Saturday, October 28, 2006

What Is It All About?

October 28

When my grandson Andy was just a toddler, one of his neighborhood friends was from a Fundamentalist Christian family and constantly passed along to him Bible stories and their interpretations from his Sunday School. When I was visiting at Christmas when Andy was about four or five, I heard Andy chanting to himself. He was, like a nervous regurgitation, speaking of God.

"God is everywhere...God is everything...God is everyone...Grandmama, did you know that you are God and God is you?"

I was transfixed. I was grappling with such notions myself.

"Yes," I said. "I do know that. How did you know it?"

He looked as if he'd been caught jumping in the pool at the deep end. He shrugged almost guiltily.

"I guessed," he said.

I stared at him and he widened his eyes, shrugging more broadly.

"I just guessed."

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, so much for 16 century philosophy.

Anonymous said...

And it's true without proof, just that gut feeling, that instinct we humans have. But do you believe all is God and God is all?

Benedict S. said...

Your grandson story reminds me of a "son" story. At the dinner table one evening I was recounting for my wife (ex) a story I had read in the New York Times Magazine about the philosopher Saul Kripke. Seems Kripke, when he was three years old, had asked his mother, "If God is everywhere, where did the little oiece of God go that I squeezed out of this room when I walked in?" This was meant to show what a keen mind the "genuis" Kripke had as a child. My son Glenn, then four years old, spoke up. "I know the answer. It went into the hole he left in the other room." Glenn is no genius so I guess his superior knowledge can be explained by the extra year he had on the three year old Kripke.

Mary Lois said...

I love little Glenn's reaction, ben, and will reflect for a moment on Robin's question. In a way, I do believe that all is God and God is all, but paradoxically, that isn't all there is to it. There's more to believe than that -- but it's a start. And there are moments when that is complete enough.

Anonymous said...

Why not start a blog about this miss ff? It would be interesting to hear everyones views. What else do you think there is to believe? I would love to discuss this topic.

Bert Bananas said...

"It would be interesting to hear everyones views."

Yeah, we could exchange our views on abortion while we were at it! And on Pres. Bush, too!

Bert Bananas said...

Okay, sarcasm aside...

"And it's true without proof, just that gut feeling, that instinct we humans have."

Human 'instincts' include astrology, numerology, palmistry, the Tarot, a myriad of gods, etc., etc. Humans often (always?) warp their view of 'reality' to enhance their perceived position in the world. Like writing a blog or posting comments on blogs...


What about a human with one 'instinct' and another human with an 'instinct' that is just the opposite of the first one? It happens!



our basic instincts, which are also our baser instincts, are

Benedict S. said...

Robin: I think you got the wrong word. It ain't instinct. It's intuition. And that word, too, has been misused. It means in one usage, a "gut feeling," and in another, "a fact that needs no proof." Horse players wear pants shiney in the knees and seat because of their "gut feelings." Philosophers use axioms that (supposedly) need no proof. That their financial status resembles that of the horse players can be appreciated by this question and answer joke an engineer asked me: "What did the philosopher say to the engineer?" Answer: "Do you want fries with that?"

Anonymous said...

benedict and bert, I was using the word instinct mainly for JS.

It's time to write about what I know.
Spirituality or Chemistry

I see intuition as being prediction based on probably subconscious allegorical"thought" leading to the perception of a prefered course of action based on a maximisation of the likelyhood of certain outcomes weighted by their desirability. none of this is done quantitatively but i find it crucial in my decision making in life. I do as quantatative an analysis as I can consciously.

Intuition and hunch are different processes from predition,
quite useful on their own merits, and very very difficult to simulate by linear processes.

Intuition and hunch are the process of comparing your model of the world
to what you presently observe about the world, and reconciling them.
Sometimes various bits refuse reconciliation, and thus stand out as important, or you get a sharp spike in the pattern. This is very useful as an indicator for attention, but it's a process that provides information about the state of your imagination of the world in 'now', not information about the state of the observed world in 'then'.

Anonymous said...

Robin: I didn’t realize that you comment was directed at me. No I don believe “All is god and god is All”. I see no need to inject any concept of god into anything.

I do have a gut instinct that Spinoza would have liked to have argued “nature is just nature” but that would have got him burned at the stake rather than just being run out of town. Instead were stuck with these endless, Angels dancing on the head of a pin, first cause, chicken or the egg arguments.

I have experienced much in life that would not allow me to lightly dismiss the idea that there is more going on here than meets the eye.

The noted biologist Rupert Sheldrake wrote a book titled the “Morphic Resonance- The Presence of the Past- The Habits of Nature” in which he raised the question and presents a reasoned case that we all live in, what he terms, are “morphic fields”. In which events in one place have effects in another even though there is no physical connection and that this is due to us all being connected by way of “morphic fields”. He followed this with another book titled “Seven Experiments that Could Change the World.” They are both very interesting reading and can open up a whole new dimension to many of the arguments presented on this blog.