Personal or External Divine

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RichardGarfinkle

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Please bear with me I need a running start before getting to the question of this topic.

I'm using the word Divine as a generic term for the substance of religion even though it's a highly debatable term in Buddhism and Taoism and a number of others. But I needed a word, and that seemed tolerable. I hope not to start an argument about the word.

I've been looking at some old threads on this board trying to see what people have been concerned with. Obviously, some of the longest running threads were arguments about the divine and the world.

I apologize for the self-involvement of the next few paragraphs but I think it would be trolling to start a subject like this without putting my own views up for vivisection.

By any normal standard I am a full-on 6 on the Dawkins 1-7 scale atheist. I've had and am willing to have debates about any of the standard arguments for the existence of external gods.

But, I also use a number of religious practices from a variety of religions, and by most standards I've had and worked to have a number of what would be called religious or enlightenment experiences. I doubt I could get by in life without the disciplines I've learned and practiced from religious sources. I doubt I could get by without the disciplines I've learned from philosophical sources as well.

I don't see a contradiction between these two because as far as I can tell religious practice is of the mind, and exists to help us get along in the world.

If that sounds dismissive, it's meant to be just the opposite. As near as I can tell from reading and personal experience, the Divine is an integral part of human thought, the part that makes our thoughts coherent and foresightful. It seems to me that the Divine is the aspect of our thinking that lets us create large coherent awarenesses of things and follow ways of action even before we know what we're going to do.

From the personal perspective, it seems to me vital and inevitable. It makes our thoughts more than just individually generated notions, and lets us do more than simply be stimulus-response creatures.

I also think that people vary in what forms of the Divine work best for them. To some an embodied form works well, for others a sense of right and wrong, a path of reason, the careful study of philosophy, a practice of silence, and so on. People don't all think the same and this is an aspect of that difference.

Note: I am not saying that the divine is as some people say a figment of the imagination to be removed, rather that it is implicit in, inherent in the human mind and without it we would not be the thinkers we are capable of being.

Further note: I am not arguing about the origin of the divine in the human mind. I can make an evolutionary case for it, but that's not the point I'm trying to get to.

So, here's my question. Is this idea of the Divine enough for people?

Is an inherent guidance and more than what is normally deemed human understanding within our own minds in short is a Personal Divine enough?

Do people feel that a divine must be external to them, that it must explain the universe rather than be our guides in living in and understanding the universe?

I hope this question does not step over the line.
 

Teinz

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I'll follow your example and explain where I'm coming from aswell. I am a 4 on the Dawkins-scale, although I was raised as a Reformed Protestant.

I doubt I could get by in life without the disciplines I've learned and practiced from religious sources. I doubt I could get by without the disciplines I've learned from philosophical sources as well.

Could you specify this?

I don't see a contradiction between these two because as far as I can tell religious practice is of the mind, and exists to help us get along in the world.

I agree, although I see religion, and filosophy for that matter, as means to keep us sane.

I also think that people vary in what forms of the Divine work best for them. To some an embodied form works well, for others a sense of right and wrong, a path of reason, the careful study of philosophy, a practice of silence, and so on. People don't all think the same and this is an aspect of that difference.

So, here's my question. Is this idea of the Divine enough for people?

It depends on how they perceive their existence and purpose in this universe. What are they here to do and why do they need to do it.

For instance, one may be convinced he (she) is here to do good, whatever that may be. I think this requires a judge, thus creating the need for an external Divine. The same goes for obedience, reverence or purity. There must be a Maker of Rules, a Being worth of admiration, or a purpose for which one needs to save oneself.

On the other hand, if one is convinced that life's about fulfillment or self-realisation, a more personal Divine is implied.

I hope I'm thinking alongside the same lines as you were when you thought of your question. :)
 

RichardGarfinkle

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I didn't want to go into particular details on personal practices or experiences as I was concerned that the particulars might distract. I mostly put that in to make it clear that I wasn't looking at this purely abstractly.

I'm not sure that a judge requires an external divine, or even obedience to a particular canon or even obedience to another human (although I worry about that one for other reasons).

The mind seems capable of holding an embodied or abstract divine sense of right and wrong or understanding of a canon to be followed without there necessarily being an external divine to it.

I'm not sure about this, however, since while I do have such things in my mind, I regard the sense of right and wrong I'm being guided on as one of my own crafting.

On the other hand, one can look upon a set of teachings and see them as right for ones life and try to live up to them. One can also see such thing as divinely inspired (because, if you accept my premise). And one can take the view that the dispenser of this had a stronger or deeper understanding of the divine and therefore that one should follow their teachings in the same way one would follow the teachings of anyone who seems better at what one needs to do in the manner one needs to do it.
 

