>
>Frank Masingill wrote to Mark Bloss about Random values
 
 MB> Conversely, one of the principle logical "proofs" of God's existence
 MB> (qualified, here) is that anything which can be imagined in the
 MB> consciousness of Man alone cannot be God, and since there are many
 MB> things  which are not ONLY in the consciousness of Man, but have a
 MB> concrete reality,  then whatever is the greatest of these must be God.
 
 MB> Aside from this, however, how can any proof be brought to bear upon the
 MB> premise that God is _non-existent_?  Perhaps it is not God "Himself"
 MB> which  is non-existent, but rather our conscious conceptualization of
 MB> what God  really is, which is non-existent?
 FM> As a matter of fact, Martin Buber, in one of his treatises on the
 FM> subject, advised those who complained that "God no longer speaks to
 FM> man" to consider that "perhaps we have plugged wax into our ears."  
 
 You know, I've always wondered why God had an American southern accent,
 uses slang terms and starts sentences very much in the same way as those
 closest to me.   Of course, some people believe God speaks Elizabethan
 English, with plenty of Thy's and Thee's and Thou's, which a few Ye's and
 Behold's thrown in for good measure.   
 FM> On the point of "God" being "existent" or "non-existent" it would
 FM> be difficult for me to imagine "God" as an "existing thing."  I know of
 
 Not a "thing", but an entity.  But even so, the process of thought in our
 mind requires our association of a "thing" being "existent".  It is too
 hard, I imagine, for man to consider God (should he or she believe in
 God) to be non-existant, yet real all the same.  I do not know how I
 should think of something which is real yet does not exist.
 FM> no other site where "man" might encounter "God" except in
 FM> consciousness.  
 
 Yet consciousness is also a real "thing".  Consider mathematical
 reasoning.  This purest activity of our brain, and because of its
 abstraction - the furthest removed from common-sense reasoning -
 yet it plays such a tremendously liberating role in science's
 exploration of the universe.  It is real, it "exists".  But it
 is a non-existent thing - because it is not concrete.  This is
 no proof of God, but it does let us deal more directly with the
 _meaningfulness_ of God.
 
 FM> "existence" of God appears VERY late in modernity (17th century) and
 FM> was not known to such principals as Aquineas, Anselm, Descarte, etc, to
 FM> whom it is frequently linked.  The primary structure of the
 FM> divine-human encounter, says Voegelin, must be carefully distinguished
 FM> from the poles of the tension in the metaxy (in-between) in
 FM> consiousness where the divine meets the human in poles of an
 FM> existential, tensional encounter.   Faith is life in the tension
 FM> between divine necessity and human contingency but when we then attempt
 FM> to SYMBOLIZE this structure we are in danger of hypostasizing the poles
 FM> of the tension into TRANSCENDENT and IMMANENT *THINGS*.  This, I think,
 FM> is a mistake.   
 
 I do not know if it is a mistake.  I do know it is compelling to connect
 our faith with an existent thing.  It may be somewhat hard-coded into
 our psyche, even our Id.  Whether or not it is _right_ to symbolize our
 divine-human encounter - it is certainly _meaningful_ to do so.
 FM> Reality is experienced and symbolized in various modes depending
 FM> on both the epochs and the various parts of the world where ecumenic
 FM> "death" has squelched smaller tribes and societies.  In the Chinese
 FM> ecumene of the ancient world the emperor who held the "teh" (divine
 FM> substance) had authority while the Pharoah of Egypt held the position
 FM> of a very "son of God" and thus partaking of divine substance and
 FM> mediating it to his people.  Plato could develop in the _Laws_ his
 FM> ultimate symbol of God as the player of the puppets while the writer of
 FM> the Gospel of John could begin his experience of the Christ with the
 FM> incarnation in man of the "light that shines in the darkness and cannot
 FM> be extinguished."  Although some use the terms, there is no such thing
 FM> as a "post-Christian" or a "new age" era for we are still struggling
 FM> with the problems of the "history" in man's consciousness of
 FM> revelatory theophanic events that were REALLY encountered and that
 FM> REALLY constitutes our "problems of history."
 Then I gather you are saying we cannot move forward until we are able
 to distinguish the true nature of the myth.  In fact, it is the true
 nature of the myth which is the guiding metaphor - and as such -
 intuition as the ideal of truth - that is our consciousness's, rather
 our mind's intuition is what Hannah Arendt said was the "most cognitive 
 of our senses", what Heidegger called the 'moment of illumination', the
 "Blitz" in German, manifests itself in English as _lightning_, and which
 was methophorically pronounced as "the ringing sound of silence" (das
 Gelaut der Stille).  This is precisely what is arrived at in silent
 contemplation - in the consciousness - the mind.  Not the intellect.
 
 So, are our problems of history really an intellectual problem to be
 solved by consciousness?  This is what I would call a mistake.  To
 understand the _meaning_ of God is an intuitive undertaking, not an
 intellectual one.  
 
 
... Always remember you're unique - just like everyone else.
--- GEcho 1.11++TAG 2.7c
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