Is knowledge of God natural knowledge?

exchemist said:

Oh I agree, hence my suspicion that "letting go of ego" might be a way of dressing up unquestioning acceptance of what one has been taught. Though in this case it seems my suspicion was ill-founded, I'm pleased to say.

I can recall from my Catholic upbringing that there can sometimes be an undercurrent of suggestion that it is better to accept teaching meekly than to question it. By questioning, one is in effect setting oneself up as a judge, so I can sort of see the argument. But it goes right against the principles of a liberal education of course, in which one is encouraged to evaluate and to judge ideas, rather than accepting them uncritically.

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A secure institution, be that religious, political, educational or whatever, you should be able to tolerate a fair amount of heresy imo.

Xavier Graham SA said:

I would like to discuss natural knowledge and the knowledge of God.
This is my understanding when I say “natural knowledge”. My Tibetan Book of the Dead, I Ching, Bible, and other religious texts have taught me that God’s existence is something that is self proving. We are born with knowledge of His existence; it in intrinsic knowledge. Attachment to suffering, ego, and material life clouds our vision. Knowledge of God is something that can be obscured.
God becomes clear when we detach ourselves from our ego; this is the process of discovering God.
Do theists agree that knowledge of God is natural knowledge? What do atheists think of this concept? Does it seem silly?

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I certainly do not agree that anyone is born with prior knowledge of some mono theistic supernatural controlling entity. There is no testable evidence for that assertion. It certainly would not apply to me. I find it insulting in fact, the premise that we all know your God creature but have just forgotten. As if we non monotheists are merely amoral deluded and stupid.

Link said:

Planets maintaining their rotations, earth maintain it's rotation, sun maintaining, all this is signs. But people are so far gone in "science" authority, they can't see it.

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Nope that's just spacetime curvature. That mediates gravitational interaction between masses. Not a sign of a supernatural controlling deity. How could it possibly be?

exchemist said:

Oh I agree, hence my suspicion that "letting go of ego" might be a way of dressing up unquestioning acceptance of what one has been taught. Though in this case it seems my suspicion was ill-founded, I'm pleased to say.

I can recall from my Catholic upbringing that there can sometimes be an undercurrent of suggestion that it is better to accept teaching meekly than to question it. By questioning, one is in effect setting oneself up as a judge, so I can sort of see the argument. But it goes right against the principles of a liberal education of course, in which one is encouraged to evaluate and to judge ideas, rather than accepting them uncritically.

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Quite.
Accepting ideas uncritically, without assesment and validation, is in my view a deficiency of mind that can only lead to delusion and ignorance.

Xavier Graham SA said:

I would like to discuss natural knowledge and the knowledge of God.
This is my understanding when I say “natural knowledge”. My Tibetan Book of the Dead, I Ching, Bible, and other religious texts have taught me that God’s existence is something that is self proving. We are born with knowledge of His existence; it in intrinsic knowledge. Attachment to suffering, ego, and material life clouds our vision. Knowledge of God is something that can be obscured.
God becomes clear when we detach ourselves from our ego; this is the process of discovering God.
Do theists agree that knowledge of God is natural knowledge? What do atheists think of this concept? Does it seem silly?

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As an atheist, I can't help but to feel that "knowledge of God" is simply unnecessary. And from that perspective, it doesn't matter "what type of knowledge" that knowledge of God supposedly is.

For me, it would be like someone pointing to a particular phone app/game I didn't play and asking if knowledge of how the game functioned is "natural knowledge." It wouldn't even matter enough for me to consider it.

Xavier Graham SA said:

This is my understanding when I say “natural knowledge”. My Tibetan Book of the Dead, I Ching, Bible, and other religious texts have taught me that God’s existence is something that is self proving.

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This is clearly not the case. To the vast majority of people, the vast majority of gods are clearly non-existent.
However, what is true is that people who have been brought up to believe that god exists will usually find something that confirms their pre-existing belief. This is little more than confirmation bias.

We are born with knowledge of His existence; it in intrinsic knowledge.

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This is just a claim made by people with a vested interest in believing it.
It is possible that we have an inherent predisposition to ascribe the unknown and confusing to some kind of supernatural agency - but that is not the same as "believing in god".

Attachment to suffering, ego, and material life clouds our vision. Knowledge of God is something that can be obscured.

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"The fantasy of god is dispelled by knowledge and reason" is probably a better way of putting it.

What do atheists think of this concept? Does it seem silly?

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Not silly. It is pretty well understood how powerful things like indoctrination, wishful thinking, fear and desire can be.

