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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (40178)	6/12/1999 5:04:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Christopher, you must have read Rudolf Otto's "The Idea of the Holy" ("Das Heilige"). On the off chance that you haven't, let me quote an excellent brief description of it (from Mircea Eliade's "The Sacred and the Profane," another book that could provide you with a lot of ammunition). Passing over the rational and speculative side of religion, he [Otto] concentrated chiefly on its irrational aspect. For Otto had read Luther and had understood what "the living God" meant to a believer. It was not the God of the philosophers...; it was not an idea, an abstract notion, a mere moral allegory. It was a terrible power, manifested in the divine wrath. In Das Heilige Otto sets himself to discover the characteristics of this frightening and irrational experience. He finds the feeling of terror before the sacred, before the awe-inspiring mystery (mysterium tremendum, the majesty (majestas) that emanates an overwhelming superiority of power; he finds religious fear before the fascinating mystery (mysterium fascinans) in which perfect fullness of being flowers. Otto characterizes all these experiences as numinous (from Latin numen, god), for they are induced by the revelation of an aspect of divine power. The numinous presents itself as something "wholly other" (ganz andere), something basically and totally different.... The sacred always manifests itself as a reality of a wholly different order from "natural" realities. It is true that language naively expresses the tremendum, or the majestas, or the mysterium fascinans by terms borrowed from the world of nature or from man's secular mental life. But we know that this analogical terminology is due precisely to human inability to express the ganz andere; all that goes beyond man's nature experience, language is reduced to suggesting by terms taken from that experience. I take it you would not disagree with this? Personally, I think it is an excellent (if slightly lopsided) description of that "oceanic feeling" that Freud described, while admitting his own inability to experience it. (Lopsided because it over-emphasizes the "terror" at the expense of the "joy" that many seem to feel in the presence of "The Holy" or "The Sacred.") Now, let me get personal here for a minute. There are many types of agnostics, just as there are many types of believers. At one extreme, there are those who are agnostic because they just are not interested in religious questions. (I don't believe, because I don't care.) At the other, there are those who have a life-long interest in such questions, and have come to agnosticism through a long process of thought and self-examination. My problem (if it is indeed a problem)is that I can't take an "it's true for me" attitude. It is either true, or it is not true. I have, other the years, developed a concept of the divine and of the afterlife that appeals to me -- without believing it is true just because it appeals to me. That is what would be "arrogance," for me. I also have had "experiences of the Holy" -- without believing that they necessarily "meant" anything. Here again, I am not "arrogant" enough to assume my mental state at any particular time proves anything about The Universe. As you can see, that word "arrogant" really hurt. <g> Joan

To: The Philosopher who wrote (40178)	6/13/1999 2:30:00 AM
From: Bob Lao-Tse	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

"...the tragedy of many (most? all?) organized religions -- that by trying to understand/define/blame/credit God in rationalist, logical human terms they conceal and turn people off from the real God." This is a very important point. I don't understand why people seem to feel the need to define their supreme being in such detail. It's clearly to some degree counter-productive. Think of all the people who turned agnostic or atheist at the point where their childhood religion tried to tell them one "truth" too many. This, combined with the point about the limitations of our minds that you alluded to with the "ant and the airplane" analogy, is why I continue to believe that if there is some sort of supreme being(s) he/she/it/they is/are almost certainly unlike anything that anyone has described yet. We need to all remain aware of the difference between arguing that a supreme being exists or doesn't and arguing that this particular supreme being exists or doesn't. -BLT