psychoblast
Bluelighter
bc4130 wrote:
You obviously don't know much about critical analysis. Each proof is obviously flawed to the point of meaninglessness. We've had previous threads debunking both St. Anselm's and St. Aquinas's supposed "proofs" of God. Try the search function, or if that doesn't work start a thread on any or all of Anselm's proofs and I'll point out the obvious errors.
dean luna wrote:
I disagree with your characterization of Buddhism. I suspect the disagreement arises because you cannot help but use vague, near meaningless words to describe your view of Buddhism. How can one believe in an ultimate void without believing in an ultimate non-void? What is it that we experience before the void?
Whatever you may have studied via book-learning (oh, and I have a degree in philosophy, by the way), it falls short of experiencing enlightenment, of tasting what it means to embrace the oneness of everything. In many ways, it strips away certain characteristics that seem inherent to intelligent life, but are actually inherent to individual ego-driven thinking.
You've got to remember that Buddhism in many ways treats life and experience as a negative. The myth of Buddha was that he saw life as suffering and sought a cure for it, which was a state of oneness that ascends your consciousness to the void. But these are just terms that arise from a "glass is half empty" approach to spirituality. You could alternatively say that life is a journey to ascend your consciousness to the oneness of everything. To be everything is to want nothing. Buddhist enlightenment means an end to selfishness, desire, loneliness, etc. But to desire nothing is a void-like mental state, from a certain perspective.
Also, there are so many sects of Buddhism, that you can find a phrase here or there that supports any characterization you may want to make. Want to call Buddhists "atheists"? You can probably find Buddhist teachings that support such a claim. Want to call them monotheists? You can find that, too. Want to call them polytheists? That, too, can be found.
But the central spirit of Buddhism and Taoism is rising to a sense of oneness with everything. I, myself, have struggled in the past with how to characterize a perception that the universe is God. I would hear people say, "I believe in God...I believe the universe is God." And I'd say, "Dammit, listen to yourself! You are just an atheist choosing to call the universe -- which we all know exists -- God. It is not intelligent. It does not judge us. It does not offer us any afterlife. If you divorce the concept of God from any afterlife, from any intelligence, then you are not REALLY believing in God at all. You are just an atheist afraid to admit it."
Yeah, but then this falters when you realize that you can believe God is everything, God is the universe, AND that universe is intelligent, AND that universe does offer immortality to us, an afterlife.
I mean, you want me to dumb it down for you? Buddhists and Taoists believe in reincarnation. They believe in a system of judgment whereby your actions in this life affect your level of reincarnation. Thus you have SOMETHING out there -- call it God, call it supernatural laws, or whatever -- that actually evaluates your life and sends your soul to a new place after you die based on your prior life. Whatever is determining that, can be called God as properly as to call the Biblical god "god."
Oh, and just because some one doesn't want to use the term "God", does not mean they are atheists. Hell, there is a huge gray area between theism and atheism. Atheists are typified as believing death is the end. We are cells and when the cells die, we die. There are no miracles. Positive mental attitude can have no real world effect. Daily affirmations are a joke. Astrology is a con. Etc. But you can believe in daily affirmations, karma, astrology, reincarnation, immortal souls, WITHOUT ever saying you believe in God. And what do you call that sort of person? Because they sure as hell don't fit in with any common perception of what an atheist believes.
What about Wiccan's who believe the Earth eco-system is a sentient being to which they pray, which can help or hurt those who life within it? Would you say, "Oh, they are atheists because they believe in Gaia, not in God." You might as well say Muslims are atheists because they believe in Allah, not God. You are just oversimplifying everything into black and white without seeing the big picture.
What do you call some one who believes nothing exists except matter and energy, but that all matter and energy has a level of consciousness, and an urge to seek love and life? And that this desire that exists even at the level of subatomic particles is what we perceive as gravity, electromagnetic pull, etc., and creates the entire natural universe around us? That while we have a consciousness, it is a POOLING of the consciousnesses of all our organs which, themselves, have a concsiousness which is the pooling of the consciousnesses of the cells within them, and their consciousnesses are the pooling of the atomic particles that make them up, and so on downward.
