Subj : Rush to Judgement?
To   : RALPH ZETTER
From : Frank Masingill
Date : Thu Nov 02 2000 08:23 am

 RZ> Exactly what ARE you describing when you say "God"? And what
 RZ> are you referring to when you said "dissociation of the
 RZ> cosmos"?

        I'm referring to the God experienced by Plato as the "player
of the puppets" or the God whose voice Moses hears in the thornbush
episode or the one who appears to Paul in a vision and says, in
effect, "Paul, it is difficult for you to continue to deny what you
cannot deny to yourself in truth" or the God to whom Meister
Eckhardt addressed his prayers or the God to whom the unknown author
of the 14th century "The Cloud of Unknowing" suggested as the one to
be contemplated or the God who creates the world in the Genesis myth
and on and on.  These by no means exhausts the experiences of God
through history and around the world but in Western Civilization
they are the most common sources of experiences of the Divine as One
which point to a universal humanity and an eschatological index. 

        When such experiences are visited upon the recipients they
become representative of mankind.  No longer is the cosmos "full of
gods" as under the cosmological myths but the one God beyond the
world has now been experienced and for man, the world is dedivinized
(the elemental spirits of the air have lost authority) and set free
for science.

        When such a revelation occurs and the recipient(s) attempt
to mediate it for the surrounding societies in which they occur the
result is quite often (as described by Bergson) an attempt to
protect it by setting it down in writings and such writings can,
mistakenly, become THE WORD, rather than an attempt to "contain" the
Word.  Rudolph Otto's _The Idea of the Holy_ is instructive here.
History is comprised of such experiences and their symbolization in
either formative or deformative shape.  Heraclitus already knowns
love faith and hope but in the Platonic and later the Christian
revelation these are clarified and differentiated.  


 RZ> > There are plenty of ready-made belief systems if that is
 RZ> > what one is looking for.  Somebody MAY be at your front door
 RZ> > next week trying to plop their's upon you.  All you have to
 RZ> > do is think that it's well dressed out and logical or
 RZ> > terribly attractive with all kinds of knowledge of that
 RZ> > which "only gods could know."

 RZ> Sometimes. Or perhaps one of these groups might actually speak
 RZ> the truth. I don't know. :-)

        Ah!  More likely I'll be at HIS door if that should be the
case.  THE truth is certainly not accepted by everybody.  Not
everybody has "ears to hear" and the people sincerely looking for
spiritual messages do not grow on trees.  

 RZ> Is the Divine Ground = God?

        No "voice" in my soul has ever rendered such a flat
equation.  If that ever happens I'll surely attempt to communicate
it but I'm already 80 and so the time is short.  I think I reached
the point long ago of realization that I did not make myself nor did
I make the things around me.   I find that people generally prefer
to equate GOD to the OPINIONS individuals may have ABOUT GOD or to
some literalization of scripture by atheists or believers in order
to scandalize the God they hate (for some ungodly reason).  As we
find it in modernity, they can even be jealous of the "perfection"
that is often associated with the term and they want that to be the
domain of humanity when, of course, it cannot be - unless we
discover what perfection is.

 RZ> > Philosophy is being done WHEREVER man is questioning and
 RZ> > wondering in true Aristotelian fashion.  When one has
 RZ> > stumbled on a satisfactory ANSWER or a GOOD MIX philosophy
 RZ> > has twinkled out of the door.

 RZ> I'm not sure I get that. If philosophers are searching for
 RZ> wisdom and truth in life, then why would you distrust someone
 RZ> when they discover an answer?

        Perhaps because they have found, in studying the questions
thoroughly, that "answers" tend to be either wrong or penultimate.
Even when they are hearing the "answers" they often resent what it
contains.  When Socrates attempts to make DIE, so that he might
LIVE, the soul of Callicles, Callicles does not believe AT ALL that
a man ought to judge HIMSELF or not gather EVERYTHING he can in life
even at the expense of humanity, hence, he follows neither the
"saving tale" of Socrates or the "persusaion" through the myth of
the judgement.  (Plato's _Gorgias_)

 RZ> And when I was talking about a good mix, i  was just talking
 RZ> about the different ideas here and how freely they go back and
 RZ> forth between religion, then to science, then to philosophy,
 RZ> then back again. Is that bad?

        I'm afraid that what I hear most often is a cacophany of
shouted mixtures of myth and science which is not truly enlightening
about either, but instead is actually ruinous to both.  I hear,
also, a lot of egophantic screaming which could hardly be of an
advantage to anybody. Bible defenders and attackers do not belong on
a philosophy echo.  I know that this will come as a shock to some
but just imagine the same thing with Shakespeare's plays and sonnets
as the literature instead of the Bible?

Frank

--- PPoint 2.07
 * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12)

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