JoshuaTree
Flowers are red?
So a jewel is a jewel because we don't want others to know we don't see the sparkle?
I'll keep pondering this, takes me a (long) while sometimes ha ha. Thanks!
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Is God a Metaphor?
- Thread starter Polymath257
- Start date
So a jewel is a jewel because we don't want others to know we don't see the sparkle?
I'll keep pondering this, takes me a (long) while sometimes ha ha. Thanks!
I think that the philosophically discovered (not the preached) God is a fuzzy concept not a metaphor. God's existence overlaps with the conceptual realms but is not limited to them. I think 'Metaphor' is not the right word.
What makes this confusing:
The preached God is often very different from the philosophically discovered one and is neither a metaphor nor transcendent, at least not by description. Sometimes the preached God even has body parts, location, can be influenced, experiences time. These are not philosophically derived attributes.
There are two competing concepts of God which often are combined resulting in a spectrum. A lot of preachers don't believe that God was discovered philosophically and instead believe God chose to be revealed through prophets, however some of these will still try to apply the philosophical concepts to the preached God. The God who is discovered philosophically has attributes such as transcendence, immanence, invisibility and omnipresence. The God who is preached very often does not and has attributes such as affection, locality, changeability and paradox. For example a preached God might have emotions or not, might be swayed through prayer but not always, might be forgiving but refuse to forgive at times. These then get combined with philosophical God who is beyond understanding and inhuman, so that God often is a hybrid of the philosophically discovered and the preached. How I see things.
stvdv
Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
firedragon
Veteran Member
Absolutely wrong from the perspectives of some books and theologies. In fact, maybe it is just wrong.
I like much of what Campbell has written, but I'm not sure that he always gets it totally right. In this case, in fact, I think he is ignoring what he has written so much about -- what we humans ourselves contribute to our understandings of our own mythologies.
In other words, I think that perhaps it's true that God is a metaphor for what transcends our knowledge (not so different from God of the gaps, actually), but that once we have adopted the metaphor, we tend inexorably towards reifying it.
A few thoughts ─
A thing is not its own metaphor, so Joe should have said, God is a label for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought.
The phrase "transcends all levels of intellectual thought" is also misconceived. "Intellect" is understanding and reasoning, as distinct from wishing and feeling. It's hard to say that one is above or below the other ─ a great deal of intellect goes into greedy net fraud, for example, and a great deal of feeling goes into electing our elected representatives.
I also think it's misconceived to say that gods stand for our noblest feelings and aspirations (not that Joe used those exact words). Gods sometimes give us victory in battle, they sometimes let us not get caught for our crimes, in other words they sometimes answer prayers and empower holy water. They also explain luck, thunder, drought, death, sexual attraction and other weird aspects of human life.
I'd say the basic qualities of a god are immateriality (though this wasn't always the case), supernatural powers ─ magic ─ and the claim that he she it or they has / have a relationship with humans of both power and authority. I may need to tinker with that, but at least it's my starting point.
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Truthseeker
Non-debating member when I can help myself
Compared to God in my view, we are as non-existent.
rational experiences
Veteran Member
A human thinking said I can describe what God is.
God not any man did not answer his quest to know God by his man words.
As no man is God the man's reasoning self advice. As a human thinker.
The thinker said let me explain God as a spirit movement as it's owned word.
GOD. It's word.
Said......spirit gases from one first stone mass became clear immaculate in womb space. First God is without owning it's word name GOD.
God he preached never owned any name so never give it a name liar brother satanist in science.
As GOD is the spirit gases sacrificed burnt natural light and natural clear gas with water moving on the face of the great deep space.
The spirit movement is a spiral forming it's spirit word O G the spiral into O cooling DD to OO.
So my descriptive man analogy says why no man is GOD. As you are not the Word GOD...do not move as the heavens into GOOD. Exactly what a father spiritually as a human told his human family.
No man as Hu man is God.
Meant what he said.
Knew what he said and why he said it and you cannot argue why our father explained GOD as it's owned word.
Yet still to this day argue
God not any man did not answer his quest to know God by his man words.
