A question on Armageddon

YES---all of that (even if I cut out the middle of your post for space). Though, when I wrote the question, I was hoping to get some Christians to answer as I wanted a feel for how Christians are thinking: Are the Muslims evil? Are the Jews who don't turn to Jesus really evil? The responses I get on other social media when speaking out for the lives of the Palestinians tells me that many Americans think the Muslims are not worthy of being treated as a human. And the immediate response is that I support HAMAS despite one of the first things I say is that HAMAS is a terrorist group, what happened on 10/7 was horrible (but the Netanyahu treatment of Palestinians has been oppressive and terrorist-like for years). And so on. I have been saying for a year or two at least that something has got to give on the Palestinian side.

I could go to my evangelical sister but she tends to avoid talking about religion with me unless she thinks she has a strong argument about how the devil has a hold of me and how I am going to Hell and so forth unless I change my evil ways.

My intent, like every other time I poise these questions in this corner of the forum, was to be good and not argue with them, as I wanted to know what they think, but as always others come in and then of course I share my opinions, and I guess Christians have learned not to answer my questions very freely, or maybe they are all staying on their own new corner of HipForums.

But yes, I agree 100%.

On instagram I have pointed out that one of the scriptures that all 3 religions share is that of Abraham who took his son up to the mountain to sacrifice. In fact, on a visit to the Middle East back in the 80's, someone in a market tried to sell me some goods that were, he claimed, from the age of Abraham. It was that moment that it struck me that the people of the Middle East live so much in the past that it was to him, and others, as if the Age of Abraham was a 100 years ago.

Abraham was told by God, or at least he believed that God told him that he was to sacrifice his son. In the last minute, an angel came down and said, stop, he's just joking, (or may be the angel said---you are an idiot, but Abraham did not want to tell anyone the angel said that) and gave him a goat to sacrifice instead, and gave both of them a new I-Phone (Ok, I'm not sure about that last part...)

Now the one lesson all three religions take from this is that, if you do what you truly believe is right, God will come and help you. Well, who in their right mind truly believes that making war is good? Zionists and Jihadists justify war as a necessary step, but I suspect if you pin them down to it, they would agree that war is a bad thing. Perhaps the overlooked lesson that I like to point out is that Abraham almost sacrificed one son. God stopped him. So, maybe we shouldn't finish the job by suicidally sacrificing all of Abraham's children.

 

I thought I would have the day to write and spend time here, but my wife just reminded me that my only purpose for existing is to serve her. (Just kidding...) Actually she reminded me that we had plans today which I was never aware of. So let me just add a tidbit here for now.

When I divide religion from spirituality, it is not a solid line that places spirituality on one side and religion on the other. Because at the core of every religion is spirituality. If that was not the case, then we wouldn't be talking about a religion but rather a judiciary system or a government.

The root word of spirituality is spirit, and this refers to a nonphysical reality that to be properly academic, we cannot really touch upon such things. After all, Kant separated such matters from science---and that was a good thing. It enabled man to become like a god in his own right. But when we talk about comparative religion and religious studies in an academic matter, we skip all around the elephant in the room---the big question---is there a mind (spirit)--body (physical) duality? Which, in the problem at hand, also followed up with, how do such belief systems interact with, connect to, and explain this duality?

In fact, the Modern Age almost stopped dead in its tracks because this mind-body question came to a stalemate between Locke and Hume who each had an undeniable point that on one side, there is no physical reality, only mind, and the other saying that there is no mind, only physical reality. Kant resolved this philosophical crisis by validating both arguments and separating the world into a side we cannot see or understand (the thing-in-itself) and a side that generates the phenomena (the material world) that enables our minds to create the world as we know it. But by leaving half the universe as something we cannot know or understand, he did not really answer the question but rather shoved it under the rug.

So yes, every tribe has a creed, a cultus, and a code. But to lump this all together into one category tells us nothing about the experience of spirituality vs the experience of religion (and again, remember that at the core of every religion is a spirituality or at least a founding spirituality) and the social, philosophical, and other ramifications of how a religion connects to the universe versus how a spirituality does.

Let me just give a quick example---the spiritual experience of a yuwipi ceremony where rattles float through the air and bounce against each other, and where the floor shakes from the entrance of a buffalo who you may experience his hot breath on your neck or a large eagle wraps its wings around you, neither of which is physically there, is considerably different from the ecstatic experience of someone who is so moved by their spiritual experience to speak in tongues.

And why is it so important to examine this difference? MeAgain's last post is a good example. The three Abrahamic religions have spread more hate and violence in the world--completely contradictory to their teachings--than, well..., religion has always had a hand in that. The excuse that there has always been wars does not justify that.

Speaking of war---my wife is getting upset.

 

As I said, I coined the term Logosummonism, and Religion tends to be more logosummonistic--it is focused on physical reality and experiencing god or spirit within the physical, and dealing with the religious implications, aspects, and understandings of the physical world. Spirituality, by my definition, minimizes logosummonism and thereby deals with god or spirit as a nonphysical thing. Where spiritualism deals with the physical world, it tends to be in regards to how the nonphysical can shape the physical world. Take healing for example---if you go to a medicine man, or a healer, and a healing takes place, somehow a nonphysical thing, whether it was spirit, or belief, or the power of the mind---but some how a healing from a nonphysical thing took place. If you go to a church to be healed, and they pray for you, it was the medicine that someone gave you that healed you----OK I'M JOKING! There too it is the spiritual side of the religion, that deals with a nonphysical thing, that did the healing.

