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New forum member, educate me?

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Messenger: GARVEYS AFRICA Sent: 2/16/2019 9:51:03 AM
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It's fine brother others here clearly overstand where I'm coming from with that

The God concept and wordsound is NEW


Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 2/16/2019 10:26:51 AM
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The word "god" may well be relatively "new" in history. I'm not really sure when the English form of this word came into common usage. The notion or concept of god or gods is as ancient as the sands of times (i.e., in no way, shape or form is the concept "new").

This may be another case of you using some esoteric or narrowly-construed meaning for a term that only you or you and a handful of others know & understand. When I refer to god I'm using the word as it is generally used by ordinary people, scholars and theologians. As such, it encompasses a wide range of meaning (see Campbell's quote) and certainly the concept of god was NOT "created by Europeans in the past few hundred years."


Messenger: CarterBlunt Sent: 2/16/2019 10:27:31 AM
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The way I use it, the word "god" encompasses a lot of concepts. You can't really pin a single definition or culture on it. The Norse gods and Greek gods seem to have a very similar nature, but are completely different from the "trinity" of Judeo-Christians, or the vague idea of god that agnostic theists believe in. Although, I could see how Greek and Norse "gods" may not have been conceptualized that way. Maybe they were more like extraterrestrials. This could be an instance of prescribing a meaning that was never intended, so I can understand your disagreement.

However, dictionaries aren't prescriptive authorities on a word's meaning, they simply describe usage. As usage changes, the description changes. The very language we are speaking necessarily uses a lot of European words, but that doesn't mean it can only refer to European concepts. In order to have a meaningful conversation about something, we as individuals only have to agree on the definition of a word, not necessarily how others have used it.

For example, if one person is talking about "grass" and another person is talking about "grass", they could be talking about two different things. They need to first agree on a definition before they can hash out disagreements, otherwise they are not actually disagreeing with the concept, only the usage. We can agree on any word, or even make up a new one, to describe any concept.


Messenger: GARVEYS AFRICA Sent: 2/16/2019 11:01:28 AM
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Give thanks Carter.


Messenger: SunofMan Sent: 2/16/2019 11:56:31 PM
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The wordsound of God, and its origin aside, I find it hard to beleive that cultures around the world havent been creating men in the sky, independently.

Kemetic priests and nobility may very well have had an overs of the symbolism, but the layman?


Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 2/17/2019 3:24:11 AM
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The Greek philosopher Antisthenes (born c. 444 B.C.) said that "God is not like anything: hence no one can understand him by means of an image".
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"the mask in a primitive festival is revered and experienced as a veritable apparition of the mythical being that it represents—even though everyone knows that a man made the mask and that a man is wearing it. The one wearing it, furthermore, is identified with the god during the time of the ritual of which the mask is a part. He does not merely represent the god; he is the god. The literal fact that the apparition is composed of A, a mask, B, its reference to a mythical being, and C, a man, is dismissed from the mind, and the presentation is allowed to work without correction upon the sentiments of both the beholder and the actor." - Joseph Conrad, "The Masks of God"


Messenger: CarterBlunt Sent: 2/17/2019 5:04:19 AM
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That actually looks like another endorsement of an atheistic view of Rasta, where god is just a "presentation". Maybe that's just what I want to see in it. In this case Selassie would be the mask, and the only thing that separates him from a common man is his comparison to a mythical being. Am I understanding you?


Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 2/17/2019 5:42:31 AM
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That's Joseph Campbell's interpretation of one way of seeing the notion and experience of god in some early cultures. As I indicated previously, the spiritual concept of god in the human mind is a deeply personal and complex matter. Words cannot articulate it well, and as we can see here in this thread, words are further limited by varying definitions and context sensitivity.

For me, Haile Selassie is God expressed incarnate in a Living Man but that does not suggest that His Power, Love, influence and presence are limited to the physical place & time where His body stands. Inasmuch as God endows every living, breathing human with the gift of ongoing Life, there is a god-presence in each person.

Having confined my remarks about Haile Selassie and God to just those limited statements, I'm still sure you will find others here who have different views. There's so much that is ineffable about our perceptions of God (or no God) that we frequently see people who essentially have very similar god experiences arguing vehemently over semantics.


Messenger: JAH Child Sent: 2/17/2019 5:53:02 AM
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In many ancient cultures, the person wearing the mask becomes the spirit they are respresenting not because people watching forget or "dismiss from the mind" the symbolism and take the performance at face value, but because trance mindstate allows the spirit to imbue the performer. When we call ourselves RasTafarI it's not because we are wearing a mask of Haile Selassie I, it is because we are manifesting the spirit of HIM. And when we say Haile Selassie I is the Most High it's not because we have labeled HIM as such, it is because HIM is embodying the wholeness of the Most High in his being. Not a comparison to a mythical being, but a manifestation of the ancient power that animates the entire universe.







Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 2/17/2019 6:06:19 AM
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"And when we say Haile Selassie I is the Most High it's not because we have labeled HIM as such, it is because HIM is embodying the wholeness of the Most High in his being. Not a comparison to a mythical being, but a manifestation of the ancient power that animates the entire universe." This is nicely put.

"the ancient power that animates the entire universe" is as good of an expression as any for what many kneel down to when they worship god - the Jew, the Muslim, the Christian -- they're all worshiping the same "ancient power" -- its how they describe it, the mythologies they use to visualize & conceptualize, the laws & practices they adhere to, and so forth that cause people to get caught up in arguments about who has the "right" religion or interpretation of god (or no god). Humans share a common spiritual experience but have so many differing variables in their individual or group life-paths that they have evolved many different ways of viewing and describing that common experience.


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