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Religion and Paradox

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
According to people who are supposed to know, a paradox is, "A seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true."
Paradox | Meaning of Paradox by Lexico

For a while now, it has struck me how religion is the ritualization of paradox. Various paradoxes are central to the teachings of a variety of religions. In Zen Buddhism, for example, one meditative technique used by practitioners are koans, which are paradoxical statements, questions, stories, etc. used to open one's mind and awareness to a deeper understanding than may be immediately obvious. Throughout Eastern religions, there is a common thread that understands reality as "non-dual," which itself is a paradoxical insight that perceives the oneness or unity of all things despite their apparent differences and separateness.

Paradox exists in the Abrahamic traditions as well. Christianity, with which I'm most familiar, utilizes a number of paradoxes in its theology, including certain understandings of the Eucharist (bread and wine as divine flesh and blood), the Trinity (three divine "Persons" in one Being or substance), and the Incarnation (God as man) - though I grant not all Christians accept these interpretations. Jesus employs paradox multiple times in the Gospels, such as, "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." (Luke 17:33)

Existence itself is mysterious, paradoxical, not completely within our intellectual grasp, try as we might to discover as much as we can. And I think one of the primary functions of religion is to honor and highlight that mystery through ritual.

What are your thoughts? How is paradox expressed in your religious tradition, or other traditions you're aware of?
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." (Luke 17:33)

Natural life is first and origin before any science statement is inferred by a human thinking.

Origin, original.

Then a scientist says that God is the origin.

Yet man is not God, as the argument with self is Bible encoded/recorded.

First paradox, stated.

Spirituality always put your own self into the thoughts of what the human expressing information is living/quoting in the exact format of how it was detailed. To tell the truth.

Reason for theorising. Self said spiritually I am trapped as a human on Earth by God....as all God information says so.

Then says I want to be released from being a prisoner (life owner).

Coercion to self....who ever loses his life will preserve it.

And if you lose your life everyone knows you own no consciousness afterwards, or a living life body to say "preserve" or I am preserved...for you would not be taken in the first place to lose.

What humans claim spiritually ,...…...I came from out of the eternal spirit as a pre owned spirit in my own form eternal. When I die as a human I re own that form eternal.

How it is stated exactly. You never owned eternal whilst living as a human. You have to be deceased to own eternal...as eternal....not as a human, for the human is the prisoner by theme/theory.

As a scientist today...when you say God is a particle, isn't that thought "nothing" and space meaning, non God presence itself, the planet?

Natural laws are first, with God the planet of stone present and with its gases present....all laws were laws of God first, where you are, where you exist.

If you claim the Laws of God are nothing....then you mean it.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
I have never before thought about how important paradoxical thinking is in at least some religions. It's fascinating to think about it. Thanks so much, LC!

I think you must be onto something when you point out that paradoxical thinking seems to be one way --- perhaps the best or only way -- of getting at some truths (or, if you must, seeming truths) about reality. There are things that cannot be expressed as well without being expressed paradoxically. Such as "the harder you try to do X, the more likely you are to fail at X", which can be applied to numbers of things.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Jiddu Krishnamurti was of the controversial opinion that trying or desiring to attain enlightenment paradoxically hindered or prevented its attainment.

But how was the paradox resolved?

Something along these lines, I believe: Desire -- even the desire for enlightenment -- somehow strengthens normal, day-to-day consciousness. Which works out to be the sort of consciousness that one is trying to get beyond in order to arrive at enlightenment. Now don't quote me on that. That's just the best I can make of it. I could be quite wrong.
 

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
I have never before thought about how important paradoxical thinking is in at least some religions. It's fascinating to think about it. Thanks so much, LC!

I think you must be onto something when you point out that paradoxical thinking seems to be one way --- perhaps the best or only way -- of getting at some truths (or, if you must, seeming truths) about reality. There are things that cannot be expressed as well without being expressed paradoxically. Such as "the harder you try to do X, the more likely you are to fail at X", which can be applied to numbers of things.

Agreed. Paradox seems baked into the cake of our lives, in certain ways. Unfortunately, I think this is where fundamentalism may hold some people back in terms of their appreciation of the nuances of life. And to be clear, I don't mean only religious fundamentalism; non-religious folks fall into the same mindset, just at the opposite end of the spectrum. Too much black-and-white thinking prevents us from seeing how reality doesn't fit into our binary ways of thinking about it.
 
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Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
Jiddu Krishnamurti was of the controversial opinion that trying or desiring to attain enlightenment paradoxically hindered or prevented its attainment.

But how was the paradox resolved?

