Is God Definable?

Higgins said:

This is the very crux of the problem with the Big God concept: it doesn't even exist as a coherent concept. Now, one can have some kinds of ideas about supernatural beings that have some indefinite quality or other, but to have a being that is by definition indefinable in every possible way, but is everywhere doing everything all the time....its just beyond absurdity.

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That would be absurd; but I doubt anybody believes in a God who is "by definition indefinable in every possible way." As a Christian I could list many of the attributes that define the God I believe in--and I'd guess Muslims, Buddhists, and even Pagans could list the attributes of their gods. Just because one believes in an infinite God does not mean one believes in an indefinable God.

For example, I've definitely encountered events that seemed supernatural...but they still had definite causal structures and occurred in limited areas. Obviously, nothing the Big God would do since apparently He is adjusting things on the other side of the universe even as we speak...or would that have to be 14 billion years before we are speaking since He just knew we were going to mention that little adjustment thing of His?

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?? This would seem to presume the God who set the laws of cause/effect in motion was powerless to work through them, and the God who created the universe unable to enter all of it.

johnnysannie said:

Many Protestant faiths insist that baptism must be immersion and at an age when the individual is fully cognizant of what he or she is doing by being baptised. I'm Catholic and so was baptised as an infant but in my twenties, when I explored other faiths, I was told by several (Baptist, Pentecostal) that if I were to join their churches, that my "sprinkling" would not be enough and that I would have to be fully immersed (dunked into a deep pool of water, sometimes inside the church, sometimes in this area and parts of the South in a creek, river, or lake).

They won't disqualify someone for being baptised as an infant but there are quite a few denominations which will insist that it doesn't count and must be done over "the right way".

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It sounds like Mark is comfortable with his decision--but just to clarify...I grew up attending Baptist camps and even Baptist churches on occasion. Baptists are the biggest proponents of baptism by immersion, but even with them it is not a prerequisite for saving faith, and one can certainly attend a Baptist church without ostracism if not 're-baptized.' Baptists believe that neither baptism nor sprinkling alone is sufficient for salvation; baptism is only a ceremony to publicly testify about your faith, after you've been saved (a matter of personal prayer, where one confesses sin and puts their trust in Christ's substitutionary death on the cross for salvation).

"That would be absurd; but I doubt anybody believes in a God who is "by definition indefinable in every possible way." As a Christian I could list many of the attributes that define the God I believe in--and I'd guess Muslims, Buddhists, and even Pagans could list the attributes of their gods. Just because one believes in an infinite God does not mean one believes in an indefinable God."

The original texts of Buddhism do not discuss God at all. Nor do they believe in Him. I don't either. But I do know that what I call God exists.

And it's because it entails no belief. For me, when you expierence anything you experience God. This has a lot implications (many derived from Buddhism). One of them being that God to me isn't a Judeo-Christian God at all (It's really a form of pantheism). And to call it absurd is to say that our existence is absurd. So when I say, describe the universe, you will say whatever it is you will say. But tell me why it's here. Tell me how it operates. Tell me how it started, if it had a beginning.

You cannot. That mystery is where "God" still exists, in my opinion. It's will-less, unintelligent, and does not have conversations. If people ask me why I would ever worship that God, I ask why people do not worship any. But to put it simply, I worship the universe (+ whatever else might exist) as God because that is the most humbling thing I can help.

And again, I do not read the Bible entirely literally. How could I? It's one way of reading it, and to me the silliest way to read it. Do not pretend that the burning bush is literal. Do not pretend that God's involvement on earth at whatever time He chose has no metaphorical value. So yes, the God that is inconceivable is in part conceivable. But the imprecision of language will always confuse our actual sense...and our actual sense of the whole is infinitesimal.

The funny thing is that the more that people fight the inconceivability (as a whole is a more appropriate way to say it) of God the more I understand that people need to be able to put "God" in a box, in a book, or in a trash can to "grasp" God. But whoever tries to grasp a concept of God shall lose God itself. "The Word is not contained within the word."

