Humans have been writing things down for only a very, very short time of our existence. I go back to animism and Oral traditions for most of Human existence. And just because it's written down does not make it better. In fact as far as what it means to be more fully Human, I'd say it's made things worse, not better. Our bodies came from the forest. Coming from the Earth if you will, the senses of our bodies and awareness of presence have evolved to connect with Nature. That's part of being Hunter/Gathers in our evolving past. But today we connect with letters. In the process, I'd argue, we have lost so much of what it is to be a full Human Being.
You have a strangely essentialistic definition of what it means to be a human being for someone who has it in for abstract philosophy. We come from the forest, we are only fully human if we connect with Nature, and the only correct way to do this is to forego writing entirely. Perhaps we should go further--perhaps we should do away with language and oral tradition as well, as those are also later developments and therefore somehow less authentically human.
In any case, much of what you're saying is basically just made up. Writing is at least 5000 years old (cuneiform), and even that is at the very edge of prehistory. We cannot talk about the long eons of unrecorded history before that and about how ubiquitous animism was, because we do not know. There are no records. You are spinning a fairy tale, and someone could as easily claim that everyone was a monotheist and then the Fall happened.
I think your poo pooing of Oral traditions is with out merit. Oral Stories set the moral and communal foundations of those cultures. As a community gathers around to hear Oral stories, they receive a sense of life and connection to their communities both from the past and and future and instruction on a variety of subjects. Where I agree with you is that when written down, religion become less more an object that is more firmly planted into society. But that does not make them any better and clearly less spiritually aware of presence.
I'm not poo poo-ing oral tradition. I'm pointing out the very obvious fact that if things do not get written down, they get lost. It would be fantastic to know about druidic practices or Greek mysteries, but we don't. Because it was never written down.
I find oral tradition really interesting, but you are basically building your own mythology around it. And making unsubstantiated claims about how writing prevents people from experiencing numinous presence. That's not the case at all--if you were to read anything in the Platonic tradition, for example, you would see that the whole thing is basically about mystical experience.
About animism historical past that you hit upon. When a people's whole entire existence is in Nature, as was our Human past, what other spiritual trajectory is there available other than animism? When we explore our few surviving long term indigenous peoples, all of which practice some sort of animism, how can anyone come to any other conclusion than of the importance of animism as a very heart the Human spiritual past. Do you have any other suggestions on what might have been? I sure don't.
There is an intriguing alternative account I've come across called
Urmonotheismum, so yeah, there are certainly other possibilities. As far as I'm aware, though, the evidence is too scant to really build any solid evolutionary theory of spirituality, so I avoid making claims one way or the other.
It's more than a modern thirst. The experiential aspect of gaining understanding is a basic Human construct. It's built into the Human DNA. It's one of the ways that Human Beings have always gained knowledge. That's why I brought in animism into the conversation. You can't understand animism with out also understanding connection of presence to Nature. The conversation here has acted like the Human spiritual experience didn't start until some 2000 years ago. And that's just crazy thinking.
You are making things up again. And I don't think anyone has said that the human spiritual experience began 2000 years ago.
In the short term I agree. But being codified doesn't necessary give long term existence to a Religion, nor make it right. People over time can move on to something else. What does happen t though is that the subjective aspect of personal revelation is denied a person.
I'm sorry, but this is just nonsense. I abandoned pantheism for Nicene Christianity, and that has in no way meant being denied the subjective aspect of personal revelation. Quite the opposite, really, since this is the only framework that has ever worked for me, so stop saying that codification makes this impossible. It's not true.
I agree, Sufies are a wonderful example, but for what "I" mean. It needs to be noted that there is a fast growing Universal Sufi movement that is not tied to the Qur'an. And the most read Poet here in America is a Sufi named Rumi. That doesn't mean we're all Sufies, I'm not saying that. But at the same time we are as a culture being influenced by not only by Sufies but even by the rediscovering of the Christian Mystics as well. And that has a way of seeping into our collective consciousness, which effects in how we experience religions. There's a reason why the Sufies are both popular and also condemned in Muslim countries. And that's because they give Life to the Divine experience.
If there's a growing movement of universal Sufism that's not connected to the Qur'an, then it's not really Sufi Islam. It's just mysticism. Which is fine--mysticism can exist outside of a religious tradition, but historically it either operates as an aspect of a larger religion, or it dies away. I have no problem if people want to build their own eclectic spiritual lives, but I'm skeptical of the claim that this is some sort of growing paradigm that is going to overwhelm the traditional religions. It's a historical reality that a certain level of orthodoxy is required for any belief system to survive over a larger period of time.
As for Christian mysticism, I don't know why you're trying to distinguish between that and actual Christianity. The Desert Fathers and Mothers, the Carmelites, and whatever other mystical group you can mention are perfectly decent representatives of Christianity. A revival of that might be a good thing, but that doesn't mean it's going to clash with the Nicene Creed or anything. Why would it?
By "mental exercises of text" what I mean are the back and forth discussions/disagreements and such of "concepts" derived from written words. That's way different than the "experiential" aspect of knowing the Divine. Another way of saying it is a focus on "belief" about God rather than an "experience" in God. I think we had this discussion in the past.
Yeah, it sounds like you're imposing abstract categories upon religious experience so that you can label your own form of mysticism as correct and anything else as wrong. Which is actually amusingly ironic.
I do not distinguish between concepts and experience in quite the same way. The intellectual and the experiential are actually linked for me--that comes with being a Platonist. Seriously, stop trying to erase us.
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