The nature of your deity

[Primula Baggins]

I can understand wondering. I just hope the wondering isn't because we're seen as some kind of bizarre alien beings, to whom it is impossible to actually relate but who can be studied in an anthropological way.

I reiterate, I do not see that kind of division between people at all, other than in fanatics on either side. And there aren't a lot of those in my neighborhood.

[vison]

It is alien to me, I admit. But not so alien that I don't recognize the relationship to me.

[Primula Baggins]

Beliefs can be alien, but surely (talking of the ordinary spectrum of religious beliefs here, not human sacrifice, etc.) that doesn't make people impossible to understand or relate to. Especially if we're living in the same culture, one in which religion is increasingly seen as a private matter and whose mainstream is increasingly secular.

[Griffon64]

You wish, ax! But - do right handed people wonder what it is like to be left handed?

Got to agree with Prim, here. Didn't occur to me to think about it that way. But I tend to cut slack, sometimes too much of it, when it comes to the motives of other people. That kind of thought sure introduces an ... unwholesome ... feeling. I'm sure there are enough people out there who do see things that way. Not something I really care to participate in. I would feel weird if I started treating other people as people with some alien thought patterns that I need to study and understand to use to my own benefit. Or something.

For one thing: what if it turns out I can't understand their thought patterns?

[vison]

Beliefs can be alien, but surely (talking of the ordinary spectrum of religious beliefs here, not human sacrifice, etc.) that doesn't make people impossible to understand or relate to. Especially if we're living in the same culture, one in which religion is increasingly seen as a private matter and whose mainstream is increasingly secular.

Well, that's the thing.

Oddly enough, or I guess not oddly at all, the "religious point of view" or "notion of the deity" that I can understand the most readily (as far as I know, at any rate) is the "old man in the clouds" type of deity. The one who made everything and used to talk to people out of burning bushes and who is still concerned with "us" on a daily basis.

It isn't that I can't relate to you (you in particular Prim, or you not particular anyone), because of course I can. The presence or lack of religious belief doesn't come up in most ordinary conversations. But every once in a while I bump up against it where it I least expect it - and I always wonder why it's such a shock to me. Because it is a shock.

[axordil]

But - do right handed people wonder what it is like to be left handed?

I suspect it's not a symmetric thing.

Handedness is a difference both fundamental in some ways and trivial in others. It doesn't matter at all, until you try to do something that's really designed for the other side to do, at which point in time it becomes a obstacle.

It's also a trait that society used to normalize, and which it no longer does as much.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

I find it interesting that a few people have agreed with other posts. Is there a collective understanding about this deity or personal, or a mixture of both?

There is certainly a collective, and commonly agreed, understanding about the nature of God between Christians (and surely between people of other faiths about what they believe). We do have 2,000 years of collective history and teaching to draw upon.

Where do your understandings of your deity stem from (personal, collective, somewhere else)?

I can only answer for Christians. Primarily from what I understand of God in the Bible ... and from helpful and illuminating insights from 'mothers and fathers in the faith'. Of course my personal experience comes into play, because you can't talk about a personal faith without personal experience, but I prefer to have a solid foundation of doctrine on which to base my subjective experiences.

I hope that makes some kind of sense.

And my thoughts, they are refusing to collect right now.

I know the feeling.

I'm more interested in the personal experiences because I am a former christian (catholic and lutheran) so I understand christianity very well.

But - do right handed people wonder what it is like to be left handed?

I wonder this all the time, and have actively spent time trying to learn. I can throw pretty well with my left hand right now. If I had a left-handed hockey stick, I might know that one better (sort of do because when you pass with a goalie stick, it is technically left-handed).

[River]

I guess I have never thought of the "divide" between believers and nonbelievers as being an important distinction in the sense you seem to be describing, River. It's not like they are two entirely different kinds of people, with different aims, or as if the whole spectrum of humanity doesn't exist within each category, or as if we can't be friends or live in the same society.

It feels that way to me sometimes though. And it wasn't the greatest metaphor. I wasn't saying people on both sides can't live and work together. We do it all the time. But it is a difference and it does affect worldviews and it does cause people to, on occasion, scratch their heads.

As far as wondering what it's like to be left-handed goes, I do wonder that. S was a born lefty forced to learn to use his right hand. This has left him with a degree of ambidexterity I am jealous of. And, more poignantly, I sometimes wonder how it is for people with functional stereovision, if it really is as cool as people say it is. I also wonder what it's like to have perfect pitch. Or be totally tone-deaf. Or have synesthesia. Or a thousand other things that are different from me.

