[MD] God is dead.

Wed Mar 1 15:18:53 PST 2006

On 01 March 2006 2:49 PM Peter writes to Joseph Bromley:

Hi Joseph, thanks for your post.

"God" is alive in the minds of many people (but not mine) and is
consequently still very powerful; he exists but he doesn't exist !
Science, based on logic, has given us so much now that the need for "God" is
diminishing.
Going back to the early days when people first began to think it seems to me
that "God" arose then as a conclusion from the awesomeness of nature and
became a force for social cohesion, personifying quality and reflecting the
apparent mystery of human self-awareness.
It has taken me many years to see through my own conditioning; I was not an
alter boy but still used to go to mass alone from about age 9 through 11,
then went to a secondary school run by Catholic brothers. I began to think
of myself as agnostic in early adulthood but later became involved with the
Gurdjieff cult, a very subversive form of spiritual fascism; breaking free
from them was very painful. About 18 months ago at my workplace I became
friends with a very religious Nigerian man and through our many discussions
realized I had progressed to atheism (I still haven't convinced him though).
More recently still, through reading Dawkins, I went a step further and
threw out the idea of anything supernatural too.

Regards

Peter

Hi Peter and Joseph and all,

Welcome, Peter! I am a different Joseph. I was struck by your post as your 
biog is similar to mine. I 'was' an altar boy. I went to a Catholic seminary 
to become a priest. They said I was not good material. I went to a Dominican 
monastery for 4 years. They said I wasn't good material. In 1963 I went to 
New York, and found myself at The Catholic Worker House of Hospitality on 
Chrysty St.. The radical, anarchist, pacifist thought and actions of Peter 
Maurin, Dorothy Day, Amon Hennacy were not what I was used to. I learned. I 
went to New Orleans, and Mississippi in the summer of 64 to apply what I had 
learned. I am a hippie! I married common-law and moved to California and 
became involved with a Gurdjieff cult in 1965. The cult changed hands and I 
survived. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the person who took over. 
I was fortunate to survive, considering I was in the area of Jim Jones's 
Peoples's Temple, 900 dead. The Manson murders, the SLA were all people in 
the neighborhood so to speak. I tried pot, but it didn't sit well with me. I 
stayed with wine. Tune in, (turn on), and drop out! The music was grand, and 
I still sing.

I loved the writings of Gurdjieff, but I could make no sense of them. I 
became acquainted with Pirsig's books Zen, and Lila. Quality! is a door 
opener.

Regards

Joe

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Corteen" <psigenics at googlemail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] God is dead.

> Hi Joseph, thanks for your post.
>
> "God" is alive in the minds of many people (but not mine) and is
> consequently still very powerful; he exists but he doesn't exist !
> Science, based on logic, has given us so much now that the need for "God" 
> is
> diminishing.
> Going back to the early days when people first began to think it seems to 
> me
> that  "God"  arose then as a conclusion from the awesomeness of nature and
> became a force for social cohesion, personifying quality and reflecting 
> the
> apparent mystery of human self-awareness.
>
> It has taken me many years to see through my own conditioning;  I was not 
> an
> alter boy but still used to go to mass alone from about age 9 through 11,
> then went to a secondary school run by Catholic brothers. I began to think
> of myself as agnostic in early adulthood but later became involved with 
> the
> Gurdjieff cult, a very subversive form of spiritual facism; breaking free
> from them was very painful. About 18 months ago at my workplace I became
> friends with a very religious Nigerian man and through our many 
> discussions
> realised I had progressed to atheism (I still haven't convinced him 
> though).
> More recently still, through reading Dawkins, I went a step further and
> threw out the idea of anything supernatural too.
>
> Regards
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> On 26/02/06, Joseph Bromley <bharhumbug at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Hello all.
>>
>> Nietzsche declared "God is dead" back in the nineteen hundreds, an idea
>> which has been slow to catch on and very often misunderstood.
>>
>> With intellectual ideas such as evolution and gravity coming to the fore
>> in
>> mans understanding of life they ate away at the properties of God. God 
>> was
>> no longer all, the law of nature slowly but surely became great and more
>> tangible to man than God. God as little place inintellectual reasoning,
>> for
>> the source of all is beyond logical reasoning.
>> Belief was still strong in god even amongst the scientists until the
>> killing
>> fields of the first world war, then men began to question, can there
>> really
>> be a god? By the end of the second world war man was beginning to play
>> god.
>> The next step is for man to will his own evolution and prove himself a 
>> god
>> by creating something greater out of himself then he himself is.
>> None of the europeans who I concider to have scaled the heights since
>> Nietzsche, such as Pirsig and Eckhart Tolle, Sid Barret have used the 
>> word
>> God, godhead yes but not God. Before Nietzsche I can find on examples of
>> those who had scaled the heights. The Asians and South Americans seem to
>> have always been able to and still can, produce such types of men, this
>> appears a new development for European blood, many of whom appear to go
>> mad,
>> or are at least labeled as such.
>>
>> Poems of a Preist.
>>
>> God.
>> He who.
>> Created everything.
>> Out of himself.
>> So that everything.
>> That was, is,
>> And will be,
>> Is Himself.
>> A God without form,
>> Yet is all form.
>> A God who creates,
>> And destroys.
>> Who brings life,
>> And death.
>> Of light,
>> And Darkness.
>> All health,
>> And Illness.
>> All knowledge,
>> And all ignorance.
>> A God of Good.
>> And Evil.
>>
>> If such a God where dead,
>> We would not be here.
>>
>> As the human body is,
>> To one of its cells.
>> So such a God is to man.
>>
>> How could the human mind,
>> Grasp and understand,
>> The totality of existence?
>> As such, what use is,
>> The concept God?
>>
>> The image of a Good, God.
>> A redundant tool of social evolution.
>> As a idea refutes the daily world.
>> We see every day, life is Immoral.
>>
>> The Christian half diety,
>> No longer deserves our piety.
>> We know too much.
>> Yet understand so little.
>>
>> If the christian god created the devil, where did the evil in the devil
>> come
>> from, if not from god?
>> If god did not create evil, then god is not the creator of all!
>>
>> Dark Humour.
>> News from earth came to the devil, that god had been pronounced dead. At
>> first the devil felt that a burden had been lifted from him, his spirit
>> soured before becoming lost. He then missed god and started to cry, who
>> was
>> there now to bring balance to life?
>> Then an idea started to rumble deep inside of him, it rumbled and rumbled
>> until the devil proclaimed to hell. "I shall go to earth and either
>> discover
>> that god still exists or take his place."
>> Chorus in Hell. "God is dead, long live God."
>>
>> Regards Joseph Bromley.
>>
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