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What Is God?: Jacob Needleman

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How to Weed Out False Prophets and Find the Real McCoy

02 min 19 sec

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Jacob Needleman, author of What Is God?, answers the question of how to determine the authenticity of a self-professed spiritual leader.

The key is "to be open-minded, without our brains following out," he says.
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01 hr 13 min 27 sec

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There are 7 comments on this program

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Previous FORAtv comments:

channie

Posted: 06.06.10, 10:37 AM

LucyDaily, Everyone comes to religion with different reason and from different backgrounds. While I don't think there is a true religion that answers all the "big" questions we have, I do think that religions do offer our existence in the world for the meantime, however lacking. I believe that at one point in everyone's life the question of one's existence naturally comes up. Why? Because everyone dies at one point. For some it'll be today, and for others it'll be sometime in the future. It is fear and pain. The fundamental things we ask ourselves are, then, what is the right thing to do? How should we live? and why? It is human nature to ask these questions. Otherwise, we wouldn't be who we are. All religions, I want to believe, started as a vehicle to help people seek the truth, but, as most things are, they are tainted and corrupted by people who abuse for political and material gains. The people you cited as screamers and do all sorts of despicable things are those who are being led astray by these people. I was a devoted christian myself, but I no longer belong to Christianity. After years of searching and studying, I know what is more important than religion. It is that every and each one of us is all capable of being greater than who we really believe ourselves to be. No precepts, dogma, rules, belief and doctrine will help you if you don't believe that all of us are all connected spiritually and that we are spiritual beings with human experience.

LucyDaily

Posted: 06.02.10, 06:45 AM

I came from a family without religion, married a man who came from a family without religion, raised 2 brilliant, loving, caring children without religion and I have often wondered what caused others to need religion when clearly it is not needed by so many people. Is it like religious diabetes where some people are born without the ability to cope and others develop an inability to cope later in life? All of the people I have known who developed a need for religion later in life, developed hyper-religious, cultish behaviors like standing on street corners screaming "Whore" at complete strangers. They all went insane, murdered people, tried to murder their children, committed suicide, became drug addicted, committed adultery with church leaders, alienated themselves from family members, became homeless etc. Or they are the ones who "found" religion while in jail and promptly lose it after the parole hearing. Most of the people I have known who claim a religion never actually attend services of any kind and the ones who do only attend for an hour once a week or only on holidays. They seem to be on an even keel and don't generally exhibit any outrageous behaviors. These people seem to do it out of habit started in childhood. So what I want to know is there some mental illness that people develop that causes them to seek out religion and because religion is a sacred cow they do not get any treatment because no one dares an intervention?

Periergeia

Posted: 05.25.10, 07:51 PM

ErgoLatin: "It is more powerful than ego (a belief in oneself), democracy (a belief in the people) or in knowledge (a belief in evidence)." That kind of argument is being used to kill people (God is greater than humans), to replace democracy with Theocracy (God rules, not man) and suppress science (God's word trumps any other form of experience). As for the "equivalence of God and Man" in Christianity... you will have to show me the particular catechism which contains that particular tenet. As far as I know, pretty much all Christian sects preach that man and God can be separated quite easily... and when they are... men is sent to hell (of one sort or another).

Fora2

Posted: 04.10.10, 11:15 AM

That "moment of access" is a moment of simple pure awareness when the conceptual driven "ego encapsulated self" has temporarily dissolved. Huston Smith, a well known professor of comparative religion said, "The polytheist says there are many gods. The monotheist says there is one God. The mystic says, "ONLY GOD!" I like that comment very much, but ultimately, "nature" and the Cosmos are an integral whole of which we are all part, and at the most fundamental level, as humans, we really are this cosmos become AWAKE. Adding names and concepts like "god" aren't even necessary. 'God' is just a name we use for this wondrous mystery and natural law by which everything functions. The ground of our being is the very ground of all being – and we are THAT!! become AWAKE! -- which seems pretty profound to me.

Fora2

Posted: 04.10.10, 09:16 AM

Sagan said, "We are star stuff" and "a way for the cosmos to know itself." All the atoms on earth and in our bodies came from supernova that blew up over 5 billion years ago. Aren't we all just walking, talking stardust -- this cosmos become AWAKE and looking back at itself? -- and aren't we intimately connected to it all? We are this wonder called life become AWAKE Please enjoy the dance. And ultimately there's nothing that separates us from others in this grand mystery. Please be kind.

Karatv

Posted: 03.16.10, 03:56 PM

Atheism is not a religious movement, it's just word that religious people want other people to use, it would be enough to say "I'm rational" or "I don't believe in any God", lol.

ErgoLatin

Posted: 03.06.10, 06:53 AM

God is the world's most powerful idea. It is more powerful than ego (a belief in oneself), democracy (a belief in the people) or in knowledge (a belief in evidence). Classical Greece's idea of man as the center of the world died without the idea of God present in their society. Civilization is here today because of the idea of God which is the essence of Christianity that Man and God are one and the same and therefore cannot be separated.