Well, let's stop right here for minute because I get this type of criticism ad nauseum on WonderCafe and I frequently challenge this notion of "scathing criticism" (the word 'scathing' gets almost infinitley more use in the context of me here than in person and all other sites combined).  But when I do challenge and ask for specifics, there's not a single instance that I can recall that anyone has ever pointed to specific text of mine, despite my asking for this.  All I recall getting is silence or evasion.  I find this especially interesting in light of or in relation to the criticism leveled at me and atheists in general on WonderCafe... which likewise is virtually never sunstantiated (I'm fairly certain there will be folks who recall my numerous request to substantiate or justify blind attacks here).  Don't get me wrong here, the charge may - or may not - be founded, but it has never been justified or documented and thus they have always remained completely blind attacks that I cannot even make reasoned comment upon.  Blind, unsubstantiated attacks always seem most cowardly and very underhanded to me.

But I tend to think of you in a very positive - if not lofty - light, Arm, so kindly point to a few specifics of my text that you find me "so scathingly critical" and also please relate them to your as yet undefined "that", both underlined in your text.  Once I fully understand your point of view about me, I'll likely be better able to respond to the bulk of your post.  Thanks muchly in advance.

How completely underwhelming, Arminius...

Scathing:  marked by harshly abusive criticism; severely critical and harsh; severely and unkindly critical; searing; withering; harsh or caustic; bitterly severe, as a remark; marked by harshly abusive criticism; harshly condemning, brutal...

How you can claim this with an 'attitude' (and not a single identifiable word) is just beyond me...

Well, one of my main criticisms is that unlike any other identifiable group that I've ever communicated with, the religious constantly attack those who challenge their (often extraordinarily diverse) views, and it seems that you've just displayed that I understand pretty damned well what I'm critical of and that my criticism is very well founded.  Indeed, if you actually read my posts rather than perceive how my "attitude comes across", I think you'll find that the more protracted critical discussions have squat to do with 'religious feeling' and much to do with repeated unsubstantiated attacks on those with other positions.  And this is why I asked you to identify not only my text, but what you think I'm being critical of.  In fact, I can't think of any post where I've even criticised religious feelings, much less been "so scathingly critical" of them, so I submit that you're completely wrong here.

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Mohandas Gandhi

(I'm lead to wonder whether Gandhi was constantly attacked like I've noted here with atheists, as well).

I'd suggest that saying someone is "scathingly critical" - as you and others do with me - can be called an attack unless it can be substantiated, but to note that nothing within religion is provable can hardly be viewed as an "attack", in my view.  And please note that I've done everything but attack you (at least in my opinion), so I fail to see the relevance of the above.  However, you now bring up something that I didn't want an answer to but now see as relevant.  From last page:

 So, understanding the rationality of the above might help, thanks.

Well, yeah (I'm inclined to say 'duh!')...  But if you think that I've ever come even remotely close to "regarding religious expression as science", I've completely failed to make myself understood.  Completely!  Are you saying that's how you see me viewing religion expression (or is this unrelated to me)?

Ahhh... Now I think I can at least see from whence you come on this point, but I think you've misconstrued what I was trying to say (might well be my fault).  I'm assuming your mention of "ridicluous" reflects my post regarding Ichthys.  And my point there was to make it crystal clear that when he - or anyone - tried to foist anything about feelings toward 'God' on me, that indeed is my reaction - please stop doing it (but it keeps coming up)!  As Chansen said:  "I am continually amazed when Christians not only have an opinion of what I should believe, but what I actually do believe, 'deep inside'".   If anything denigrates, it's being told your own feelings don't exist, as Ichthys did with us and as you couldn't agree more with, with heart.

However, I don't believe that I've ever interjected that it's ridiculous that a theist believes what theists believe.

Re "irrational" and your point, how is my saying that God does not exist any different from a theist saying that God does exist, please?

Regarding your early post, are you under the (mistaken) impression - as would seem by your text - that I've never tried meditation?  And thanks so much for the dig about ignorant and most assured... true to a religous person's typical attitude about the irreligous it seems, as noted in my first long paragraph.

Hi Ichthys (and Brett—if you still read me :-)

I think and feel that God is the self-generative cosmic totality, in a unitive state of synthesis. This "God" is not supernatural but perfectly natural beause IT is the self-creative and self-godly universe ITself.