I think I erased the part about the tribe as the church, and perhaps elsewhere you talked about the in-group out-group. Again I have found that there is a major difference in the indigenous concept of in-group out-group and that of civilization and a religion. Because the individual is so significant in indigenous societies, I argue that the group is less defined, hence it is more subjective. The tribe, granted, is a group. But members of the tribe are more like members of a loving functional family, where each individual is important as the individual they are, rather than being a part of the group. The authentic individual is so important that in many tribes even their name can change through out their life to reflect who they are. Even Levi-Strauss has written about this if I recall correctly. What we refer to as tribalism, is really a concept of civilized man, that I argue developed in the planter societies.

This is related to another difference between religion and spirituality. There is no reason to prosyletize or convert to a spirituality. I have never found any indigenous spirituality that does so. But this is definitely something that religions do. Likewise, spiritualities do not recognize heathens or judge nonbelievers. There are cases of exclusivity----we could cite the mystery cults, but I would argue that they are more pseudo-religions if not actual religions. But in other cases, such as among the Dine' the exclusivity is the result of their treatment by white men. In the past, the Dine' were very open about their spiritual beliefs and practices. Then along came anthropologists, and asked to observe them, which was fine. But then they saw how the anthropologists wrote about their beliefs as savagery, and even worse, they turned their spiritual practices into a circus for tourists to come and watch. So today they are very protective of their beliefs. There are other tribes that are this way too.

This is why it was so easy for Christians to come in and convert indigenous people. They didn't see Christianity as a threat to their beliefs. From their viewpoint, in tribe after tribe after tribe after tribe, was this is how we pray and it is good, let's see how they pray, it must be good too. We can pray both ways. They did not see a problem with practicing in multiple ways---until the Christians hooked them, and told them their ways were evil.

I forget---and right now I'm too tired and lazy to go back and see where I said this---but I believe this is where I was talking about how academics explain how healers learn about what plants to use as medicine.

I meant this exactly how I explained it---again, they ignore the elephant in the room---the possibility that there is a nonphysical reality. So rather than ask a native healer how they know what plants to use, or, if they do, they dismiss it as superstitious crazy talk, and they then make the assumptions that are the agreed upon explanations of how healers learn to use the plants they use in healing. There is some truth to their explanations. For example, a lot of Native Americans will tell you that the reason they use Bear Root (or Osha) for healing is because their ancestors observed bears, when they weren't feeling well, would dig up the roots and eat it. But if that is the case they well tell you that, and it applies to that plant, not the others.

The answer is pretty universal among indigenous groups around the world. ( I am referring here to healers who use plant medicine, there are other healers like shamans and yuwipi men and others who use ceremony to heal, and there are others who use both. Most of the plants they use, they will tell you that the plants told them, or spirit told them, or the information was given to them in a dream. Now, what is an anthropologist, who is going to submit the conclusions of his field research to peer review going to do with that information? Nothing. Instead he will say something like, 'The tribes extensive knowledge must come from many centuries of experimenting with various plants and observing their affects to learn what works. But if you think about that, with the thousands of plants that are available to any indigenous community, and the many ailments that need to be treated, not to mention the many potential ways of using any given plant, and to top it off, the fact that there are many tribes in various parts of the world where, if the healer fails, and especially if his patient dies, it could mean death for the healer, it becomes a fairly ridiculous and unlikely assumption even when we are talking thousands of years.Supposedly monkeys with a typewriter, given enough time can write Shakespear's Hamlet. But it is ridiculously unlikely.

I would argue that religion can also alienate the individual a bit from spirit. In my writings I have been critical of religion, but not condemning. I have always been a strong proponent for all religion, and I will stand up for anyone who is being religiously persecuted. I have usually tried to respect anothers beliefs and not try to change them, unless they try to convert me, then, I am happy to give them some things to think about. And of course I love discussing or debating philosophy.

However, this position has been very difficult for me, since Trump came into office. It is a struggle for me to be a proponent for religion when you have the scary threat of Christofascism trying to take away our freedoms, liberty, and democracy.

 

Good. So do I. But my wife is possibly less understanding than you about such matters--hence the delay in my response to your posts. I do agree with you about some things, notably that religion can be and often is--especially in its Abrahamic form of exclusivism-- an alienating force. And it is difficult to defend religion at a time when Christian nationalism, or what you call "Christo-Fascism" is abroad in the land. To me, though, this simply reinforces the possible usefulness of Armageddon as a metaphor. If it were literal, I suspect the Christo-Fascists, along with the Islamic jihadist militants and Zionist zealots, would have a rude awakening if the Great Battle were actually to come about. They are all blind, and we should pray for their salvation before it's too late.

Let me just outline what I think are the principal differences in our positions, and to try to explain mine. I think that: (1) sprituality and religion are analytically separate phenomena that coexist in sometimes interdependent relationships; (2) even the simplest primal societies have what can meaningfully be described as religions, as anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of comparative religion understand the term; (3) modern scholarship has its pros and cons, but is generally more valid and reliable than primitive folklore in understanding the world around us, including the phenomena of spirituality and religion; (4) Descartes was wrong about the mind-body division. I see "mind" as a product of the functioning of our physical brains, and expect mine to cease when I die I think the existence of a material realm is a good bet, but consciousness is obviously not material, any more that images generated by a movie projector or a DVD player are; and I think ideas are more important than the material brains that generated them; (5) while we are, in a sense, prisoners of our perceptions, I'm willing to make a "hop" of faith and bet on rationality and empiricism as primary guides to truth; (6) humans made impressive gains since the Stone Age, intellectually as well as technologically, thru the uses of reason and science; (7) "good" and "evil", though both abstractions, are realities, describing actions and consequences in the real world, and dualism is a useful way of describing their relationship; (8) all existing religions are human constructs contaminated by human propensities for evil, as well as good--hence the confusion about such matters as what the sides are and who will "win"; (9) Hegel's metaphysics, in vogue during the late nineteenth century, reflects an extravagant indulgence in metaphysics--and attempt to grasp the secrets of the universe by sitting on his can and speculating about it. Marx, likewise. (10) "Armageddon" is, at best, a metaphor, and to express it as a battle among particular religions is a misconception. These, of course, are just my opinions, and I'd be glad to debate them--but after dinner and doing the dishes.

