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Dejan Stojanovic

Dejan Stojanovic Quotes

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Famous Dejan Stojanovic Quotes

“God is Sisyphus, and existence (life) is the stone. The accomplishment of purpose is the saddest point. Sisyphus is happiest without the total accomplishment of the purpose, while he persistently works and aims at the top. The accomplishment of the purpose is Sisyphus’ fall, so he forgets his achievement quickly. Voyage contains his whole hope and beauty; the voyage is the purpose of the stone—purpose to itself alone. He always arrives in the same place but chooses voyage instead of the target. The purpose and target were always there. Voyage is always new because it is fed from oblivion by unaware memory, with infinite possibilities stemming from the nature of the absolute through “free” will and unincidental accidents or errors. Voyage is the ultimate goal or purpose because it hides an infinite multitude within itself; the infinity of the finite through endless possibilities. The beauty of infinity is always new; the voyage is the sum of happenings on the scale. Every experience or adventure is new. Beauty shines from experience.”

“Only the possibility of a journey creates space because space, before and after, becomes (is) the same; only the Way on a journey creates time, and the idea of the goal gives birth to time. Time does not measure time but the length of a passed road. The journey is space since nothing journeys (travels) from one to another or apart from one another. Nothing is ever separated; rather, all travel with all; all looks for itself within and in the other, and every path is the idea of the Being that finds itself on its journey because it is the Way.”

“At the point of creation, two poles of the Absolute, Universal Mind (Something) and Absolute Void (Nothing) become creators of the world. The Universal Mind is the active “pole,” and the Absolute Void (Nothingness) is the passive “pole.” At the “moment” of creation, the Universal Mind envelops nothingness by the size of its program, but there is always nothingness “beyond” this nothingness unaffected by the creation. There can be many of these creations or universes. All of them together form the Universe. The Universe we live in is only a speck of the real Universe we cannot identify based on our current technology. It is a big question whether we will ever be able to glimpse the Absolute except through abstract thought and imagination, which are, in my opinion, legitimate methods not only of philosophical investigation but also scientific ones.”

“The idea that the World can create itself from nothing is equally absurd as the idea that God created the World from nothing. The lack of the material world, space, and time in the primordial, immaterial state of the Being is not proof that the primordial Being does not exist. Also, the lack of a material world in the primordial state does not mean that the Being creates from nothing. The Creation, or the process of creating, happens in the interaction between the Being and Nonbeing. The immateriality of the primordial Being does not mean that there was only absolute Nothing in the imagined “beginning.” This Immaterial Something is the Source of Everything.”

“Russell’s Teapot (Celestial Teapot Analogy) We cannot equate Russell’s teapot idea with the idea of God. Although this idea is humorous, it isn't very sensible. If anybody without scientific credentials stated thoughtfully that the teapot is circling the Sun, the majority of people would think that a person saying that is either bipolar, schizophrenic, or suffers from some other mental illness. This kind of comparison is absurd. Comic and absurdist comparisons of this kind only muddy the waters. Proof or disproof of such a thing is unnecessary because almost everybody knows the teapot can't orbit the Sun as freely as planets on a microcosmic or macro level. Regardless of Russel being aware that his example is nonsense, he still used it (and he states that). The point was not to prove anything but to make a funny remark to diminish the subject of the attack, God. It is a logical fallacy whenever we use such tactics or tricks because we use witty comments for lacking something more potent. If we make fun of some ideas, it does not mean they have no value. We cannot destroy an idea that has existed for millennia by witty but silly arguments. Carl Sagan made an even sillier argument about the undetectable dragon in his garage. To compare the idea of God to the teapot or a dragon in a garage is a useless way to refute an idea or argument with an “argument” (example) in the form of funny irony. I admire Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan for their ingenuity and insights. I also admire Bertrand Russell’s writing style because he could express complicated ideas and concepts in very readable and clear prose. There can be no comparison between the idea of God and a teapot floating around the Sun or between God and an unidentifiable dragon in the garage. We cannot base our arguments on the value of their wit because regardless of how witty the statement is, it has to stand the test of truth, not the test of wit. We can easily exclude the idea of a teapot floating in orbit around the Sun as ridiculous. The same applies to the argument about the dragon in a garage. But can we exclude the idea of God from religious and theological thoughts and serious philosophical inquiries interested in discovering the truth about the world and God? We can easily refuse to accept a teapot or dragon in the garage as serious arguments. However, we cannot a priori deny the legitimacy of the idea about God, at least not the deist one (or pantheistic).”

