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In reply to the discussion: Student Protest Leader at Columbia: 'Zionists Don't Deserve to Live' [View all]elias7
(4,049 posts)Neither of us give any such agency to a supreme being. You, because you are a non-believer and me because I dont think about god in this way. I was being somewhat tongue in cheek in my earlier response.
I resonate with Spinozas conception of there literally being only one substance (lets label this god) with infinite attributes and extensions, and so the vast (the universe) and the minute (the lives of humans on one planet) are the unfolding of a process or mystery that we will never comprehend (transcendent of our ever knowing) yet is the explanation of my and your existence (imminent, or within us). I resonate hard with Joseph Campbells description of the perennial philosophy (progenitor to Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist thought) where with the astronomical observation by the ancients that the 7 visible spheres (sun, moon, mars, mercury, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter) move in a mathematically calculable procession through the fixed backdrop of stars. This implies an impersonal cosmic order, no personality or God, but rather an ever unfolding process informed by the energies of the universe that is and will always be a mystery. It is up to us to recognize our oneness with the universe, that we are derived and inseparable from this process, and though it will always be a mystery, we can align with nature, harmonize with the process (as we do follow and live in accordance with such observable cycles such as the rise and fall of the day, the monthlong lunar cycle, the cycle of the seasons and the year, the great eon, etc.).
As the explanation for my existence, yours, Palestinians, Israelis, the New England Patriots, trees, rocks, seas, chemical reactions, the Renaissance, Mars, orbiting moons, spinning galaxies, black holes, worm holes, etc. all derive from the same underlying process that will never be understood by our simplistic minds - this mystery I label as god for lack of a better term, and one which has no agency or anthropomorphized concern for the existence of one speck of dust such as myself in one moment (in the face of eternal time) or place (in the face of infinite space), to name but two dimensions.
So, I believe in god insofar as I use this as a label to describe the phenomenon that I believe I exist and think and feel and I believe you do too; that you and I are a tiny manifestation of THE cosmic mystery that informs the energies of the universe. My wife does yoga and the greeting Satnam, I believe, means the infinite in me acknowledges the infinite in you, that we are material beings whose bodies will come and go, but for a moment in time (an individual life) carries the energy of the universe from which it was derived.
Probably a bit more than you asked for