God is Subjective

Yes I know. What a claim!

I often ponder moral relativism vs objective moral truth idea to myself. Once I have a solidified stance at least for both sides of whatever duality, I attempt to remove the duality.

I'v been thinking of ways to contradict my thoughts on matters, I find that is very useful to do.

So, I usually believe that for there to be an objective moral right/wrong, and we have a moral "duty" to humans and animals, and not all situational, then there must be a god.

Because, God (or something as Karma I suppose) would be the underlying judge of action that is needed for an idea of an objective right/wrong judge. Or else there would be no such "duty" other than what we can attribute to moral relativism and subjectivism.
But, I always want to remove polarities. So I came up with something like this:

God is subjective. I wrote about it before, to an extent, about how constant subjective exposure creates the collective objective moral code that would be suffice for a God.

Now. God being subjective, there can be an objective moral truth, for an individual, ALL relying on the subjective situation BASED on previous experiences.
I'll explain. No one else can judge the action/intention/thought/whatever other than yourself.
Because, everyone is worshipping a different God ( if one even worships a god) even if they are intentionally worshipping the same. That sounds offensive but it is not, it's in reference to the idea of God.

Everyone has a different idea of God and what it would define as permissible. I have asked many followers of Catholicism if certain acts would be permissible or not, and of course not all of them say the same thing.
The different branches are in essence worshipping the same divine being with different ideas of the God, according to the specific branch.
Then even deeper, a different God intrinsically, according the each individual.

Therefore, whenever a subject performs an action, produces a thought, has an intention, there is always a voice in your head, or a feeling, that objective moral safety ground checking if what you are about to do is morally right.

That, in my opinion is our Subjective and Objective God.
That, in my opinion, is why Buddha promoted that all we need is inside of us.
That, in my opinion, is why the new pope said you just need to follow your "inner voice" to get into "heaven".
Everyone has their own subjective AND objective God and it is each their own objective judge of action.

Thank you for your time.

You're welcome.

To paraphrase the Beatles, the God you take is equal to the God you make.

People project their subjective God into the collective unconscious, hence spiritual warfare.

👣

a reply to: MyEyesSeeTooClear

"I often ponder moral relativism vs objective moral truth idea to myself. Once I have a solidified stance at least for both sides of whatever duality, I attempt to remove the duality."

Actually Eyes, at this moment I do not have the desire to follow, I mean really follow the rest of your post. I read it through but cannot give it the consideration it may deserve as I am still in contemplation of your opening statement. Wonderful by the way.

In addition to that you then toss out this little gem.

'I'v been thinking of ways to contradict my thoughts on matters, I find that is very useful to do." This to my mind would be the attempts to remove the 'whatever duality' in whatever equation you are pondering.

God is subjective in the sense that we cannot adequately describe Him. That is one of the many reasons there are so many religions.
The lack of a satisfactorily description of God.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Is this just a a sarcastic-jab post or are you being sincere..?

a reply to: MyEyesSeeTooClear

I know many many people who are trapped within ridged mindsets. They follow the logical implications of any notion on out into it furthest provable (to themselves) endpoint. Once there though there seems to be no going back. And once there, there is no room for the other possibility because they have already scoured the logic of whatever notion they entertain and have found it consistent. At that point all the rest, all the thoughts and claims and truth claimed by others outside of that particular mindset are labeled,"wrong". Or at least this is what I am presently considering.

So yes, I find the idea of considering both sides of apparent polarities, immersing oneself in both sides, as far as one can without falling victim to the manacles of all belief systems and then sifting out the polarities, as you call them, to find the center truth, the center path. I struggle against Absolutism in my own life and interpret your first statements above as a likewise endeavor. Absolutism seems to me to be the killer of consciousness. It tells us we have found IT, when indeed we really have not. Examples? The list goes on forever.

And your second sentence, of making attempts to contradict your own thoughts, allows for a necessary caution in all worthy searches for truth. So yes, Eyes, I was being sincere.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Oh okay thank you for explaining, I just never know what to expect on this site.

I too encounter many people who have become dug into a predisposed mindset and it can be a real shame when trying to have an actual conversation.

as I stayed in another thread. It becomes arguing from ignorance rather than debate from an intellectual pursuit. I Think forcing oneself to see both sides of any argument or polarity then using logic to find a compromise and thus disolving the polarity is a great tool in all aspects of debate and life.