“There is a universal reservoir, the source of all knowledge, which is the same for the arts and sciences as for philosophy and religion. In a way, science is an art. In some ways, religion is philosophy because philosophy and religion often deal with the same questions—with the first and the final causes, among others. Religious people a priori “bet” on God, whereas philosophers may bet on God or not. The difference in approach toward God between religion and philosophy is that religion imposes and prescribes God, and philosophy offers the freedom of thought and choice. Religious prescriptions of God are not proof of faith or God’s existence, but rather the opposite—they prove that philosophy is more “religious” than religion because it doesn’t steal God from people but offers freedom.”

“The world was ready for greater discoveries two thousand years ago. (Heron of Alexandria is an excellent example of an inventor who invented the first steam engine, aeolipile.) There was a basis for it. Only the language to translate abstract ideas and symbols into the language of science was missing. The only obstacle to a human being is a human being himself. The only limitation comes from the inability to dream and pierce into the essence that permeates all that exists in the universe. There is the same law for a galaxy, for a man, and for an ant. Basic principles are the same everywhere; they never change and exist as long as the universe exists.”

“God is not absolute, and Nothingness is not absolute. If we come from these positions (postulates), we confront the inability of language to be precise. This inability reveals that the problem of understanding different phenomena is not so much in the phenomena themselves but in our failure to understand or present them linguistically in the best and most precise manner.”

“God, or to put it better, our idea of God, is a concept before anything else. The way God had been (mainly) understood throughout history leads to the idea of God as an entity beyond the world that creates the world and stays beyond the world but affects it. There is no proof for this, but the concept itself, by its nature, is a theoretical expression or view of a particular phenomenon. As such, applied to something invisible or tangible and visible, it is subject to change.”

“Many concepts and ideas become laws in time, like the laws of physics. In time, many of these same concepts lose validity in favor of new concepts that become new laws. These phenomena lead to the progress of science; otherwise, some concepts, which were previously laws, would always stay the same regardless of whether they were correct.”

“New concepts or laws would not be possible without the preceding concepts or laws. What we refuse today as incorrect is the basis for something we accept as correct tomorrow. Then the question arises—if the preceding concept was incorrect, how is it possible that the new concept, or law, that we think is correct can be based on the previous and rejected one? Something “incorrect” cannot be the basis for something correct. In this way, we conclude that even those laws (concepts) we reject today as incorrect contain the elements of a new law or concept or something that we think is correct or more correct. The world's universal nature cannot be wholly apprehended and observed by the human mind. All this happens while the laws stay the same; only our ideas and concepts about the laws change, not the laws or the truth (fact) itself.”

“Nothing in the world can be absolute except the Absolute itself. Everything else is contained and exists in relations. Relations can exist only through the division of the Absolute or God. Since no part is absolute, then no part can completely understand (including the human mind) or comprehend the whole of the Absolute. Understanding the “final” laws leads toward the end. If humans understood and empowered themselves with the knowledge of these laws, they would cease to be humans and become what they sought to find or understand. In that way, humans become either God or nothing. The ultimate beauty is the evolution of the world. Evolution in the animal world (individual species) can be horizontal without major changes. Still, in the development of humans, it can be pretty vertical (thanks to awareness and brain power). Regardless of the vertical evolution of humans as biological beings, this is still only evolution, and evolution is only possible if something new is acquired, for the lack of final knowledge, about the final causes and the ultimate essence of being.”

“That which we never question is the concept itself. But what is a concept? Is it necessary to put the idea of a concept itself, or the law, under the magnifying glass to better understand it because a concept is only a word or term it expresses? Even the concept itself, as an idea or term, can be a matter of discussion or scientific, philosophical, artistic, or religious discourse. Consequently, we may discover that something that slowed down the development of ideas and their formulations or understanding of laws is the impossibility of breaking up with concepts or paradigms that became a priori truths.”

