Beyond Belief 1...2...3 (eBook)

Martin M. Martin (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
628 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-6662-6 (ISBN)

Infos

SCIENCE AND RELIGION CONFLICT. SCIENCE AND SPIRIT DO NOT. THEY INTERSECT IN BEING. THEY NEED EACH OTHER. RELIGIOUS LIFE MAY INCLUDE SCIENCE. LIVING SPIRIT MUST INCLUDE SCIENCE! BOTH EVOLVE OR DIE. BOTH EXIST IN THE KNOWN. BOTH GROW ON THE UNKNOWN. WHO WE ARE IS FINITE. OUR GODS DO NOT EXIST. WHAT WE KNOW OF THE COSMOS IS NOT GOD. GOD IS BEYOND BELIEF. GOD WILL ALWAYS BECKON. THE ODYSSEY OF REALITY HAS JUST BEGUN.

Martin M. Martin is a pseudonym - probably a hopeless veneer of protection in today's digital jungle. After a lifetime of studies in philosophy, religion and science, the author's day job (and person) risks unwanted calumny and bullying in a troubled Manichaean black-and-white world, where respectful dialogue and unalloyed criticism suffers an ignominious death. The book's contents are going to upset people of faith and nonbelievers equally. This tractatus is a blunt step-by-step examination of the major enfeebling limits of both religion and science. By asking key questions, moribund histories unravel due to a constantly changing reality that has been routinely neglected. Archaic, specious misinformation is summarily exposed so that healing connective bridges exist and await those who embrace fresh information and are willing to grace the unfamiliar path of consilience. The material and numinous arches that span the Cosmos and humanity are largely unknown, but pretentious schisms still abound. Anchoring our understanding in the latest physics, mathematics, biology, neurology, genomics, astronomy, chemistry, digital information, simulation theories, holography, optics, robotics and a fresh approach to mythology, emergent possibilities are addressed. Spend thirty seconds looking at the Table of Contents, and the depth and breadth of this author's efforts will be apparent.

Textauszug

(1)

Is there a God? Possibly Gods. All anthropomorphic Gods, insofar as providing empirical evidence of the existence of a God of the entire physical Universe, are false.

(2)

Anthropomorphic Gods are earthbound gods, as Nietzsche recognized, products of human imagination and tradition. In the fifth century B.C., Greek philosopher Xenophanes, with whom the term anthropomorphism originated, mocked Homer’s depiction of the gods looking human by sarcastically observing that if horses had hands, “they would draw their gods like horses.” Ancient Babylonians, Greeks and Romans saw gods among the constellations of stars in the Cosmos above Earth. Any presumed God creates us. God has not created us sui generis. We cannot create God. We created all god(s). We can define, birth, kill or dismiss gods. We have no power whatsoever over God. Traditional theology reflects human anthropology, sociology and psychology, not empirical cosmogony, cosmology or teleology. Glorification of god glorifies man. Glorification of God glorifies the Universal Unknown. As the Sufi poet Rūmī noted: “There is no reality but the Reality.”

(3)

There is no objective evidence for the existence of non-anthropomorphic Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Holy Ghost, Deva/Devi (male/female Hindu deities), chthonic realms, Incarnation, Transubstantiation, Afterlife, Nirvana (Buddhism’s transcendental state of final liberation and release from Karma - cause and effect fate and the cycle of birth and death), Samsara (cycle of death and rebirth), Atman (liberated true Self), Moksha (Hinduism’s release from the cycle of rebirth), Sat Chit Ananda (divine/infinite existence-consciousness-bliss), Dhyana (Sufi notion of the absorption of the individual mind into the Universal Mind), Xib’alba (the mystical Underworld described in the K’iche people’s origin myth the Popol Vuh), Oversoul/Overself, Ley Lines (alignments and networks of sacred sites that share interactive “energy” fields), “Rapture,“ Rebirth,” Kenosis (self-emptying), Metempsychosis/ Transmigration (migration of the soul at death into another entity) or Unitary Consciousness, in the physical Universe. All of these or any of hundreds of other manufactured fantasies or imaginary realms are entirely anthropomorphic constructs.

These categories, as well as, soul and self exist as awareness of a Universal immersion, connection and spirituality among and within living humans, not as persistent entities independently in the Universe. As Joseph Campbell says:

Furthermore, the deities that were thought to live up there we now know have been projected from our own psyches out into that space, so that everything we attributed to the gods and to the yonder of the spiritual world comes right out of our own selves and is right here.

