Michael said:
From a Christian point of view, this appears to be enlightenment. However, it seems to me to be nothing more than a statement; in particular, a clarification of where “we” came from.
Man was created in the imagine of God. Ergo, man came from God.
(A) What insight into the human condition does this statement afford?
- - If I take the statement as literal, then may wonder why does god have a Penis?
Or,
-- Why are our retinas so screwy?
Or
-- If I take the statement as esoteric, I may wonder if I am suppose to reach a higher plain of understand, and that this plain-of-understanding is God’s “image”. If that’s the case, then is this really a Christian idea?
It's a realization about ourselves, not so much about God - i.e. it doesn't work so well backwards. Let's say I create an image of myself in wood, does it automatically follow that I'm made of wood? Our retinas aren't screwy, unless they don't work properly. That's just the nature of nature, so to speak - the consequences of entropy and possibly a long history of sin.
As for reaching a higher plane of understanding, that doesn't need to be "esoteric". I.e. once you've gained the knowledge, there's no need to look for deeper meanings. There's no law stating that every higher or newer understanding must
remain difficult and esoteric - unless it's
really beyond our abilities.
Or to put it in other words: if after everything has been said and done, you don't actually
believe you've been enlightened, it's not going to mean much (and
that isn't just a Christian idea).
If not taken as a flat statment, well then, I was under the assumption that reaching these higher states of consciousness were the meat-and-potatoes of Hinduism and Buddhism?
From a certain perspective, certainly. But once you've realized what you have to realize, it's going to be very mundane - "Ah, so that's it then." You're just trying to know the fundamental truth of things, nothing
more than that, which would lead into a realm of eternal doubt and skepticism. It might be an amazing thing for someone who's never heard of it, but if you've heard it so many times that you take it for granted, it won't hold much magic. When you've realized that meat-and-potatoes really
are meat-and-potatoes, at the highest plane of understanding, there won't be much left to do other than tuck in. A person who's been lost in the desert for two weeks might feel differently about the same realization (and maybe that's how people generally expect enlightenment to feel, being spiritually starved, even if intellectually and materially comfortable).
If it’s just a statement. Then there doesn’t appear to be much of a personal reflective nature to the statement. Ie: there’s no “thinking” involved.
A statement itself will arguably never seem to have much of a personal reflective nature. If I said, "Hey! I'm enlightened", it would be just as easy to say "so what?" as to write a library full of books about it. The thinking comes in when you start wondering what it means, what the implications are if it's true, and so on. So if you meant
wisdom and what seems
wise, I think that is something else - a result of enlightened thought.
(B) However, there is this notion of “sin” and that could afford some thinking. Yet, isn’t it the Bible that lays out what “sin” actually is? So again no need to think. Don't eat this, Do eat this. Don't do this, Do this.
As a matter of fact, in one story, the Godhead tires of the way man is acting/doing things and so kills most of them off!!! This seems like man is NOT to think, come to a conclusion, and do as he has concluded. But instead he is to do as God has concluded is good for him to do?
What kind of bullshit is that? Why have consciousness if one is not to use it?
Well, it
would have been rather disillusioning if what you said were true. But to use an analogy, is justice simply "Don't do this, don't do that", or does it require some thought? If a constitution was all we needed, why do courts exist? The Bible says "All wrongdoing is sin", and the law tells us what "wrongdoing" means. If you stop thinking about what you're doing, you're therefore
not doing what God concluded is good.
So you see, if the statement
was as simple as you thought it was, how do you explain not understanding what it means?
So to me “sin” in a Biblical sense is also not about “thinking” but about obeying. And obeying is not about to lead one to any sort of “enlightenment” on the human condition. As a matter of fact, we can see that society kind of crapped out in Europe during the rein of the Pope and the very terms “Enlightenment” and “Renaissance” describe the era following this, when the Church had lost it hold on people. Isn't that a sort of evidence, from within Christendom, that the Bible actually stifles enlightenment?
In fact, the "Enlightenment" only came two hundred years after the Reformation and new humanistic trends. It's religious foundation had already been established by
monasticism, described as a culture of "love of learning and the desire for God". Monastries had existed from the days of Constantine, and preserved scholarship and morality during the so-called "Dark Ages". Writing became an art, which paved the way for the printing press and the wide dissemination of information that heralded the Reformation. The Abbey of Cluny in the 10th century sought to escape corruption by establishing its independence from the feudal system in which all medieval institutions were rooted. From
answers.com:
The role of monasticism in the development of the new civilization of the West is incalculable. Monasteries were islands of stability, and their inhabitants, almost alone, preserved learning in the West.