And so on upward. Organizations have a consciousness which is the pooling of the conciousnesses of the people in that organization. Associations of organizations have a consciousness which is the pooling of the consciousnesses of the organizations within them. Nations have a consciousness which is the pooling of their citizens. And no, these are not just semantics, they have a real independent sense of self, desire for life and growth and happiness every bit as real as you and me, albeit undetectable by us because it is on a different level of concsiousness than we can directly experience. And carry that up far enough, and you get to a conscious universe which is the sum of all conscious fragments within it, like you and me and a tree and a rock and an electron and Poland and Venus.
And when you die, your consciousness is not deleted. There is conservation of matter and energy and, thus, of consciousness. It may be a trillion years from now, but eventually all matter and energy will coalesce into a singularity and there will be only ONE consciousess. The reformed, unfragmented consciousness of the universe. And it WILL contain within it all consciousnesses that ever lived, and you will then be aware of yourself, like waking up from a dream. You will wake up and think, "Wow, I dreamed I was this human on Earth...cool, and hey, here I am now realizing I am not just that person, I am everything, I am immortal, I am God!" And simultaneously, all consciousnesses that ever lived will similarly wake up and realize they are immortal and they are God.
Is God the wrong term? Is this the view of an atheist? No, this is not exactly Buddhism or Taoism. This is Spiralism. However, if you would say that a Spiralist is not an atheist, then I think you also must concede a Buddhist or a Taoist is not an atheist. At least not unless you broaden the concept of atheist far beyond its normal use in everyday discourse. Well, maybe that is what you are striving for, in which case I might agree with you. Is that it? Are we having a semantic tug-of-war over the reach of the term atheism? Because it is a man-made word. A collection of sounds and symbols. It will stretch as far, or as short, as we want it to. Language is the ultimate democracy. Words mean what the majority chooses them to mean.
When does life begin? Conception or birth or some other time? Stupid question. There is no objective answer waiting for us out there. It is not a question, but a VOTE. Because WE DECIDE what the word "life" means. We decide it ever day. Whatever was decided a decade ago, we can change it if we want.
Which leads to my ultimate beef about how most philosophical debates (if not all) turn into tug of wars over the right to use a certain word in a certain way. If 2 people both want to use a word in a certain way, why not just make up a new word and then both can have a word of their own? Language is infinite. There is no scarcity of words. There is no need for capitalist competition for the right to make a word have a certain meaning.
~psychoblast~
You obviously don't know much about critical analysis. Each proof is obviously flawed to the point of meaninglessness. We've had previous threads debunking both St. Anselm's and St. Aquinas's supposed "proofs" of God. Try the search function, or if that doesn't work start a thread on any or all of Anselm's proofs and I'll point out the obvious errors.
dean luna wrote:
I disagree with your characterization of Buddhism. I suspect the disagreement arises because you cannot help but use vague, near meaningless words to describe your view of Buddhism. How can one believe in an ultimate void without believing in an ultimate non-void? What is it that we experience before the void?
Whatever you may have studied via book-learning (oh, and I have a degree in philosophy, by the way), it falls short of experiencing enlightenment, of tasting what it means to embrace the oneness of everything. In many ways, it strips away certain characteristics that seem inherent to intelligent life, but are actually inherent to individual ego-driven thinking.
You've got to remember that Buddhism in many ways treats life and experience as a negative. The myth of Buddha was that he saw life as suffering and sought a cure for it, which was a state of oneness that ascends your consciousness to the void. But these are just terms that arise from a "glass is half empty" approach to spirituality. You could alternatively say that life is a journey to ascend your consciousness to the oneness of everything. To be everything is to want nothing. Buddhist enlightenment means an end to selfishness, desire, loneliness, etc. But to desire nothing is a void-like mental state, from a certain perspective.
Also, there are so many sects of Buddhism, that you can find a phrase here or there that supports any characterization you may want to make. Want to call Buddhists "atheists"? You can probably find Buddhist teachings that support such a claim. Want to call them monotheists? You can find that, too. Want to call them polytheists? That, too, can be found.
But the central spirit of Buddhism and Taoism is rising to a sense of oneness with everything. I, myself, have struggled in the past with how to characterize a perception that the universe is God. I would hear people say, "I believe in God...I believe the universe is God." And I'd say, "Dammit, listen to yourself! You are just an atheist choosing to call the universe -- which we all know exists -- God. It is not intelligent. It does not judge us. It does not offer us any afterlife. If you divorce the concept of God from any afterlife, from any intelligence, then you are not REALLY believing in God at all. You are just an atheist afraid to admit it."
