Hi Mike and thank you for engaging with my questions :)
First of all, indeed, it goes without saying that not all Christian rituals work - the same can be said for the rituals of any religion/belief system! What I meant is that they work "enough" for those who believe they do that they keep practising them - "to work" may simply mean that they make them feel better, not necessarily that they produce results; btw some people stop believing precisely because they are disappointed with not getting results. Interestingly Michael Shermer is one of them ("Shermer stated the final end of his Christian faith was when a girl was paralyzed in a motor accident. Shermer
prayed to God to heal her. She
remained paralyzed.
[2]"
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer). If all Christian ritual worked all the time (of course only when asking things that are compassionate and in line with Christian values....praying God to see someone we dislike die should not work :)) it would be pretty tempting (to say the least....) to conclude that this is because through such spiritual practices one is connecting with the Ultimate Truth.
And indeed I get you 100% when you say about rituals/spiritual practices "That's because we mostly don't understand what they are and why they work" - see scenarios #3 and #4" in my latest post here which speculate on what could be going on. It does indeed seem that rituals/spiritual practices are felt to work (albeit erratically, but still "well enough") by the respective believers of any religion/belief system whatsoever, making their effectiveness religion-independent. That is why Sheldrake, among many others, has written a book about rituals which (can) work within the framework of whatever religion/belief system. But again, that would confirm to an outside observer that the effects of spiritual practices are independent of the Ultimate Source of Truth that individual believes in and is trying to connect with (the believer necessarily must assume, whether he has thought this through or not, that his rituals work because his metaphysics is the right one, while the believers of other religions are just benefiting from some kind of a placebo effect, because there can be no "active ingredient"= reality in the spiritual entity they are trying to connect to).
(I quote you again):
"I think Ultimate Truth, by its very nature, must be inherently inclusive. Ultimate Reality is likewise inclusive. But when we get into things like Ultimate Utility or Purpose it is hard to go beyond Awareness of Being - since being is absolutely absolute and cannot be qualified by truth or purpose. And such Awareness has to embrace all that was, is and will be [which are the same in any case]. That kind of stuff just does our heads in" -
I must say this kind of language is too deep/mystical for me to understand (sounds a bit like Heidegger :)) but I think you are opting for my scenario #2, which I referred to as 'logically impossible' (and in fact you used the expression "
does our heads in"). I respect your position obviously. You seem to be inclined to follow the mystic approach, "
the divine that was beyond reason and imagination" (as you put it), while I am not willing to relinquish reason, even if I may already have come to the limits of what reason can enable me to understand. But I keep pushing, because if the divine truly is beyond reason as you say I'm not interested in developing a proper relationship with it. But I think I still have a long way to go before fully agreeing that all of the divine is beyond reason, and knowing myself I'll probably only give up when I die :)
Oh and finally I also wanted to say that the existence of Unicorns or Father Christmas etc is not just a question of "usefulness" in my opinion. You wrote:
"
The Ultimate Truth could be that all of these things humans have imagined are real - depending on what you define as real. If you mean 'existing' then unicorns are 'real' because they exist as ideas. If we imagine 'real' in terms of utility, a unicorn is not sufficiently real to be useful as something for me to ride in my physical body. But it is useful to amuse and enchant a child."
Problem is, we are not talking about children here. There are loads of grown up people who fully believe in the existence of Unicorns in other dimensions, and that they care about us and can help us. Just one example among many:
https://tesswhitehurst.com/5-unicorn-spells-to-try-right-now/
Do you really accept that the fact that some people believe in unicorns and therefore they "exist as ideas" in the mind of these people make them real in the sense that THEY (ie, unicorns, not the way our minds mysteriously work) have a will of their own and can help those who address them via spiritual practices? Do you feel that Unicorns must therefore be "real" for you, too, in some way, or not at all? And the fact that I have just now (for the sake of experimenting) imagined a bizarre creature in my mind's eye that I had never visualised before - does that make that creature 'real' too, including for you and everybody else? Just curious about exactly what you mean with "real" - because I have heard similar statements to what you wrote above from others, but still I can't grasp your definition of "real" and would like to bring it into focus (it's far too fuzzy as it is for me). Where do you draw the line between "actual spiritual entity with an independent 'existence' and will of its own" and simple "product of our imagination which we can imagine doing things that make us feel better"?
And if you just accept that "Unicorns are real for these people, and that's good enough" isn't this just a kind, ecumenical but ultimately "insincere" statement, because, truly, you yourself don't believe in Unicorns or Father Christmas, although lots of children believe in him, just like you don't believe that there was a real historical Jesus who said and did exactly what the Gospel say about him?
I hope I haven't been rude or anything (English is not even my native language)! I have only tried to be as clear and direct as I possibly could so that I could get clear answer from someone whose take is of great interest to me (you) - I am not here to question other people's beliefs, my aim is most definitely not that of attacking or changing anybody's mind, I simply wish to UNDERSTAND things better because I am a seeker and hence I DON'T have the truth, only a working theory, which I am constantly testing against other people's arguments and logic. This is where I come from, so hopefully you won't take it amiss if I have questioned some of your points. Thanks again for commenting on my post.