[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[/quote]
But he never had a chance to do otherwise, so it’s not his fault.
Perhaps he didn’t, perhaps it was the other way round.
For shits & giggles.
Interestingly,religious belief is the main cause of cruelty and violence among humans.People who believe in sth will get very angry and upset,if you question their belief.Because they are pleasantly asleep in their comfort zone and don’t want to be disturbed anymore.
To most,spirituality seems to go hand in hand with emotionality,an ideology,something vague and up in the air,or plain out voodoo/magical thinking.It gives them “safety”,like drinking,smoking,drugs,etc.Or a feeling of permanence,when it fact reality changes every day.
I don’t know what exactly spirituality is,but I can tell what it is NOT.
Reality,truth,god,whatever you call it,will most certainly not fit in any one book or belong to any specific group od people.Nor could it be a static thing.Nor could there be an authority,such as a priest,or a pope.Because if you follow anyones authority(religious,political,psychological authority incl.),you are a blind person relying on other blind people to show you the way.In the process,your mind will become infantile…
to admit that you really don’t know anything could be on the other side the beginning of real intelligence.
[quote]pat wrote: I suspect your going to call me a bunch of names, >>>[/quote]If you’re really interested (and this is an easy one), aside from “liar”, which I stand by, show me where I called you ANY names and I’ll answer. Ya know Pat there are people who’ve been around long enough to have seen both of us at work here.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Gumpshmee wrote:
“Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.”
Seng-ts’an - 3rd Zen Partriarch
“To free yourself from all the error’s inherent in the truths we snatch at…”
Carl Jung
…
It would probably be missing the point to argue for these words, so I won’t.[/quote]
Eastern Philosophy is garbage.[/quote]
Mathew 18:3
And he said: Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven…
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[/quote]
I know you believe this, and while I respect your right to believe whatever makes sense to you, it is only a belief and not actual knowledge.
Hey, at least with your perfect certitude, you don’t have to bother with asking all those pesky questions like I do 
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Gumpshmee wrote:
“Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.”
Seng-ts’an - 3rd Zen Partriarch
“To free yourself from all the error’s inherent in the truths we snatch at…”
Carl Jung
…
It would probably be missing the point to argue for these words, so I won’t.[/quote]
Eastern Philosophy is garbage.[/quote]
I think truth can be found in all philosophies.
[/quote]
Maybe, but that’s not why I think it sucks. I think it sucks because eastern philosophers always made statements and never backed them up.
Sure they may sound all lofty and profound, but are they correct.
Further, the eastern philosopher’s counter argument was always of the nature that if you think a conclusion is wrong, your just not lofty enough and enlightened enough to get it. Hogwash.
Western philosophy is way more accurate in that everything needs to be backed up. You can’t just drop a bomb and walk away, you have to defend it.[/quote]
You only need to back up (and indeed only can back up) assertions about reality. Much of eastern philosophy, like all other philosophies, is about wisdom and morality rather than reality.
I don’t think western religion does any better of a job defending their claims about reality. Just look at our discussions on the cosmological argument. Since I don’t agree with you, clearly I’m “not lofty enough and enlightened enough to get it” 
Confirmatory bias is alive and well in both the oriental and occidental hemispheres.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
“…in faith I know the truth”
[/quote]
It is. That’s just what it is. I can’t make a logical argument to defend it. I know truths based on faith. It’s technically correct to say that I don’t know them. But I do know them through faith. Something else that will sound funny is that I have found faith way more reliable than reality. In the end, it just works out.[/quote]
Can you explain what you mean? You admit that you can’t actually know it’s true, but in the next sentence say you do know it’s true, through faith. Do you actually know with 100% certainty that it’s true, or do you just have faith that it’s true?
[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Gumpshmee wrote:
“Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.”
Seng-ts’an - 3rd Zen Partriarch
“To free yourself from all the error’s inherent in the truths we snatch at…”
Carl Jung
…
It would probably be missing the point to argue for these words, so I won’t.[/quote]
Eastern Philosophy is garbage.[/quote]
I think truth can be found in all philosophies.
[/quote]
Maybe, but that’s not why I think it sucks. I think it sucks because eastern philosophers always made statements and never backed them up.