God's place and time are obvious, then, for me. It's here. And Now. For all of time.

AMC

p.s. Higgins: I hope this addressed the absence/presence of God. Your argument of transcendence is a good one, but I hope I addressed it.

Originally Posted by Pat~

Originally posted by Higgins
For example, I've definitely encountered events that seemed supernatural...but they still had definite causal structures and occurred in limited areas. Obviously, nothing the Big God would do since apparently He is adjusting things on the other side of the universe even as we speak...or would that have to be 14 billion years before we are speaking since He just knew we were going to mention that little adjustment thing of His?

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?? This would seem to presume the God who set the laws of cause/effect in motion was powerless to work through them, and the God who created the universe unable to enter all of it.

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Okay, so God has the (rather indefinite in terms of location) attribute that he created the universe and is able to enter (?? enter ?? how can he "enter" Part X if He is omnipresent? He can't "enter" it at all since He is already there...can he exit any part of the universe? How would that be definable as an event? If His exiting and entering are by definition indefinite then He has at least one completely undefinable characteristic) it. This doesn't seem coherent to me. If he created the universe then it is something that has some degree of absence from Him. How is this universal absence definable? How is creating or entering or exiting contingent on anything? Could he chose to create other universes etc. etc?

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Confusing to me too --that's why the ?? Your underlined statement makes no sense, if the God you're referring to is the omnipresent God of the Bible. (Which is my reference point.) Secondly, why must the fact that He created the universe mean that it is something that has 'some degree of absence' from Him? And to answer your last question, why couldn't He choose to create other universes? (I don't know whether or not He did, but that doesn't make Him as a God 'undefinable'--it just makes that particular detail about His creativity unknown to me.)

AMCrenshaw said:

"That would be absurd; but I doubt anybody believes in a God who is "by definition indefinable in every possible way." As a Christian I could list many of the attributes that define the God I believe in--and I'd guess Muslims, Buddhists, and even Pagans could list the attributes of their gods. Just because one believes in an infinite God does not mean one believes in an indefinable God."

The original texts of Buddhism do not discuss God at all. Nor do they believe in Him. I don't either. But I do know that what I call God exists.

And it's because it entails no belief. For me, when you expierence anything you experience God. This has a lot implications (many derived from Buddhism). One of them being that God to me isn't a Judeo-Christian God at all (It's really a form of pantheism). And to call it absurd is to say that our existence is absurd. So when I say, describe the universe, you will say whatever it is you will say. But tell me why it's here. Tell me how it operates. Tell me how it started, if it had a beginning.

You cannot. That mystery is where "God" still exists, in my opinion. It's will-less, unintelligent, and does not have conversations. If people ask me why I would ever worship that God, I ask why people do not worship any. But to put it simply, I worship the universe (+ whatever else might exist) as God because that is the most humbling thing I can help.

And again, I do not read the Bible entirely literally. How could I? It's one way of reading it, and to me the silliest way to read it. Do not pretend that the burning bush is literal. Do not pretend that God's involvement on earth at whatever time He chose has no metaphorical value. So yes, the God that is inconceivable is in part conceivable. But the imprecision of language will always confuse our actual sense...and our actual sense of the whole is infinitesimal.

The funny thing is that the more that people fight the inconceivability (as a whole is a more appropriate way to say it) of God the more I understand that people need to be able to put "God" in a box, in a book, or in a trash can to "grasp" God. But whoever tries to grasp a concept of God shall lose God itself. "The Word is not contained within the word."

God's place and time are obvious, then, for me. It's here. And Now. For all of time.

AMC

p.s. Higgins: I hope this addressed the absence/presence of God. Your argument of transcendence is a good one, but I hope I addressed it.

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AMC, I'd love to address this post--I am strange that way, I guess; I enjoy the mental exercise. But first I want to contact the mod of this forum to see if it should stay here, or if our exchange would be better in a different forum location--I don't want to be an offensive houseguest, here.

