[MD] MOQ and some interesting a-theology quotes about non-gods

[David M]

Hi Krim

For me, we have to ditch any desire for such authority, but this in no way
means we are any less in need of finding what is true about life, what is 
sayable,
what is possible and what is good for us.

DM



> DM,
> Well I suppose I actually am a social challenged "you know what" but never
> the less, the blurring of those lines is something of an issue. Liberal
> theologians on the extreme do tend to sound a lot more like philosophers
> than preachers. Witness process theology which grew out of Whitehead. Or
> liberation theology which tends to look like politics. The problem is that
> once theologian move away from grounding their work in particular passages
> of divine revelation they find themselves on no firmer ground that
> philosophers. They become unable to say that "this is so because God
> says..." They must appeal to the same sorts of rational and empirical 
> proofs
> as folks in every other discipline. Stripped of divine underpinning
> parishioners are left wondering what "authority" commands them to pay 
> heed.
>
> The alternative is the inerrancy crowd that turns scripture into tea 
> leaves,
> tarot cards and goat entrails. They peer into ancient writings and insist
> that their particular reading of divine writ comes from on high. For what
> it's worth I regard such readings as blasphemous. They turn scripture into
> an idol which must be treated with the reverence of a divine presence.
>
> Krimel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David M [mailto:davidint at blueyonder.co.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 4:27 PM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] MOQ and some interesting a-theology quotes about 
> non-gods
>
> Hi Krim
>
> I wonder. I certainly have no interest in pews. My point is that the far 
> out
> end of theology does have some meeting points with MOQ and is
> exploring the same possibilities. Same goes for postmodernism of
> course. Same goes for Nicholas Maxwell. I certainly agree we'd all
> be better off (believers, non-believers, and even sophisticated
> people like me who are neither) doing our best to come to terms with
> as much hard thinking and knowledge as we can lay our hands on.
> Mind you, you gotta have a heart too, unless you are a socially
> challenged you know what.
>
> David M
>
>
>> DM,
>> I have long hoped that theologians like Cupitt and other members of the
>> Jesus Seminar would have some impact on Christianity. Christianity today
>> seems weighted down by its reflexive reaction to Darwinism in the form of
>> inerrancy. It is a turtle retracting into its hard safe shell where light
>> and reason need not intrude on its peace of mind.
>>
>> A couple of people you might find interesting are Steven Mitchell who is
>> something of a new ager. In his "Gospel According to Jesus" he follows
>> Jefferson's example and edits the four gospels in a very interesting way.
>> Reading it you get a better feeling for the wisdom of Jesus.
>>
>> Marcus Borg also talks about Jesus as a "spirit person" along the lines 
>> of
>> Buddha or Lao Tsu. He sees him as one having an intimate and personal
>> relationship with the Father. For me, Borg helped show the way for
>> Christianity to actually make some sense by striping away the more
>> superstitious aspects and getting to the really important parts. His 1997
>> book "Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings" put the words or Jesus and
>> the
>> Buddha side by side and blurs the distinctions between them.
>>
>> The real problem in the pews is that once you strip away the superstition
>> the pews tend to empty. The decline of the mainline denominations really
>> resulted in large measure from their more liberal theology. They provided
>> what Time magazine once called a theological justification for
>> agnosticism.
>> The rise of the religious right filled in the gap by ignoring the head 
>> and
>> appealing directly to the heart and gut.
>>
>> Krimel
>>
>> Hi all MOQers
>>
>> Just been reading Nigel Leaves book about the UK ordained theology
>> Cambridge
>>
>> fellow Don Cupitt called Odyssey on the Sea of Faith. Cupitt made a TV
>> programme called the Sea of Faith in 1984 that introduced me to Nietzsche
>> and Jung and intellectual history generally. Don is an interesting
>> theologian, who many consider as being an ordained atheist. He describes
>> himself these days as a post-modern thinker and as a post-Christian
>> creative
>>
>> religions thinker. Check him out on WIki if you like. In the US he is
>> associated with the Jesus seminar and the Weststar institute. He is
>> interested in Buddhism and anti-essentialist thinking and calls himself a
>> non-realist. Anyway, here are some quotes from Don given in Nigel Leaves