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Well, I'm primarily an agnostic; and my brand of agnosticism renders the Dawkins scale irrelevant. The probability of God existing is a red herring to me, and that's it. It's on this basis that I have to parse your usage of "the Divine", and I can't really do it. I don't know how.

Let me rephrase one portion so that it makes sense to me:

As near as I can tell from reading and personal experience, the Divine is an integral part of human thought, the part that makes our thoughts coherent and foresightful. It seems to me that the Divine is the aspect of our thinking that lets us create large coherent awarenesses of things and follow ways of action even before we know what we're going to do.

From the personal perspective, it seems to me vital and inevitable. It makes our thoughts more than just individually generated notions, and lets us do more than simply be stimulus-response creatures.

As near as I can tell from reading and personal experience, habit is an integral part of human thought, the part that makes our thoughts coherent and foresightful. It seems to me that the habit is the aspect of our thinking that lets us create large coherent awarenesses of things and follow ways of action even before we know what we're going to do.

From the personal perspective, it seems to me vital and inevitable. It makes our thoughts more than just individually generated notions, and lets us do more than simply be stimulus-response creatures.

***

See? Habit is a process that involves everthing: nature, nurture, daily experience. But it also gives stability - or should I say continuity?

The only reason I could have to use a word such as "the Divine" would be as a rhetorically political concession to my conversation partner, but inside I'd just be retranslating it to "habit"; I have to if I want to continue talking at all.

The question you pose, then, seems to be recast as: to what extent do you feel the need to have your habits legitimised? Clearly, my habits did not develope in a vacuum, so they're, by nature, external to some extent. Internalised legitimisation is quite different from legitimisation you face as external, and I think that's ultimately the point.

Back to the Dawkins scale: it seems to me mathematically symmetric, with the difference between a 1 and a 7 being linguistically habitual. My most comfortable place on the scale would be a 4, but I have much more in common with people somewhere closer to 7. That's confusing. The point is that I don't actually have a 50:50 estimate about the existence of "the Divine", but rather it's my default habit to deal with stuff I have no experience of. But other things I have no experience of at least relate to things I do have experience of (say, aliens or the Loch Ness monster).

So my question might be: What am I missing? What does the term "the Divine" add to the question that I can't capture under the term "habit"? Am I missing the point? [I don't actually expect you to come up with an answer; I've had that problem all my life, and I've passed the age of 40 now. Very ingrained mind-habit, that.]

So what am I do? Stay out of this thread? Pretend to talk about the Divine, but really talk about habit? Is the question of whether there can be such a thing as a one-man-religion relevant? I'm laying it open as best I can, but I'm stumped.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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The question of habit is an interesting one. To my mind there are two different kinds of mental habit, narrowing habits and expansive habits. The former shrink perception leading to mindless action. The latter leads to deeper and deeper perception and attempts at understanding, an increase of mindfulness.

Do you accept this distinction of types of habit?

If not do you see all habits as the same?

If so, then I should clarify that what I was calling the Divine is also the aspect of mind that leads to increase of mindfulness.
 

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The question of habit is an interesting one. To my mind there are two different kinds of mental habit, narrowing habits and expansive habits. The former shrink perception leading to mindless action. The latter leads to deeper and deeper perception and attempts at understanding, an increase of mindfulness.

Do you accept this distinction of types of habit?

Not sure. I'd have to think this through. Off the top of my head, I'd say that the same habit can have both these types of effect in different contexts. I think it's more of a push/pull type of thing. You get more open-minded in one aspect of life, you fortify another, so you don't lose your footing. But since you can increase your tolerance for frustration, this is not a 1:1 thing.

So I'm not sure it's useful to classify habits according to their effect. Maybe if you correlate that with contexts?

Summary: A habit frees you up from thinking things through all the time; that means free resources to think something else. A habit does also provide a basis for further, more complex thought - but at the same time it sets limits what is viable within it. So my intution is that a thought habit is always both limiting and enabling - both with respect to energy management and content building.

If not do you see all habits as the same?

Huge range. Very difficult to handle. There's the practised sequence, the triggered response...

If so, then I should clarify that what I was calling the Divine is also the aspect of mind that leads to increase of mindfulness.

I doubt there's a single identifiable aspect that does it. I'm also unsure how to detect a net-gain in mindfulness. I think more mental stamina is the main source of that, and that in turn is mostly the result of training. It's rather mundane, really. Even doing cross-word puzzles can help. Or anger management. No one single identifiable aspect.