As no man is God the man's reasoning self advice. As a human thinker.
The thinker said let me explain God as a spirit movement as it's owned word.
GOD. It's word.
Said......spirit gases from one first stone mass became clear immaculate in womb space. First God is without owning it's word name GOD.
God he preached never owned any name so never give it a name liar brother satanist in science.
As GOD is the spirit gases sacrificed burnt natural light and natural clear gas with water moving on the face of the great deep space.
The spirit movement is a spiral forming it's spirit word O G the spiral into O cooling DD to OO.
So my descriptive man analogy says why no man is GOD. As you are not the Word GOD...do not move as the heavens into GOOD. Exactly what a father spiritually as a human told his human family.
No man as Hu man is God.
Meant what he said.
Knew what he said and why he said it and you cannot argue why our father explained GOD as it's owned word.
Yet still to this day argue
It was surprising to see a Buddhist at Burger King, since they don't eat meat. When asked what he wanted...."one with everything."
To be one with the universe, is to understand that everything is like everything else in some sense.
If I were to teach this concept, I'd get someone to pick out a rock on a rock hill, and tell him that it is a very special rock. Indeed, it is, since it is the first rock that he picked up. Then I would ask him to describe it.
I would give zero credit for the obvious. Size, weight, shape, type of rock, etc. It is a boring task to be told that you get zero credit after studying a rock, and after the first hour the study gets very boring.
However, after the first few days of studying the rock, it becomes interesting once again. For the entire universe is in the rock, and the rock is part of the entire universe, as is the person studying the rock. All are one.
The acquisition of wisdom is shunned. New concepts are rejected. Socrates (Allegory of the Cave) said that it is like living life tied up in a cave, facing the interior of the cave, and only able to perceive the world from the reflections of the real world. Then suddenly being allowed to turn around and see the bright light of the real world with all of its colors and intricate patterns. At first, one would reject this, and claim that it is not real (for one has no basis to understand reality). But, once one's eyes become accustomed to the light of wisdom, one can accept it.
Perhaps understanding of the world is what the world is all about?
Socrates (Meno) wondered if virtue could be taught (if virtue is a type of knowledge), or learned through practice, or in one's nature. Socrates (Crito) used reason (rather than his culture) to determine ethics (right and wrong). Socrates (Phaedo) spins a yarn about the transition from life to death, followed by drinking hemlock and dying. Socrates was quite a pest, always engaging others in discussions.
Discussions are dangerous....they can lead to wisdom.
Does following God's laws bring us closer to God? If so, perhaps words and God's laws are God? Or, at least in the sense that all things are one?
At a drinking party, Plato (Symposium) praised loved, then defined it. Does this lead us closer to the love of God?
Socrates (Euthyphro) believed in many Gods, and believed that they were constantly fighting. So, while some Gods might agree, others might not.
Socrates (Republic) suggested that kings should be philosophers (which at the time meant learned all knowledge) or philosophers should be kings. Yet it was this Republic that ultimately forced him to drink hemlock and die (the alternative was banishment, and that would have meant starvation for himself and his wife). No wonder Xanthippe was a xanthippe.
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With yin there is yang.
The knowledge is there, it is up to us to respect it.
rational experiences
Veteran Member
As a human I see that no human existed as a human before all things.
A human exists last.
A human quotes first all the time lying.
That human status I will speak of first things self gives any body they look a name claiming I am the first and the last by idealising self is everything they name.
The first no longer even exists only self changed form exists.
So my learned non science brother said egotist men brothers never give God a name ever again. And meant what he said.
You however won't stop as theist man so we said you are the destroyer.
Brother inherits science life Galileo.
Lie gaol his status. So he was by our spiritual learned brother put in gaol for lying. Equalled exact science of man encoded inheritance.
What he said was not why he was gaoled. What intent is lied about today.
He inferred the sun was God.
God in science was an agreed human men in science social agreement. God was first the stone.
A sun when it ends was taught to be a dead stone.
The life of stone hence was its heat radiating as the life of stone
Science began to remove the life of stone. Why they were told to stop.
By human consensus. As the planet is self owned is not man owned.
A human exists last.