As for my differences with Meagain: (1) nowhere does the Bible depict Armageddon as a struggle among world religions; (2) "God" is neither an omniscient nor an omnipotent Dude in the Sky who is playing games with the universe nor had anything to do with this misconception; (3) God did not establish the three Abrahamic religions, or any one of them. They developed as an effort by humans to understand their situation in a world of uncertainty; (4) Christianity is not a monolith; Nicene Christianity encompasses the vast majority, but not the totality, of Christianity, and a significant number Christians agree with me on these points; (5) the Bible should be taken seriously, but not literally. Progressive Christians take an historical-metaphorical approach to it, in which myths like Genesis and Armageddon might express metaphorical or allegorical truths.

 

I reject the use of the term Armageddon. The Battle of Armageddon is the description of an actual battle that occurred in the late New Kingdom Egyptian History. It was somehow incorporated in the Christian Bible as a futuristic conflict between good and evil. The actual battle occurred when the Assyrian Army camped at the plain of Armageddon in advance of their planned invasion of Egypt. The inferior Egyptian Army advanced at night to a hill overlooking the Assyrian camp. The Pharaoh at the time realized that they would be easily defeated if they engaged in a battle in the daytime. The Egyptians tied linen bundles soaked in flammables on the rear of their chariots, and charged the Assyrian camp with the linen on fire. The surprise attack confused the exhausted Assyrians, set their tents and supplies on fire, and frightened the Assyrian horses to the point that they decided to stampede back to Assyria. The invasion was over and the Assyrian army marched home. They returned years later and accomplished their plan. You can read all about in an Egyptian wall somewhere.

I suggest that the Name the future conflict the "Apocalypse" and modernize the dialogue. The fire enhanced shadows in the overcast sky can be changed from Chariots of Fire to Images of doom.

 

"Apocalypse", the notion of an end times to the universe, in which the good will be rewarded and the wicked punished, is closer to the traditional Jewish concept--except for sects like the Essenes (see the War Scroll, from the Dead Sea collection). Har Megiddo-- a fortress made by King Ahab on a hill or mound overlooking the plain of Jezreel, was actually the site of several battles: the first, between Pharaoh Thutmose III and a Canaanite coalition in 1482 B.C.; then Israel versus the Canaanites; Israel versus the Midianites; and Israel versus Egypt (Pharaoh Necho). As for the Assyrians, they eventually made it the capital of their province in Palestine. The crux of the current thread requires a battle among three self-righteous world religions. A mere end times scenario wouldn't serve the purpose of discrediting them.

This might be a good time to take up #10 on my list (Post #45). As mentioned, a final battle was not a general Jewish concept, but seems to have been held by minority Jewish sects , notably the Essenes, which provided early recruits for the new Christian movement. They were a sect at odds with the Jewish Establishment at the Temple, and retreated to a monastic community at Qumran, site of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They seem to have been heavily influenced by the dualism of Persian Zoroastrianism in describing a final battle between the "Forces of Light" and the "Forces of Darkness". Palestine was a Persian protectorate for a couple hundred years until the Greeks took it over under Alexander the Great. Related Jewish sects, less monastic and more militant, formed the Nasoreans, the ministry of John the Baptist, with which Jesus and some of His early followers were associated.

The term Armageddon, though, came later--with a breakaway sect of ex-Jews known as the Johannine community, reputedly followers of the apostle John, one of the "Pillars" of the early Church. (H.W. Attridge, 2006) Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 1, Origins to Constantine
(Raymond E. Brown ,1979) The Community of the Beloved Disciple
This embattled group had a turbulent history of external and internal conflict--expelled from the Jewish community as heretics, torn by internal factionalism, and finally bearing the brunt of Roman persecution under Emperor Domitian (81 C.E.). The term "Armageddon" was introduced in a book written by a member of this community, John of Patmos, in his book Revelation. Revelation was written by John during his exile to give them hope that they would eventually prevail in a final struggle with the worldly powers in league with demonic forces (i.e., the Romans). Although the concept may have been interpreted by some as a battle among religions, that's not what the Book says. It was a spiritual war, but "spiritual" isn't the same as religious. Obviously, it says nothing about Muslims, since there weren't any yet. And although the adversaries of the community were pagans, it doesn't explicitly refer to them. It is couched in obscure symbolic language, probably code to confuse the Romans. The idea of a primarily religious war came later.

So really this whole topic on HF is about a misconception that equates the Bad Guys of Revelation with opposing religions. (not that some adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths don't think of it that way.) I think the concept of Armageddon may have some utility as a metaphor (if we could keep it at that) describing the eternal struggle between good and evil. I see it as an internal as well as an external struggle. Good is whatever promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Evil is whatever does the opposite. Satan can be taken as a metaphorical personification of Evil. Heaven is a condition in which everyone followed the path of Peace, Love and Understanding, and strove to maximize good and minimize evil in the world. Hell is what would happen if everyone did the opposite. At the risk of zealotry, I think it's useful to recognize this struggle or jihad, especially within ourselves. And the notion of a final battle may strengthen our confidence in the ultimate superiority of good over evil. I'm not ashamed to be a Social Justice Warrior. I'm reminded of a prayer from my Catholic youth: "Saint Michael (Mithra?), Archangel. defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wiles and snares of the Devil. We humbly beseech Thee, Lord of the Heavenly Hosts, by the Divine Power, cast into Hell Satan and the other evil spirits who roam about the world seeking the ruin of souls." (No, I don't mean literally!)