Something along these lines, I believe: Desire -- even the desire for enlightenment -- somehow strengthens normal, day-to-day consciousness. Which works out to be the sort of consciousness that one is trying to get beyond in order to arrive at enlightenment. Now don't quote me on that. That's just the best I can make of it. I could be quite wrong.

Good point, I think you're on the right track. I think this is the same fundamental point of the insight in Zen that "samsara is nirvana."

@crossfire is vastly more knowledgeable and experienced than me in all things Buddhism though, so I defer to her insight here, if she wants to share it. :)
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
First of all seeking is proven wrong.

What you seek is what you will never obtain. The spirit that you are "not".

As we are just human, and know all balances are lived with our bio Nature, we are meant to commune in the presence of spiritual purpose. To be a self, and just own self and own no one else.

Live as balanced a life of health as is possible.

When you claim you own anything else...you lie, for I can watch you die, and be removed from owning self/life/presence and any status that you gave anything else.

Why searching for what is not obtainable gets you destroyed....enlightenment in full understanding.

To be illuminated is the ancient aware human applied information to experience what you never personally owned. When all life was as said "sent to Hell" as a human for disobeying natural law in the God planet presence and heavens.

As simple and as basic as the human teaching was.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
In the OP, you've hit one of my senses about spiritual realities. Looking at this I have some thoughts. So as one "blind man" touching the "elephant" in different places partially underlining @Left Coast and @rational experiences 's posts. So take this as a rewording rather than something unique to me.

One is the thesis/antithesis/synthesis. On the physical level, light is a particle and a wave but is truly both at the same time with only our perception varying depending on how we look at it. So a resolution of paradox is a higher synthesis.

Another frame is ineffability. Truth to me can be pointed at in words but words cannot express Truth which is beyond words. So paradox underlines that reality is at some level not expressible in words and thoughts.
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
In the OP, you've hit one of my senses about spiritual realities. Looking at this I have some thoughts. So as one "blind man" touching the "elephant" in different places partially underlining @Left Coast and @rational experiences 's posts. So take this as a rewording rather than something unique to me.

One is the thesis/antithesis/synthesis. On the physical level, light is a particle and a wave but is truly both at the same time with only our perception varying depending on how we look at it. So a resolution of paradox is a higher synthesis.

Another frame is ineffability. Truth to me can be pointed at in words but words cannot express Truth which is beyond words. So paradox underlines that reality is at some level not expressible in words and thoughts.

The scientific wisdom advised self after the fact of self advice...... said that light is the spirit. In science the spirit is only a gas.

Gases existed before physical mass did historically as a particle cause, so you say light, the spirit of created the particle, yet gases from a physical mass multi particles existed afterwards. The mystery of that circumstance was of course space.

Cold space, deep space, the presence space the pressure of space. The inclusion opening of space as mass consumes its mass opening more space.

The psyche then says cold deep and dark space caused it.....when it did not...it caused particular statements to be quoted.

Teaching, if you want to know what it is like to be sacrificed, like our Father learnt said Jesus and he taught me...is to follow my story and open the door in to space by causing space to open and find our for yourself. Which is of course fission/removal of mass into a new space.

Which is not wisdom and I never believed that the sacrifice of life was wise...but some of you do not agree.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
According to people who are supposed to know, a paradox is, "A seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true."
Paradox | Meaning of Paradox by Lexico
"The following sentence is true.
The previous sentence is false."

The above is an example of a (true) paradox. In logic a paradox can't be resolved. Some statements seem to be paradoxical but can be resolved. take the original Liars Paradox the Paradox of Epimenides who, as a Cretan, said "All Cretans are liars." It seems that if he is telling the truth, he must be lying and if he is lying he must tell the truth. The resolution is that he is simply lying as the opposite of "All Cretans are liars." is not "All Cretans tell the truth." but "Not all Cretans are liars."

The same goes for religions. One has to be careful to accuse a religion of being paradoxical. Some seeming paradoxa can be resolved. Take the trinity in Christianity. God can't be one and three at the same time, can it? It can in the same way as three lines can form one triangle.

Sometimes it can be quite an exercise to find how a religious system is self contradictory.
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
Paradox exists in the Abrahamic traditions as well. Christianity, with which I'm most familiar, utilizes a number of paradoxes in its theology, including certain understandings of the Eucharist (bread and wine as divine flesh and blood), the Trinity (three divine "Persons" in one Being or substance), and the Incarnation (God as man) - though I grant not all Christians accept these interpretations.

