around the earth, that there were canals on Mars, and that we were born with our minds a blank slate.  What I mean is, just because something cannot be proved now doesn't mean that it won't be.  Frustrating to be sure, but it stands.

11 hours ago, romansh said:

Or are you referring to our own sense of consciousness with respect to experience?

My own conscious experience at one level, but then the panentheistic God's experience of my experience, which is actually God's experience in its entirety. :)

Maybe the panetheistic God is like a mother ship - comprising of a zillion souls that experience the universe as all sorts of different atoms, only to eventually return with that experience now included in the entirety that is God?  Maybe we don't know that we are actually part of God experiencing the universe unfolding, but one day we will realize it?

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