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One thread considered to be a defining point of religion is the addressing of what is commonly labeled God, Deity, the Ultimate, what have you. Different religious systems have different ways of addressing this idea, some by breaking down the idea and others by setting up precise definitions for what this strange thing is. Even within the same religious systems there are individual variations on how the divine is seen. So how do you concieve of the divine?

Is it one, many or some combination of these? Why do you believe so and in what way does that belief make sense?

Is it immanent, transcendent, or a bit of both? What leads you to believe that?

What sorts of abilities, powers, and limitations does Deity have? Why?

If your concept of the Greater/Ultimate/Divine doesn't really fall under the conventional system, feel free to tailor your response beyond these questions.

In this I challenge you to look at how those OTHER than yourself view the divine. Pick someone's view of the divine and try to understand how it makes sense and how it is logical from a certain perspective. If you really can't understand how someone could possibly believe "X" then politely ask them to explain it. Keep in mind that ideas about the Divine do not neccesarily directly correlate to the Divine itself. The world's religions generally agree that Deity is in part fundamentally ineffable and shrouded in mystery. The idea here is to learn and understand others views so that we may be more tolerance of diversity in conceptualizing Deity! whee

Oddly, some of this sounds similar to ideas I arrived at independently (aka, not through studying Hermeticism or really religion at all) when I was a kid. So if I understand this right, MoA, this concept of deity is generally transcendent from our point of view? We would be part of this deity in the senes that we are its thoughts, but am I right in that there is an implied separation?

The separation occurs where we fail to recognize ourselves as part of this god-force. To become aware requires a transcendental state of consciousness, as every-day consciousness is concerned with the physical world and not the spiritual. The physical world can be equated to the "dreams" of the All, while the spiritual world, unseen by physical eyes, is reality.

Reaching the transcendental state of god-consciousness is called Adept-hood by Hermeticists, Gnosis by Christian mystics, and enlightenment by Buddhists and other religions of the East. Reaching this state is equal to achieving Nirvana.

By the way, I forgot to add this to my first post... As far as the lesser deities go... the ones who actually communicate with man... I do believe they can take mortal forms to physically teach men who are less spiritually "aware" than others. Examples have been Jesus, Krishna, Hermes Trismegistus and Mithras, though there have been many more.

Are you familiar with Jewish mysticism, namely the Kabbalah? I don't know precisely where it is (as I read this in a book of religious philosophy) but there is an idea almost exaclty the same as what you describe in Jewish mysticism... the shattering and seperation of the divine and that good deeds can reunite that shard with the greater one God and restore its unity.



So there isn't any one particular concept of the divine that strikes you as more 'true' than the others? There are those who recognize many more possible forms the divine can take and don't really put one concept above the other; I'm not sure if any formal system quite does that to such an even degree though.

Interesting. Would you mind going into a little bit more detail? I haven't heard of a Zen Nazarite before. whee

This sounds pretty cool. It's always interesting to see syncretic mixes of religious systems. I like that there's a link to the Gospel of Thomas on that site... in one of the podcasts I listen to, that particular gospel was described as a book most Christians wouldn't want you to read. wink It is curious how and who decides Biblical cannon. I'll have to look into this system a bit more sometime. In each religious path I always find something wise and worthwhile. whee

Most religions (even the more dogmatic ones) usually touch on at some point the unknowable, mystery aspect of the divine. Perhaps the pervasiveness of that in the world's religions somehow supports the position of the agnostic? Who knows. I stopped searching for "the truth" a while ago. Instead I search for "the truths" and choose what is personally meaningful to me whilst acknowledging the truth in other perspectives. whee

I always find it interesting that many Atheist-Agnostic types often describe something very similar to the idea of the divine when they think about the universe, even though they don't conceptualize it as a deity. Most of the world's religions do find the divine to be something (at least in part) beyond our comprehension. Since the divine is often seen as something 'greater' there is often a sense in the world's religions as well of 'smallness' compared to the vast expanses out there. You get these same feelings from studying science, or at least I find I do. That's probably because science and religion overlap more than some people are inclined to acknowledge in terms of function in human psychology (but I won't get into that here).

Some of the arguments against a godless world argue that life is pointless without some divine entity. I'm not entirely sure where the logic behind that comes from as I think we ascribe further meaningfulness to our existence regardless of whether or not we're theists or atheists.