This view is not really panentheism, but closer to pantheism. Unitheism or holotheism is, perhaps, a better name for it. My favourite definition, though, is "syntheticism," because I feel and think that the universe is in an ultimate state of synthesis, which, in its actual is-ness, is ineffable, and can only be experienced. I think we experience IT in the pure, unmediated experience, as in meditation, and this purely experiential and objective Truth, to me, is absolutely True. Any conceptualization or analysis of the ultimate objective Truth is necessarily relative, specualtive, or metaphorical, but  scientifc analysis comes closest to the small "t" truth of analysis.

The religious metaphors ring True in my experience, but metaphorically so. I take the Bible seriously, but not literally.

Hi Ichthys, 

"Progressive" Christianity is a concept which can mean a variety of things, I have noticed.  Some folks use the term interchangeably with "liberal" Christianity, and others mean something completely different. 

Arm,

The whole discussion goes back to being able to create a god if god created us! Could it be that God is just a word ... as it says in a biblical line:

'In the beginning was the word and the word was god, and the word was light!"

It is truly a dualistic enigma, so why not talk in words of creation like Par's in sects trying to get it altogether at the very edge when they say:

"Omega'd IT's coming to me!"

Then everything seems light and bubbly like a Calib Yau space in string theory. Isn't that mathematically creative in a loupe of logic that some might call thought after a creative act?

Then some would say that there are no sects (A'B'D) in the bible and IT's simply intercourse between the sole and spirit of God and that we are perhaps God's emotion (physically, mentally and spiritually) a bit of an infinite stretch of the imagination. Then some say that the GUI interface of the mind and physical reality is imaginary field theory ... only a feeling that cannot be proven even in an infinite mind like the Sole'Amon ... the singular integral of the whole thing which a mortal has difficulty in getting into as it involves getting out of one's elph ... a devil of an action that one sometimes experiences as an out've-body feeling when in some sort of daze.

If you don't believe in such wonderings of the mind, or psyche ... would you have a psyche-IC experience if you don't believe in the soul IT's-elf as if the mind was the devil to a Roman way of regarding the who situation? Then Romans wouldn't let common people of that loving feeling towards all this intelligence discuss this sort of thing as Pagans. Pagans were not supposed to Love or be educated under Roman Rule and thus the origins of the Sacred Social order of the mind that begins in the heis art of motive of the sole singularity. First one must understand the word of peoples feelings and that is very alien to many who fall under the shadow of Roman Roues ... for a Maas've Rub on our generally false beliefs on anothers feelings. Isn't that Plasmic funny, like Reuben falling out of God's A'B'D ... a bit of a cut of the infinite leaving one with a grand feeling of a God'ESS ... a sole that just received something out of this world.

This lie would probably never been initiated if the Romans hadn't stated this silly thing about God being mortal when we know such a story could keep people talking for along time. Isn't that the same as wholesome communion ... sometimes without a word being spocken ... like genetically speaking ... exchanging the very stuff of your bones ... in a form of scrimshaw ... unconscious words in a silent mind divided between two people to make another bit of a whole in space. If you looked at it from the roomy side (attica, space of the mind) would anything solid look like a hole in the aether's view. Mere X-Maas to all where in old linguistics it is another way of saying: a sea, or 'c' of fiery mind, an Ire that get anything started even by an ancient Christian of Modern literalist who won't believe the depth of feeling presented in a word ... in writ or even spoken in grace. If they think they're angry words that's the way they accept them without really getting to know the other's emotions. That' probably why physical man was put out of that imaginary dimesnion in the first place ... until they learned to believe in the creative power of words to make something of nothing ... like I just did, but will anyone accept that? A few good men ... that was know in past times as the Cathar Heir as Ayin something different that the pope who thought He was the hand of God ... an impossible incarnation in a real dimension ... QUE'd, or Q'ED in a matter of proving a theory when you've never been there. Sort of like the Peter Pan Syn'd Rome ... first yah have to escape reality that is the only mortal thing that some people believe in and lie about knowing God, an infinite feat for a mortal that can't get out of themselves ... and here we go again in that locical spiral that the Romans and Powerful business folks hated as Nautilust, or Ammonites, people that believes in the case of higher power ... gravidy and Light in other words ... metaphors of th'ought?