 

I think there will be a lot of people from every religion that will be fighting on the side of evil. In the end of times, the deception is going to be so strong that even the elect may be deceived. There will be a time of suffering such as there never was nor will there ever be again. "It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear."

I already know there are many christians that are in fact deceived already. Imagine how much worse it will be in the end of times. So I do think that the Jews and Muslims are deceived as well. But in the end it seems like there will be the elect, those that worship the beast, and those that don't. So not being a christain doesn't necesarily preclude someone to fighting on the side of evil, so long as they don't worship the beast. But the sway of evil will be so strong that it will be very difficult not to. There will be many christains fighting for evil.

----

In the end there will be war in heaven. Michael and the angels will win and cast lucifer to the earth. Then there will be a great tribulation on the earth for a time. Then Jesus, leading the armies of heaven, will come down from heaven riding a white horse wearing a robe stained red with blood, and will overcome satan on the earth. Then satan will be bound for 1000 years and cast into a bottomless pit while Jesus reigns with the saints for 1000 years on the earth. Then satan will be released, deceive many more, and then surround the throne of God, at which time fire will come down out of heaven to devour them, and then they will be thrown into the lake of fire for the rest of eternity.

Let me get deeper into this later.

 

(I THOUGHT I POSTED THIS THIS MORNING---DARN IT!)

Of course, I too could not make such an argument academically about spirituality as someone living in the Modern Age, or even the Post Modern, which in the end is the Age of Nihilism. Not unless the philosophy of the times were to change.

The whole history of Western philosophy has been, at its core, the history of man trying to answer the question, is there a mind-body reality? (Is there a physical and nonphysical?) A good part of this history was spent under the control of the church, all the way up to Kant, and really even into the time of Hegel. So they could not really ask this question directly, but instead couched it in the terms, how does the mind-body work? How can the physical and nonphysical interact and impact each other. Therefore, when Descartes set out to find the one truth he could not deny, I think therefore I am, the reason he took this very subjective realization to objectivist terms (creating the Objectivist problems of the Modern World) is that he was answering the question, how can we show within our physical reality, the wonders of God as truth?

The problem is that such questions are still not, at its core, truly convincing without first answering the question, is there a mind-body; a physical-nonphysical reality to the universe? And all of philosophy, including Sartre stating that hidden realities were an embarrassing part of the history of philosophy that we have now moved beyond, were really in the end, seeking the answer to this question. Even to the present day.

When I left my career in the stock market to write philosophy, I was trying to offer my own humble solution to a simple philosophical problem---you know---not start out big, but something easy, like solving the meaninglessness of Post-Modern existence. I did not know where that journey would take me. I was also trying to come to terms, or rationally make sense of the other crazy world I lived in, which included life with my wife, whose ancestors were healers in the old Philippine traditions, and this gift had passed down to her, and the crazy unexplainable things I experienced in Native American ceremony. I grew up in the church, a fairly progressive one, mind you, but at 8 years old, in my baptismal class, when the idea of sin and guilt and judgement is first really taught, I had trouble with correlating that with a God, that I was told, was truly loving. By the time I was 10 years old, I was actively searching for truth in world religions. (This was perhaps inspired by the enchantment I held for all the souvenirs and trinkets my grandfather had after serving in India as a Civil Engineer during World War II.) In other words, I was looking for proof to God's existence. By the time I was 19 or 20, and preparing to leave for Japan (still on this quest for truth) I had already concluded that every religion has many truths, but they do not have the deepest truth---the proof of God's existence. I had already concluded that the reason is that world religions were nothing more than institutions. The 1980's came and Jerry Rubin had already told many of us hippies that real freedom cannot exist without economic freedom, so it was time to make money. It wasn't long until I became very agnostic, and concluded that there is no proof of god and science will probably explain everything one day. I gave up the search. That is, until I met my second (and current) wife, then there was an indigenous peasant farmer who healed my stepdaughter in the Philippines, and I would see crazy things happening with my wife and her family that went beyond science, and eventually I was back on that quest again. Eventually, I got my proof that there is a nonphysical side to the universe, in a way that I could not deny or rationalize away (and I tried very hard to do that). But I realized, despite the fact that it was something that left me with physical evidence, that it was very subjective, because only I could know how truthful it was, what really happened, and how I tried to explain it away and disprove it. I can tell anyone the story, but no one but me can really know how true it was. But philosophically, I now had my answer to this question. This happened at a time when I still worked in the stock market, but I had already started writing philosophy, and this event added a whole new context to what I was doing.

So along comes my humble response to the Post-Modern problem-----Archephenomenalism. In philosophy, Arche is ancient Greek for First Cause, which is a very unpopular subject in Modern Philosophy---the idea that there is a first cause to everything. I call this First Cause, mind, and I leave it up to everyone else to decide, what they think this First Cause is, God, quantum information, universal mind, the essence of the universe, the void, whatever.

But here is the thing, the answer that Kant could not give, or that the whole history of philosophy could not provide, despite always wrestling with this problem, the elephant in the room when academically discussing religion or spirituality------is there a nonphysical reality? The answer is yes, and science could never see it because after Kant, it was dogmatically stuck in materialism, but it was there all along.