>> book. There are some very interesting points that seem very close to the
>> MOQ. The first two from his book Mysticism after Modernism, the third 
>> from
>> The Religion of Being (that is largely about Heidegger and is very
>> interesting and MOQ relevant) and the 4th quote is from a letter to Nigel
>> Leaves. Cupitt is very strong on the value of change or DQ, and how the
>> linguistic turn fits in with MOQ friendly notions of experience. For
>> Cupitt
>> religious experience should be found at the leading edge of
>> now-experience.
>> Anyway see for yourselves what he has to say below. By the way, despite
>> the
>> below, he is disinclined to think the word god is very useful these days.
>> Once again the really out-there talk of god sounds like talk of DQ to me,
>> especially when theologians even question whether the word god is really 
>> a
>> very good one to be using.
>>
>> David M
>>
>>
>>
>> "The older "platonic" kind of mysticism was usually claimed to be 
>> noetic -
>> by which I mean that people saw religious experience as a special
>> supernatural way of knowing something Higher that was itself
>> correspondingly
>>
>> super-natural . . .But now, with the end of metaphysics and two-worlds
>> dualism . . .we should give up the idea that mysticism is a special
>> wordless
>>
>> way of intuitively knowing the things of another and higher world . . .
>> The
>> mysticism of secondariness is mysticism minus metaphysics, mysticism 
>> minus
>> any claim to special or privileged knowledge, and mysticism without any
>> other world than this one. We now get . . . that feeling of eternal
>> happiness, not by contrast with, but directly off everything that is
>> merely
>> relative, secondary, derived, transient, sensuous and only skin-deep. We
>> have quite forgotten the old hunger for what is basic, rock-solid, 
>> certain
>> and unchangeable: we are content with fluidity and mortality . . .
>> Relativism should not be a bogey to us: it is true, and religiously
>> speaking
>>
>> it is good news . . . Why shouldn't we just give up the idea that there's
>> something wrong with being secondary and fleeting?"
>>
>> "Esse est deus is Eckhart's formula; Be-ing is God. Here, I suggest, we
>> should (with Martin Heidegger perhaps) locate Eckhart's idea of God.
>> Be-ing,
>>
>> life, the outpouring play of secondariness in the Now-moment: that is as
>> close as language, or we, can ever get to God . . . We experience
>> everything, totalized into the Now-moment; eternal happiness in the solar
>> efflux of pure contingency. All eternity, here and now . .. All we have 
>> to
>> do is to get our own relation to existence right. Just get on the leading
>> edge of the Now-moment and wait very still and attentive, until you find
>> yourself beginning to surf it . . . Eckhart has found a way of writing
>> religious happiness."
>>
>> By Being Heidgger means:
>>
>> "...pure groundless fleeing contingency, already passing away even as it
>> arrives, which is why Being does resemble God in allowing us only to see
>> its
>>
>> "back parts." Capital-B Being is being that is prior to any 
>> determination,
>> pure transience. It cannot be described in language and it cannot be
>> grasped
>>
>> in thought; but it is always presupposed by language, and it sustains
>> language. It gives itself to us, and it emerges within language. We know
>> nothing but the field of view, the field of our own experience. This 
>> field
>> is differentiated by language into a field of Be-ing in beings. So Being
>> comes out in our world, the world of language, the only world."
>>
>>
>>
>> "On non-language, everyone seems to find the point hard to grasp. I've
>> argued that all our thinking is transacted in language . . . Therefore 
>> all
>> our apprehension of the world is language-mediated. But in that case
>> what's
>> the difference between a complete description of A and A's actual
>> existence?
>>
>> We can't say in words, so we use the non-words "non-language" of Being
>> (under erasure). Being (under erasure) is prior to the distinction 
>> between
>> Plato's timeless Being and temporal becoming. So it may be written as
>> Be(com)ing. It is the indescribable, gentle, constant-yet-only-contingent
>> forthcomingness of everything. Being (under erasure) gives itself to
>> language. Being (under erasure) is not a thing, not even a proper noun,
>> but
>> it deserves religious respect . . .It is not an Almighty Lord, as God 
>> was.
>> It is immanent and ubiquitous. It supports our language as hot air
>> supports
>> a balloon . . . we do indeed need a sort-of-idea of something out there
>> beyond all the equations; but it must remain indescribable and purely
>> immanent."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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