Yeah, but then this falters when you realize that you can believe God is everything, God is the universe, AND that universe is intelligent, AND that universe does offer immortality to us, an afterlife.
I mean, you want me to dumb it down for you? Buddhists and Taoists believe in reincarnation. They believe in a system of judgment whereby your actions in this life affect your level of reincarnation. Thus you have SOMETHING out there -- call it God, call it supernatural laws, or whatever -- that actually evaluates your life and sends your soul to a new place after you die based on your prior life. Whatever is determining that, can be called God as properly as to call the Biblical god "god."
Oh, and just because some one doesn't want to use the term "God", does not mean they are atheists. Hell, there is a huge gray area between theism and atheism. Atheists are typified as believing death is the end. We are cells and when the cells die, we die. There are no miracles. Positive mental attitude can have no real world effect. Daily affirmations are a joke. Astrology is a con. Etc. But you can believe in daily affirmations, karma, astrology, reincarnation, immortal souls, WITHOUT ever saying you believe in God. And what do you call that sort of person? Because they sure as hell don't fit in with any common perception of what an atheist believes.
What about Wiccan's who believe the Earth eco-system is a sentient being to which they pray, which can help or hurt those who life within it? Would you say, "Oh, they are atheists because they believe in Gaia, not in God." You might as well say Muslims are atheists because they believe in Allah, not God. You are just oversimplifying everything into black and white without seeing the big picture.
What do you call some one who believes nothing exists except matter and energy, but that all matter and energy has a level of consciousness, and an urge to seek love and life? And that this desire that exists even at the level of subatomic particles is what we perceive as gravity, electromagnetic pull, etc., and creates the entire natural universe around us? That while we have a consciousness, it is a POOLING of the consciousnesses of all our organs which, themselves, have a concsiousness which is the pooling of the consciousnesses of the cells within them, and their consciousnesses are the pooling of the atomic particles that make them up, and so on downward.
And so on upward. Organizations have a consciousness which is the pooling of the conciousnesses of the people in that organization. Associations of organizations have a consciousness which is the pooling of the consciousnesses of the organizations within them. Nations have a consciousness which is the pooling of their citizens. And no, these are not just semantics, they have a real independent sense of self, desire for life and growth and happiness every bit as real as you and me, albeit undetectable by us because it is on a different level of concsiousness than we can directly experience. And carry that up far enough, and you get to a conscious universe which is the sum of all conscious fragments within it, like you and me and a tree and a rock and an electron and Poland and Venus.
And when you die, your consciousness is not deleted. There is conservation of matter and energy and, thus, of consciousness. It may be a trillion years from now, but eventually all matter and energy will coalesce into a singularity and there will be only ONE consciousess. The reformed, unfragmented consciousness of the universe. And it WILL contain within it all consciousnesses that ever lived, and you will then be aware of yourself, like waking up from a dream. You will wake up and think, "Wow, I dreamed I was this human on Earth...cool, and hey, here I am now realizing I am not just that person, I am everything, I am immortal, I am God!" And simultaneously, all consciousnesses that ever lived will similarly wake up and realize they are immortal and they are God.
Is God the wrong term? Is this the view of an atheist? No, this is not exactly Buddhism or Taoism. This is Spiralism. However, if you would say that a Spiralist is not an atheist, then I think you also must concede a Buddhist or a Taoist is not an atheist. At least not unless you broaden the concept of atheist far beyond its normal use in everyday discourse. Well, maybe that is what you are striving for, in which case I might agree with you. Is that it? Are we having a semantic tug-of-war over the reach of the term atheism? Because it is a man-made word. A collection of sounds and symbols. It will stretch as far, or as short, as we want it to. Language is the ultimate democracy. Words mean what the majority chooses them to mean.
When does life begin? Conception or birth or some other time? Stupid question. There is no objective answer waiting for us out there. It is not a question, but a VOTE. Because WE DECIDE what the word "life" means. We decide it ever day. Whatever was decided a decade ago, we can change it if we want.
Which leads to my ultimate beef about how most philosophical debates (if not all) turn into tug of wars over the right to use a certain word in a certain way. If 2 people both want to use a word in a certain way, why not just make up a new word and then both can have a word of their own? Language is infinite. There is no scarcity of words. There is no need for capitalist competition for the right to make a word have a certain meaning.
~psychoblast~
