This is why I don't like to take part in discussions of religion and the like. It's why I find it quite fultile and not illuminating in any way (where I take something positive away from it).
A lot of "It's not really that way, it's really like this."
And I just looooove being told what I really think.
Is almost finished with the Behe section,
Matt
At 11:29 AM 6/20/2001 +0200, you wrote:
Dear Matt, Rasheed, Marco, John, Roger & others,
Matt, on 16/6 22:39 -0500 you reject defining religion as "the essentially human pursuit of re-experiencing DQ" "because, by definition, you don't re-experience DQ", because "that implies religion as the only way to experience DQ" and because "Being part of a religion means being part of ... static social patterns.".
If you "define" (undefinable) Dynamic Quality as (or rather point to the moon of DQ with) "pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality" and if "reality = experience", than you don't re-experience the same bit of DQ you experienced last time you experienced DQ. You can however re-experience DQ as freedom from (even the new) static patterns of value (that have formed from last time's DQ-experience). The futility of trying to re-experience the same bit of DQ, doesn't deter human beings from pursuing it, though, so I'd still leave the "re-" in my definition as a kind of malicious side-note :-)
Pursuing DQ is a way of experiencing DQ (if you are not so stupid to try to re-experience last time's bit of DQ), just experiencing anything and pursuing only static goals is another way, as those static goals (sex on the biological level, status on the social, truth on the intellectual) are just DQ in disguise (reflections of the moon?). And if you pursue only static goals you may still "accidentally" experience DQ that goes beyond these. My definition simply does not imply that religion is the only way to experience DQ (even if the static intellectual patterns of some religions seem to imply such exclusivity. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to God but through me.").
Does being part of static social (and intellectual) patterns deter people from pursuing DQ??? Maybe they don't experience them as static because they identify with them and use them as "platform" to jump to the moon? Maybe they are busy "putting them to sleep" (Lila ch. 30)?
Religion is not the static patterns associated with it. They are only the result of DQ experienced in the past. Once experienced DQ sometimes latches and creates a new static pattern of value. Even if it doesn't latch, the platform that was used for jumping gets the credit. Different religions are like different platforms humanity uses for jumping to the moon. That which connects and defines them is the act of jumping, the pursuit. In another often used metaphor: religion is the climbing of a mountain, not the different paths we follow to the top. (I like the moon-jumping metaphor better, though, because of the implied unreachability of the goal.)
Religion is essentially human. Some of us call ourselves atheists. Others restrict religion to a separate part of their lives. Once we do so, we start creating metaphysical patterns as platforms to jump to the moon from (in the the rest of our lives, for those who restrict religion).
If you write "what each of these religions is pointing at (the moon, as it goes) or trying to experience, well, that may be DQ." I read that as support of my definition...
Matt, you wrote further:
"Where I stand now, I guess, would be that it doesn't matter if God exists or not. ... because the Western conception of God is always as a separate being alongside the universe. ... I ... cut him out. My life doesn't change a bit."
Marco, you apparently agreed on 17/6 12:49 +0200:
"Now call it God, if you want. It doesn't change a lot."
You are right. It doesn't change anything at all on the rational level of knowledge to equate DQ and God. (See John's posting of 15/6 15:38 +1000 or members.ams.chello.nl/f.visser3/wilber/science.html for an explanation of Wilber's levels of knowledge.) It diminishes both DQ and God to equate and define them. To be more precise: it takes them down to the rational level of knowledge, depriving the spiritual level of a focal point for communication about meta-level experience.
I propose not to equate them, therefore. Just leave them -undefined- at the spiritual level of knowledge, beautiful moons to jump at. I just want to point out the analogy of religion pointing at God and a MoQ pointing at DQ. The act of jumping and trying to build up the platform we're jumping from is the same. Accepting that enables us to learn from each other: MoQites and religious people (sometimes combined in the same person.
Matt on 16/6 22:39 -0500 you also wrote:
"I am extremely intrigued by pantheism"
A fellow Quaker (now deceased) dug up the concept of "panentheism" somewhere before World War II which sustained her through the concentration camp of Mauthausen. "Everything exists within God." Isn't that a beautiful metaphor, too? Comparable to Pirsig's "Dynamic Quality is not ... in any block. It is in the background." (www.moq.org/forum/emmpaper.html p.13)
Matt, you wrote you don't experience God and do experience DQ. I'd say they're both moons of which you and I only experience the projections (in our eye-balls or wherever). The real thing eludes us. Who knows whether it "really" exists? Who cares? The "lure of God" (John 20/6 12:05 +1000) and "lure of (Dynamic) Quality" experiences are real enough.
I say I believe in God. I even call myself a Christian. Essentially I do so because I want to feel included by other people whom I want to communicate with about our experiences. From what I wrote just now, you could just as well conclude that I am an atheist believing only in what I experience or an agnostic who couldn't care less.
My favourite pointer to God is "that which connects everyone and everything", meaning to me: that which refutes everyday (static) experience of separation and disconnection. I just as easily speak about God as a person, though, with those who prefer to do so. Another fellow Quaker legitimizes describing God as a person by explaining that "being a person" is the highest Quality he can attribute to something. I very much respect that.
John, in reply to your 18/6 13:34 +1000 posting: Pirsig seems -very wisely I think- to leave to us the writing of the "third novel dealing with meaning"...
I won't forget my offer to describe Quaker methods of discriminating the dynamic, but I haven't time for it now. You could take a look at the "Introductory items"on www.quaker.org meanwhile. "How a Quaker Meeting for Business works." should include the most important parts of what I mean to write, but I haven't checked yet.
With friendly greetings,
Wim Nusselder