Xavier Graham SA said:

It perhaps falls under the category of being unfalsifiable,

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We could conduct repeatable experiments to test for this, but it would require isolating babies from their families for several years, so may be frowned upon.
But definitely falsifiable.

Introspection is self-illuminating.

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Perhaps, perhaps not. Depends on the individual and how you define the terms.

Hypothetically, our consciousnesses and souls have God’s essence in it. Since God is within us, it is provable if we look within. Meditation will allow us to see God. And once you’ve seen God, what more proof do you need? You have seen Him, God has been discovered. We are attached to God, and it is our ego that separates us. The belief is that we have all of the tools within us to discover God within. We are not merely smart apes, we are God like creatures.
I guess this can be labeled as a mere belief.

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An awful lot of question begging in there.
Also, it implies that if we look for god through meditation and don't find him, then he isn't there, which disproves the claim that he is in everyone. ("No True Scotsman" is obviously not an acceptable rebuttal here)
And personal experience is notoriously unreliable. We know that we can experience stuff that despite seeming absolutely real is in fact hallucination or delusion.

Link said:

We as in our personhood can only be maintained and seen truly fully and objectively valued in God's vision.

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What does this even mean? You said you had "proofs". This is just meaningless platitude.

We have objective value. Therefore God exists.

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What?
1. What is our "objective value"?
2. How does that demonstrate the existence of a particular version of god? (Islam, in your case)

Also, I do believe the design of earth, stars, galaxies, sun and moon, animals, interconnection of nature, mountains, make a case for God.

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How? We have good naturalistic explanations for these things and none of them require a god. In fact, some of the claims made by your god about these things are demonstrably wrong!

I am aware of the scientific explanations, I'm not convinced,

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Because of cognitive dissonance, blind faith and lack of understanding. But just because the child doesn't understand how their iPad works, doesn't mean it must be magic.

and believe there is holes in theories trying to account for these things and they are obvious if reflected about but people are so swayed by scientific authority, they can't see design for what it is.

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In which case you will be able to point out these holes and explain why the theories doesn't work, using evidence, data and rational argument.
What's that? You can't?
You do surprise me!

Link said:

Planets maintaining their rotations, earth maintain it's rotation, sun maintaining, all this is signs. But people are so far gone in "science" authority, they can't see it.

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I assume you also refuse to believe that phones, computers, planes, satellites, medicine, etc, etc, are real or work, because you aren't "so far gone in "science" authority"?
What's that?
You use all these things?
How very inconsistent of you.

RestlessSoul said:

A secure institution, be that religious, political, educational or whatever, you should be able to tolerate a fair amount of heresy imo.

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I think you are absolutely spot on.

Very few had done this though.

KWED said:

I assume you also refuse to believe that phones, computers, planes, satellites, medicine, etc, etc, are real or work, because you aren't "so far gone in "science" authority"?
What's that?
You use all these things?
How very inconsistent of you.

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I can explain it in a way that proves it beyond doubt that these are designed but since it won't convince anyone not convinced and who am I compared to your big scientists right? So there is no point.

Xavier Graham SA said:

I would like to discuss natural knowledge and the knowledge of God.
This is my understanding when I say “natural knowledge”. My Tibetan Book of the Dead, I Ching, Bible, and other religious texts have taught me that God’s existence is something that is self proving. We are born with knowledge of His existence; it in intrinsic knowledge. Attachment to suffering, ego, and material life clouds our vision. Knowledge of God is something that can be obscured.
God becomes clear when we detach ourselves from our ego; this is the process of discovering God.
Do theists agree that knowledge of God is natural knowledge? What do atheists think of this concept? Does it seem silly?

Click to expand...

Rom1;19Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.........

Heb 11:3Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
(or... were made of things which do not appear/are not visible)

Xavier Graham SA said:

I would like to discuss natural knowledge and the knowledge of God.
This is my understanding when I say “natural knowledge”. My Tibetan Book of the Dead, I Ching, Bible, and other religious texts have taught me that God’s existence is something that is self proving. We are born with knowledge of His existence; it in intrinsic knowledge. Attachment to suffering, ego, and material life clouds our vision. Knowledge of God is something that can be obscured.
God becomes clear when we detach ourselves from our ego; this is the process of discovering God.
Do theists agree that knowledge of God is natural knowledge? What do atheists think of this concept? Does it seem silly?

Click to expand...

