Instead of abandoning God

why not just reinvent her in a form that you find acceptable?

Love your neighbor and yourself.

Okay, I'll reinvent God to be the vast, unconscious, purely physical universe I see around me.

Originally posted by Red Night
why not just reinvent her in a form that you find acceptable?

Love your neighbor and yourself.

How does that differ from "Christianity"?

Originally posted by darthmix
Okay, I'll reinvent God to be the vast, unconscious, purely physical universe I see around me.

That sounds good to me.

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
How does that differ from "Christianity"?

AND

Also, the phrase "Love your neighbor as yourself" is much older than Christ. Zoroaster used the phrase at the time of Isiah and it probably isn't original to him.

Originally posted by Red Night
why not just reinvent her in a form that you find acceptable?

Love your neighbor and yourself.

Because that leads to confusion over what the word 'God' actually means and essentially gives license to all the deluded individuals who have not 'reinvented' her to continue in their delusion resulting in all the ills caused by religion.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Because that leads to confusion over what the word 'God' actually means and essentially gives license to all the deluded individuals who have not 'reinvented' her to continue in their delusion resulting in all the ills caused by religion.

Religion will continue to cause ills until we realize that we are all children of the same god and accept each other's beliefs.

That means accepting all believer's including those who "believe" in the God of Atheism

Originally posted by Red Night
why not just reinvent her in a form that you find acceptable?

Love your neighbor and yourself.

I like the kind of goddess you can roll around in bed with and then makes pancakes.

Originally posted by mdhall
I like the kind of goddess you can roll around in bed with and then makes pancakes.

Augustin?

Originally posted by Red Night
Religion will continue to cause ills until we realize that we are all children of the same god and accept each other's beliefs.

That means accepting all believer's including those who "believe" in the God of Atheism

We can accept each other's beliefs without having to realize that we're all children of the same god. Accepting each other's beliefs, as hard as it has historically been, is still much, much easier than actually neutralizing all religious differences.

Anyway, the point here is that when a word can mean anything, it means nothing. If you can define God simultaneously and a conscious, personal being and an unconscious physical universe - as soon as the word "God" can contain both those definitions - then saying "I believe in God" becomes a meaningless statement. It has no power to bring us together; it has no power to do anything at all, because the statement has no substance.

Originally posted by darthmix
We can accept each other's beliefs without having to realize that we're all children of the same god. Accepting each other's beliefs, as hard as it has historically been, is still much, much easier than actually neutralizing all religious differences.

Anyway, the point here is that when a word can mean anything, it means nothing. If you can define God si ...[text shortened]... together; it has no power to do anything at all, because the statement has no substance.

there is an argument there, but it is it any better to say "I believe God doesn't exist."

And I'm not telling you how to define god, I am merely pointing out the obvious truth that god is indefinable....so man defines him/her as he sees fit.

For centuries we changed those definitions as are perceptions changed and then we stopped. Why?

Originally posted by Red Night
there is an argument there, but it is it any better to say "I believe God doesn't exist."

I think it is, because at least when you say that people have a rough idea of what you mean.

It's probably true that God, if he exists, is undefinable; but insofar as he intersects with and affects our lives, he's not undefiniable. He's defined by the ways in which he does those things. When you invoke God, you invoke a set of cultural traditions and associations and definitions, so that people have at least a hazy idea of what you're talking about in context. If we define God the way you're trying to - a word without definition - then any statement about God is necessarily devoid of meaning, even a hazy one.

Originally posted by darthmix
I think it is, because at least when you say that people have a rough idea of what you mean.

It's probably true that God, if he exists, is undefinable; but insofar as he intersects with and affects our lives, he's not undefiniable. He's defined by the ways in which he does those things. When you invoke God, you invoke a set of cultural traditions and ass ...[text shortened]... efinition - then any statement about God is necessarily devoid of meaning, even a hazy one.

But when you say there is no god, you are merely redefining him.

And what definition am I giving him when I say that?

I use the word tathata to refer to the just-so-suchness, in which and of which I also inextricably am (including my consciousness); the just-so-suchness experienced in simple being-aware, before adding anything: e.g., thoughts and concepts. (The Buddhist term “empty mind” does not mean empty of perception.)

Because tathata is pre-/non-conceptual (including all “I-concepts” ), any words that I use (including these) can be no more than “fingers pointing to the moon.” Tathata itself is ineffable, and that word itself is just a label.

I sometimes use Brahman (or other words, such as Tao, or even Tathata if the context does not render that confusing) to refer to the Whole: the totality without an edge, the one-without-a-second, the all-without-another—of which we also are. The Whole itself has no proper analogy; it is not a figure that has a ground: it is the ground from which all figures arise, subsist, and pass away. I conclude to non-dualism from the non-separability and mutuality (Zen talk: “all things mutually arising” ) apparent in lived experience, particularly in non-thinking just-being-aware. (Fingers, again, metaphors and allusions...)

If someone uses the word “god” to mean much the same thing, then we understand one another, and we can talk from there, sorting out the details, sharing our varied metaphors. However, if someone else insists that “god” (a) entails a supernatural category,* and (b) necessarily refers to a supernatural individual—then we are not talking about the same thing at all. At that point, all discussion is likely to focus on dualism versus non-dualism, or on a supernatural spirituality versus (as Starrman put it) a natural spirituality.

The word “god” is simply a label: either for the non-conceptual ineffable, or for some conceptual complex. If I say that I “believe in the god (or the goddess)”, to what am I referring? As darthmix points out, what someone else thinks I am referring to is likely to depend on their particular “set of cultural traditions and associations and definitions.” In the RHP culture here, for example, it is likely to be generally taken as referring to supernatural theism; and rejection of the term “god” is likely to be taken as rejection of that supernatural theism. [Note just in this thread how the personal pronoun keeps cropping up.]

The potential for confusion expands when one realizes that some strictly non-supernaturalist, non-dualist spiritualities use theistic language (perhaps because it was inherited), but in a strictly metaphorical sense (e.g., Kashmiri Shaivism; some Advaita Vedantists, Sufis, Kabbalists, etc.).

I have no intrinsic objection to the word; I simply do not use it in this “culture”—and if I do, I am careful define what I mean by it; or, more specifically, what I do not mean. I am not sure exactly what one is abandoning by simply abandoning the word.

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* By “supernatural” here, I mean extra-natural, or extra-cosmic, not simply beyond our comprehension. I do not assume that there are no aspects of the natural cosmos that transcend the “grammar of our consciousness”; and I do not take Brahman to be supernatural.