[nerdanel]

As far as wondering what it's like to be left-handed goes, I do wonder that. S was a born lefty forced to learn to use his right hand. This has left him with a degree of ambidexterity I am jealous of. And, more poignantly, I sometimes wonder how it is for people with functional stereovision, if it really is as cool as people say it is. I also wonder what it's like to have perfect pitch. Or be totally tone-deaf. Or have synesthesia. Or a thousand other things that are different from me.

As a lefty with perfect pitch - I actually don't wonder what it's like to be right-handed. I'm occasionally irritated (less so, now that I don't have to deal with right-handed desks) by the ways in which the world is designed for right-handed people, but I've never seriously wondered what it's like to be right-handed, or even wanted to be right-handed. It is possible to be in a minority and completely comfortable with that.

On the other hand, as someone with perfect pitch, I often wonder what people without perfect pitch experience when they hear music. It seems like their experience with music must be the equivalent of being colorblind - to hear so many tones and not to know absolutely what tones they are hearing. I can't relate to that, I don't understand it, and it confuses and even bothers me a bit that perfect pitch isn't more common. (seriously - imagine being able to see color while the majority of the world around you is color-blind, and you'll probably get what I'm saying.)

Anyway, my point is - sometimes the minority views the majority with curious interest and sometimes the minority just doesn't care about the majority. The same is probably true of the majority. So, with respect to religion, probably some non-religious people are curious enough to ask the questions vison did; others couldn't care less. And similarly, some religious people probably feel curious about why non-believers think as they do, and other religious people do not. So I don't really find these sorts of analogies to be very effective. At most they establish that some people wonder why others are the way they are, and sometimes (not always) that is related to one or the other's minority status.

[axordil]

At most they establish that some people wonder why others are the way they are, and sometimes (not always) that is related to one or the other's minority status.

Yep. And that's all they need to do.

[Griffon64]

Man, I started this post and then peeled away and now nerdanel has already said what I would have said, only much more eloquently.

But here's the beginning of my original post, just because:

As far as handedness goes: since the majority of the population is right-handed, many implements with an intrinsic handedness are mostly for right-handed use, and therefore, many left-handed people learn and handle these ambidextrously - with the exception of stuff like desks, of course! I'm left-handed, and speaking for myself, I've never wondered what it is like to be right-handed. I can handle the right-handed stuff just fine ( except writing and drawing ) so I kind of know what it's like already.

[Cerin]

imagine being able to see color while the majority of the world around you is color-blind, and you'll probably get what I'm saying

Wouldn't it be more like, knowing the names of colors while the majority of the world around you doesn't know them? Because it isn't as if people without perfect pitch can't hear the notes, and identify their relationship to one another. As I understand it, people without perfect pitch can still carry a tune; they just can't identify the key it's in -- is that right?

[River]

I can pick out a major vs. minor key, or some other mode, if that's what you're getting at. And I know people who don't have perfect pitch but who haven't spent six years with their instrument of choice in a closet who can actually put the letter on the scale they're hearing (A minor, C major, Bartok weirdness, etc). You can learn what some notes are supposed to sound like (I can still nail A 440; there are some things that just tattoo themselves into your brain and even if I wanted to forget A 440 I couldn't). You can also learn to hear the intervals. In fact, many professional musicians don't have perfect pitch. But my understand of how perfect pitch works is people who have it will just identify a tone. Immediately. No interval required, no intensive effort to memorize what something is supposed to sound like.

[Primula Baggins]

Perfect pitch is awesome, but I have known many very gifted musicians who didn't have it. It's like, it's an extra, not a requirement. People who don't have perfect pitch (as I don't) aren't tone-deaf; I'm sure I'm like a lot of decent amateur musicians in that I can tune to pitch perfectly. And I do hear music in multiple layers; even if I can't identify each tone, I can follow each line well enough that (despite not being able to "really" sing) I can sing harmony without music in front of me.

Don't mistake me, I'd love to have perfect pitch—but it's not a necessity for being a good musician. (Not that I'm one, either!)

[Teremia]

As someone who's pretty much ambidextrous, handedly and theologically, I have to say I really understand why vison would ask this question. It is fascinating to me as well.

I am rather religious, but unable to believe in a person-like God. Not unwilling to believe in that sort of God, not uneager to believe in that sort of God -- just congenitally unable to do it. Though I can IMAGINE a sort of Narnian set-up, and imagine it with pleasure, that's not something I'm able to believe. And yet I would love to be taken by surprise and find God and Heaven and the whole nine yards!