Sure they may sound all lofty and profound, but are they correct.
Further, the eastern philosopher’s counter argument was always of the nature that if you think a conclusion is wrong, your just not lofty enough and enlightened enough to get it. Hogwash.
Western philosophy is way more accurate in that everything needs to be backed up. You can’t just drop a bomb and walk away, you have to defend it.[/quote]
You only need to back up (and indeed only can back up) assertions about reality. Much of eastern philosophy, like all other philosophies, is about wisdom and morality rather than reality.
[/quote]
You have to back that up too. If you don’t back it up, in reality it’s meaningless. If something moral, why is it moral, what makes it more moral as compared to it’s antithesis. Eastern Philosophy is more similar to religion than it is actual philosophy. In religion you operate under the assumption of certain pretexts, that give the ‘one liner’ greater meaning than if it were alone. So it is with eastern philosophy. They assume you are on the same page, but you may not be.
Let’s look at the above statement:
“Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.” Ooooo, profound, but is it correct?
If you don’t search for truth, then you won’t know what truth is and you can fall for non-truths. If you don’t have opinions, how do you measure where you stand…
Oh I know, it’s saying that there really is no such thing as truth, only opinions and there for one is not better than the other, so quit thinking your right. How utterly meaningless. We can disect the statment a million different ways and it’s still not really a good ‘order’ to follow. Hell the statement itself is likely a cherished opinion.
The problem with dropping supported conclusions is that you could be wrong. Then everybody has to waste their rime trying to figure out if your right or not. If you laid out the argument everybody could make that determination immediately.
[quote]
I don’t think western religion does any better of a job defending their claims about reality. Just look at our discussions on the cosmological argument. Since I don’t agree with you, clearly I’m “not lofty enough and enlightened enough to get it”
Confirmatory bias is alive and well in both the oriental and occidental hemispheres.[/quote]
See my above statement comparing Eastern philosophy to religion.
The cosmological argument isn’t a religious argument. Perhaps you thinking it is, is part of your misunderstanding. It doesn’t matter if you agree with it or not, it’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact and it’s either correct, or it’s not. I do sense your missing something about it thought I cannot pinpoint what. It’s very ridged argument as all deductive arguments are, there’s just no wiggle room.
[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
“…in faith I know the truth”
[/quote]
It is. That’s just what it is. I can’t make a logical argument to defend it. I know truths based on faith. It’s technically correct to say that I don’t know them. But I do know them through faith. Something else that will sound funny is that I have found faith way more reliable than reality. In the end, it just works out.[/quote]
Can you explain what you mean? You admit that you can’t actually know it’s true, but in the next sentence say you do know it’s true, through faith. Do you actually know with 100% certainty that it’s true, or do you just have faith that it’s true?[/quote]
I have 100% faith, in my 100% certainty…
Pat, you can’t objectively prove morality.
Prove that people should love each other.
Prove that people have a right to life, liberty, and happiness.
Prove that taking illegal drugs is wrong.
The reason you believe I don’t get the cosmological argument is because I don’t agree with you. It’s as simple as that. You think it’s self-evident that an infinite regress is impossible. I disagree. You’re practicing the same confirmatory bias as any other believer or nonbeliever, rationalizing why you must be right and anyone who disagrees with you must be mistaken. I know you don’t see it that way, but such is the nature of confirmatory bias. Only very, very rarely do people see it in themselves.
I think it counts not to underestimate what the real strength of social conditioning is.
Social conditioning and emotional thinking existed prior to language and the two take priority over “rationality” which was bolted on later.
While neuro-plasticity means that the mind is capable of reversals it’s a great struggle. While not as difficult as convincing someone that “sugar doesn’t taste good” (which is a downright lie, lol) you are still coming up against a “preference” that developed while integrating into society and therefore has a lot of inertia.
Mirror neuron’s basically exist so that humans act like humans and giraffes act like giraffes (whether or not doing so makes sense). And that their actions become accumulative. For a long time the most basic group decisions were all “fight or flight” and the way we group-think today is still relative to a decision between one of these two modes. If everyone runs or fights together then survival odds are increased even in reaction to false positives.
- YouTube in the last clip something interesting happens.
