God the All-terrible!

Welcome to Wondercafe2!

A community where we discuss, share, and have some fun together. Join today and become a part of it!

Register Log in

I am blessed by and responsible for the gift of speaking in diverse tongues. That is, I am as able to speak with a panhandler in the street as with the Canadian Attorney General at a posh University dinner.

Yesterday evening I was chording through an old evangelical hymn collection. This in preparation for singing in the company of a local care home's residents. These folk were born into hard times. There was little available material remedy. This made necessary the cultivation of spiritual resources. Singing songs they cherish I will evoke those resources and provide a therapeutic benediction.

I grew up dirt poor. When times pressed hard against our best hope, mum would have us sing. In those songs we found a place of refuge against the often bitter reality of our circumstance. Father gone on a bender with the paycheck. Little food in the cupboard and next to no coal in the shed.

Such childhood experience served me well. While my demographic cohort earned wages, obtained necessary commodities, begat and raised children, with an eye to security for the days to come, I wandered the highways and byways, sleeping in the lee of some hill or under a handy bridge on a regular basis. My only resource was the songs mother taught me and the sure knowledge that she kept me in her prayers.

I am fully behind creative endeavour appropriate to any given context. I am not at all happy about the bias to revision of historical artifact. This was problematic in the days of printed text. That problematic takes a quantum leap as we move to full digital storage and distribution as a matter of global security. Trust big brother and such.

George

"Sing them over again to me,
Wonderful words of life,
Let me more of their beauty see
Wonderful words of life."

 
I like your comment GeoFee about the place that songs and hymns might hold in our hearts. I often find myself humming a tune from somewhere in the far reaches of memory.
 
This also relates to the "Happy Songs" thread, in a way.There are lots of rock or pop songs that I like that might have lyrics that are somehow not appropriate, i.e. might be considered sexist or something, but what they do is invoke the feelings I had when I was in the company of others listening to them or even singing along and that's what's important or uplifting to me. Even songs about hard times can be "happy songs" because they connect us with others' experience and we feel better for it. I didn't grow up with old hymns but can imagine it's a similar experience.
 
I often sing or hum the old Lutheran hymns of my childhood and youth. But the thought of taking them literally is so far removed from my mind that the often outrageous lyrics don't bother me. I just enjoy the music, and the feeling that the music evokes. It is like that with many other old folk songs, or even modern songs: the lyrics are banal or even atrocious, but I like the melody, and sing or hum them frequently.
 
If, as I believe, God is the All, then God would be All-terrible, but not intentionally out to harm us.

Nature seems cruel, but not intentionally so. Cruel intent is a human concept.

If God indeed is the Whole and All, then God favours the Whole and All. Unfortunately and necessarily, this sometimes includes sacrificing the individual for the benefit of the Whole.

Fortunately, the All is the totality of being, and we are an inseparable part of IT. From the godly viewpoint of the All, God is All-merciful. When we identify as or with the All, then God is All-merciful, even to us.
 
Hermann said:
If, as I believe, God is the All, then God would be All-terrible, but not intentionally out to harm us.

Nature seems cruel, but not intentionally so. Cruel intent is a human concept.

If God indeed is the Whole and All, then God favours the Whole and All. Unfortunately and necessarily, this sometimes includes sacrificing the individual for the benefit of the Whole.

Fortunately, the All is the totality of being, and we are an inseparable part of IT. From the godly viewpoint of the All, God is All-merciful. When we identify as or with the All, then God is All-merciful, even to us.
Click to expand...
Can we just boil this down for a moment? You're saying God/All is cruel, but not intentionally. Also, God/All is merciful. I assume you don't mean all the time, because that's indefensible.

To me, the Reader's Digest version of the above is, "s**t happens."

Sometimes bad, sometimes good. No rhyme, no reason. Almost like things happen at random.

And if we remove the assumption of a God, how the hell is that any different?
 
God the all terri bull ... as a clay semi likeness to the mother expanse ... a real OEm 'r, Hummer, or Just a Muon'r in a raincoat?