So then, what do you say about the notion of there being an objective moral based on constant subjective exposure to the point of it becoming the safety net to be considered the objective?

a reply to: MyEyesSeeTooClear
I agree with you that God is subjective, but not in the way you are describing it. We are self-aware consciousness, which is our fundamental Being, ultimately Subjective in nature.

However, this consciousness, which is reality itself, has become identified with these body-minds through associating with the root process of attention.

Attention is the point-of-view making machine of the body-mind, which gives us a sense of separate identity, albeit an illusory one. From there, all sorts of confusion and immorality ensue due to the felt sense of separation from everything - and for endless lifetimes we seek union - to ultimately return to our native state of conscious light-being-energy, Reality itself.

As we unwind in our search for re-union, we begin to see that God or Reality is already the case, that everything we tend to seek is what is keeping us from this obvious truth. The heart starts to open up, energy starts to flow again in the body-mind, and the excellence of God invades the being - including Love's inherent morality flowers in the heart.

We don't have to seek to be moral - we simply need to recognize that we are not inherently separate from all arising, and this gives us true morality, non-separate love. Of course, being in the good company of others of this understanding also helps greatly with the moral life.

If everyone were to simply notice our inherent non-separation, that these body-minds are completely dependent on the external environment, not independent entities - we could enjoy a great and true morality. This non-separation is indeed the case, it simply needs to be noticed and lived, and the reality that it is, will unfold our inherent morality.

originally posted by: Abednego
God is subjective in the sense that we cannot adequately describe Him. That is one of the many reasons there are so many religions.
The lack of a satisfactorily description of God.

Oh yes ONE can. I can very adequately describe IT. If you knew God's spirit (the unique sense of humor it garners) you would understand a wise statement made by 'that which encompasses a belief form': "The only real illumination of a church's message is the one that is burning" (down).

a reply to: MyEyesSeeTooClear

God is a mental concept, of course it is subjective.
I can't see the duality, you are trying to solve?
And

So, I usually believe that for there to be an objective moral right/wrong, and we have a moral "duty" to humans and animals, and not all situational, then there must be a god.

how you come to this conclusion is a miracle, or is it your irrational concept of god talking?
the only compass you need for objective moral is common sense.

a reply to: MyEyesSeeTooClear

God is Truth........Truth is subjective.......I really like my ATS name.

a reply to: Peeple

common sense isn't real many people that are good ppl have no common sense whatsoever

a reply to: christophoros

But that's only because we have a serious social detachment problem. No matter how stupid some are, deep down even they feel how isolated, and betrayed they are. That's why they love facebook and things like that so much, because they can put a figure on how much "friends" they have. Everybody is running away, from themselves, the truth and project all their inner fears and problems on little consumable items, or "status symbols with entertainment value".
We have no real community, we don't talk, we act, we don't listen, we take it personally, of course the common sense gets tainted, because it automatically creates a perpetual feeling of being attacked. And once you feel defensive, you become even more detached and listening and talking about your true self becomes harder and harder.
But God has nothing to do with it, it's more the ritual shared feeling of belonging, a sense of "home" while singing and being with others feeling like we do something meaningful, trying to achieve something together. But that won't work as long as we only bother ourselfs we the easiest emptiest, most meaningless #.
That's kind of why i love ATS so much, here it is somehow a good thing when you let your guards down and show all your hidden freakiness. And from what i observed, here mostly, is common sense has different colours, but even those i strongly disagree with, have a noticable "pattern", common sense, but shifted, and mostly you can tell where they took a minor left turn. Detachment.

For those of you who are unimpressed by purely subjective opinions about God and desire to discover REAL evidence - mathematical and scientific - of His reality that transcends the Cartesian duality of subjective/objective, you are invited to study the research at
smphillips.8m.com...
God is NOT a mental concept. God is beyond all levels of the mind and is the ontological source of ALL concepts, including our ideas about Him. To call Him a concept is a naive, philosphical category error, often made by those who are desperate to dismiss or trivialise the problem of God by reducing His status to yet another debatable idea like the question of ghosts and ETs. God is not only subjective but also objective. Everything is God. There is nothing but God.

a reply to: micpsi

God is not only subjective but also objective. Everything is God. There is nothing but God.

And that is your mental concept about god. Still not true for everybody.
The world and life still exists, with or without a faith in god. So it is my subjective decission if i need a greater power or if i find myself and life enought to be amazed and greatfull to be allowed to experience it by chance, chemistry and physics, or whatever factor you find suitable for your needs.
I believe in god, no need for everybody else to do the same thing, because others have their own experiences, their own subjective proof of either existing, not-existing, or undecided and that is basically proof that it is a mental concept.

