taliendo

I have a living enigma inside of me.

For the last few years I have had a constant battle between my spirituality and my philosophy; although, I have found my self on several occasions using one to explain (or possibly express) the other, they do not perfectly coincide. By natural selection, or social programming or what have you, I was raised a Christian. The lessons taught in the religion still ring true to me as I've said before. I believe in the story of Jesus of Nazareth, but (i think) more importantly, I believe in the active Christ Consciousness linking together all humanity -- past, present and future. My search of philosophy largely stems from my consciousness seeking something further to fill in the gaps where the church fell short. In the end, I found my basic beliefs to rest in line with most existentialists and the belief in the absurd -- after all, if the idea of God isn't absurd, what is?

Kierkegaard (if you want the excerpt that I'm refering to its in my journal) has written this example of a man falling in love with woman that he cannot have. The man, or knight, resigns that he loves her infinitely and eternally, without the need of a finite definition -- this is a beautiful thing in and of its self. BUT the Knight of Faith, believes that what is infinitely possible is also possible in the finite -- and why? because of the belief in the absurd, because of his trust in God.

There are millions, billions of people on this earth, and most of them claim to lay their faith in some supreme being -- and yet no god of heaven or earth moves for their people. In turn, many have rejected the idea of God, or in the very least forgotten about Him and the world has been left without a soul. I've been to church -- all kinds of churches. I've seen some shit that most people wouldn't believe -- hell, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't been there - some of it I don't believe and I was there. I guess my question is -- where have we lacked? What is lost that was once here? is this a faithless world? An act like infinite resignation, takes motion - movement Kierkegaard calls it - in the spiritual realm. An act like faith requires even more from the soul.

What's stopping the world from solving problems like famine (this country produces five times the amount of food to feed the world and the government pays farmers to leave it sit and rot in their graineries,) or war or any other social injustice. . . ok

/rant

__________________
-LIFE IS ABSURD-

Mantus

I really should stop making it a habit or reading this forum before I go out since it leaves me very little time to ponder and respond. But this post god my attention and I feel that I must post something.

A comment on each of your paragraphs in the same order.

- The world is not absurd, the world has order. Everything makes sense and everything has a pace. The only thing that happens without a reason, is the existence of the world itself.

- Love is goes poorly with god. Since we do not understand either how can we hope to gain something form nothing?

- “What is lost that was once here?” Nothing was lost; do not make the assumption that the world has changed much over the past few thousand years. We have more sophisticated toys and our knowledge has grown in leaps and bounds, but our spirit is still very much the same.

- As for your last question. Human nature is the answer. We are still animals.

datalink7

Philosophy is questions without answers. Religion is answers without questions.


*I forget who said this.

__________________
Ashes and diamons
foe and friend
we are all equal
in the end.

taliendo

I do agree that there is much order in the world. Without order and reason there would be no existence of the greater sciences or even of mathematics. All I contest is that there is absurdity in the universe -- there is even a certain amount of absurdity in the order of the world. Do not confuse absurdity with chaos - they are two very different things.

I have to politely disagree with the totality of this statement. I know that we are animals and much of our nature shows this. However, I contend that we are more than animals, that we have a spirit - a sense of self awareness, an ability to know the difference between good and evil and the opportunity to base our decisions upon this knowledge. If mankind acted entirely upon its 'animal' nature, the world would be a much more harmonious place to live.

__________________
-LIFE IS ABSURD-

Mantus

Indeed i don't really get absurdity.

I did not intend for it to be an all-encompassing statement. You are correct in all your assessment of humanity. Indeed we are very advanced animals. We are torn between our conscious minds and our instinctive drives, and more often then not we do not know which one is which. I do not think that we are ready to let go of our instincts, yet our minds are outgrowing their shell (if I may call it that). We are certainly living in a very interesting time. We can witness genius minds make leaps and bounds in unraveling the universe around them, and behold men who have become puppets of the animal within.