<Jeff-Relf.Me @.> wrote
| "God" is nature; nothing more, nothing less.
| And nature has programmed us to like certain things.
.....
| There is no free will, everyone is a RoboSlave.
True in a sense. There's no evidence of a cosmic plan
for you to make a grand entry onto some cosmic stage.
But God isn't limited to extremes of primitive personification
or non-existence. That's the realm of religious zealots and
the halfwit atheists or "new atheists" who argue with them.
(If you read the New Atheists you'll see that their position,
which they'd like to believe is the very pinnacle of modern
Western philosophy, is built on a cornerstone that assumes
religion is limited to the belief in a personal God who lives
in the sky. Of course they feel clever when that's all they're
willing to look at. I'm sure they could also present a very
sharp argument against unicorns. But so what?)
What do you suppose people like Jesus, Buddha,
Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Gurdjieff, Zen masters,
etc represent? Do you think they're all just "whistling Dixie"?
Do you think the Odyssey is just an old adventure story?
That the Bhagavat Gita is the same? As Joseph Campbell
put it (possibly not the exact quote, but close), "the virgin
birth is not about medicine and the kingdom of Heaven is
not real estate!"
You might not find absolute meaning, but you can
find something else. However, no one can tell you what
that might be as long as you assume reality to be
concrete phenomena that can be known by objective
science. You have to suspend assumptions a bit. You
have to entertain the notion that you might not
know what you think you know.
Have you
ever read Plato's cave story? It's brief but presents a
possible view of reality in which science is still true, but
is only a superficial level of reality. A reality in which,
basically, you're God. But you've fallen asleep and you're
dreaming that you're Jeff. Nature made your body and brain,
but you dreamt Nature. It's hard to wake up
because that dream reality is very reassuring. And after
all, who wants to accept that they're dreaming? But you
did say there's no free will. So by implication there's no
true conscious thought. If you can accept that possibility
then you're off to the races. :) The obstacle of the dreamer
is the certainty that their dream is the only possible
reality. And our modern science dream has a built-in
teaching that it's the most advanced understanding that's
ever existed. That's a very stubborn dream indeed.
You might think I'm a dingbat or a dreamer. But then
you'd still be faced with why the world's religions have
existed. To think they exist only to reassure fools would
be very unscientific. Buddhist psychology is far more
sophisticated than Western. Teresa of Avila guided her
nuns through various stages of knowing God. Zen and Taoism
both offer profound poetry describing the nature of cognition.
They all offer vast teachings on consciousness, ethics
and meditation practices, or mental training.
If you start looking at that stuff it becomes clear that
believing it's all fantasy made up by fools is an absurd premise.
There's just far too much of it, in far too much detail,
including profound, abstruse ideas, to regard it as children's
books.