I like your method of thinking; you have an interesting way of pursuing new insights.

My basic objection would be that God must be transcendent to be worthy of calling God. An internal God is fine, but if it is not a connection to something higher that goes beyond yourself, then how is it distinct from an imaginary friend?

If God must go beyond yourself, then it can still be less than perfectly objective but he must at least be less subjective than personal preference or insanity- on the low end of that spectrum maybe there are still many distinct subjective Gods that personify various natural systems- a god of predation that says kill only what you can eat, a god of war who says kill only what is trying to kill you, a god of peace that says just don't kill- all real, all transcendent, distinct from you until you enter into their domain and then you are a limited expression of that God. In this view a God is distinguishable from the voices in a madman's head telling him to kill everyone because it must arise from interactions in reality and interact predictably with multiple people at once.

For my taste though, the above would only qualify as spirits. God must be the sum of all of the parts of existence and more- he must be both the cause of and an emergent property of the universe- he must be all transcendent. In this view it is still technically true that each individual is a subjective image of God, but I am more interested in the other side of that coin, which would be that God is an objective image of all individuals.

What is interesting about that all transcendent view is that it doesn't really leave much room to believe in such a thing as evil. If every interaction is essentially a subjective view of God acting on a subjective view of God, then objectively speaking God is acting on himself mostly unseen. If we assume that God will not harm himself, then it can be argued that evil is simply an illusion created by an incomplete view of God's intention. (I will mostly ignore what if God will harm himself, because though the result of a suicidal or darwin-award worthy god would result in evil according to my logic, the idea of a suicidal or fatally incompetent God destroying himself sounds like it would be a net gain for the universe too).
The analogy might be that you are a muscle fiber in the body of God and when God decides he's getting doughy and needs to work out, but you're completely out of the loop- you have no senses or brain of your own- you're a muscle fiber all you do is work and rest and ache. All you know is that a signal comes in from outside, makes you do difficult things until you're in pain, and then after that passes everything you do just seems easy. You don't have a big picture view to see the connection- life just seems to be a cruel rollercoaster of ups and downs. But what is happening is not evil in the least- it is entirely good- only your subjective point of view obscures the good, creating a shadow- an illusory something which is actually nothing- the old argument that evil is just the absence of good, or the absence of God if you prefer... which in a world where God is all transcendent means there is no evil.

You can also go morally objective without God- via utilitarianism- and on that road any brush with transcendence will again destroy the concept of evil. If we are not entirely separate then we are not entirely left out when we put the greatest good to the greatest number ahead of your individual concerns- and so everyone can always be maximizing good to themselves and others at the same time- even though the maximum good may not seem like enough for us it is still good and not evil.

a reply to: micpsi

Interesting link, thanks.

I agree that everything is a modification of the Divine Reality, but that Reality is not a Creator-God. The idea of a Creator-God tends to imply a duality between creator and created. Those are mental concepts and perhaps are useful for communication at times, but in this case, when people hear the idea of a Creator, they immediately objectify that one over against themselves and others.

This objectification, caused by the assumption of a knowing separate subject, is the root of the illusion of self, and what keeps us from fully recognizing our actual non-separation from the Divine Reality.

originally posted by: bb23108
a reply to: micpsi

bb23108: I agree that everything is a modification of the Divine Reality, but that Reality is not a Creator-God. The idea of a Creator-God tends to imply a duality between creator and created. Those are mental concepts and perhaps are useful for communication at times, but in this case, when people hear the idea of a Creator, they immediately objectify that one over against themselves and others.

This 'reality' (if you could identify as true) from our perspective 'seems' real enough. There is a natural polarity going on because we live in the material whereas "God" lives in the spiritual/astral non physical; so exists a duality. WHY?

bb23108: This objectification, caused by the assumption of a knowing separate subject, is the root of the illusion of self, and what keeps us from fully recognizing our actual non-separation from the Divine Reality.

I think there is a deliberate plan for the separation. I think the idea is for humans to overcome this duality (are we as humans also godlike or is God human expressing itself) and become again IN PHYSICAL MATTERFORM one with IT in our lifetime here on earth. Its a puzzle; its a quest to see if we can figure this out. Many use the practice of meditation to achieve this. God just wants us to 'see' it and love it; and like any good parent isn't going to make it easy, as unfair as this seems.