We think of the wave as a physical thing. Take electormagnetic waves---light, radio waves, infared, microwaves, etc. In fact it was through these waves that we dscovered the wave-particle duality of our universe. All these things travel through the universe, it seems, as both a particle and a wave, and in the case of electromagnetic waves, this particle is a photon, which is actually a bit of a phantom---a particle with no mass or size. So we have this image of these photons travelling through space in a wave like pattern. But that is not how it works. Take a ray of sunshine, for example, the particle exists for an infinitesimal point of time at its point of origin as a photon on the surface of the sun, which is already confusing because the light wave itself, stretches back, at least, to the beginning of the universe, and then, for another infinitesimal point of time at some point on earth, where it makes contact and is absorbed into an atom as a photon. But here too, the wave stretches on to the end of time. In physical terms it takes that wave of light about 8 minutes to make its way across the solar system to earth. But Einstein showed us that it doesn't really move through space, rather it is time that moves it from the sun to the earth. In fact the wave exists simultaneously all through time and space. We can start to understand this through Eisntein's equations, but it was in the realm of quantum mechanics where we actually defined this as being superpositioned---that the wave has infinite positions through space-time. And this isn't true just for light, but for each and every particle and subatomic particle that makes up the entire universe. Because every quanta represents this wave-particle duality. and every single particle can potentially appear anywhere in the universe at any time, but it has the greatest probability of appearing in space-time where it is supposed to in order to maintain a universe consistent from one moment to the next. It is information that determines where it will appear as a physical particle---quantum information---something immaterial that remembers, changes, learns, shares, and so forth. And not only the when and where, but the how, what kind of particle, what spin, what charge, and so forth.

Science says all of this is a physical thing, and philosophers have no reason to deny really, after Kant split the sciences of the physical and nonphysical apart, then sometime after Hegel came along and said there is no nonphysical. Everything is physical, even God, who exists solely in the collective will of mankind. And this is considered the peak of German Idealism. (As a teenager debating with Marxists in the backroom of an underground bookstore I already knew Marxism was the prime example of the failure of Hegel's philosophy, because I have always believed that life itself, or as Heidegger would say, Being, was a nonphysical thing. Even Schopenhauer was so close to seeing the answer, if it wasn't for this dogmatic adherence to materialism.)

But I say that this is a nonphysical reality. Consider this, right now, as I sit and write this in my dining room, there is nice warm sunlight coming through the window warming my back. But the implications of the superpositioned wave is that this same sunlight hitting my back right now (these photons, not the sunlight of some other but time, but the light of these photons) was here yesterday as well, it was here when I was a kid and had no idea I would be sitting here writing this, and even as dinosaurs walked the earth. It will be here in many millions of years, after the sun has burned out and the earth is nothing more than a dead cinder floating through space. And at the same time it is somewhere deep in space or on another planet on the other side of the universe. But the photons--the physical thing, is only in one place, very briefly---on my back. And the same is true of every other wave of every other subatomic particle that makes up my back or my table and dining room and this computer, and everything else at this very moment. They too were here and will be here, even though this moment where all of this is physical lasts for only an infinitesimal point of Now. This acknowledgement of nonphysicality seems like a subtle simple statement, but I argue that it is philosophically profound. It is the answer to the mind-body dilemma.

This quantum reality, which I have only taken the time to give a small picture of, doesn't give us some objective proof of god or a great spirit or a universal mind. But it does acknowledge that there is more than just a material world. And it provides us with the knowledge that, because reality is consistent from one moment to the next, that there is some kind of transcendent Beingness (transcendent beyond the limitations of physical reality) that holds the universe together.

So we can take debates like this one on spirituality that ignore the elephant in the room and then reexamine the problem differently acknowledging the existential experience of the people we are talking about.

 

You know, I went so far as to write, "Christian Nat" before I switched it to Christo-Fascism

I agree that they are different, and that, in the case of religion, they do coexist in an interdependant relationship, but that Spirituality began before religion and that indigenous spirituality, except in the case of advanced planter societies, exists alone.

I think that lumping them together in this way does not due justice to the experience, nor even the purpose of a spirituality versus a religion.

I don't know why Natives say that White People are so arrogant and think they know better about their traditional Native ways than they do... LMAO! (Boy the response your comment would produce among my Native friends.) But, I have to stop and remember that I used to think the same way. When you actually experience Native ceremony first hand, you begin to realize that a lot of the assumptions made are nothing more than uninformed assumptions. I already mentioned the indigenous accounts for how medicine is discovered, and how ridiculous the Western explanation is. Another is their explanation of Hanblechiya (the vision quest). They argue that because the person spends 4 days typically on the hill with no food or water, pretty much exposed to the elelments, that their vision is the result of hallucinations. Well, I spent 4 days up on the hill with no food or water, in fact I've done this more than once, and I can tell you that I did not hallucinate. Some of the things that I saw go beyond scientific explanation. Some other things could have been mundane experiences of nature, if it weren't for a communication between us, and this was not something initiated by me, but rather an automatic event. The academic explanation suggests that no one who wrote of this had even experienced it. I could tell stories all night long about the things I have experienced, either in indigenous ceremony or with my wife who after spending years fighting her own path as a healer, finally embraced it. But I can understand that they would be nothing but anecdotal to you. It is something you have to see first hand.

What you are describing sounds like epiphenomenalism, which is a Cartesian philosophy actually. It goes back quite a bit, but neuroscience has kind of revived it. The argument is that consciousness is merely a reflection of the physical phenomena of the biological brain. But this means that it is merely an illusion created by the brain. We may think, for example, that we are making choices with our mind, but in truth, it is the electrochemical reactions within the brain, and the choice was made even before we were aware of the decision. One implication of this is that we don't have free will. And if that is the case, then our whole judicial system is flawed and we should not be putting people into prison.

I agree, as long as we are dealing with the physical world. The problem is that Spirituality deals with spirit, and the post I thought I had posted, but instead posted right before I wrote this, explains why I don't think this statement is entirely true in that context.

I agree with you here. I think Kant was a great thinker and when he split religion from science, that is what allowed us to become, as I have said, who we are today. This was a great thing. But after this split has served its purpose, it has left us in a meaningless world. And the whole Post Modern dilemma is a direct result of that. Including the epidemic of depression, drug abuse and other addictions and so forth. We can point to many causes and factors, but I think the philosophical factor I speak of here is a very big one, and one that is often overlooked.

