First let start by saying happy birthday to joseph campbell. and second let me share a quote and i want to know how you feel about it.

- God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.- Joseph Campbell

Here is one response i got from it.

He has some good quotes. I will browse more tonight....but I disagree with this. First of all saying God is a transcendant reality above all intellectual inquiry is actually a statement that requires the intellect to interpret. Also if areas...on, intellect, logic, and inquiry are all disqualified as means to inquire into God's nature, how could we ever know it/ He/ she was "a metaphor transcending inquiry" in the first place?See More

You're right, I guess everything gets more complicated the more deeper we look at it

I disagree. The intellect is only required to postulate that there is something beyond its reach. There's no contradiction in that. I can imagine that something happens beyond my comprehension. And in order to realize that, I need no comprehension - other than to use the language to express it. I just acknowledge that my comprehension is limited, because there's things I cannot understand.



Campbell says god is "a metaphor for that which transcends intellectual thought". God is a word, and a concept. For Campbell, that concept is a representation of everything that transcends intellectual thought. Again, I see no contradiction in that.

Obviously, when talking about "god" (and maybe keeping in mind that Campbell studies myth and compared religion, so he is anything but a dogmatic or a literalist) we are not talking about an object that can be described and measured. We can talk about how we think god relates to our rational mind, to our reality. But we cannot really say anything about god's own nature.

I have always been a hard line rationalist, but trying to deny god using reason is as stupid as trying to deny science using belief.

There is the known, and the unknown. Campbell defines god as an expression of the unknowable. He goes one step beyond than simply saying that god is an expression of the unknown. So I completely agree with him.

Nothing is as simply as that.

Vodsel i completely agree with you.

I hope that you wouldn't mind if i took some of your ideas to retort back to this person.
I love your view point and yes that is Campbell.

I would have to disagree on the basis that God is also everything that can be interpreted by intellectual thought. In a sense God is EVERYTHING and by this I mean everything! Even the human condition and its capacity to understand at certain levels. I understand that he is referring to God in a very objective way, but to me God transcends and embodies objectivity and subjectivity. It almost seems to me that in this quote he is making fun of/rejecting the idea of God. He wishes to show men that God is only an idea of their minds in this objective plane we live in, and it only represents that which is yet to be discovered. Of course this holds many truths, for God is an interpretation of what we cannot understand, at a psychological level. But apart from the human understanding God is something entirely different, he surpasses the "that which transcends human understanding" into "that which transcends all" in a sense. His definition of God I feel is entirely different than if we really took on a view of GOD. He bases his statement of God as something that most people would believe. The great higher power that "observes" us. I feel as if this is very far from the true nature of God, as I said before God is everything. In a book by George Berkeley he makes a claim for God by saying this; we consider a man to be a separate consciousness, only by observation. We have no physical proof that each man is living within his own world such as us. But yet we still, on a very instinctual level, regard each man as an individual. So God is the same thing. Only we perceive God through the manifestation of our very reality. Thus we perceive God in "every moments spent in existence". This to me is the most powerful claim to the existence of God that I know of. It deals with the very idealism that Berkeley presents, and I believe is very hard to get over. If ever needed to be denied. God is the manifestation of our reality. He is the Perception of reality. God is the "everything" which creates nothing, destroys nothing. God is much more complicated than this man says. Even if God is only a notion of the human mind. That notion alone could be the most complicated thing that is known to man.

I think what Campbell is talking about is the so-called "God of the gaps", where anything that isn't explainable by everyday means is attributed to a higher power.

I doubt Campbell ever tripped.

I see God as a very powerful metaphor. At the same time, though, the entire human story on one level could be seen as metaphorical, which is why God has such a powerful place here.

This is why (some?) buddhist teachings for instance, are only hinting at something, well knowingly that language can't desribe it. Because it is ..as good old terence would put it: translinguistic. And therefore: Above the intellect, culture, ego and so forth.

Of course. But ultimately the whole discussion comes down to the concept of god we have. My only point was that I do not find Campbell's definition contradictory, as your friend said. Besides that, I personally agree with Campbell in his way to define god because I think it's a good synthesis. But there might be many, as suggested by others here, and discussing the "true" concept of god can be very stimulating but leads to no conclusions other than personal points of view or experiences.

There are many different aspects to god. It is above intellectual inquiry to the extent in 2 ways that I can see. First of all, god is much more easily experienced than put to words ("intellectualized" ). Secondly the extent to which rationale may be applied to god depends on scope. God manifests itself at every conceivable vantage point, but I think as humans, we lack the ability to intellectually understand the "ultimate scope" that either spans the potentially infinite universe or perhaps a potentially infinite multiverse as well. In such a way that this ultimate scope must inherently elude us, god transcends intellectual thought.

From the research I've done, it seems that the experience of god is an emergent right brain phenomena in the sense that there is a coordination of the hemispheres, but that the other Self that is encountered is in some way vitally connected to the right brain which processes incoming sensory information as wholesome, symbolic and indivisible. It is in fact the same information that the left brain processes which uses words and analysis (intellectual thought), but that the post-processed data between the two hemispheres is largely incompatible. A right brain transcendent experience of the whole that is the universe (god) is simply not the kind of data that is reducible to language, and in this sense can be seen to transcend intellectual thought.

The retort back

Well put, and you correctly interpreted Campbell's meaning. And while I do respect Joey C. as a scholar, this quote is the very foundation of Platonism. To Campbell, God is a useful metaphor at best, the demiurge at worst. By placing t...ruth outside the realm of intellect and it's faculties, Man is disqualified from placing meaning to anything. We cannot measure truth, but we can describe it: it is that which gives everything meaning. So we are not talking about who's idea of God is right; we are talking about whether Man can accurately know truth and reality. We are talking epistemology, not theology, and not comparitive religion. One question- do you think to Campbell, this transcendent reality would have right and wrong?

Yes very true.