Pat~ said:

It sounds like Mark is comfortable with his decision--but just to clarify...I grew up attending Baptist camps and even Baptist churches on occasion. Baptists are the biggest proponents of baptism by immersion, but even with them it is not a prerequisite for saving faith, and one can certainly attend a Baptist church without ostracism if not 're-baptized.' Baptists believe that neither baptism nor sprinkling alone is sufficient for salvation; baptism is only a ceremony to publicly testify about your faith, after you've been saved (a matter of personal prayer, where one confesses sin and puts their trust in Christ's substitutionary death on the cross for salvation).

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I married a Baptist and what you say is not true, not in this area or these Baptist churches. You can attend - as an outsider - but you cannot join the church unless you are immersed. Baptists here do no consider Catholics such as myself to be "saved" unless they make the public declaration and be baptised.

My husband - no longer Baptist - made the decision to become Catholic without any input from me at all. It was his decision and when he told me, I was totally blown away by it. But he saw the faith of his childhood in an entirely different light when his wife was considered not saved and not even a "real" Christian without a complete and total immersion.

Because I have troubling saying it right

I don't want to bog that thread down anymore with my self-arguing. As a non-theist I do that often. It's very difficult to stay on middle ground.

Here is closer to how I think.

This is the Judeo-Christian God. It:
Is its own cause of Being. Possesses will and intelligence. Has created all things. Is ultimately Good. Is infinite in nature. Manifests itself on earth in various forms. Judges souls. Is eternal. Created an after life: heaven, hell, and purgatory. Is omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent.

It may or may not exist. Its existence cannot be proven.




God as Reality (the one I try faithfully to adhere to):
There are many realities, but only one Reality, and a Truth that correlates with it. However, as finite beings, we cannot describe Reality because we cannot speak Truth. We can only speak truths about realities and gods.
Its existence is necessary for if it didn’t exist neither would we. Which is possible, but then nonexistence would make up reality. Thus “belief” in Reality is not a belief at all.

Reality may have an infinite nature. It may be eternal. It may have intelligence. There may be an after life. But we as humans do not and cannot know, and so these things are, for us, irrelevant.



However, the holy books are all great sources of spiritual guidance because they have tried very hard to model reality. This is also precisely why I cannot rely on them.

I hope there is enough room for discussion here and I am inviting an open discussion (that could very well contain ridiculous tangents).

AMC

Just to be different I'm going to talk about communication more than deities.

The act of defining a thing neither changes it nor brings it into existence. What it does is to bring into existence an appreciation which we can share, and which we can then refine and improve on or dismiss and replace.

If we don't define something - or can't - then our ability to share it is limited. All we can do is offer one another experiences which may or may not yield the same appreciations. But also, without definitions it's easy for us to get lost assembling experiences and trying to find meaning in them. Most of the development of human thought has been about discovering how to build good definitions and then work with them to improve our imperfect understanding.

But still there are plenty of appreciations that don't define well. Our art is full of them: love, beauty, honour, good. These concepts tend to be values-driven, experiential in nature and they change over time as our values change. These are interpretative, appreciative concepts. They're reflections of our spirits much more than reflections of the world itself, because the physical world does not change as fast as our appreciations of it do.

I personally believe that it's possible to produce functional descriptions of love, beauty, honour and good. I just don't believe that they're true definitions, in the sense of being prescriptive. They're more guideposts to experiences that allow (most) reasonable humans to discover something of value.

If you describe god (lower-case 'g') as something nebulous like a binding, connecting and abiding aesthetic in existence then it's something we can all talk about. Perhaps using different words - and using descriptions rather than definitions. Naturally our appreciations of that aesthetic will change as our values and experiences change. But it's possible to talk about that binding aesthetic with animist bushmen from Papua New Guinea, or a Hindu in Mumbai, or a Moroccan Muslim - because we are human and we value connectedness and beauty -- and our values aren't so different that we cannot understand one another with effort.