I will continue later, I've got to get to bed.

 

1. I was just clarifying that the notion that the Bible preaches religious warfare is fallacious.
2. It is certainly true that the orthodox versions of the religions you mention think God is omnipotent and omniscient. Progressive Christians don't necessarily believe this. In Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. Protestant theologian explains why it ain't necessarily so.
3. I'd qualify that by saying "within the constraints of nature". I think the biological traits of empathy and reciprocal altruism provide the foundation on which religious memetic systems are built.
4. I had the impression you might be tending to over-generalize from time to time on the basis of the more hidebound sects.
5. We certainly agree on that!

 

Descartes was trying to arrive at an unchallengeable proposition about reality. It may have dawned on him that the most immediately accessible aspect of reality is his consciousness.--incontestable proof of his own existence. Seems logical to me. My problem is getting to "body". My solution: to make a bet. Existentialism. I don't think there's any other way. That, in essence, is existentialism. My bet is on trusting my reason and senses. etc. I like to make educated bets. So far, it seems to be working out.

Ah, a seeker! Good for you. Such a rare species. Unfortunately, most people don't give a rats ass about such matters.

Postmodernism is a rat hole--responsible for the disintegration of morals and values. "Alternative truth", Gimmie a break!

I had my encounter with sin, guilt and judgement much earlier. In fact the very earliest memory I have of anything is a nun's lecture on original sin--at age 5!

I can believe it! You've describe an experience similar to mind in becoming a Christian. I think we may have an opening for common dialogue.

In my case, I was working in a "dog-eat dog" employment environment, in which some of my co-workers jobs were on the line and I was troubled about how, if at all, to deal with it. A little passage from the Bible entered my head and grew into a life-changing encounter with world religions as though the thoughts were being downloaded: Hinduism (Atman), Buddhism (Upanada, tanha), Islam (shirk, al-jihad al-akbar), Aztec/Toltec theology (nagual vs. tonal). I ended up a Christian, and was able to take effective action by putting my own job at risk. I also had a new appreciation of world religions, each of which I see as offering invaluable insights. This experience was deeply personal. Nothing in my formal religious training prepared me for it. While it had some relation to past religious upbringing, it was definitely sui generis and as you say, impossible to convey to those who have had nothing like it. My immediate impression was that I'd had a "religious experience"--an encounter with unseen unknown forces: non-physical reality. As a rationalist/empiricist, I'm also willing to entertain the alternative explanation: I was searching for a solution ("Seek and ye shall find") and the stress caused me to dredge up these thoughts from my unconscious. Of course a third possibility is that I'm just nuts.

Science operates on the basis of empirically tested refutable knowledge, and is useful for eliminating Type One statistical errors (false negatives)--accepting things as true that are false. It is, by nature, tentative and of no use in eliminating the Type Two errors: rejecting things that happen to be true. Our private experiences might "prove" the reality of all sorts of things (ghosts, Big Foot, etc.) that are rejected by science. Yet like poor Cassandra, we'll have trouble convincing a scientific audience. I try to keep an open mind, but follow the Sagan/Hume rule: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Bringing this back to the topic, mysticism has been around for a long time, in tension with established organized religion. Private individuals like Saint Hilegard of Bingen, Saint Bonaventure, Meister Eckahrt, etc., claimed to have had visions of direct contact with an unseen world. Clerics seeking to control the path to spiritual enlightenment have been uneasy about what to do with such people. Revelation , on which Armageddon was originally based, was the product of a mystical vision by a man who, among other things, seems to have been into Jewish Merkabah mysticism (Spong, The Fourth Gospel). It was the last of the books to be included in the Christian canon, because of considerable resistance--IMHO, with good reason.

 

Especially, considering that I'm Native American. And if I told my white MAGA friends that I know better than they do what the likely result of victory of a certain presidential candidate in 2024 will be, they'd say the same thing. Hey, I'm used to it! Indigenous and non-indigenous alike are in cultural bondage. Realty is a judgment call.

Alas, that's the plight of the mystic. You didn't hallucinate. Your encounter was real! We can take your word for it, as we can someone who reports encountering a ghost, extraterrestrial, or Bigfoot--or not. I know that ghosties, and ghoulies, and long-legged beasties" are the rage in New Age circles, and lots of individuals claim to have private encounters with them, especially after ingesting hallucinogens. See Sagan, A Demon Haunted World. They may be right. But I won't believe them unless I have confirmation from trusted sources. Because otherwise I could believe anything.

But to me, the more important issue is that you deny that hunter-gatherers have/had "religion", only "spirituality", which you define as subjective individual feelings. What is or isn't religion is a matter of definition. Definitions are neither true nor false, only more or less useful. Scholars who have tried to study comparative religion have different definitions of the term "religion", but many find the four Cs useful. Apart from your assertion that it isn't, you haven't produced evidence. You mention participating in your solitary vision quest, and in native ceremonies like the Sun Dance. The vision quest is certainly private and subjective, but where did you get the idea? Did you ever hear of such a thing before, or did it just pop into your head without knowing that other cultures had the tradition before you? Not only is it well-established in Lakota tradition, but also in biblical and Hindu traditions, as the de rigueur path to spiritual insight. And science has established the effects of physical ordeals on the brain. Science Says: This Is How Stress Affects the Brain
How Does Lack of Sleep Affect Cognitive Impairment? | Sleep Foundation
Food for Thought: Brain-Body Interactions and the Regulation of Hunger - Science in the News.
You went into the wilderness to find something, and surprise--you found it. As the saying of another celebrated mystic goes,"seek and ye shall find'. Or as they say in psychology, confirmation bias. My point is that the whole thing was shaped by cuturally induced expectations, much as folks at a tent revival find Jesus after an alter call.

