RealAwareness
Rising Star
Does God Exist? If So, What is the Nature of God? These two question keep me up at night. Let me start by saying that while I do believe in God, I have no idea what the nature of God is: A personal, yet infinite being, or an impersonal force, or a transpersonal, infinite void that spins off Universes like grains of sand.
When I look at the world as it is, I have a very hard time in accepting the idea that a loving, caring God would create a Universe that appears to us exactly as the Universe should appear if there were no God: A colossal indifference in it's very design to issues of fairness, justice, suffering, evil. The Universe just is, and cares not one whit for the human experience. "It rains on the just and unjust alike". Indeed. I have read the writings of St. Ireneus, who postulates that the Universe was created deliberately as a "vale of tears", that suffering is an essential component for the evolution of souls into mature, loving beings.
Now Ireneus is one of the few early Christians I like, and the only one that answers the Problem of Evil in a somewhat coherent fashion. For example, he was a Universalist, as was Origen, and denied the doctrine of everlasting Hell. I'm not going to go into the rational absurdities of religious doctrine, as I don't believe Truth is something issued by Decree, which we must believe in or perish everlasting. Such a notion is absurd on it's face.
There have been Western mystics who described God in terms very near to the pantheism of the East, yet there are schools within both Hinduism and Buddhism which adhere to a notion of a personal God - that is, a God with a Mind, an infinite mind, fully soveriegn over creation. Yet still, that begs the question: If God exists, then why did He design a Universe that appears exactly like we would expect the Universe to appear if there was, in fact, no God?
Ultimately, I can't give a rational explanation as to why I believe in God, generally speaking. It might be more accurate to say I believe in a spiritual foundation to reality, that, as the Dao states, the Name which can be uttered is not the Eternal Name; that if we think we grasp God, we don't. But my belief is based primarily on personal experience, on feeling, on serendipitous events and synchronicity in my own life which leads me to believe there is a larger force ultimately orchestrating things. But feelings and coincidences do not form a rational foundation for belief. I do think Intelligent Design and the Anthropic Principle can possibly give a rational basis for belief in a Creator of some kind, but can state nothing of God's Nature.
Ultimately, I simply don't know, and don't know if knowledge of the unapproachable is even possible, outside of direct Mystical experience - which begs the question again; how do we know such experiences aren't simply products of our own mind? I know I'm not the only one who struggles with these questions, especially in a place like this; indeed, this is a big reason why I am drawn to DMT - the potential for a transcendent experience of Ultimate Reality that could help me resolve my questions and world view.
When I look at the world as it is, I have a very hard time in accepting the idea that a loving, caring God would create a Universe that appears to us exactly as the Universe should appear if there were no God: A colossal indifference in it's very design to issues of fairness, justice, suffering, evil. The Universe just is, and cares not one whit for the human experience. "It rains on the just and unjust alike". Indeed. I have read the writings of St. Ireneus, who postulates that the Universe was created deliberately as a "vale of tears", that suffering is an essential component for the evolution of souls into mature, loving beings.
Now Ireneus is one of the few early Christians I like, and the only one that answers the Problem of Evil in a somewhat coherent fashion. For example, he was a Universalist, as was Origen, and denied the doctrine of everlasting Hell. I'm not going to go into the rational absurdities of religious doctrine, as I don't believe Truth is something issued by Decree, which we must believe in or perish everlasting. Such a notion is absurd on it's face.
There have been Western mystics who described God in terms very near to the pantheism of the East, yet there are schools within both Hinduism and Buddhism which adhere to a notion of a personal God - that is, a God with a Mind, an infinite mind, fully soveriegn over creation. Yet still, that begs the question: If God exists, then why did He design a Universe that appears exactly like we would expect the Universe to appear if there was, in fact, no God?
Ultimately, I can't give a rational explanation as to why I believe in God, generally speaking. It might be more accurate to say I believe in a spiritual foundation to reality, that, as the Dao states, the Name which can be uttered is not the Eternal Name; that if we think we grasp God, we don't. But my belief is based primarily on personal experience, on feeling, on serendipitous events and synchronicity in my own life which leads me to believe there is a larger force ultimately orchestrating things. But feelings and coincidences do not form a rational foundation for belief. I do think Intelligent Design and the Anthropic Principle can possibly give a rational basis for belief in a Creator of some kind, but can state nothing of God's Nature.
Ultimately, I simply don't know, and don't know if knowledge of the unapproachable is even possible, outside of direct Mystical experience - which begs the question again; how do we know such experiences aren't simply products of our own mind? I know I'm not the only one who struggles with these questions, especially in a place like this; indeed, this is a big reason why I am drawn to DMT - the potential for a transcendent experience of Ultimate Reality that could help me resolve my questions and world view.