If you woke up one day and everyone was a firm scientologist and it was a very big deal to them collectively, then conversion to a way of thinking that at least allowed you to integrate with them would occur, you wouldn’t want to be the one “crazy guy”, after all you probably still want to breed. You might even go all the way, and your children quite likely will.
After a few generations we’d have 100 sects of scientology because of varying rationalizations about the minutiae, only sped up by communication and the internet.
I mean from a rational standpoint the nudists “have it right” and there’s no danger in seeing nudity, and on a warm day such as today it might feel nice to air things out, but my conditioning and awareness of norms says another thing.
But beside all this there’s another point:
It still remains that there’s a huge batch of Meso-americans, Micronesians, Japanese etc. who didn’t get a chance to make it into heaven because something infinte sent a “message” to one small group. Back then sure “other guys suck” makes sense for a tribe. But as far as many modern-society integrated christians are concerned they don’t prohibit Japanese people from their faith or afterlife. Therefore those “lost generations” must be accounted for. Perhaps god intends for the missionaries to travel back in time to give those people an equal opportunity… or maybe… it’s as made up as it sounds (can’t be certain).
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
“…in faith I know the truth”
[/quote]
It is. That’s just what it is. I can’t make a logical argument to defend it. I know truths based on faith. It’s technically correct to say that I don’t know them. But I do know them through faith. Something else that will sound funny is that I have found faith way more reliable than reality. In the end, it just works out.[/quote]
Can you explain what you mean? You admit that you can’t actually know it’s true, but in the next sentence say you do know it’s true, through faith. Do you actually know with 100% certainty that it’s true, or do you just have faith that it’s true?[/quote]
I have 100% faith, in my 100% certainty…
[/quote]
I know you do I’m just pointing out the inconsistency with your earlier statement, which I completely agree with:
If you don’t know everything, you can’t be certain of anything.
You might feel absolutely certain, but unless you know everything, your certainty isn’t justified.
[quote]Gumpshmee wrote:
I think it counts not to underestimate what the real strength of social conditioning is.
Social conditioning and emotional thinking existed prior to language and the two take priority over “rationality” which was bolted on later.
While neuro-plasticity means that the mind is capable of reversals it’s a great struggle. While not as difficult as convincing someone that “sugar doesn’t taste good” (which is a downright lie, lol) you are still coming up against a “preference” that developed while integrating into society and therefore has a lot of inertia.
Mirror neuron’s basically exist so that humans act like humans and giraffes act like giraffes (whether or not doing so makes sense). And that their actions become accumulative. For a long time the most basic group decisions were all “fight or flight” and the way we group-think today is still relative to a decision between one of these two modes. If everyone runs or fights together then survival odds are increased even in reaction to false positives.
- YouTube in the last clip something interesting happens.
If you woke up one day and everyone was a firm scientologist and it was a very big deal to them collectively, then conversion to a way of thinking that at least allowed you to integrate with them would occur, you wouldn’t want to be the one “crazy guy”, after all you probably still want to breed. You might even go all the way, and your children quite likely will.
After a few generations we’d have 100 sects of scientology because of varying rationalizations about the minutiae, only sped up by communication and the internet.
I mean from a rational standpoint the nudists “have it right” and there’s no danger in seeing nudity, and on a warm day such as today it might feel nice to air things out, but my conditioning and awareness of norms says another thing.
But beside all this there’s another point:
It still remains that there’s a huge batch of Meso-americans, Micronesians, Japanese etc. who didn’t get a chance to make it into heaven because something infinte sent a “message” to one small group. Back then sure “other guys suck” makes sense for a tribe. But as far as many modern-society integrated christians are concerned they don’t prohibit Japanese people from their faith or afterlife. Therefore those “lost generations” must be accounted for. Perhaps god intends for the missionaries to travel back in time to give those people an equal opportunity… or maybe… it’s as made up as it sounds (can’t be certain).[/quote]
Good post. Unfortunately, most don’t have the background in psychology/sociology/anthropology to understand and appreciate your points. And even if they did, the capacity for confirmatory bias doesn’t disappear.
Most of them read your post, and are saying to themselves, “Blah, blah, blah. I’m still right because I believe in the one, true god and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong, because my god has said so.”