But if you start talking about God (capital G) as a personified, anthropomorphic image, then you're not talking about a sharable human aesthetic but a cultural myth that you've elevated to the personally sacred. That's okay, but in doing so, you've replaced a sharable, values-based human aesthetic with a prescriptive authoritarian symbol, so it's already lost some portability.

If you happen to be monotheistic then this can lead you into the mistaken idea that if your personal symbol has no currency to others, that it's somehow their fault. Where monotheists have been responsible for the ill-treatment of others, they have always justified such ill-treatment under that one punitive judgement.

'god' (as I have described it) is not definable but you can point to it if you want, and people can accept it from their own, quite diverse perspectives and still share what they appreciate. The complementarity of those perspectives has its own value I think. If you want to increase your appreciation of red desert, you could do worse than to talk to an Australian aborigine.

'God' is much more definable because it's a cultural artifact. But good luck in getting everyone to accept your version of it.

I'm an atheist. I don't like 'God' because I consider its 'definitions' to be flawed. Unlike the concepts in science or philosophy, I don't believe that the definitions of 'God' are improving over time; I think that the pea of delusion is just being shuffled under different shells according to the mood of the times. But I can enjoy stars and harmony and human fellowship and honour and good and love just as much as the next guy. I can (and do) happily share my appreciations of that binding aesthetic with Christians and Jews and Muslims and agnostics and Hindus and the occasional animist from Vanuatu over a cup of kava. As I learn, I find myself agreeing with just about all of them on what kindness and love look like, and that the stars are very beautiful.

For me the hobby-horse of monotheism is an ugly, rotting creature, full of splinters and creaks with leering eyes and a mangy mane. As a child I had an eyeless teddybear worn thin with love, and I understand the sentimental attachment to such things. But just as nobody wanted to touch my drool-stained bear, so I don't like touching folks' 'definitions' of God. I just wish that the monotheists would realise that and go play by themselves.

"If we don't define something - or can't - then our ability to share it is limited." I almost agreed with this statement.

Can we share silence, however?

"without definitions it's easy for us to get lost assembling experiences and trying to find meaning in them."

I would say that definitions get in the way of reality. The reality of anything is, at least in part, sacrificed when we engage in language. The fact that paradox exists at all, for example, is an indicator of our failure to describe anything accurately, particularly when basic statements about the universe can be deconstructed endlessly to mean, in the end, nothing at all.

"But if you start talking about God (capital G) as a personified, anthropomorphic image, then you're not talking about a sharable human aesthetic but a cultural myth that you've elevated to the personally sacred. That's okay, but in doing so, you've replaced a sharable, values-based human aesthetic with a prescriptive authoritarian symbol, so it's already lost some portability."

It is difficult, I think, to separate human aesthetic from cultural myth - if, of course, it has been spread over the globe like a plague like monotheism has.

I actually tend to agree with the most of your post. I do think that a cultural myth not elevated to the sacred realm is still absolutely useful to us. At the same time (and I think you would agree), if this cultural "myth" is elevated to the sacred realm, but the consequence of it is an appreciation of that sharable 'god' there can be no dispute about its significant function in society. I think it still has that potential; however, I think other 'concepts' we come up with will end up exceeding whatever potential that myth once possessed. But I guess we won't know for another thousand years or so.

AMC

If God were something easily definable then we'd not need so many splinters of faith to figure out exactly what he she or it want us to do on this crazy ass planet.

Of course, we all know what God looks like, thanks to South Park.

It is only in our human form that we even think about defining God. We always try to put him a box for our convenience. Is God male or female? Is he Christian or Jewish? Is he this, is he that?

God is so much more than our minds can comprehend so we cut God up in pieces... he is this, he is that..

The word used for Almighty, in God Almighty means all breasted.
God is not definable..because he is bigger than any human words can define him.

Well...you know what you do when you can't define something?

You start making up words till you can.

AMCrenshaw said:

"If we don't define something - or can't - then our ability to share it is limited." I almost agreed with this statement.

Can we share silence, however?

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Yes, and herpes - without defining it, too! But that's not on topic either.

