I'm not an atheist, at least not the modern western kind with the associated beliefs that the Universe is a brute fact, and we are just biological robots with no afterlife and simply create our own meanings to our lives. I do not think we have compelling reasons, or frankly any reasons, to believe any of this.
But I also reject this idea that there is this cosmic superhero type of God who is all powerful and tinkers with the laws of nature to bring about desirable ends. That is, I do not believe in the type of "God" that atheists tend to focus on and ridicule.
I'm not sure what I do believe, I only have a vague feeling. I think such a question is perhaps beyond what we human beings can understand or discern.
But, if pressed, I would say that I tend to gravitate towards the idea that there is a fundamental non-personal ‘spiritual presence’ that pervades and suffuses the entirety of reality. That reality as a whole is somehow infused with this conscious presence that we all somehow partake in. And that all conscious creatures -- indeed all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be -- is infused with ultimate meaning. But what such an ultimate meaning is eludes us in our present states.
I have had a life long inner dialog. I have at different points in my life thought of God in the fundi Christian old man in the sky sense. Of course that didn't hold up. But in admitting the "just so" stories of the church were unlikely it still didn't make sense that we were simply a cosmic accident and that Hitler in such a world could be ultimately no more "evil" than Churchill. So I have come to a place where I still pray and meditate. I think that consciousnes is the fundamental reality and that we are eternal expressions of that conscious and in my opinion personal well of being. I know it's a ramble. And I believe I could articulate it better than I have. But I somewhat agree with you. But, I don't think "I Am" is impersonal. But, that's just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Steve, that the "I am" is not solely impersonal. But i suspect I don't disagree wtih Ian as much as you might think.
Delete"Personal" in regard to God usually means some separate higher "Being" who is infinitely more immoral than any human being we've ever conceived of.
If we take the God stories of the Bible literally, this "God" is a psychopathic sadist who makes Donald Trump look like a Bodhisattwa by comparison.
Without going into complicated theology or philosophy, a meditation teacher I had once put it cleverly.
He was talking about the kind of selfishness that gets in the way of an ethical life, and he said, "I don't mean for you to take this personally. However, you should take it very personally."
There are ways to understand things as "personal" in one way - in the sense of having the qualities of absolute kindness, lovingness, etc - and personal in a very different way, as having to do with a separate "me."
God can be infinite, unthinkable, all pervading and transcendent, and yet "personal" in the sense that this all pervading, transcendent reality is not uncaring, not semi conscious (like Bernardo Kastrup's "Mind at large")
I think I agree. I would say that anything that can be called "conscious" or "consciousness", or that can be said to have a "presence" is, by definition, personal.
DeleteI think there is "something it's like" to be "God", and that "something it's like" is us, our experiences. And hopefully there's a better "what it's like" to come...