[quote]Gumpshmee wrote:
I think it counts not to underestimate what the real strength of social conditioning is.
Social conditioning and emotional thinking existed prior to language and the two take priority over “rationality” which was bolted on later.
While neuro-plasticity means that the mind is capable of reversals it’s a great struggle. While not as difficult as convincing someone that “sugar doesn’t taste good” (which is a downright lie, lol) you are still coming up against a “preference” that developed while integrating into society and therefore has a lot of inertia.
Mirror neuron’s basically exist so that humans act like humans and giraffes act like giraffes (whether or not doing so makes sense). And that their actions become accumulative. For a long time the most basic group decisions were all “fight or flight” and the way we group-think today is still relative to a decision between one of these two modes. If everyone runs or fights together then survival odds are increased even in reaction to false positives.
- YouTube in the last clip something interesting happens.
If you woke up one day and everyone was a firm scientologist and it was a very big deal to them collectively, then conversion to a way of thinking that at least allowed you to integrate with them would occur, you wouldn’t want to be the one “crazy guy”, after all you probably still want to breed. You might even go all the way, and your children quite likely will.
After a few generations we’d have 100 sects of scientology because of varying rationalizations about the minutiae, only sped up by communication and the internet.
I mean from a rational standpoint the nudists “have it right” and there’s no danger in seeing nudity, and on a warm day such as today it might feel nice to air things out, but my conditioning and awareness of norms says another thing.
But beside all this there’s another point:
It still remains that there’s a huge batch of Meso-americans, Micronesians, Japanese etc. who didn’t get a chance to make it into heaven because something infinte sent a “message” to one small group. Back then sure “other guys suck” makes sense for a tribe. But as far as many modern-society integrated christians are concerned they don’t prohibit Japanese people from their faith or afterlife. Therefore those “lost generations” must be accounted for. Perhaps god intends for the missionaries to travel back in time to give those people an equal opportunity… or maybe… it’s as made up as it sounds (can’t be certain).[/quote]
And forlife will read your post and say to himself, “Blah, blah, blah. I’m still right because I believe in the one, true, unchangeable sexual preference and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong, because the CDC and every major American mental health institution says so.”
[quote]pat wrote:
Oh I know, it’s saying that there really is no such thing as truth, only opinions and there for one is not better than the other, so quit thinking your right. How utterly meaningless. We can disect the statment a million different ways and it’s still not really a good ‘order’ to follow. Hell the statement itself is likely a cherished opinion.
[/quote]
What I know about the rest of Zen the application is that by thinking we are right to others we become wrong and there is now a basis for external conflict. And thinking that some of the content of life is good and that some of it is bad means inevitable dissatisfaction and internal quandries.
People say “oh but there are threats”. But there are also many, many, many, many false positive and false negative “threats”. “Oh but this is bad” but if an alligator eats a man is it bad? Or is it “an alligator eats a man”. Alligators must eat, humans aren’t designed to live forever, and they’re “made of food”, you can’t make this stuff up, lol.
From the animal design of our brains and bodies we are predisposed to strongly “prefer” things for survival but from the rational side of things we can see where this can sometimes or very often be the route toward pain as opposed to away from it. You would have to redesign the brain to approach this ideal, and indeed this is what zen monks try to do in their lifelong practice, and neuro-plasticy partly accomodates their effort.
It would be overly certain of me to say I know enough to defend it fully or that it would even be desireable and unironic. And saying so seams like the easy way out, which ain’t bad. Being right is a very high standard and unrealistic I think with the available information and the information processing capacity. I’d rather just be aware.
But hell, clearly I do have something like an opinion about all this Epistemological nonsense. Just cause I thought it once, or maybe I was told it, doesn’t mean it’s right. Maybe I’m becoming double agnostic.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
Most of them read your post, and are saying to themselves, “Blah, blah, blah. I’m still right because I believe in the one, true god and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong, because my god has said so.”[/quote]
And since you have no certainty they’re wrong you have to concede they may be right therefore placing all your haughty skepticism in jeopardy.[/quote]
Why do you keep saying this, when I’ve said the same thing several times now?
Well, except for the haughty part.
What is more haughty: admitting you don’t know everything, or insisting that you do know, and that anyone disagreeing with you must be mistaken?