But the clarification does give me another path to think along: Imagining an outside authority will get rid of a range of worries, but may intoduce others. I could tackle the problem on that level - what sort of worries incapacitate me more would then perhaps influence whether I work better under internal or external divinity. For me, faced with an external authority, I'm worried about "getting it wrong", but without an external authority, I'm worried about unintended consequences. The latter is less debilitating for me. Might explain my ahteism/agnosticism. Interesting.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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Not sure. I'd have to think this through. Off the top of my head, I'd say that the same habit can have both these types of effect in different contexts. I think it's more of a push/pull type of thing. You get more open-minded in one aspect of life, you fortify another, so you don't lose your footing. But since you can increase your tolerance for frustration, this is not a 1:1 thing.

So I'm not sure it's useful to classify habits according to their effect. Maybe if you correlate that with contexts?

Summary: A habit frees you up from thinking things through all the time; that means free resources to think something else. A habit does also provide a basis for further, more complex thought - but at the same time it sets limits what is viable within it. So my intution is that a thought habit is always both limiting and enabling - both with respect to energy management and content building.



Huge range. Very difficult to handle. There's the practised sequence, the triggered response...



I doubt there's a single identifiable aspect that does it. I'm also unsure how to detect a net-gain in mindfulness. I think more mental stamina is the main source of that, and that in turn is mostly the result of training. It's rather mundane, really. Even doing cross-word puzzles can help. Or anger management. No one single identifiable aspect.

But the clarification does give me another path to think along: Imagining an outside authority will get rid of a range of worries, but may intoduce others. I could tackle the problem on that level - what sort of worries incapacitate me more would then perhaps influence whether I work better under internal or external divinity. For me, faced with an external authority, I'm worried about "getting it wrong", but without an external authority, I'm worried about unintended consequences. The latter is less debilitating for me. Might explain my ahteism/agnosticism. Interesting.


This is inevitably a tricky matter because a great deal of it amounts to taming the kind of subjective experience that is not susceptible to useful external analysis.

What is, I can't really use the word demonstrable, but at least capable of being tested by multiple people is that a number of internal disciplines have been created in a variety of traditions that have helped people get a handle on and more control over their own thoughts. Some of these, like practices that use quiet and stillness to clear the mind of distraction have recurred in different cultures and religions that share nothing in common as regards dogma or worldview.

I am more inclined as you are away from external authority. I'm not sure I would distinguish between getting it wrong and unintended consequences. But my day job is computer programming where unintended consequences are just a more sophisticated kind of bug, compared to the program just not running.

But rather than seeing this whole matter as a presumption of rightness on my view of mind, it seemed better to try to find a point of view that might be shareable. Too many discussions of religion fall apart into people pushing their views.

I'm willing to argue hard in the matter of objective reality, but there is the question of whether the subjective side can be discussed in a non dismissive manner where the personal import and utility of people's practice, awareness and understanding is seen as integral to their lives.

Such discussions may well bear fruit where yelling does not.
 

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But rather than seeing this whole matter as a presumption of rightness on my view of mind, it seemed better to try to find a point of view that might be shareable. Too many discussions of religion fall apart into people pushing their views.

I agree, and I understand the impulse. But I'm not sure where that takes us. You used the word "the Divine", but there's nothing (little?) you're sharing with me, without resorting to other ways - yet again - to express it, and then the whole thing might be "reduced" and what - then - do I understand at all.

At heart, I might have all-men-are-islands attitude, and I'm sceptical even about the possibility of navigation, though I'm not prepared to give up. (Metaphors work to some extent, but at some level they take on a life on their own, become conceits, and I lose track of what they're supposed to illuminate. I can only hope that the structural habits I form prove useful when I happen across the same thing later.)

I do think that true understanding of other people is impossible: on the one extreme, you're the ultimate egocentric, and on the other extreme, you become the other (you forget how to understand yourself). All that is only theoretical, and in itself probably metaphoric. A sort of side-ways modulation through personalities. (And I suppose that makes no sense.)

When I say: "getting it right"above (which is what I would worry about with an external authority), then the point of view is that of said authority, not of an imaginary objective arbitrator. That's because I find objectivity troublesome:

I'm willing to argue hard in the matter of objective reality, but there is the question of whether the subjective side can be discussed in a non dismissive manner where the personal import and utility of people's practice, awareness and understanding is seen as integral to their lives.

