WaPo 'On Faith': God Can Be Experienced, Not Explained

The Washington Post:

As people of faith, should we concern ourselves with God's nature, relatives, ways and history? I, for one, think we should not.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post

Comments

[Christian Mysticism]

02:40 PM on 08/16/2010

To have a spiritual experience one has to go beyond the mind. The explanations are to quiet the mind so the spirit can be experienced. thinkunity.com

[feddown]

12:34 PM on 07/11/2010

Prayer should be used only to achieve some sort of personal communion with God, or to give thanks, or even to complain about the universe. Requests for favors, like more money or EVEN cancer cures, etc. are presumptuous and silly.

[hollybork]

04:51 PM on 07/10/2010

Martha, I liked this post. "The Great Mystery" is exactly how I feel all consciousness.

You begin by asking, "should we concern ourselves with God's nature, relatives, ways and history?" .

The question about God's relatives, ways and history are absurd, as would be the question about his sex or race. It makes no sense to me. God's nature and qualities are at beating heart at the center of the mystery we seek to unravel in living. Why are we compelled by beauty and meaning, moved by justice, the mind outflanked by compassion?

I'm sorry for people who think God wants them to pontificate, evangelize, or make war on other beings. Such individuals may even tacitly accept God's unity. Yet their experience is so solidly in temporal reality that they feel sure the One, the Beginning and End, has a sex, or a race or an historical era, or is attached to real estate (think Jerusalem) or has wife and child.

This kind of framing of deity has never made any sense to me any more than believing living belongs more to one group than another.

Some think God can be pleased by their puny choices and actions (miniscule as a single beings actions are relative to the Universe).Worse, some name God as cause for destruction of individuals or parts of his creation!

I have found it more helpful to conceive of God as formless outside time and space, but held as light and feeling in the heart.

[bushgirlsgone]

05:15 PM on 07/08/2010

My acupuncturist released my Qi in less than a minute. I told her that never happens to me and she said, "that's what they all say".

Anyway, my inner-child's Qi and my Qi are in a cosmic battle over who's turn it is to clean our room. With enough inner faith and spirtiual guidance, I think I'll convice 'him' it's his turn, otherwise I'm going to the the Holy Enlightenment out of him.

[knerd]

09:48 AM on 07/08/2010

The finite mind cannot accomodate the Infinite. But we try and try and try, don't we?

[Magick1]

06:59 PM on 07/08/2010

No, it cannot. For those that think it can, it would take a complete shattering of the ego and no requirements to even comment here at all, specifically since they could not identify themself as apart from others writing here. All points pro or con would be moot.

[Tim Ostrander]

03:05 PM on 07/10/2010

I agree. So let's stop trying and throw away the ridiculous idea altogether.

[recless]

07:36 AM on 07/08/2010

So, if I follow the logic of the article don't I end up where you simply believe humans are too darn stupid to know anything anyway and you just have to believe? Seems the same claim that you have to believe in the supernatural before you can understand it.

[wulidncr]

06:56 AM on 07/08/2010

Neither proving nor disproving a one true god is possible. Just like proving or disproving Thor or invisible garden gnomes is impossible. Showing the god of religion X, y or Z to be absurd is certainly doable. Consider this. Theists believe their god is active in the day to day lives of each person. Thus that god is open to new experience. New experience changes the experience-er. If god starts out as perfect, any new experience would be a change from perfection to something else. If god is perfect, god cannot change and thus cannot have a single bit of information or experience added. If you want to claim, well, god knows everything thus can have no new experience, then your god cannot act. Actions are new experience. So either god does act and thus is not perfect and not god, or god does not act in any way what so ever, thus not only is god dead, but he never could have been since dying would be a new experience. Thus, as we atheists say, whether there is a god or not we do not know, but we are certain any god you conceptualize in your human mind is not so. Thank you very much.

[Tim Ostrander]

03:11 PM on 07/10/2010

actually, your argument is flawed. Actions are not new experience, nor need to be conceptualized as such by the theist. The way you define god in your argument is not really fair. I would agree that there are serious flaws in the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, immutable being (I am an atheist, btw), but your argument imperfectly argues against it.

[wulidncr]

06:03 PM on 07/10/2010

Well, If I do something, if I act I have the experience of the act itself and the experience of the consequences of that act. This is all new information. New information changes the one who receives it. So either God is all knowing, which means there is nothing else to know, or God is not all knowing and thus by definition not God at all.

[William D Simpson]

02:23 AM on 07/08/2010

God is, and the reality of God can be experienced through a very intimate an personal relationship only when after a person is drawn by the Spirit of God to the revealed knowledge of Jesus Christ.
I am amused by the many people who comment on this religion blog, who remove all doubt as to the debth of their ignorance. If you really want answers, I will challenge any person on this blog to read my newly released book, Living in the Hope of My Imagination. http://www.williamdsimpson.com
It will cause you to rethink your worldview, and might even lead the elect to the only true God, who is Creator, Savior and Judge. I've given the evidence, you try to disprove it... For those of you not up to the intellectual challenge of reading my book, my blog will do. http://www.wsimpson.wordpress.com

Will you dare?