(4)

The role of suffering is central to almost all religions. Anthropomorphic religion views suffering, as seen on earth as well as in Purgatory, Hell, Jesus crucified at Gethsemane, the Bhagavad-Gita, Samsara, etc. as a merciful, sometimes reciprocal, communion with God. The First Noble Truth of the Buddha is: “All life is suffering.” Job, in his wretchedness, affirms “though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Suffering putatively purifies, ennobles and overcomes an expansive ego that is in rebellion against God’s Will. Muhammad enjoined: “Even if you know the world will end tomorrow, plant a tree.”

Much of our finest art has its genesis in suffering. Art can be viewed as a prism replete with “the shadow of hopefulness.” At one extreme, Qadiri, musicians/dervishes from Kurdistan celebrate their holidays by “eating grass and razor blades, slash and pierce themselves with swords, handle snakes and scorpions – always without permanent damage to themselves” (Peter Lamborn Wilson), while the pendulum swings to the sublime in Maurice Ravel’s elegant composition Pavane pour une infant défunteé (Pavane for a Dead Princess) or Samuel Barber’s Adagio For Strings, Opus 11. And, there is always rock icon Nilsson’s gut-wrenching love-cry of despair in “Without You” – someplace in between. Painting, sculpture, poetry, writing, photography, etc. – all draw deeply from this dark well.

However, meaningless personal suffering is rightly condemned as unbearable evil, but compassionate participation and higher awareness of collective suffering is posited as a path to transcendence and union with God. Carl Jung and Arnold Toynbee (among many others) saw the ordeal of self-examination and the endurance of suffering as a necessary positive stepping stone to new beginnings and a deeper meaning of life.

South Indian literature historically posses a “tragic” dimension, expressed by the bhakti poets, who do not strive to be released from their suffering and apparent torture or indifference inflicted upon them as God’s devotees, but extol their separation as a divine reflection of God’s longing for earthly connection and evidence of mutual need and love. Only separation proves that a living relationship exists between God and His created creatures:

Cruel is your creative act bringing innumerable sorrows to all who are endowed with life.

…

So I had always thought, Invincible One, But now I reason: how else could living beings delight in drinking in, with eyes and ears, this form of yours, supernally sweet and liquid with awareness in the flooding ocean filled with the nectar of truth.

- Shulman, David Dean, Labyrinths and Mirrors, The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry -

Traditional religion favors a universally immanent God who is said to suffer the whole of Creation “in us,” offering forgiveness of sins and redemption and opening creativity. God is envisioned as essentially good, compassionate and sharing in our pain. Through suffering, self-transcendence, redemption, grace, joy, love and “Divine Bliss” is attained from a Divinity who seeks and needs the love of His creation:

The deep intuition feels that God is lonely … God is in solitary confinement in eternity. He can’t get out and has no one to be with. For all the bliss that may be worth, it also creates a certain despair: will God ever be able to share with anyone? So what can we do? We can entertain God; God wants to be loved.

…

He can’t get from any other being but man: relationship. Neither angels nor other beings have that which makes them capable of saying no to God.

- Schachter, Zalman, Parabola, Spring 1977, p. 88 -

Pope John Paul II, in an Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris, confirms the role of suffering for all Catholics, citing the Apostle Paul: “In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.”

Closely related to the insistence that God suffers and human suffering can be caused, shared and resolved by belief in God, is forgiveness. Many contemporary typical religion-based injunctions sound like this:

Every wisdom tradition on the planet emphasizes that compassion is the quintessence of the holy.

…

Forgiveness is the very face of the Divine Feminine. Each time we allow mercy to enter the shattered spaces of our hearts, we participate in the divine nature. To forgive ourselves is to forge a contract with the Divine Mother. I will mirror you in my own soul.

- Starr, Mirabai, Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics –

…

… the idea that the Lord might pity us (care for our fallen state of sin and suffering) is the core meaning in today’s Christian practice; we earnestly wish to be forgiven for our transgressions against a higher, sacred principle.

- van Laer, Lee, “Mercy”, Parabola, Fall, 2019 -

…

The truth is that we are here to awaken to the light, to the God within us and within all. Finally, by letting ourselves love the whole messy, chaotic, and beautiful “being” that can bring us home to the God within.

- Corn, Seane, Revolution of the Soul: Awaken to Love Through Raw Truth, Radical Healing and Conscious Action –

…

Conversion is the most concrete expression of the working of love and the presence of mercy in the human world. The true and proper meaning of mercy does not consist only in looking, however penetratingly and compassionately, at moral, physical and material evil: mercy is manifested in its true and proper aspect when it restores to value, promotes and draws good from all the forms of evil...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.9.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-6662-6 / 9798350966626