Objectivity already relies on a relation between perceiver and percieved. It's, thus, not really a measure of how close we are to an external reality - but a measure of reducing subjectivities to what people have in common. And I think (very tentatively) that me being an atheist means that I think that reduced subjectivity is enough to get by, but never enough to understand another point of view. And what I wonder is whether expanded non-native subjectivity is potentially available through indirect experiential means, or whether that's just an expansion your own subjectivity and there's no connection really because you can get by on reduced subjectivity. (And of course I'm talking myself into a corner here, because none of this is a demonstrable difference, which I need to make sense of things.)

In short, attempts to understand always lead me to a "place" where I lose myself, and I can only hope that this constitutes valuable training of some sort. (I leave the bubble of words here, to demonstrate this. They originate from what I think is an attempt to understand - or rather from the frustration of what I think is a failure to understand.)

I don't blame anyone who can't make sense of this. I said it, and I'm not sure what it means...

Such discussions may well bear fruit where yelling does not.

Yeah, but maybe eating cookies in silence together over a prolonged period of time bears even more fruit? (I'm not putting down your thread; I'm just wondering whether I should just slide into the shadows and watch the show instead of messing up my insides due to stage fright...)
 

RichardGarfinkle

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In short, attempts to understand always lead me to a "place" where I lose myself, and I can only hope that this constitutes valuable training of some sort. (I leave the bubble of words here, to demonstrate this. They originate from what I think is an attempt to understand - or rather from the frustration of what I think is a failure to understand.)

You've just popped up one of those common practices, that vary in how much spiritual import they are given.

One of the things we teach children is the idea of putting yourself in someone else's place. Culturally this is usually done to try to inculcate ideas of justice, fairness, and unselfishness. Part of the root of this is the Golden Rule, which recurs in several religions and a lot of philosophies.

But there are two more extreme versions of this same practice.

There is a Buddhist spiritual practice that involves imagining that one is each person in a given interaction, to try to take up other people's points of view in order to undo the attachments of this particular life. One form of this practice is to assert that in previous lives one actually has been each of these people having this exact interaction, and that therefore there is no privileged place to the particular position one is now holding.

The second more extreme version isn't seen as spiritual at all. It's a practice beginning writers are taught of looking at each scene through the eyes of each character in order to make the scene more realistic. One form of doing this is to do this in actual interactions one is having, to try to see the other perspectives in order to get a better sense of the people.

Mentally, apart from the motivations these are all the same practice. Whether working to develop a sense of fairness, of detachment from self, or to improve the art of writing a benefit has been discerned in this practice, and it can be taught and refined regardless of source of teaching.
 

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So, here's my question. Is this idea of the Divine enough for people?

Enough for people to...what?

Is an inherent guidance and more than what is normally deemed human understanding within our own minds in short is a Personal Divine enough?

Again, enough for what? Enough to feel a little better than you otherwise would on a daily basis? Probably. Enough for ultimate justice to be achieved and the fallen, suffering world set right? I'd speculate not.

Do people feel that a divine must be external to them,

I don't know about people, but I feel the divine must be external to me because, well, I'm not divine.

that it must explain the universe rather than be our guides in living in and understanding the universe?

Why can't it be both?

I hope this question does not step over the line.[/QUOTE]
 

RichardGarfinkle

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Enough for people to...what?



Again, enough for what? Enough to feel a little better than you otherwise would on a daily basis? Probably. Enough for ultimate justice to be achieved and the fallen, suffering world set right? I'd speculate not.



I don't know about people, but I feel the divine must be external to me because, well, I'm not divine.



Why can't it be both?

I hope this question does not step over the line.
[/QUOTE]

The question of whether or not it is enough is basically for each person, a question of whether an internal divine is enough for the religious needs of the person. I am being deliberately vague because I do not think those needs are the same across the entire population.

You seem to be saying that for you it isn't, that you need an external deity.
 

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

I have no quarrel with anything in your first post in this thread, and I don't think Dawkins (or most other people) would consider me an atheist. You can only experience the Divine inwardly, because that's where mind (and soul, from my perspective) lie.

Don't see why the Divine can't be both inside and outside. Just the experience is inward. External can be whatever it wants.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

RichardGarfinkle

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

I have no quarrel with anything in your first post in this thread, and I don't think Dawkins (or most other people) would consider me an atheist. You can only experience the Divine inwardly, because that's where mind (and soul, from my perspective) lie.