“God is a concept more than anything else. The idea of God or about God, as it functions in religions, doesn’t deal with reality but with presuppositions based on revelations. Revelation, in itself, is arbitrary and can result from hallucination, among other things, which does not exclude the possibility that even hallucination may lead to some ways of truth.”

“From the point of established religions, God is conceptually the source of the world, something that creates the world but stays beyond the world as something absolute that influences the world. Not only is God understood in this way, but it is also appropriated in the main monotheistic religions. Therefore, from the standpoint of official religions, it is much more important to claim God understood in this manner and establish the right to God than the God itself (accurate idea and concept of God). That is how this strange ownership functions and obtains “legitimacy.”

“Divine Hiddenness Argument against God’s Existence Divine Hiddenness does not necessarily mean that the Ultimate Being hides; it instead means that our human powers are limited. The natural laws were secret (and still are) to the people before they learned to decipher them slowly. We may say that Newton's laws deciphered and formulated were hidden up to that point not because they were hiding per se but because our abilities were not on par with the laws of physics, which we have thought were “hidden.” It is a poor argument to use hiddenness as a legitimate argument against God or against anything else, of which, at some point, we do not have a proper or complete understanding. Hiddenness by itself is not proof that God does not exist. By using that logic, we may say that mosquitos are not aware of the existence of human beings. The argument that they are very “aware,” in some sense while sucking the blood of humans would not be sufficient because they are not aware of who and what human beings are. Certainly, microorganisms, without any desire to compare human beings with microorganisms, are not aware of the existence of human beings. What if animals used an argument, if they could, that there is no evidence that there are many galaxies in the Universe, or if any other animal could have used that argument? Would that be proof that other galaxies do not exist? On what basis are we sure that we possess the ability to experience God directly if it existed (although the world is one of the faces of God)? I am not trying to compare human beings to other animals or diminish human abilities. Still, I would like to emphasize that, regardless of how advanced we are, we may still be as distant from God, or more, as some animals are from us. To rely only on evidence is to limit the science, not to be scientific. What is scientific in limiting science to the frame that fits our capacity for understanding, learning, and comprehension instead of fitting the frame of reality and the truth? To be precise, we would need to redefine or make the idea of God more precise. Maybe God is not what we think it is. What if the World itself is God? What if the World, regardless of its beginning and end, is still a consequence of an eternal Being without a beginning and end? What if the world and matter as we know it are only the modes of the Universal Eternal Being from which everything originates and to which everything returns? Matter is not what we think it is. God is not what religious books say. Nobody has the right to God, a title to God. No prophet can tell other people that he (or she) speaks the word of God. Humans do the things done in the name of God in their name, not the name of God. Their hiding behind God is a form of manipulation, demagogy, and control of others.”

“Heaven and Hell We can turn the picture of the world to mean that hell is not in the other world but here. We can further turn it around to suggest that if there is any punishment in hell, then this world is the place of that punishment where we pay the price, not for previous sins but the price of life, the experience of life. Our very existence is the “primordial sin,” and we are sinless sinners.”

“God is, first and foremost, an idea. Nobody has the right to God, to claim God, even though people throughout ages claimed it, and probably always will be, by religion. But this God is only a stolen God, made in the human's image (the image of the human race), wearing the colors of his creators and not his own. This God wears not the colors of truth but of deceit. Deceitful simplicity is neither simplicity, truth, nor God. A stolen God is not God at all because it is, above all, an instrument of a human being in the service of a human being and not of God.”

“Atheists got so trapped that they forgot that God is not necessarily what religious books say. We have to redefine the word God to encompass everything. If God is the Creator of everything, then God is Everything. If God is Everything, then God is the truth. Why not believe in truth and refuse the partial truths sold as truth? The truth does not care about human-biased decisions and their fights or who first claimed the truth.”

“What is the Absolute? Absolute can only be the absolute knowledge, thought, mind, immaterial “substance,” the absolute “brain” (spirit) that contains an infinite programming ability and potential for absolute plurality through chance. Since human beings are limited, although much more advanced than other animals, they cannot understand inconceivable and invisible spaces by experience, experiment, or evidence, far exceeding their perceptive and sensory abilities. Even if they were at a higher level of evolution, humans would be unsure if they found the final truths and complete knowledge. However, if they free themselves from dogmas—religious, political, and others—human beings can count on a higher degree of understanding and closer touch with the world.”