Atheists: what would make you believe?

[dennisrwood]

and I say that all of my spiritual growth has come within the Church. and that I have become a better man as I have grown in the Church. submission to a greater power can be liberating.

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Different paths to the same end. And whatever works for each of us should be OK, as long as we're not hurting anybody.

Personally Dennis, you touch on what is probably one of my most significant problems with the whole concept of religion. Submission to a greater power. First, I struggle to accept that anything can be a greater power in my life than I can, and second, submission is just not something I'm keen on. To me, it is a lessening of my own worth.

I always did like to win.

--A

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

submission to a greater power can be liberating.

See, when I read this, I feel like it's an oxymoron.

"Submission to a greater power" involves accepting the authority of another over yourself. This, naturally, limits your options of behaviour.

"Liberating" generally means to increase a degree of freedom.

As far as I can see, the only liberation that would take place in submitting to a higher power would be the liberation of responsibility for your decisions. In other words, as long as you justify yourself to your master, you don't need to worry about the consequences of your actions, and can be secure in a reward after death.

The mechanics of domination and submission (no dirty implications here, obviously) are very intricate, and I generally tend to look at equality as the goal. I definately won't surrender myself to a higher power that I don't believe in, and ESPECIALLY not to the human representatives of that higher power.

I am free to act based on my own morals, which are harsh, to be honest. But they're mine.

[Fist and Faith]

I understand at least some aspect of what dennis means. When you give control to something/someone else, you no longer have worry about. The worrying, planning, contemplating, self-doubting, etc, all goes away. You are free of all that. Free for, what is for some, more important things.

These last several posts just prove to me that different people have different psychological strengths, weaknesses, needs, fears, desires, etc, and so we cannot possibly all take the same path to whatever we're searching for.

Regarding lots of this, and Catholocism in particular, Jung said this:

The personal unconscious consists firstly of all those contents that became unconscious either because they lost their intensity and were forgotten or because consciousness was withdrawn from them (repression), and secondly of contents, some of them sense-impressions, which never had sufficient intensity to reach consciousness but have somehow entered the psyche. The collective unconscious, however, as the ancestral heritage of possibilities of representation, is not individual but common to all men, and perhaps even to all animals, and is the true basis of the individual psyche.

Do we ever understand what we think? We only understand that kind of thinking which is a mere equation, from which nothing comes out but what we have put in. That is the working of the intellect. But besides that there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them. It is a question neither of belief nor of knowledge, but of the agreement of our thinking with the primordial images of the unconscious. They are the unthinkable matrices of all our thoughts, no matter what our conscious mind may cogitate. One of these primordial thoughts is the idea of life after death.

Regarding the imagery of the archetypes: Naturally the question now arises: why does the psyche not register the actual process, instead of mere fantasies about the physical process? After a few paragraphs of examples and explanations, he sums it up this way: It is not storms, not thunder and lightning, not rain and cloud that remain as images in the psyche, but the fantasies caused by the affects they arouse. I once experienced a violent earthquake, and my first, immediate feeling was that I no longer stood on the solid and familiar earth, but on the skin of a gigantic animal that was heaving under my feet. It was this image that impressed itself on me, not the physical fact.

After describing some rites of the Catholic Church, and telling what they represent, he says: These mighty projections enable the Catholic to experience large tracts of his collective unconscious in tangible reality. He has no need to go in search of authority, superior power, revelation, or something that would link him with the eternal and the timeless. These are always present and available for him: there, in the Holy of Holies on every altar, dwells the presence of God.

The existence of an individual consciousness makes man aware of the difficulties of his inner as well as his outer life. Just as the world about him takes on a friendly or a hostile aspect to the eyes of primitive man, so the influences of his unconscious seem to him like an opposing power, with which he has to come to terms just as with the visible world. His countless magical practices serve this end. On higher levels of civilization, religion and philosophy fulfill the same purpose. Whenever such a system of adaptation breaks down a general unrest begins to appear, and attempts are made to find a suitable new form of relationship to the unconscious.

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

That's an absolutely excellent post, Fist. Oh divine lord and master of the quote!
Interesting stuff... see, for me, when I said that I started finding spiritual answers after I left the church, what I meant was (in light of this Jung section here) that I was free to determine my own personal symbols, and feel out what they said about me. I simply could not relate well to the symbols handed down to me... I dont know why, it just didn't satisfy me. Now, my symbols are drawn from my friends, my tarot deck (a lot, actually), various religions including christianity, and my own personal thinking and reasoning.

Because the human experience isn't always a reflection of some kind of absolute reality, it's easier and easier for me to pick and choose how I will view and experience my own reality. My reality simply doesn't mesh with any of the major religions I've read up on.

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There we have it again. The subjective nature of reality.

I'm guessing that if the "reality" handed down by those symbols that (for instance) the church provides, doesn't match up with the reality that you experience/perceive, then you're not going to be satisfied.

I'm with you on this. Define your own reality any way that you please, (or way that seems right) and then work out your approach accordingly. It is, and will be, different from any other. And that's fine.

--Avatar

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

Because you're different from anyone else.

[Avatar]

I am a Visionary.
I started out knowing not much at all.
But I processed every bit of Information
That Anyone ever shared with Me,
And I shared it back again, until
I realised that what I know
Is different from Anyone else in the World.
-Anonymous Advertising Copywriter