Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 00:56 (5505 days ago) @ Frank Paris

This is the second part of my previous post, part II because the forum wouldn't let me post it all in one piece, something like a stinkin' 5,000 character limit.-So, continuing with my previous post, I hesitate to go beyond this without further feedback, but I have to explain one critical thing. The term Griffin uses over and over again to describe God's influence in the world, is the word, "lure." God can only consciously affect what happens in the world by acting as a "lure," by exposing his essence to consciousness. The question often asked is, how can any of us tell the difference between the "lure" of God and any of the other -- and profane -- temptations of the world? One answer is: practice! It takes tons of experience with meditation practices to get beyond the layers of confusion, distortion, fantasies, wishful thinking, and sins that becloud almost everybody except the great mystic saints.-Anyhow, to get back to my main point, God can only start having a conscious effect in the world when organisms reach a state of complexity where they themselves become conscious and can "hook up" with God. Before that point, evolution truly is undirected and completely out of the conscious control of God. But once (for example) organisms reach the point where they have a sense of beauty, God can step in and start "taking over," little by little. Human beings are merely on the threshold of coming under the conscious control of God. That's why we struggle so much with questions like, "If God really existed, why doesn't he just reveal himself in unambiguous terms?" The fact that he apparently can't, is used is "evidence" that he can't exist. But in my theology, at that is is evidence that human being have barely climbed out of the slime into consciousness.-There's no point in my elaborating this theology without further feedback. Let it emerge organically, from the need of explication.