As one who belongs to a Christian faith which does not accept those apparent paradoxes, I can assure you that none of those beliefs are actually scriptural, so it reduces the number of paradoxes somewhat.

Jesus employs paradox multiple times in the Gospels, such as, "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." (Luke 17:33)

This is not a paradox either if you know what Jesus was referring to.....
If one seeks to save his life by denying Christ or disobeying his teachings, then his denial or disobedience will be rewarded with death. But if a Christian loses their life because of their obeying the teachings of Jesus Christ, then they are assured of a resurrection in the new world to come. (John 5:28-29) Their life will be restored, and thereby preserved.

This requires a sound knowledge of scripture, which I believe is the reason why so many are confused. They have a somewhat brief overview of the Bible, but no real knowledge about what it teaches....or what questions it answers IMO.

Existence itself is mysterious, paradoxical, not completely within our intellectual grasp, try as we might to discover as much as we can. And I think one of the primary functions of religion is to honor and highlight that mystery through ritual.

To me....it is man who invented 'religions' in an attempt to fashion a god in their own image, rather than to find the true God who created everything for a reason, and to fit in with his purpose.

It is the Creator who tells us how to worship and the reason for our existence. It is not complicated or mysterious.....it is the end result of a Being whose primary quality is LOVE, wanting to share life with others, as he enjoys it....with freedom of choice and in company with like minded ones joining together with the common good in mind, rather than the selfishness that permeates the world of today.

Its a big planet, made just for us to appreciate all of creation in peace and security under his watchful care.....but free will, when it takes freedom away from others, makes life into something the Creator never intended. Humans misused their free will and became selfish, taking from others instead of giving and sharing. They never seem to get reason for the lesson.....but God never does anything for nothing.
He will take us back to the conditions of Eden because he always finishes what he starts. (Isaiah 55:11) The lessons of this life will never be forgotten. That is how I understand things.
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
According to people who are supposed to know, a paradox is, "A seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true."
Paradox | Meaning of Paradox by Lexico

For a while now, it has struck me how religion is the ritualization of paradox. Various paradoxes are central to the teachings of a variety of religions. In Zen Buddhism, for example, one meditative technique used by practitioners are koans, which are paradoxical statements, questions, stories, etc. used to open one's mind and awareness to a deeper understanding than may be immediately obvious. Throughout Eastern religions, there is a common thread that understands reality as "non-dual," which itself is a paradoxical insight that perceives the oneness or unity of all things despite their apparent differences and separateness.

Paradox exists in the Abrahamic traditions as well. Christianity, with which I'm most familiar, utilizes a number of paradoxes in its theology, including certain understandings of the Eucharist (bread and wine as divine flesh and blood), the Trinity (three divine "Persons" in one Being or substance), and the Incarnation (God as man) - though I grant not all Christians accept these interpretations. Jesus employs paradox multiple times in the Gospels, such as, "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." (Luke 17:33)

Existence itself is mysterious, paradoxical, not completely within our intellectual grasp, try as we might to discover as much as we can. And I think one of the primary functions of religion is to honor and highlight that mystery through ritual.

What are your thoughts? How is paradox expressed in your religious tradition, or other traditions you're aware of?
From - Paradox - Wikipedia
“In logic, many paradoxes exist which are known to be invalid arguments, but which are nevertheless valuable in promoting critical thinking, while other paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions which were assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined”.

In my opinion, the very priestly and scholarly interpretation of the biblical contents have itself created lots of paradoxes which really don´t exist.

Much of the dualistic expressions are not paradoxes but just complimentary sides of the same coin which aren´t understood because of a priestly and scholarly lack of mythical, astronomical and cosmological insights.

And much of the original mytho-cosmological symbolism in the Bible have been de-mythified and personalized and understood as historic events instead of descriptions of the Creation.

A "religious ritualization of paradoxes" is based on pure dogmatism because of the lacks mentioned above.
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
Jiddu Krishnamurti was of the controversial opinion that trying or desiring to attain enlightenment paradoxically hindered or prevented its attainment.

But how was the paradox resolved?

Something along these lines, I believe: Desire -- even the desire for enlightenment -- somehow strengthens normal, day-to-day consciousness. Which works out to be the sort of consciousness that one is trying to get beyond in order to arrive at enlightenment. Now don't quote me on that. That's just the best I can make of it. I could be quite wrong.
Good point, I think you're on the right track. I think this is the same fundamental point of the insight in Zen that "samsara is nirvana."