A human quotes first all the time lying.
That human status I will speak of first things self gives any body they look a name claiming I am the first and the last by idealising self is everything they name.
The first no longer even exists only self changed form exists.
So my learned non science brother said egotist men brothers never give God a name ever again. And meant what he said.
You however won't stop as theist man so we said you are the destroyer.
Brother inherits science life Galileo.
Lie gaol his status. So he was by our spiritual learned brother put in gaol for lying. Equalled exact science of man encoded inheritance.
What he said was not why he was gaoled. What intent is lied about today.
He inferred the sun was God.
God in science was an agreed human men in science social agreement. God was first the stone.
A sun when it ends was taught to be a dead stone.
The life of stone hence was its heat radiating as the life of stone
Science began to remove the life of stone. Why they were told to stop.
By human consensus. As the planet is self owned is not man owned.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
It seems that scientists can only go so far without bringing God into it themselves. At least as a metaphor.
Einstein, Hawking, Peter Higgs being three that come instantly to mind.
rational experiences
Veteran Member
We live on one planet that formed it's one heavens mass. Yet within mass science says are variables.
The lying.
Space highest place is its lowest deepest place coldest.
Science theist for science status said mother state not God state.
M +*** the mother rides upon space as empty deep space held all form to mass.
If you say hot dense state you don't define it as held mass you state satanism burning consuming mass.
Therefore gods word is GOD movement of the spirit form gases notice m *** and g as defined science word use spirit moves in face of deep by spiral rotating movements forming status God a one only word.
Men then said only the one term is correct. O as G spiral to O split DD as heat is natural in heavens cooled back to OO. God is good science statement.
Non science practice stated was to introduce products of earth to a hot dense conversion. Alchemy was once included as outlawed. Proving how scared they were in reactive causes.
Why status to statements were concluded and agreed. All AH for instance said spirit was the breaths stating oxygenation was life continuance only.
Cannot have oxygenation if science burns the bushes. So that the voice tells you how evil science had become.
The mother nature theme the earths garden was included in human science reasoning why nuclear atmospheric changes was evil against gods balanced heaven.
Reasons why God was explained as it's status as science burnt extra gas mass in heavens and the status changed.
To claim God is a power is fake God was explained as movement only.
The lying.
Space highest place is its lowest deepest place coldest.
Science theist for science status said mother state not God state.
M +*** the mother rides upon space as empty deep space held all form to mass.
If you say hot dense state you don't define it as held mass you state satanism burning consuming mass.
Therefore gods word is GOD movement of the spirit form gases notice m *** and g as defined science word use spirit moves in face of deep by spiral rotating movements forming status God a one only word.
Men then said only the one term is correct. O as G spiral to O split DD as heat is natural in heavens cooled back to OO. God is good science statement.
Non science practice stated was to introduce products of earth to a hot dense conversion. Alchemy was once included as outlawed. Proving how scared they were in reactive causes.
Why status to statements were concluded and agreed. All AH for instance said spirit was the breaths stating oxygenation was life continuance only.
Cannot have oxygenation if science burns the bushes. So that the voice tells you how evil science had become.
The mother nature theme the earths garden was included in human science reasoning why nuclear atmospheric changes was evil against gods balanced heaven.
Reasons why God was explained as it's status as science burnt extra gas mass in heavens and the status changed.
To claim God is a power is fake God was explained as movement only.
sealchan
Well-Known Member
If you look at the meaning of God across cultures, then certainly God is a metaphor.
God is a metaphor for totality as is the idea of the universe or of consciousness. Any rational attempt to describe the whole of reality runs into the problem of subjectivity or self-reference. The prevalence of this problem, which transcends rationality, gives rise to an intuitive perception of a pattern of chaos embedded in order. This chaos is the Trickster who is a divine personality metaphoric of this "flaw" in the order of things.
When this conflict between order and chaos is seen as a duality then you have such things as the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate or the great battle of good vs evil.