AMC said:

"without definitions it's easy for us to get lost assembling experiences and trying to find meaning in them."

I would say that definitions get in the way of reality.

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Definitions have no impact on reality - except inasmuch as they change behaviour. They exist to focus our attention on those parts of reality of interest to us, and to try and give us means to to extract use or benefit from those parts.

In consequence of better definitions we are able to support more people, give them longer, safer and healthier lives and more ways to pursue happiness and fulfillment.

We may also have more anxiety in consequence of definitions, but we also have means to prevent that from occurring (i.e. - to spend more time in reality when thinking makes us too anxious)

The reality of anything is, at least in part, sacrificed when we engage in language.

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Reality continues regardless of how we think about it, but we do trade our appreciation of it for some possibly similar, but different model.

The fact that paradox exists at all, for example, is an indicator of our failure to describe anything accurately, particularly when basic statements about the universe can be deconstructed endlessly to mean, in the end, nothing at all.

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We're actually very good at defining and working with those parts of reality concerned with material needs (hence our growing longevity etc...) We're not so capable at describing intangibles, but we're still very good at it! (Hence, we have currency, long-term relationships, psychotherapy and extremly complex planning activities). Paradoxes only exist at the margins of modern thought, and many of the paradoxes posed by the ancients (e.g. Achilles and the Tortoise) have been resolved. They're curios rather than the norm.

It is difficult, I think, to separate human aesthetic from cultural myth - if, of course, it has been spread over the globe like a plague like monotheism has.

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In practice, myth informs aesthetic and vice versa. That's all fine. It's when myth or aesthetic are held as physical truths that we begin to make questionable, even ludicrous and sometimes inhumane decisions.

I actually tend to agree with the most of your post. I do think that a cultural myth not elevated to the sacred realm is still absolutely useful to us.

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Agreed. Myths are are stories about who we are.

At the same time (and I think you would agree), if this cultural "myth" is elevated to the sacred realm, but the consequence of it is an appreciation of that sharable 'god' there can be no dispute about its significant function in society.

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Replace 'function' with 'impact' and I'd agree, but as for 'function'...

I've written elsewhere: religious instutions perform many valuable social functions (like traditional ceremonies associated with births, marriages, deaths; like providing infrastructure for charities and public works)... But I'd argue strongly that these functions don't need to be shaped by mysticism, or controlled by religions. It just happens that our ceremonies and social services were developed when we were a much more ignorant and superstitious people.

Take away the ceremonies and social services, and what is left? The three M's of morality, myth and mysticism. Morality I would argue is sacred but evolving, and is properly owned by society at large, not vested sectarian interests. Myth is cultural property and not of itself sacred, and mysticism to my mind has no useful function at all - it's just myth taken too seriously.

I'm okay with 'god' as an aesthetic concept - though it's not a term I'd normally use. But 'God' - the shared mythical construct that people think is real - has no function. It is simply a piece of propaganda whose principal use is to seize inappropriate control of key social functions and to manipulate community behaviours and attitudes.

If you doubt this, consider: 'God' has entirely lost control of the physical domain of human concerns (God no longer makes storms, or creates plagues of frogs), and its influence in the mystical domain has shrunk too as the mystical domain itself gets debunked. Increasingly God has no function. God is not dead; it's homeless, raving and long-term unemployed.

The part that still has function these days is 'god' - the transculltural sense of ineffable connectedness that some people choose to see as mystical, intelligent but unknowable and others prefer to see as beautiful, insensate and mundane.

Can a table define or understand the carpenter?
Can a painting define or understand the painter?

By the same principle, we cannot define or understand God.

Just my opinion :^)

As I see it, The Supreme Being, the Great Mystery is beyond
our ability to understand directly. Therefore every few hundreds or thousands of years, God sends a manifestation of itself, a messenger who reflects some of the attributes of God.
For example Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Baha'u'llah, among others.
Knowledge of these messengers of God is the closest we will ever come
to understanding God.

