Are there any Ignostics/Transtheists here?
I'm an Ignostic. To be more specific, I'm a Transtheist. Am I the only one here? There don't seem to be very many people who view the concept of God in this way. I view the concept of God in this way because abstract concepts always have abstract explanations. God is a very abstract concept. The highest forces in the universe can't be completely explained using only culturally generated ideas. What ideas are conventional, is irrelevant to the grand scheme of the universe. The concept of God can't be completely explained through cognition because the universe and the essence of life aren't limited by knowledge. Any attempt to explain the concept of God using language would be over-simplified because God is a concept above language and everything else that is finite.
Joseph Campbell said God transcends all categories of thought. Even Being and non-Being are categories of thought. Alan Watts talked of the hidden unity of polar opposites, so that in a sense all pairs of opposites in some sense are inseparable because you can't have one without the other, like two sides of the same coin or opposite ends of the same stick.
Alan Watts also spoke of the limitations of language in trying to communicate direct experience. Words are very limited but they are our main tools for doing this, subject to misunderstanding on many levels. People sometimes mistake the map for the territory. Alan Watts mentioned the famous saying that Zen is like a finger pointing at the moon, then added that instead of looking where the finger points, some people end up sucking it for comfort.
I wrote a song about the limitations of language. Here is YouTube video of a live performance last week of this song:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYX3dg5753E[/youtube]
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"When you ride over sharps, you get flats!"--The Bicycling Guitarist, May 13, 2008