My first thought here is that what you are speaking of could be described as unconscious archetypes in the vein of C.G. Jung's thinking. As such we can witness in our own cognition and most certainly in our artistic creations or our dreams the influence of these archetypes. They are patterns of our cognitions that we often don't consciously know but in hindsight we can see clearly through a comparative analysis of the products of our cognition.

In Jung's view the Self is what might be understood as the archetype of God. When one experiences the Self it is a balancing factor for the psyche and it always points toward psychic wholeness. I have been a student and interpreter of dreams for a long time and have even posted on the topic of The God Dream which claims that there are certain patterns to an experience of God in dreams that show God to have at least a "psychologically objective reality" in that the same patterns apply independent of the dreamer.

The God Dream

The basic stripped down gist of all this is that experience or knowledge of God is the simultaneous realization of one's personal "smallness" in relation to God's ultimate "greatness", but that in that relationship is the essence of meaning, personal validation and compassion. This is the ego and the Self mutually aligning in their endless effort to try to be good "dance partners".

So I would say that, in a bit of a poetic re-contextualization, that knowledge of God is not logically self-proving but Self-proving or an experience of ultimate personal validation that will last a lifetime once it has happened. But this notion of God is objective only at the level of psychology/brain-activity, not objective physical reality in the sense of if no human existed there would still be a personal God.

While God existence knowledge is innate, to get connected to him and truly know him, you need to look at the heaven/sky/true kingdom of God which has the lights chosen by God, and this a decision to believe and meditate and become aware of the scent of God's chosen ones with you and their light with you.

Thus to believe in God and the heavenly stars/lights/weapons against Iblis, is part of our deposition too. To recognize their sustenance is the power and energy of God while the unclean energy is delusion, illusion and leads away from God is also innate in our nature. We know both directions well, and we know good and evil well enough. This is life is not a lesson, it's a test. We know already.

Link said:

I can explain it in a way that proves it beyond doubt that these are designed but since it won't convince anyone not convinced and who am I compared to your big scientists right? So there is no point.

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You said that you reject the scientific explanation for the natural world because you are not "so far gone in "science" authority".
But you accept scientific explanations for other things.
Or do you believe that cars, planes, phones, etc all work by magic?

The thing with your "proof beyond doubt" is that it requires not only a belief in magic without any evidence, but also the rejection of demonstrable science and the evidence supporting it.
You have no "proof" for anything, just "belief" bordering on delusion.

KWED said:

You said that you reject the scientific explanation for the natural world because you are not "so far gone in "science" authority".
But you accept scientific explanations for other things.
Or do you believe that cars, planes, phones, etc all work by magic?

The thing with your "proof beyond doubt" is that it requires not only a belief in magic without any evidence, but also the rejection of demonstrable science and the evidence supporting it.
You have no "proof" for anything, just "belief" bordering on delusion.

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A watch also works scientifically, does not mean it's not designed. Anyways, I've decided I'm going to write books. Forums are not a place of guidance, whether attaining it or giving it.

Link said:

While God existence knowledge is innate,

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More unsupported assertion.
Belief in the gods of religion is absolutely not innate. It must be taught. It is only a propensity to ascribe the unexplained to a supernatural cause that may be innate. But that simply explains how religions were invented.

to get connected to him and truly know him, you need to look at the heaven/sky/true kingdom of God which has the lights chosen by God, and this a decision to believe and meditate and become aware of the scent of God's chosen ones with you and their light with you.

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How do you explain the fact that people generally only "discover" the version of god they were brought up to believe in?
If what you claim is true, they should all find the same god. As they don't, it means that at most only one of the many versions of god is true, and more likely none of them - even if there is some kind of supernatural power at work in the universe.

Thus to believe in God and the heavenly stars/lights/weapons against Iblis,

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The claims that stars/meteorites are weapons sent by Allah against eavesdropping Jinn/Iblis is so laughable as to be disturbing that anyone can actually take such nonsense seriously.

The heavenly stars/lights/weapons is Mohammad (s) and his family (a) and the context in Quran CLEARLY proves that, but the SORCERY keeps people from perceiving and the tafsirs talking about physical stars are laughable like you said.

Link said:

A watch also works scientifically, does not mean it's not designed.

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Paley's Watchmaker is a poor argument for design that has been repeatedly refuted.

Anyways, I've decided I'm going to write books.

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Fantasy, I presume?

KWED said:

Paley's Watchmaker is a poor argument for design that has been repeatedly refuted.

Fantasy, I presume?

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Not using that, but I haven't research original, maybe it too took a strawman version like all others do in western academia.