[researcher]

02:39 AM on 07/08/2010

god weeps for humanity.

you have made god in your image. ie ego thing.

god does not weep.

the word god has so much baggage no airline in the world would ticket god.

you are conditioned far beyond anything you can imagine.

if you would have been raised in a buddhist culture you would be writing books on buddhism and suffering.

if you were raised in a hindu culture you would be writing books about how desire from a past life has now caused you bad karma and suffering in this life.

muslim culture well you would probably be flying through tall builidings yelling god is great.

how arrogant to think your book will change anyone's world view because they have read your book.

god weeps? cannot you not see that is so weak in logical thinking. infinite weeps???????

you cannot define infinite for to define it is to limit it.

as far as jesus having to die for humanity. that is paganism cannot you not see that.

christians lost the message of jesus of love when they let paganism into their religious beliefs.

the christian nation that has wars for profits. loves capitalism that puts profits over people. and our prisons overflowing, and materialism has gone amuck in america.

evidence- bet you used the bible as your only source to prove your evidence as valid.

this is like the repubs using reagan's speechs as their evidence to create free trade and their proof that the trickle down theory works.

[bushgirlsgone]

05:18 PM on 07/08/2010

What evidence have you given? Say that reminds me, my astological reading for the day said that God doesn't exit. Prove that isn't true.

[William D Simpson]

05:28 AM on 07/14/2010

Read the book...

[Parsimonious]

02:07 AM on 07/08/2010

"As for knowing God's history, it is so wrapped up in competing myths of Mystery moving through human history--competing religious writings--that it appears to me damagingly detached from reality to claim the validity of one set of myths over another."

My God, those goalposts are slippery.

[Fight4Freedom2008]

01:54 AM on 07/08/2010

"God Can Be Experienced, Not Explained"

That's because religion is for those who don't understand science. Though they'll use a number of technological devices to communicate otherwise. There is a word for that...

[ThaGovna]

03:32 PM on 07/08/2010

Fanned.

[revrod1]

01:30 AM on 07/08/2010

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
The first step is in choosing to believe in God's holy word or not. For those who have chosen to recive His holy word into their life as a lifestyle, this scripture in Rom. 1:20 is a reality. For those who don't, this scripture is still a reality, just not recived.
Read my new book titled "The Sword and the Spear" much more expination is given on the matter.

http://bit.ly/cfz9s2

Also at: Amazon.com

[SlowFoodGavin]

06:28 PM on 07/08/2010

What about the rest of Romans?

You can't pick and choose what bits of scripture you want to believe in and those you don't if you proclaim the Bible to be the word of god.

[Tim Ostrander]

03:20 PM on 07/10/2010

"Get in the car, little boy."
"Let me see the candy first."
"Get in the car, and I'll show you the candy."

You go ahead and take that advice, pal. I'll stay on the street and play with my friends. Besides, my mother always told me not to get in the car with strange philosophies.

[SilentSolidarity]

01:30 AM on 07/08/2010

Describing or understanding God is something only atheists can waste their time with. Well guys, depending on how old you are, you only have 1-100 years to firgure to explain God whiel the theists experienced it a long time ago.

[SlowFoodGavin]

06:29 PM on 07/08/2010

How do you know what it is if you can't explain it?

By saying you've experienced god, you've explained it. It's ridiculous.

[Tim Ostrander]

03:23 PM on 07/10/2010

Right. You experienced something ineffable and indescribable. The warm gooeys in your heart. Why am I not impressed?

[SolarArray]

01:25 AM on 07/08/2010

I wish they'd set the record straight. This is all about faith in an imaginary being and all the other stuff is either political or a money grab from the gullible and insecure. Simple as that.

[Uncle Bob]

12:00 AM on 07/08/2010

if it can't be explained, then why do people talk about it so much?

[GodIs]

10:56 PM on 07/07/2010

God has always behaved rationally and he expects us to function in the same manner. Faith cannot conflict with reason or God would require the impossible and that would be irrational. Many have faith confused with credulity which is believing something without evidence or reason.

God is love.

[SilentSolidarity]

01:32 AM on 07/08/2010

No. God sometiems acts irrational. Look at Jesus. God would never have done this if he was an atheist human. They would never go beyond their instincts.

[Tim Ostrander]

03:25 PM on 07/10/2010

Listen to yourself, "God would never have done this if he was an atheist human." Do I really have to point out why that is such a nonsensical statement?

[Fight4Freedom2008]

02:15 AM on 07/08/2010

“Re: God(s)...

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

--Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.), Greek philosopher. Taught that the soul consists of atomic material that disintegrates at death.”