[MD] God is dead.

Fri Mar 3 13:53:53 PST 2006

Don Cupitt's 'After God' is worth a look.

DM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joseph Maurer" <jhmau at sbcglobal.net>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 11:18 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] God is dead.

> 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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