The Quakers spoke to my condition because they did not require me to believe in anything in particular (apart, I suppose, from the peace testimony), which meant that among Quakers I was free to experience the Light in my own way, without worrying that I might be "failing" to believe something essential.

And there is something very deep that goes on in a Quaker Meeting. I've come to feel that the "that of God in every one" that George Fox speaks of is REAL, that somehow we reflect the "that of God" back and forth as we seek the Light in each other, and somehow it becomes more real with every reflection.

Another way I think of these things these days is to wonder at the vastness of the universe, its vastness and complexity -- and here we are, able to see this wonder and marvel at it. As if a corner of the universe had folded back somehow and become aware. If all the universe is somehow "God," then we are what humanizes God and witnesses the miracle.

As Gerard Manley Hopkins says,
"The world is charged with the grandeur of God,
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil,
crushed....."

What if perhaps the world really IS "charged with the grandeur of God"? Not just in the sense of electrical charge, or of a burden to carry, but of an awesome and wonderful responsibility? By being witnesses to the universe, we have our part in echoing/creating/ratifying the grandeur of God. We make the Light human. It is rather amazing.

[Frelga]

As far as handedness goes: since the majority of the population is right-handed, many implements with an intrinsic handedness are mostly for right-handed use, and therefore, many left-handed people learn and handle these ambidextrously - with the exception of stuff like desks, of course! I'm left-handed, and speaking for myself, I've never wondered what it is like to be right-handed. I can handle the right-handed stuff just fine ( except writing and drawing ) so I kind of know what it's like already.

Kind of like being Jewish at Christmastime.

Teremia,

Yeah, I believe in God. What I will write is not representative if what Jewish religion believes. It's just how far I got.

I believe that God is, that is, exists objectively regardless of what people believe. I don't know what God is made of. Possibly everything is made out of God, as some mystics believe. Possibly God is made of Godness, the same material used to create that bit of me that is not run by electric impulses and chemical reactions, the Frelganess.

I am quite sure that God is conscious, that's rather the point.

I don't believe thar prayers work by God checking his list and deciding which prayers to grant. I think prayers work because visualizing a particular outcome can be a powerful force. Sometimes other forces are in play and the prayers don't get 'granted'.

I also think that these are not questions someone who perceived God in the same way as I do would ask.

[Nin]

First of all, apologies for my English.

I am also an atheist and while I never really wondered what it meant to be left-handed or to have the perfect pitch (just learned that word..) I also wondered how someone can believe in God, although maybe sometimes on a different level.

I wondered about it, because it is very alien to me and -unlike left-handed - not something that you are born with, it is not physical but intellectual and concious. And something that can change. Some people find God, others loose faith.

Somehow I hope that in my life I will not "find" God, because my atheism is a part of defining my view on the world and it is precious to me.

For me, there is nothing divine outside the human ability to conceive divinity. There is nothing more divine than humanity itself. It gives human beings a great power - like the power to create religions, beliefs to put this ability of imagining that there is a God outside of themselves and to proclame that actually a God exists and worship him. It gives them understandings of mystical moments, like the one Maria described. And it makes for me every human being infinitely precious. Every human has this ability to conceive deity, to think in moral, abstract terms and to wonder about death and the deeper nature of the universe. And this unique ability - which in our experience scale only humans have - makes humanity infinitely precious. My atheism is one of my reasons for my absolute opposition to death penalty.

Now, I also know that there are moments when you feel like touching "the divine", music, physical love, art, nature... many things can give you those moments. And although they don't last, I can understand how they might lead to belief. But I still think that they are only expressions of our humanity. The beauty and the godly side of nature only exist because there is a human being aware to see them. And in this sens for me also lies the only justification to keep mankind on this planet for which it is a curse.

I have also often wondered about the question what becomes of us when we are dead. Because, obviously I don't believe in any after-life. We have this one life, this one chance - but it is enough to make it meaningful, as we have this ability to conceive deity. The beauty of each life is to be unique and to be brief and utterly unrepeatable.

When I wonder about religious faith, I wonder more about the fact what it means for people's lifes. What does it mean to go to church? What does it bring to you? What impact has religion on your actions and values? Can you imagine world without your deity? But maybe those questions lie outside the scale of what vison thought for this thread and it is hers, so maybe I should not answer after all, because after all I do not believe in the existence of God.

So obviously, I don't pray. To whom? I also don't pray because I think we are responsible for each and every of our reactions. And if "miracles" happen it is not because God made them happen but because every human being is a miracle - especially my sons, but all the others are okay too. .

In the answers here, Teremia comes closest to my conception, I think. But when she says: "We make the Light human" it still says that there is a light outside humanity which we make shine.
I don't think that there is a light outside humanity.
We are the light.