The Sun Dance and other ceremonies are obviously products of communal beliefs and practices. Asked if you want to offer flesh to a tree? How would anyone believe that the would be an effective action? The feelings generated by such ceremonies are subjective but also group-shared. Of course, no one really knows how prehistoric humans felt about such things. We do know that, early on, humans, and even pre-humans, buried their dead, often with grave goods. And we know that shamanism was prevalent early on. Otherwise, we make inferences on the basis of observations on contemporary hunter gatherers, who might not be like their ancestors at all. So I think there's enough to go on to establish a prima facie case for prehistoric religion. I'm sure that back in the day of hunter-gatherer bands, religion was a lot less formal. In fact they were, as you say, family affairs--if family includes extended kinship and kinship by marriage. But they still had shared beliefs, rituals like the ones you participated in, customs about how to relate to others inside and outside the band, and of course, community fellowship in expressing common views about the sacred. That's enough.

 

Religious war? Plenty of passages in the OT can be interpreted to promote war, but which ones were you thinking of that can be interpreted to promote religious war? Of course, it has been misinterpreted that way. The Crusades come to mind.
What Does the Bible Say About On The Crusade?
38 Bible verses about Crusades
What passages of Scripture were used by the popes and crusaders to justify the Crusades?

Jesus said: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” (Matthew 5:9). Paul reinforces this position:

• Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory… (Philippians 2:3)
• Follow after things which make for peace… (Romans 14:19)
• Live in peace; and God of love and peace shall be with you… (2 Corinthians 13:11)

The only passages I can think of that come close to justifying religious war are those in the book we've been talking about: Revelation. And as I've been arguing, they say nothing directly about religious warfare. Besides, I regard the Bible as the product of humans seeking God, at different times, with different agendas--not something dictated by a supernatural being. We need to look at the historical context, and how the passages square with Jesus' hermeneutic of love.

I, for one, call myself a Christian because I try to follow the teachings and example of Jesus, as portrayed in the New Testament. He said that the Law and the Prophets could be summarized in two commandments: Love of God and Love of neighbor. If everyone followed those, we'd have paradise on earth again. If nobody did, we'd have hell on earth--a condition to which we seem to be drawn like lemmings to a cliff.

I agree: "some sort of God" or gods, an ultimate being (Tillich would say the "Ground of Being" or ultimate meaning. Most theologians would agree that this Entity is ineffable--impossible to describe in words. Think physicist Richard Feyman's statement: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Richard Feynman, the Physicist Who Didn’t Understand his Own Theories | OpenMind The same can certainly be said of God.

Belief in God is based on inferences from observance of nature (the integrated complexity of the universe; fine tuning); or on what are taken to be direct revelations from on high, recorded in various scriptures; or on a felt presence of a Higher Power. Notably, many scientists believe in God. We know God as an inference and as an experience. But, I daresay, what most believe in by that name is often different from the bearded Dude in the Sky with the lightning bolts. When I use the term, as a panendeist, I mean the felt presence of an immanent and transcendent Higher Power "in whom we live and move and have our being." Separate analytically, but also present in every aspect of our reality. Or as the Qur'an (50:16) puts it: "We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein." This would include whatever is responsible for the laws of science and the moral constraints they impose (Ma'at; Dharma; Lex Naturalis). It would also include the results of human memetic evolution, based on empathy and reciprocal altruism (the summation of human idealism). But that's just my take. For me to speculate on exactly what God is would be as futile as my dog trying to explain what I am, or why I get upset when he shits on the rug.

 

LMAO---I knew the minute I wrote white people that you probably would come back with something about that not being you, but I thought, well you know---a catch-all term for Non-Native people. But I think you can understand that what I am really referring to is the colonial attitude and the way those Natives who walk the Red Road see the assumptions made by this attitude. May I ask what Nation?

As far as the debate with MAGA Republicans, I have that debate quite regularly. Unfortunately what scares me the most is Trump winning because a third party candidate split the vote. My son is one of those people this time that is thinking third party. There were people that tried to get me to do that in the last election. But,in 2020 and right now, we have to do anything and everything to keep Trump or anyone like him out of the White House.

Yes, I do agree with that. His exercise in skepticism was sound, the truth he found--his First Principle, is strong, but then his argument to validate all the other truths that validate physical reality, truth, and God are flimsy. I think Kant did the best job of anyone of validating the truth of phsyical reality. I have long considered myself an existentialist, more so when I became very agnostic, but all kinds of experiences after that turned me into an essentialist. In fact I once wrote a piece called existentialistic essentialism. I was never a traditional essentialist, and I agreed with the arguments that existentialism made against essentialism, for example, it is silly to say that a table is a table because it has the essence of tableness. A table is a table because we label it and probably use it as such. On the other hand, and individual table has its own unique essence which is everything from its phsyical form to its history of what happens to it----the quantum information of that table, and this is why, if we scratch the table and leave it scratched, it will always have that scratch, despite quantum randomness.

However modern day materialism is the result of Hegel in the footsteps of Kant, and while I am fascinated by his philosophy, I find his attempts to turn idealism into a materialist philosophy to be just as flimsy, and that if it hadn't been for Kant, and Cartesian objectivism and everything else that came along, feeding the fires of materialism, that people would not have been so in love with his ideas, but said, 'wait a minute, you speak of pure being as nothingness, and history as being on some kind of transcendent path to achieve divine good, and you speak of God, yet you insist all of this exists only in a physical reality?'