Because I've never met a supernatural being in meatspace, I have no frame of reference for comparison.

It's a shame no one asked Jesus back in the day.

Alvah said:

Can a table define or understand the carpenter?
Can a painting define or understand the painter?

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Well, yes they can! That's how archaeology works. The table can glean its purpose from its shape, and the painting can understand the painter's values from its aesthetics. But this makes them a lot better off in working out their purpose than the average human. Since we're waxing poetical...

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam said:

As under cover of departing Day
[SIZE=-1] Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazán away,[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] Once more within the Potter's house alone[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay.[/SIZE]

Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small,
[SIZE=-1] That stood along the floor and by the wall;[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] And some loquacious Vessels were; and some[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] Listen'd perhaps, but never talk'd at all.[/SIZE]

Said one among them--"Surely not in vain
[SIZE=-1] "My substance of the common Earth was ta'en[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "And to this Figure moulded, to be broke, [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again."[/SIZE]

Then said a Second--"Ne'er a peevish Boy
[SIZE=-1] "Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy;[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "And He that with his hand the Vessel made[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "Will surely not in after Wrath destroy."[/SIZE]

After a momentary silence spake
[SIZE=-1] Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make;[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "They sneer at me for leaning all awry:[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"[/SIZE]

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot--
[SIZE=-1] I think a Súfi pipkin--waxing hot--[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "All this of Pot and Potter--Tell me, then,[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"[/SIZE]

"Why," said another, "Some there are who tell
[SIZE=-1] "Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "The luckless Pots he marr'd in making--Pish![/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] "He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well."

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[/SIZE]
In case it's not obvious, the quatrains are satirical. We're not a table nor a painting, nor a wine-cup and it's ludicrous to pretend otherwise. We have no innate function except to compete with each other to make more of our own kind - a task at which we're very skilled, highly devious and frequently ruthless. For the rest of it, religious dogma only agrees on this much: "Try and get on with one another while you fight for breeding rights." That's a little like the parents telling the kids, "We're going out for the evening; don't fight."

If there is any purpose to be had, it's ours to find - or more likely, to invent. The only purposes to be found in religious dogma are conceived "off-stage", and the only halfway credible divinities these days are the "absentee landlord" sorts.

Or put another way, the best religious philosophers can't make a jot more sense of the life we know than Omar Khayam's poor existential pots, so they have to invent life we don't know in which all silly dangling plot-threads are resolved, and you pull back the curtain to find the wizard who explains it all to you.

I don't know about you, Alvah, but I find "off-stage plot resolution" as cheesy in philosophy as I find it in narrative.

We are very skilled at interpreting purpose from form and function, and if after thousands of years of our best minds contemplating the question we can find no real purpose in either, then I'd suggest that it's not evidence of an ineffable Creator; it's evidence that a purposeful Creator is not effin' there.

johnnysannie said:

I married a Baptist and what you say is not true, not in this area or these Baptist churches. You can attend - as an outsider - but you cannot join the church unless you are immersed. Baptists here do no consider Catholics such as myself to be "saved" unless they make the public declaration and be baptised.

My husband - no longer Baptist - made the decision to become Catholic without any input from me at all. It was his decision and when he told me, I was totally blown away by it. But he saw the faith of his childhood in an entirely different light when his wife was considered not saved and not even a "real" Christian without a complete and total immersion.

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Sounds like your Baptist churches need to review the Statement of Faith from the Southern Baptist Convention (see links, "salvation" and "baptism.") Baptists (incl. Southern Baptists) DO believe that salvation is apart from baptism, happens prior to baptism, and that baptism does not save a person. But as you said, they also require baptism (immersion) for formal church membership and for partaking of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Here's what the Statement of Faith from Prestonwood Baptist Church (largest SB church in Texas if not the southwest) says:

Salvation is a gift through repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. Every person who truly is saved is eternally secure in the Lord Jesus Christ and will spend eternity in heaven, while those who die in their sins will spend eternity in hell.

Baptism is by immersion after salvation and is done in obedience to Jesus Christ's command.