Metaphor has been argued by some researchers to be a fundamental building block of concepts in human language. Poetic, adaptable and imprecise metaphors become "concretized" as part of a rational, written language into non-flexible terms and precisely defined concepts. But as Hofstadter has shown, it is not possible to escape the tricksy subtle chaos of any rational construct. Even in mathematics we have the trickster in Godels Incompleteness Theorem.
So God is a mystery, a conscious being, a divine principle, a creator, a trickster, conundrum...and always of an ultimate order. These are but a few of the metaphors for God and of that to which the word God metaphorically points.
rational experiences
Veteran Member
Satanism the isms lies.
Inherited by the scientist. To be tricked.
Words were used to invent statements for the practice human science owns all science confessions. It's history lied.
Words never owned anything the trickster.
Seemingly you forget that any status human expressed is only by a human in human presence
Tricked your own self.
Chaos ensued and the holding of mass by spatial stretching opening space to contraction of space after cooled occurred. Formed from chaos form.
Chaos owns no order.
Science applied order for science only to convert pre owned mass into a lower form. To order it to be achieved.
You taught us that once our universe was an equal universe in galaxies near orion and Sirius.
You said O Is R is....Isis. As it owned some mentality old science expressed. Named Sirius a DOG star meant the spiral of GOD holding form was released.
Gods planets had a UFO war of planets that blew up. Our same planet mass galaxy gone. Those gods fell by satanic act destroyed into space deep caused by calculus. We moved shifted our suns galaxy universe.
Now we have less planets.
Theme the sun cooled by deep out space cooling. As the deep.
Science applied same thesis to drop the gods by planet status into pit as gods yourself. Based upon sun in space wisdom. Blasting bang.
So you heated a burning ring of fire into cycle circuit of the planet gods by earth irradiating releases causing the asteroid bodies heating with cold sun metals heating.
Activated space by circuit into hotter burning cycle. Bodies mass coming in close then began passing planets through heated radiation trails. Began hitting the gods.
The planets gods started to mass convert.
You know as Satan the human scientist you caused it as you own naming storytelling by word use.
You say by my organised human named group satan I want the eternal returned to us by satanic out of space theories.
Satan he says the science trickster word use is abstract to human self presence from space will have the state eternal inherited for human self promise. To have it given back.
Knowing no human began as a self in space.
Not even God earth hell volcanic Satan themes. About the human Jesus effect.
The actual sun hell Satan in space destroyer. Theist human. Build and said to everyone your intentions which is a confession.
The words a human confession has is the pursuit of science was by words first.
Cult environment info shared says in society that the Satan elite claim is they agreed to destroy life of humans on earth claiming by alien space themes on behalf of the alien...not God and not Satan.
As the word eternal owns one meaning only. Is the eternal never changed its form as the eternal always will be the eternal.
God O mass released from the eternal changed its form.
Theme as nuclear orbital image is now seen in cloud mass I increased cloud mass to assist its cooling.
Previously only angel images like humans with animals or human image owned cloud amassing saviour of life by rain flooding constant to gods gases.
Science says so I am not doing any ark flooding forty days as clouds as new mass own a colder atmospheric holding. It only floods sporadic. As science has already caused an upper atmospheric cold status.
As Satan science argues against Satan science. Two forms of satanism.
Natural never owned the human choice science invention.
Science says snap freeze will be caused versus heated atmosphere as two forms of life destruction.
Nobody seems to observe they are arguing life's destruction itself as an everyday acceptance. By humans about humans.
Snap freeze father said is earth by heated core causes drops into deep space observed in and with gods planets attack..it would be instant not unnatural gained sporadic ice snow fall now witnessed as a warning.
Ground signs always the human warning sign.
Science by nuclear model has not caused burning ring of fire that pyramid scientists knew they caused before. Just read about it they already confessed knowing.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
I love Joseph Campbell, but I disagree with him on this. Whatever or whoever God is, he is not a metaphor.
rational experiences
Veteran Member
Humans are just humans.
Each human is one self.
To think one self my owned self eats drinks lives life's highest support in a natural atmosphere. As a human. I live with God statements human said. Then I die.
If we all died in the same one moment no God fake me I self man men he his or him...penis owner actually would be said. Stories.
Science statements where a he or him said I know how God created me.