[JewelSong]

Oddly enough, or I guess not oddly at all, the "religious point of view" or "notion of the deity" that I can understand the most readily (as far as I know, at any rate) is the "old man in the clouds" type of deity. The one who made everything and used to talk to people out of burning bushes and who is still concerned with "us" on a daily basis.

Well, vison has given me a kind of "jumping off" point for my own post on this topic.

(And thanks for starting the thread - I think it is very interesting.)

The picture of God as an old man up in the sky is one that many of have when we are children - in part, thanks to Michelangelo and other artists, who depict God as a man with a long flowing beard and a wise expression. Most of us who are believers of one sort or another move on from this very concrete and very limited view of God. Some of us move further than others.

I have had several atheists tell me that they don't believe in God because they just can't imagine there is really some old man in the sky, watching everything they say and do. And I once had someone ask me incredulously, when I said that I believed in God, "Don't tell me you really think there is some old man in the sky!"

Well, no. No, I don't!

Personally, I would rather refer to what we call God as "the Divine" because that seems more encompassing and more...ethereal, if you will. Since English has no pronoun for a neutral gender, we are stuck with calling God "Him" which, added to the enforced patriarchy of the Old Testament, seems to evoke a God who is primarily male, with male attributes and limitations.

Like Teremia, I subscribe to the Quaker philosophy of "that of God in everyone" and I very much relate to the concept of an "inner Light." I, too, have been at Meetings for Worship where I can feel the Spirit moving among us. It is very powerful, very humbling and a little bit scary.

In a nutshell, I believe that God is Love. I know that sounds trite and has been overused to the point where the meaning is all but lost. But I do believe that Love is the most powerful force in the Universe and can outlast the most dreadful wrongs and the worst sort of evil.

I believe we make the Divine manifest through Love. For Hate may be strong, but Love is long.

[Pearly Di]

When I wonder about religious faith, I wonder more about the fact what it means for people's lifes. What does it mean to go to church? What does it bring to you? What impact has religion on your actions and values?

This is relatively easy to answer, Nin. I'll talk for now about what going to church means for me. My church is a community which sustains me and nourishes me spiritually. It's a place of relationships, where a motley bunch of folk have to learn to live together and serve each other because they are 'one in Christ', and also a place of worship. Worship at its best can be a profound, even transcendant, experience. I can feel truly human and alive when I am worshipping God.

But it's not like I go expecting some amazing spiritual experience every week. That ain't gonna happen and in any case, there would be something pretty unhealthy about that kind of expectation. Seeking a lovely, mystical experience without the hard work of being a disciple is just being lazy and self-indulgent, IMO.

Can you imagine world without your deity?

Actually, yes. Although such a prospect would be very bleak. However, I have read some arguments for humanism and atheism. (Not Richard Dawkins: the guy rants too much and dismisses all religious people as idiots.)

I have often concluded that even if I were not a Christian, I would still believe in a God of some kind. I might expand on this later, when I have time, but work is calling me.

So obviously, I don't pray. To whom? I also don't pray because I think we are responsible for each and every of our reactions.

I'm not trying to be contentious, because Vison has asked us not to be , and I have no desire to be either, but in all seriousness, I would like to know ... do non-religious people think that because a 'religious' person prays, we don't believe we are also responsible for our actions?

I have to say that I would find that perception very puzzling.

I believe that God treats us like grown-ups. I do not think of God as handing out sweeties as if He were the great Santa Claus in the sky. And I don't regard prayer as a slot machine: pray in the 'right' way and you'll get what you want. Prayer, above anything else, is about a relationship with God.

But also: some things are way out of our control. Having to watch a loved one die from a terminal illness, for example. I am not ignoring the fact that serious atheists choose deliberately not to pray, presumably because they would also feel rather hypocritical about doing so ... just pointing out that a lot of people who don't consciously identify as 'religious', do actually pray at such times. It is not surprising that humanity then looks outside itself for an answer.

[Tar-Palantir]

I find that I have a tendency towards abstraction in conceptualizing God - and in fact (following the advice of C.S Lewis) I try deliberately to be realistic and personal in the way I imagine the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

I think that there is a tendency among intellectuals (like me!) to retreat into abstraction, and lose the vital personal relationship which is at the heart of Christianity; also abstraction sounds more intelligent when defending oneself against skeptics. But it can be a pitfall.

All concepts of God are inadequate - and that applies equally to abstract concepts as to anthropomorphism. It depends which is your own natural tendency that needs to be counteracted...