Yes, WaterBuoy, God is just a word.

The ability to conceptualize through the use of words made us creative, in the image of our ultimate creator. Now we are using our god-given and godly ability to create images of our ultimte creator. God is coming full circle, continuosly creating and re-creating itself, in an infinite variety of forms.

The most exciting thing about this new theolgy of Unitheism is that we are no longer just the created or evolved, passively enduring the effects of the act of creation.

We are consciously, actively, intentionally, and purposely co-creating and co-evolving the All, in co-creation with each other and the ultimate creator!

I humbly submit that your round-trip is incorrectly documented because a new-born's brain is insufficiently wired to actually be able to have a belief in anything, including belief in any and all of humanity's 'Gods'.  Minimally, this should have been true prior to any of the memories that you can now access.  Thus: Atheism->Theism->Pantheism->Panentheism->Theism.

And therefore your last stated position may well be easily understandable if as most people, your first bout of Thesim (and therefore your second) was due to the indoctrination of your young and impressionable mind... in short, brainwashing works.

“All children are atheists -- they have no idea of God.” -- Baron d'Holbach

Itchthys,

An extraction of Itch and thy's, where "B" is a sheltered shadowed place, for a dimension to grow acseded possibilities ... comes out as B'ithcy if that love is un-requieted with great thought attached to the outcome of the cultivation ... a turning of the earth 's a dom Eigh without IT!

Ish Mael, something fishy? Can one connect impossible thoughts with feelings? It takes a mind with Emma Jin nation ... spiritual thing heis that just pas d'the roe ... d' green maelis ... verdant sleeves ... well wound dite! Warp'd word in ancient Gael ... Eyore in need of learning more of that shadowy "C"!

Newborn children do not think in concepts, but they may be ahead of us adults by experiencing objective reality "unadulterated," as it really is.

Then we adults indoctrinate them, and they assume that the conceptual reality they have been indoctrinated into is the real, objective reality. They confuse the map they were given with the territory.

This basic human illusion of confusing our subjective or conceptual reality with the real ontological or objective reality is THE basic human error to which we all are prone. Some people regard the conceptual reality as an illusion, but I would say it is a creation.

The scientific method verifies objectively which part of our subjective reality is true. But science has, so far, verified only a relatively small part of reality.

Most of reality is still up to speculation. Believing in the absolute truthfulness of one set of specualtions appears to be a grave error because it precludes creative thinking and nails our minds down to one set of beliefs.

The pure, unconceptualized experience of reality—as experienced in babyhood—seems to be the bottomless wellspring for new thoughts and for scientific discoveries. Delving deeply into this bottomless wellspring, people frequently experienced (and still experience) feelings of unity, universal at-one-ment, unitive love, bliss, etc.

Ancient prophets and mystics interpreted those experiences as experiencing "God." They, or their followers, wrote down those interpretations, which were subsequently believed to be the "word of God."

Much of contemporary religion is still handicapped by believing the interpretations of mystics who lived two- or three-thousand years ago to be absolutely true. But the bottomless wellspring from which those ancient mystics dipped is accessible to everyone. All it takes is some turning inward, and we expereince the pure, unadulterated reality which the ancient prophets said is God. Our interpretations of such experiences, however, are—like theirs—arbitrary creations.

I would say that religious expression belongs in the realm of the arts. And, if we treat it as art, then we can joyfully share our artistic creations whith each other without bothering who is right and who is wrong. Then our differences are necessary artistic differences.

This being said, philosophy is an art that is based on logic, a logical art, if you will. In the world of logic, pure mathematics is absolutely true, scientfic truth comes a close second, then philosophical truth, and then come all the other arts.

If, however, the universe is in an ultimate state of synthesis (and some scientists and philophers feel and think it is) then reality will forever elude our attempts at analysis simply because any analysis constitutes a fragmentation of the synthetical state. Even if an analysis is analytically true, it does not and cannot signify ultimate Truth, which is synthesis, and which can, in its actual is-ness, only be experienced in the pure, unconceptualized experience.

I think we'd all do well to frequently delve into that experience, and take our creative impulses from there. It would, however, be advisable to cleanse our minds from all pre-conceived bias when entering or interpreting the pure experience. Otherwise we'll only see our biases confirmed, which will make us even more self-righteously biased than we were before.

Call me Syntheticist,

Arminius