Just my take on things, but it seems from this thread that God (or 'god') is certainly 'definable'--just not comprehensively, and not in a way that is agreeable to everyone.

Ruv: Words get in the way of our perceiving reality as it actually is. You are right in saying no matter what we believe, reality exists. We are not arguing on that point at all. (It was my manner of speaking, of course, that got in the way.)

Also, speaking of manners of speaking: "But I'd argue strongly that these functions don't need to be shaped by mysticism" --- be careful not to confuse mysticism (the personal study of the self) with mystification (the obscuring of "Truth"). Mysticism is, to my mind, the only practice that lends itself to a sense of community. In a round about way I don't care to get into unless someone presses me. But it can and does happen without God as the center of our being, or the thing that we really are.

Higgins: "So why is it that 3000 years later, J. Y. Tetragrammon, has lost all the characteristics that made Him particularly interesting? Why is being nebulous better than being a brutal, vindicitive local hero?"

If "interesting" was the aim of spirituality, then I would still be less interested in a brutal war hero. That's me. However, "interest" and "fascination" have a lot less to do with spirituality than "awe" does. I have the hunch we do not disagree that discovering our actual place in this universe is a humbling thing. And humility leads to love, ultimately...An ethic that is sharable by all human beings.

AMCrenshaw said:

be careful not to confuse mysticism (the personal study of the self) with mystification (the obscuring of "Truth").

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They're not confused; I chose the one I wanted. I don't know any authoritative definition that describes mysticism as 'the personal study of self'. Rather, it's usually described as trying to identify with the ineffable (which, to my mind is also mystification). Here's what the Britannica had to say on it:

Encyclopaedia Britannica said:

in general, a spiritual quest for hidden truth or wisdom, the goal of which is union with the divine or sacred (the transcendent realm). Forms of mysticism are found in all major world religions, by analogy in the shamanic and other ecstatic practices of nonliterate cultures, and in secular experience.

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Which is done through self-examination. And whoever says Hidden Truth is using a translation of esoteric that a lot of scholars would not primarily use. Eso-teric also refers to inner. Inner being Hidden most of the time. One esoteric form of Christianity is well-known: the Gnostic tradition, which is a secretive tradition. The gnosis, of course, refers to knowledge. Esoteric Gnosticism, then, is Inner Knowledge. Sorry that I made the leap of logic that I did. If I am yet unclear, just tell me!

A good text to broaden the mind on mysticism is Inner Christianity by Richard Smoley. Another is The Four Quartets and The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot.

I found them useful, anyway, because mysticism used as a myth, rather than a grotesquerie will lead you to knowledge of the self. Their thang is that we are all like microcosms, and that knowing ourselves is knowing all other things. Not knowing about, not being able to describe, but having an intimate knowledge of...That's a modern-ish view on mysticism. Eliot and Smoley are my primary sources here.

AMC

"Mysticism...

AMCrenshaw said:

Which is done through self-examination.

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It's not perceived that way in all cases. In some it's perceived as a journey through a metaverse (e.g. the trance/drug practices of some tribes). In some it's seen as escaping the self (e.g. in certain transcendental meditative practices.) In all these cases it looks to me like the mind trying to do two things badly: either capture its own nature or try to be larger than it can reasonably be. At best I think it can produce relaxation and creativity; at worst I think it can produce psychoses, narcissism and grandiose delusions. I have acquaintances who are deeply involved in such practices and I've seen examples of both.

From www.etymonline.com:
I haven't used the term 'esoteric' in this discussion, and I'm not sure that I need to, but since you raised it...
So, just more 'initiation' and 'mysteries' in my view.

AM, I'd have to agree with Ruv here; I've never heard of mysticism being described as a personal study of self before. In fact, Christian mysticism is all about union with the divine--an absorption with the divine that seems to dissolve awareness of self, so that self is not even something one is conscious of anymore.

The apostle Paul wrote, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20). One might say the living out of this is, in fact, Christian mysticism.