Without invention thesis.
Said a big bang non male reaction in space owned burning mass that cooled into held form by space a one of reason.
Space a one of nothing allowed burning to cool. Status about mass. Status about nothing space.
Then a man defined in human life. Notice human is first...then status type of human a man by penis says the end of creation mass then created beyond the mass.
Yet it didn't.
As the gases were held inside mass but ejected.
So the story says reality proves there is no God. A voice and image seen in the gas state. The heavens. Recordings stated to be the God self. All owned in the mind status.
As the heavens owned no image as they existed in reality only inside mass.
Rationally it was complete as just a planet owning other forms held within.
Just because it could put it out into space does not make it a creator.
As logic
Logic human first. Sexual inference fake idealism.
In reality of an argument.
Then one self talks about idealism when no human in any form was talking about a belief his life forms evolved. Yet the consciousness just one human self did not exist to tell stories.
Why science is fake.
Human. I am one self. Any self I look at is also just one human self.
No argument allowed. We are equal. Notified.
I look at a monkey. It too is one self.
A monkey has sex by condition two of. They have a monkey baby three selves.
I compare as a human. I do the same.
I am not allowed by defined presence the living to pretend I am dead. I have not yet been given death. Decomposition. It left just as bones.
As a human law agreement. Reason to use and practice legality I said no human living is allowed to talk to or about dead things.
A human legal condition.
Legal and law highest human law was human law first.
God never owned laws.
In human law I referenced gods law only because the law of life continuance had been broken by human choice. Practices with machines referencing planet earth.
The reason why law said there is no God argument only human laws.
Each human is one self.
To think one self my owned self eats drinks lives life's highest support in a natural atmosphere. As a human. I live with God statements human said. Then I die.
If we all died in the same one moment no God fake me I self man men he his or him...penis owner actually would be said. Stories.
Science statements where a he or him said I know how God created me.
Without invention thesis.
Said a big bang non male reaction in space owned burning mass that cooled into held form by space a one of reason.
Space a one of nothing allowed burning to cool. Status about mass. Status about nothing space.
Then a man defined in human life. Notice human is first...then status type of human a man by penis says the end of creation mass then created beyond the mass.
Yet it didn't.
As the gases were held inside mass but ejected.
So the story says reality proves there is no God. A voice and image seen in the gas state. The heavens. Recordings stated to be the God self. All owned in the mind status.
As the heavens owned no image as they existed in reality only inside mass.
Rationally it was complete as just a planet owning other forms held within.
Just because it could put it out into space does not make it a creator.
As logic
Logic human first. Sexual inference fake idealism.
In reality of an argument.
Then one self talks about idealism when no human in any form was talking about a belief his life forms evolved. Yet the consciousness just one human self did not exist to tell stories.
Why science is fake.
Human. I am one self. Any self I look at is also just one human self.
No argument allowed. We are equal. Notified.
I look at a monkey. It too is one self.
A monkey has sex by condition two of. They have a monkey baby three selves.
I compare as a human. I do the same.
I am not allowed by defined presence the living to pretend I am dead. I have not yet been given death. Decomposition. It left just as bones.
As a human law agreement. Reason to use and practice legality I said no human living is allowed to talk to or about dead things.
A human legal condition.
Legal and law highest human law was human law first.
God never owned laws.
In human law I referenced gods law only because the law of life continuance had been broken by human choice. Practices with machines referencing planet earth.
The reason why law said there is no God argument only human laws.
Starlight
Spiritual but not religious, new age and omnist
Only if you mean God is a concious transcendent reality
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
You're taking him too much in a literal sense as Campbell very much was a theist who eventually converted to Hinduism.
Within that religious paradigm, Brahman is not just "up there" but is so intrinsic in all so as to be a piece of us. What comes to mind is the Society of Friends' [Quakers'] concept of the "inner light" and also the concept of "soul" that so many people of faith have, including that which is found in Judaism: Bible, Revised Standard Version
BTW, with us anthropologists, Campbell is like a "saint", and I've been exposed to his writings since the mid-1960's. His "Power of Myth" co-authored with Bill Moyers, is a classic.