@crossfire is vastly more knowledgeable and experienced than me in all things Buddhism though, so I defer to her insight here, if she wants to share it. :)
Regarding Krishnamurti: I agree. Enlightenment is something unexpected. If you expected it, then you can't say you were totally ignorant of it in the first place. It's like a **doh** moment, and is usually something that seems embarrassingly obvious once you realize it. (It's an ongoing process--it's not like once enlightened, always enlightened, imo. Your mileage may vary.)

Regarding paradox: it's a good way to engage both your conscious mind and your unconscious mind to get them working together in a creative fashion. Jung would call it "Holding the tension of opposites {the conscious mind and the unconscious mind} in order to invoke the transcendent function."
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
One is the thesis/antithesis/synthesis. On the physical level, light is a particle and a wave but is truly both at the same time with only our perception varying depending on how we look at it. So a resolution of paradox is a higher synthesis.

Another frame is ineffability. Truth to me can be pointed at in words but words cannot express Truth which is beyond words. So paradox underlines that reality is at some level not expressible in words and thoughts.
Jung's Transcendent function.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Truth to me can be pointed at in words but words cannot express Truth which is beyond words. So paradox underlines that reality is at some level not expressible in words and thoughts.
Truth at present may not be available. We need more research. But I do not agree that it will always be something which cannot be expressed. After all, we the uninitiated, also have some inkling of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Chaos, Probability, Randomness, Uncertainty, etc.
Regarding Krishnamurti: I agree. Enlightenment is something unexpected. If you expected it, then you can't say you were totally ignorant of it in the first place. It's like a **doh** moment, and is usually something that seems embarrassingly obvious once you realize it. (It's an ongoing process ..)
I am not a mystic like perhaps what Krishnamurthy was. To me, enlightenment was not unexpected. I was hovering around it, weighing it. I was trying to get the answers and got mine just like in the way Buddha got, in a particular moment. We need to work towards it. Some get there easily, some with great difficulty and some never.
 
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Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
"The following sentence is true.
The previous sentence is false."

The above is an example of a (true) paradox. In logic a paradox can't be resolved. Some statements seem to be paradoxical but can be resolved. take the original Liars Paradox the Paradox of Epimenides who, as a Cretan, said "All Cretans are liars." It seems that if he is telling the truth, he must be lying and if he is lying he must tell the truth. The resolution is that he is simply lying as the opposite of "All Cretans are liars." is not "All Cretans tell the truth." but "Not all Cretans are liars."

The same goes for religions. One has to be careful to accuse a religion of being paradoxical. Some seeming paradoxa can be resolved. Take the trinity in Christianity. God can't be one and three at the same time, can it? It can in the same way as three lines can form one triangle.

Sometimes it can be quite an exercise to find how a religious system is self contradictory.

Thanks for sharing the difference between a "true" and "seeming" paradox. There may be more than one definition floating around out there, so I'm glad you brought this distinction up. Either way, I think sometimes critics of a religion rush to the conclusion that it's contradictory in some way when actually what they're observing is a paradox, or a seeming one. I agree that telling the difference can be quite a challenge.
 

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
Regarding Krishnamurti: I agree. Enlightenment is something unexpected. If you expected it, then you can't say you were totally ignorant of it in the first place. It's like a **doh** moment, and is usually something that seems embarrassingly obvious once you realize it. (It's an ongoing process--it's not like once enlightened, always enlightened, imo. Your mileage may vary.)

Regarding paradox: it's a good way to engage both your conscious mind and your unconscious mind to get them working together in a creative fashion. Jung would call it "Holding the tension of opposites {the conscious mind and the unconscious mind} in order to invoke the transcendent function."

Thank you! In some ways, enlightenment strikes me a little like sleep. When you lay down and "try" to sleep, it tends not to work well. All you can so is lay the groundwork to enable sleep to happen, let go, and sleep will come.

This has interesting crossover in Biblical terms as well: salvation is a gift that can't be earned, only freely given. The spiritual life is frequently described using various plant metaphors; no plant "tries" to grow, it just happens naturally, given the right conditions.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Well, not in my case. I was vigorously trying to get the answer. No, I would not make it into any God's gift. I am a strong atheist. :D
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
Well, not in my case. I was vigorously trying to get the answer. No, I would not make it into any God's gift. I am a strong atheist. :D
And you´re doing the right thing not to that either as such "answering" experiences is normal and natural in even the smallest Native tribe. IMO it´s even the normal human way of getting knowledge of everything :)
 

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
Well, not in my case. I was vigorously trying to get the answer. No, I would not make it into any God's gift. I am a strong atheist. :D

Totally fine, I just thought the parallel with theistic salvation was an interesting one worth noting. :blush:
 
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