The mother expanse? That's de void ... or that out there emptied of matter ... spatial effects?

Hermann,

Did you know that "being" has a metaphor in the form of the word "hebephrenic" that often applies to adolescent behaviour patterns? Phrenosis can often lead to fitz of humour that stoics dislike as they are not confident that you might be referencing them in a mess of disseminating words ... or the scattering thereof ... just to make people think: "what dah elle did that mean?"

If one has a handle of God as word ... does everything come to you with devious understanding (diverse) that does not register with those of one-track understanding? An odd expression could thus mean everything and anything ... dependant on the source, or where it come from as a vanishing point!

Get used to such things here as we are at the centre of chaos ... a fact that few are recognizant of ... awareness being a part and parcel of understanding egos, echoes of voices bounced out of the void ... consider Job 4:16 and voices heard nowhere!

Now that is something that raises my curiosity ... although many religious sorts have told me to question nothing ... the other extreme of where god hides out! Appears this all encompassing character is stretched from nothing to everything and thus forming impressions on those encountering a bit of this stretch ... lets call it the KISS of a vast ethereal composition ... like tip a' rare-ie, or ie something else again as indeterminate! This is Dermond Omurchu's field of Quantumm Spirituality ... since you don't know the chance of it biting ...
 
Chansen,
Like random, quantum is indeterminate ... not a good thing for persons requiring something established ... and thus the stone bull ... Henry VIII married her ... she had a fore name as Anne meaning a "concern" for some people. This amounted to a large paradox for people manipulating Nobles and Church at that time ... do some research in how things were corrupted by the powers about King Henry ... it is fearsome and awful what they did under the fabrication that they supported god's representative as a schism from Roman attitudes ... some even considered these as disseminating base turds ... but this can be misleading!
 
chansen said:
Can we just boil this down for a moment? You're saying God/All is cruel, but not intentionally. Also, God/All is merciful. I assume you don't mean all the time, because that's indefensible.

To me, the Reader's Digest version of the above is, "s**t happens."

Sometimes bad, sometimes good. No rhyme, no reason. Almost like things happen at random.

And if we remove the assumption of a God, how the hell is that any different?
Click to expand...

If there is an intentionality in the ways of universe, IMHO it is towards balance (note the IF please). Destruction and Creation often go hand-in-hand. A volcano builds a new island but causes havoc on surrounding ones and even messes with the global climate if it is big enough. A forest fire (a natural, lightning triggered one) destroy hectares of forest, but that destruction is necessary for some species to grow and therefore for the forest to renew itself. And so on. You cannot have creation without destruction, so a view of existence as "creation good; destruction bad" is too simplistic and unrealistic.

s**t happens, but, on a cosmic/geological time scale, bad s**t can open the door for good s**t (e.g. the Cretaceous asteroid wiped out the dinos and other megafauna of the Mesozoic, but opened the door for the rise of the mammals) which can become bad s**t (e.g. mammals evolving into us polluting the world) and so on throughout time.

Is all this intentional? I do not know. That's what makes me an agnostic. But I do know that it is a marvellous, beautiful universe that, in the long haul, does seem to balance out creation, destruction, and other forces whether by intent or simply nature. Likely the latter.
 
"I do not know."

And that's the key. Saying that you do know, because you read this book and you have daydreams about the characters within it, is ludicrous.

I don't know how this universe came to be in motion, but of all the hypotheses, the religious ones are the most insane, least defensible positions, and they are often held most closely, with the least amount of evidence in their favour.
 
Agree with chansen. The simple principle of parsimony says that the easiest explanation is the most likely. It has worked for science and we take people to the Moon, not by faith but based on precise and accurate science.

A god could prove he/she/it exists any moment if he/she/it chose to do so. There is no excuse other than "God" as we imagine it just doesn't exist. Can you explain the whole universe without a God? Not yet but we are inching towards it. Once we do, why would putting God into the equation provide a simpler explanation? It just doesn't thus God doesn't exist. There is your teleological proof that god does not exist and if he/she/it does, I don't want to be associated with that monster.
 
