Monday, June 6, 2016

POST # XXX - SERENDIPITY, REALITY, RELIGION: AND ONE MAN'S TESTIMONY

Preamble:

(a) As a child, I attended a Christian Church that sometimes invited members of the congregation to stand and give their religious "Testimony".

(b) Before I left my Original Wife, she sometimes proffered: "You don't know what you want".

(c) Immediately on leaving my Original Wife, I began to do what I wanted to do rather than what I should do or would like to do - and began to notice the occurrence of a plethora of coincidences in my favor, ie., SERENDIPITY.

Next, I will quote from John Hick's Introduction to the Second Edition of his An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent  (p. xxiv):

"But whilst we cannot apply to the Real in itself such terms as loving and wise, which presuppose personality, we can use a more general concept and say that in relation to us the Real is serendipitous or benign.  The term 'serendipity' was invented by Horace Walpole to refer to the course of events when they turn out well for us.  They are happiness-making and as though planned for us by a benevolent power.  Accordingly, serendipity can be experienced either as the structure of the cosmos or as the work of a personal Being.  Likewise 'benign' can be used in both personal and non-personal senses:  we speak of a benign ruler and a benign climate.  And so the benign or serendipitous character of the Real , in relation to us, can be expressed both theistically as the benevolence, goodness, love of a personal deity, and non-theistically as the process leading to nirvana or moksha or being at one with the Tao, the eternal order...  These are different human ways of conceiving and experiencing what I have called (Chapter 4) the cosmic optimism of the great world faiths."

My Analysis:

Along with some other contemporary theologians/philosophers, Hick finds it appropriate to apply the definite article 'the' to the term 'Real' ie., "the Real" - producing a noun, a thing, rather than writing about what is "real" (an adjective).  In doing so, some supposed reality becomes a free-standing semantically 'manufactured' transcendent entity as "the Real".

On the other hand, in previous POSTS, this blogger has posited reality as being 'conceived' and 'born' as a product of male-female procreative interaction - rather than being a manifestation of a mysterous transcendent thing or person - "the Real".

By thinking/writing without considering the possibility and implications of male-female differential and complementary 'religious'/'spiritual' functioning, Hick - as is the norm for Western philosophers and theologians - obviates the conceptual possibility that both (i) divinity and (ii) the supernatural are natural manifestations of real human heterosexual functioning rather than aspects of a transcendent "the Real".

If the natural serendipity that is commonly experienced by males* is identified as being supernaturally provided by a Transcendent entity, it is easy to make a religion out of the matter with priests, etc., who offer to teach people how to 'harness' and control such good fortune by ritual, worship, prayer, etc.

*I believe that a female is a critical part of the generation of serendipity for males, rather than being its beneficiary - except indirectly by her relationship with the male.  One woman offered that serendipity, for her, is a positive happy feeling and mood rather than events producing such.

A woman is less likely to kowtow to a transcendent 'Higher Power' because she correctly recognizes that her very Being personifies such. This is the essence of the 'Garden of Eden' story up to the point where Adam humilated both himself and Eve by blaspheming her.

Testimony:

In this blogger's personal experience, I found that when I, so to speak, simply answered God without blaming any woman, God disappeared!


[The question presents itself:  Is the very existence of the Judaeo-Christian "God" founded on men blaming women?]


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