In formulating my own philosophy of Archephenomenalism, I began with three principles, the first being Descartes': 1.) I think therefore I am. 2.) I am here in time, therefore it is Now (meaning that all we can determine to truly exist as a physical reality is the present, and only the present). 3.) I remember, perceive, and intend, therefore I transcend physical time (meaning that if all physical reality only exists in this single point of Now, then the mind must therefore transcend physical reality). This point of Now (or the Quantum Now as I refer to it), which represents the entirety of physicality at this given moment of Now represents all current and simultaneous quantum wave collapses into physical particles and which I assign to Planck Time. In other words all of physicality exists right now, and no where else. Anything outside of that, including superpositioned waves, is nonphysical. However it is actually a point of time that is infinitesimal---Planck Time (and one Planck Time and Planck Space is dimensions that are used in string theory, so we are literally talking of dimensions at which string theory would say that strings exist. And even at that, quantum physicists are unsure if waves even actually collapse into particles, or just near enough to generate the phenomena of a particle.) So the mass of the universe itself, is really going through this continuous cycle of being and nonbeing, because in between each actual collapse (or near collapse) of a particle, is a point where only the wave exists, but that it generates the phenomena of reality, and our minds which transcend this physical existence, runs it all together into the reality we understand.

Nietzsche wrote about this coming Age of Nihilism, and what he was referring to was the European fin-de-siecle which bears many similarities to today, and was indeed an age of Nihilism. Baudrillard says that we have entered an age of hyper-Nihilism, and I agree with many of his observations and assertions of simulacra. I too have written about the current age of Nihilism. But I thought I would never see the day that Nihilism would become the official view of the US Government. But when Conway said the president is not lying but simple speaking of an alternative truth, I knew that was the case.

Its getting late, and I have been travelling. I am home now and have access to my extensive library. There are several books I was going to mention that might give you some perspective on my definition of spirituality vs religion and the things we have talked about here. (And I even have a book or two that you have mentioned) I can't think right now of specific titles but I did go downstairs to my library and pulled out, The Primal Mind, Vision and Reality in Indian America, by Jamake Highwater. He is Blackfeet and Cherokee and I think his views are aligned quite a bit with mine. But, of course when I read this book I understood it from my perspective. You may get something entirely different from it.

I will continue tomorrow. One last point, I am not Native American, though embarrassingly enough, Ancestry.com claims that one of my ancestors in colonial America married the daughter of a chief of the Iroquois Confederacy that is very famous for creating good relations with the settlers, and so forth---I will not share this with hardly any of my Native friends because---I am very well of the jokes about the white people who were descended from Native American princesses, and I joked about that too until I happened to see the family lines from ancestry.com and responded---Oh no! I don't know how true it is, Im also related apparently to the Duke who was the common ancestor to Prince Charles and Lady Diane, and several family lines go back to the Norman Conquest and the family of WIlliam the Conqueror, while a different line goes back to the first Scottish King, King David. And then it goes way back to a long line of Saxon kings with the name, Odin. So I don't know how authentic all of that is or if it is just trying to make people feel good. I do argue that all of us have indigenous ancestors. One thing I do know for sure, because my cousain has done a lot of geneological work, and got a family history from Germany that I helped him translate from Dutch, the matriarch of the family of my mom's father was one of the Hags that ruled over the Hague, and the family was known for having some gifts, such as the ability to heal animals. I have that connection to my indigenous Germanic ancestors.

Anyway, my philosophy was in part, trying to come to rational terms with the reality I experienced in Indigenous ceremony and so forth, maybe I said that already. Being that I am not Native (at least not in a way I would admit or even know for sure) I do not write about Native Spirituality, except perhaps to borrow terms and ideas at times from primarily Lakota concepts, sometimes other Nations, for the purpose of illustration, as I do with other world religions. Otherwise it is all based entirely on Western philosophy and science.

 

I should have clarified. I was thinking of religious war in the context of the OP--i.e., a war among religions, or a war against people because they worship a different god or in a different way. The Yahweh of the OT certainly did direct operations against foreign nations, and sometimes cuz He didn't like their morals. But I don't recall Him saying : go smite the Elamites cuz they're worshiping Napirisha, or strike down those Moabites for worshiping Chemosh.

When scripture is misinterpreted, is religion at fault or the people who misinterpreted it? In many cases, right up to the present day, religion is twisted out of shape by politicians and clerics to serve their own nefarious ends. I think my religion and my country are being hijacked by a motley crew of Christian Nationalists.

You sound traditional in your view of religion. Ours a simpler religion, more focused on the main teachings of Jesus. But we do this in church every week, study scripture, and engage in free-wheeling discussions of religious and ethical matters. Lately, we've been studying Wesley's three general rules (do no harm, do good, and love God) and how to implement those in our lives. We've got code, creed, minimal ritual but strong community and good fellowship.
What more do we need?

The ethical system is paramount and intimately connected with our experience with God. It's a set of principles to live and die for. The Bible tells us that God is Love, and the biblical Jesus told us love of God and neighbor are the summation of the Law and the Prophets. One important aspect of God is His role as the summation of human idealism.

We admittedly are skeptical about supernatural claims, but inspired by the mystery of existence, the beauty we see around us, and the potential for bringing heaven closer to earth. But most conceptualize God as being both imminent and transcendent--a spirit touching and guiding our lives, in fact the most important thing in their lives. That's called panentheism, or in the case of those who think God is more "hands off", panendeism.

Can Panentheists be Christians? Some ordained Catholic thinkers tell us that it was the original viewpoint of early Christianity.
The Universal Christ
The Thomas Keating Reader
In Protestantism, process theology and Creation Spirituality incorporate panentheism, and tehologians associated with the Jesus movement, like Marcus Borg, have embraced it. It also resonates with the traditions of the Eastern Church.
Panentheism - Wikipedia
Can Deists be Christians? Some of our founding fathers thought so. Christian deism - Wikipedia