I suggest you read the articles on
Dark Ages ("many modern negative conceptions of the age come from Enlightenment authors") and
Renaissance ("present-day historians also see the [Italian Renaissance] era as one of economic regression and of little progress in science") at wikipedia, so you can see the stereotypes expose themselves. Reason, reform and scholasticism came from within
and without the official church and state.
You also seem to presuppose that boundlessness is somehow more enlightened than limitations like self-control, responsibility and the principles guiding them. Yet all religious expressions of enlightenment have emphasized strict mental and physical discipline. Is this just coincidence? If deviating from the course of enlightenment is called "sin", then don't you think it might be a useful concept for someone who seeks to be enlightened? And if, from there, people intent on making the right decision and thinking in the right way, want to know under the circumstances what is right and what is wrong, you might start codifying the "path" - giving guidelines, setting boundaries, even making laws. They might be a step removed from what actually
does need to be done, even a hindrace, but
disobeying these laws would, in effect, be to stray from the path to enlightenment.
Throwing out these "restrictive" laws, that point out various sins (don't murder, don't steal, etc.) would actually put you back a few thousand years (about 5000, counting from Hammurabi), rather than "freeing" you to be enlightened all by your lonesome self.
Just because too many people have been riding on a precept for too long, doesn't mean it loses its truthfulness. Maybe people are just taking it for granted, and need to become
aware (what the word for "enlightenment" actually means) of its truth again.
(C) If there is little room for thinking, then the would be enlightened-mind is relegated to having faith. Not thinking .... but instead accepting. Does accepting (and not thinking) create an enlightened individual? Faith, to me, seems like a sort of mental-couch-potato introspection and if anything appears to lure people away from enlightenment.
You are just unaware of your own faith, which is in your reasoning ability. Thinking that thinking is the
only tool for enlightenment. You might have
accepted the legacy of the Enlightenment as the highest human ideal (secular humanism), but if all faith is to be questioned, shouldn't this implied faith be questioned, too? If you
think about it, such total reliance doesn't make sense, and can be just as fanatical as religious fundamentalism. There is room for spiritual and physical improvement that reason alone cannot provide. For instance, you can't reason yourself into never needing food, your health depends on other forms of sustenance. Reason has its place, and faith knows this; but for some reason, people refuse be entirely reasonable and make the same allowance for faith.
In terms of the human condition, is there anything particularly MORE enlightening in the phrase:
You were created in God’s image.
over the phrase
You were created in the image of the Gods.
??
When you compare to the two statements, neither appears to be all that enlightening? Its like saying: Your nails are painted blue, like the Gods nails.
For one thing, many gods can't have only one image (or they would not have been called "many"). And like I explained before, a statement itself can't be enlightenening - it depends on what you do with it. If you don't attempt to think of it as true, it
can't have any meaning. The statement above, for instance, would immediately raise the question of who your God is, because that would help you to better understand what it tells you about yourself.
Enlightenment isn't where thinking ends, it's where thinking starts (unless you intend to die on that moment); and where thinking starts to have
meaning. And you have to have
faith in the validity of your experience, or it will lose its meaning, like you said: a statement at best and a lie at worst". CS Lewis once said, "Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods".
Jenyar, thanks for the comments and debate. I sort of thought that there’d be a little bit more coming from other people of various religion. It sort of makes me wonder: What are people getting out of their belief? I guess as an academic I made the assumption people were finding enlightenment. Now I am starting to think maybe it’s just as they say: Opium for the masses. Perhaps enlightenment isn’t really what people want at all, they want someone to tell them what to think and be done with it. If so, well that’s sad
huh? But I suppose it makes sense.
Just keep in mind that what people get out of their faith won't be immediately apparent from what they might have to say about their faith. Another possibility is that you have an idea of enlightenment or God that's largely a stereotype. If an academic were to describe his Eureka moment in religious terms, he might call it "a moment of enlightenment", "realization" or "sudden awareness". But let him describe it to you - let's say, "e=mc^2" - and you might ask "...and?"
An observer might remark, "Truly, science is an opium for the masses; describe something in sufficiently scientific terms, and they say, 'oh, okay, I accept that' and go on their way with a sense that all is well in the world, since it's obviously been explained". It's the same argument made against believers of all kinds. But in the field, you often see
religious people putting
scientific advances to good use, and vice versa. Why aren't
they stoned by these opiums? Maybe they're the enlightened ones...