Transcending Categories of Thought

[PairTheBoard]

Nielsio provided this quote of Joseph Campbell's on another thread. I think it deserves SMP's focused attention.

[ QUOTE ]
“God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought. Even the categories of being and non-being; those are categories of thought. So it depends on how much you want to think about it. Whether it's doing you any good. Whether it is putting you in touch with the mystery that is the ground of your own being; if it isn't, well, it's a lie. So half of the people in the world are religious people who think that their metaphors are facts; those are what we call theists. The other half are people who know that the metaphors are not facts, and so they're lies; those are the atheists.”
-Joseph Campbell


[/ QUOTE ]

I think there are a lot of points worth discussing in the quote. I wonder if Phil finds Campbell's view "pernicious"?

One comment I'd like to make for now is that I think there is a middle way between Theists who insist their metaphors are facts, and Atheists who insist the metaphors, being nonfactual, must be lies. I think Campbell alludes to this middle way in his comment, "So it depends on how much you want to think about it. Whether it's doing you any good."

In my view a metaphor in general serves to point toward the truth rather than represent a factoid of truth. We can see this even in the metaphors of science, commonly called scientific theories. The actual facts of science are records of experimental results. Scientific metaphors/theories are designed to fit those results and predict new ones. But the scientific metaphors/theories are not themselves facts of reality. The underlying ultimate reality of existence remains a mystery to us. Nevertheless, the scientific metaphors/theories serve us as pointers to the truth.

So it is with metaphysical metaphors. Except that integral to metaphysical metaphors is the response of individuals to them. Are we 6 billion people in one universe or One People in 6 billion different universes? Expecting a metaphysical metaphor to fit each individual equally is like expecting a scientific theory to fit 6 billion unique universes with 6 billion different laws of physics. Thus the diversity of interpretations of spiritual experience.

PairTheBoard