Knowledge, belief & agnosticism (Agnosticism)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Thursday, July 24, 2008, 14:19 (5749 days ago) @ Mark

I've found Mark's sermon quite interesting. Evidently he is a type of mystic. - He writes: "So how do we begin on this journey of knowing God personally? If all I have is doubt, what is the first step? The first step is to open the door of faith. Even if you can't step through, you can speak into what may seem like a void. You can say "Lord, if you are there, help me to know". It is about allowing the possibility of a personal relationship. It is a recognition that our own powers of reflection and calculation may not be the only way. It is about being open to be given what we have not observed or discovered for ourselves." - It seems to me that what he is doing here is allowing room within his conscious mind to be influenced by the archetype of the "Loving Father" within his unconscious. It is a deliberate reduction of one's ego or wilfulness and submission of the reason to intuitions from "Spirit of Love and Unity", another aspect of the "God" archetype. - It seems to me, from my personal experience with people of religious beliefs, that many of them are gentle and peace-loving, with their "hearts in the right place". This can give them an attractive personality. But it also makes it difficult to reason with them logically, because they prefer intuition to logic. They tend to be "god-befogged" as I call it. - Although this concept of "God" is within Mark's own mind, he makes clear that he perceives it as independent of his own desires and wishes, which is what makes it an archetype; part of the "collective unconscious" as Jung called it. This also makes clear why Mark's God is not the exhibitionist sort to do conjuring tricks to impress atheists! - I hope Mark will not take this diversion into psychology as any sort of personal attack. It's a long time since I made any sort of study of psychology, mainly, as is evident here, by reading Jung, and I am not any kind of physician.