You ...​

Lots of folk thought the Wright brothers right wacko .... this obsession with overcoming gravity. The boys had faith by its classic definition: "The substance of things hoped for; the evidence for things not seen." They took flight to be possible contrary to popular opinion. And, what their imagination suggested they set out to accomplish by resort to all available means. They believed what others took to be impossible and made it possible.

Every freely chosen step along the way of progress, by resort to empirical means, is in the first place taken as response to the whisper of intuition. For example: "We have always done it this way and it must be done this way"; the voice of the somnambulant mass shaped by the propaganda (advertising) of their superiors (1%).

Then the whisper from within..."There is an alternative present and available." This whisper inspires hypothesis and experiment. Repeated trials over extended time and a key insight: Change is possible for these discovered reasons. Once pronounced those reasons will be challenged by diverse persons and institutions submerged in murky waters of status quo.

The same is present in our assembly here. Some are quite clear that only their perspective is the correct one. These are deeply embedded in the seductions of power for the determination of what is good and what is evil (generally, what I do is good what those who disagree do is evil). Some, known by their voluminous contribution of cut and paste authority, take their point of view correct and no other. The gatekeepers of heaven and hell, deciding who is in and who is out.

We each stand as observers and narrators of our unique experience of our common human being. Foucault encourages me to avoid possession of truth by the preference of truthfulness. Where we are truthful together there is hope.

Where we are truthful together there is risk. This risk increasing proportionate to progress along the opening way of truthfulness. The state has historically tended to rejection of truth at the apex of its powers.

Some folks hired to do a task. What matters? That they know the skills necessary to the task? That they cooperate in the deployment of those skills? Come lunch break these folk can explore their personal difference and discover common ground. They can quarrel religion, philosophy, politics or sport. Then back to the shared task; the care of creation (cosmos)

We take our inspiration where it may be found. We may call it by a name. Or we may refuse. It matters not. What matters is that we cooperate in our shared human mandate: care of the air, the water and the earth. These are the foundations of human being in creation (cosmos - nature).

Every single human act promotes either what helps or what hinders.

Knowing this matters.

... Me​

 
Last edited:
Ah, a though for that personality that takes on me ... for conflict ... or just for the phun 've IT? Is IT a n icon of intelligence or just information on knowledge and the biblical point of conflict is that we as common folk shouldn't know ... driving people across that devoid into the land of mystification and sharing of the things denied by the law of man ... thus there is this mystical domain of shared thoughts ...

Is that out of 'ere or what? Thus god disseminated or became powerfully scattered ... something to ponder or just meditate on the archeology thereof? If you happened to dig it as a subtle thing ... like foundation where? Mormon's seem to be fascinated with that as they always wonder whether they are wearing appropriate garments ... a bit of Mormon in everyone as scattered strings?
 
chansen said:
Can we just boil this down for a moment? You're saying God/All is cruel, but not intentionally. Also, God/All is merciful. I assume you don't mean all the time, because that's indefensible.

To me, the Reader's Digest version of the above is, "s**t happens."

Sometimes bad, sometimes good. No rhyme, no reason. Almost like things happen at random.

And if we remove the assumption of a God, how the hell is that any different?
Click to expand...

No difference, chansen, just a different way of looking at the same thing. So one might as well drop the God language. But, by the flip side of the same token, one might as well use it. But then one runs into danger of being misunderstood. That's why people like Eckhart Tolle or Carl Sagan have dropped "God" from their spiritual language, although Eckhart Tolle said he would gladly use it if it didn't come encumbered with such heavy, traditional baggage. But Richard Rohr still uses the term "God," as well as other traditional Christian metaphors, albeit awkwardly at times, because he has to stretch the conventional Christian metaphors almost to the breaking point trying to make them fit into his pantheism.


Nature is My Religion;
Earth is My Temple.

-Michail Gorbachev
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top