Don't see why the Divine can't be both inside and outside. Just the experience is inward. External can be whatever it wants.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
thanks.
Sorry, if I wasn't clear. I wasn't asserting that there cannot be an external divine, I was asking if people felt that a purely internal divine was insufficient for them.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

I'm the sort of fish that needs water both inside and outside me. Answer your question? I think we live in the Divine, because the Divine is all that is. But that doesn't mean everyone has to experience it the way I do. The inward experience can be plenty.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

kuwisdelu

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Like Dawnstorm, I have to nitpick Dawkins' 1-7 scale, since it doesn't really work for me either. Just to be difficult, I'll formulate it in mathematical terms.

If m is the probability that god(s) exist and x is the observed world with evidence for/against god(s)'s existence, then the posterior distribution of the probability that god(s) exists given the data is:

p(m|x) = p(x|m) p(m) / { int_0^\infty p(x|m) p(m) }

And the expected value of m, E[p(m|x)], is the Bayes estimator for the probability of god(s) existing.

Not only is the integral in the denominator intractable, but I don't think the p(x|m), probability of the observed world given the existence of god(s), has a closed, calculable form. In short, I think it's impossible to put a probability on god existing, and I live my life under the assumption that it's an intractable problem.

I would probably put a equiprobable prior on it as p(m) = 0.5, though.

Now there are two ways I think about god(s), should the divine exist. The first is of god as a novelist, and the history of the universe as the model. This would seem like an external divine, but then I go all "Death of the Author" on god, and god's existence doesn't matter so much anymore. It's more my attempt to reconcile fate, free will, and the evils of the world. As writers, we learn to always do what's best for the story. Sometimes that means happy endings and sometimes that means sad endings and sometimes that means bittersweet endings. I figure the universe is the same way. I suppose we could call that tendency "god," the same way we call the medium through which novels are written "authors."

The second way I think of god(s) is that we are all god. Or part of god. The collective consciousness and will of humankind and the plants and the animals and the earth and the universe. That when added up, we, the world, and the universe, are more than the mere sum of our parts. I think that could be called "god." There are a few religions out there that incorporate this idea of all of us belonging to god or all of us making up god, some more closely to how I like to think about it than others. What I don't believe is that there is some separate "will" besides the collective will of us and the world and the universe. So I don't think god is external to us or the universe in that way. But I'm not totally sure in what way you're using the words "personal" and "external" here.
 

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First on the probability of gods existing. Given the high uncountable number of possible worlds with and without gods but containing the same observable phenomena as those of a particular human being (since we can't necessarily assert more than one person's observations), I don't think a standard integral will work. I once tried to see if I could create a measure space of possible worlds for exactly this kind of problem, but decided I was out of my mind.
Thanks, that was a fun digression.

More seriously. I chose the word personal since that is a common term people use for one reason to hold to the idea of the divine, that it is personal to them. External was a more neutral term for a divine that affects the universe outside of the individual. I was trying for a word that would cover as broad a gamut as possible without favoring too much one particular view or another. It's unsurprisingly difficult as most words on th subject are pretty charged.
 

kuwisdelu

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First on the probability of gods existing. Given the high uncountable number of possible worlds with and without gods but containing the same observable phenomena as those of a particular human being (since we can't necessarily assert more than one person's observations), I don't think a standard integral will work. I once tried to see if I could create a measure space of possible worlds for exactly this kind of problem, but decided I was out of my mind.
Thanks, that was a fun digression.

The integral could be dealt with if necessary. The bigger problem is p(x|m) not having any kind of agreeable closed form in the first place.

More seriously. I chose the word personal since that is a common term people use for one reason to hold to the idea of the divine, that it is personal to them. External was a more neutral term for a divine that affects the universe outside of the individual. I was trying for a word that would cover as broad a gamut as possible without favoring too much one particular view or another. It's unsurprisingly difficult as most words on th subject are pretty charged.

My confusion stems your use of "personal divine" in a very different (almost antithetical) way to the common definition of a "personal god," if I'm understanding you correctly.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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The integral could be dealt with if necessary. The bigger problem is p(x|m) not having any kind of agreeable closed form in the first place.



My confusion stems your use of "personal divine" in a very different (almost antithetical) way to the common definition of a "personal god," if I'm understanding you correctly.

If it came across that way I messed up a great deal. I was trying to encompass the idea of personal divine in the sense of divine as explicitly involved in or part of the life of the individual. In contrast to the purely uninvolved deistic conception of a divine that is external but detached from a person's life.
 

kuwisdelu

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The End of the World
If it came across that way I messed up a great deal. I was trying to encompass the idea of personal divine in the sense of divine as explicitly involved in or part of the life of the individual. In contrast to the purely uninvolved deistic conception of a divine that is external but detached from a person's life.

I think if I understand you now, then the way I tend to think of god is not exactly either, but kind of both.
 
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