Perhaps brmckay has ghosted me. Oh well, so it goes. Avoidance is the best way to avoid.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s anyone out there who can relate to the simple concept - no it is not a concept, it’s an observation plain and simple: Appreciating the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide
Forgive me for having to say it, but that is just anti-theist political rhetoric. Not reflective of philosophical introspection. (“God” is ultimately just a word. How it gets used by an individual is what requires attention.)
Right. So you are saying that Bishop John Shelby Spong was an anti-theist? He said the same thing about various ideology of the Church- it’s nothing more than a control mechanism. He said that about hell, but when you get down to it, the idea of a god is too.
While you do well with philosophical speech, I wouldn’t quit your day job. Philosophy doesn’t pay much.
I prefer any word but the religious term “god”. The word carries too much baggage.
You have this exactly backwards.
Take God out and all the politics around the term disappear.
The politics come with the term.
This is the same false argument as declaring that atheism is a belief.
Theism is a belief, “grokking” without evidence.
Atheism is cognition, “grokking” there is no evidence
My apologizes, I am overwhelmed by this extremely dynamic and sophisticated user interface and have been just responding to whatever shows up in front of me. (I’ve lost track of how many people I’m trying to respond to with some measure of quality.)
Reality is, if nothing else, a synchronistic feedback loop. Whatever quality and beauty we bring to the moment is echoed back and then some.
I have the same conversations with theists as with atheists.
You can kid yourself if you like. But the God/gods that atheists don’t believe in, are hardwired to the ones that theists believe in. Just re-read some of your and especially mirana’s posts in projective response to my use of the term “God”.
There are degrees to this syndrome of course, I personally find that the Buddhists do the best job of not projecting. But then they have that excellent grounding in the monisms of Vedanta and Yoga going for them.
As for “grokking” that there is no evidence, the secret to that, is getting free of expectations and attachments as to what that looks like and means.
For some, that’s true. I tried to maintain my affiliation to church for a while with that attitude, but I couldn’t find anywhere that expressed it from the top on down. It’s fine for the independent spiritual seeker, but doesn’t work when you are trying to share it with others. That’s almost in your statement here, since it’s about the individual.
Part of the problem I have, is letting go of past uses of the word. If those had all been tamed and reconciliations had all been made, that would be great. But there are entire countries that base their laws on one holy book, and places in otherwise free countries where religion dominates. I just watched the Netflix documentary on the Fundamentalist LDS church, some very recent history. I tune in to a variety of organizations that are there to help people escape groups like that. And then there’s the SCOTUS. So, dismissing the use of religion as a control mechanism as mere rhetoric, ignores reality as I see it.
I appreciate you hanging around @brmckay, even though you can hear my frustrations, and think you will find yourself equally frustrated in your attempts to bridge this divide.
No you won’t with me. I know where and when Gods were invented. And it was long before humans entered the stage. Do you?
As for “grokking” that there is no evidence, the secret to that, is getting free of expectations and attachments as to what that looks like and means.
You may want to revisit “Stranger in a Strange Land” to refresh memory of what grokking means.
There is Only Reality. Including those “nondistinct quanta of values ”.
There is also never NOT “who” either. Who, What, Why are all of the Then Thousand Things. Which is not the Whole. Since that includes the unnameable potential for such.
Calling it Tao doesn’t work, nor does calling it God (Reality either). But that doesn’t make it any less significant.
The difference in what we have each just said is evidence of falsifyabililty. So how do we test it, other than in each of our own lives?
You know where and when Reality was invented?!
Are you talking about reality?
Or the ability of creatures to recognize reality?
That sidesteps the main question.
What does that even mean?
Synchronistic feedback loop?
Couldn’t it be said the “synchronicity” is a quantity inherent in a feedback loop?
So what’s the point you’re trying to make about reality?
And now we can loop it right back to the start of this comment.
Also it would be splendid if you would answer the questions directly,
If you weren’t attempting to evangelize, we wouldn’t be mirroring what you say.
Now you’re preaching Buddhism when obviously you are attached to some deity?
BTW, god is not a reality. A god in any form, whether she is Bast, or he is Zeus, or she is Diana, or the Xian god, or even the Muslim god called Ayah (purposely done), or any other name one to give the human concept, it is all mythology. IMHO, you are still evangelizing.
Atheist do not say there is a god. You can prove a negative, so it is up to the believer to prove the positive.
Are you calling reality god now?
“citizenschallengev4, post:310, topic:7931”
Are you talking about reality?
Or the ability of creatures to recognize reality?
Common wisdom holds that our Reality became explicated a moment after the Inflationary Epoch, when the energetic plasma began cool down and the first fundamental particles (values) began to form, all without any help of a deity.
The invention of the first sky god, later identified by several different names, came much later when the first hominid cursed and threatened the “unseen beings” high up in the sky, that were making speaking loud noises (thunder), throwing fire (lightning), and pouring water (monsoon) on him and his family.
Ever seen a chimpanzee “rain dance” ? I’m sorry to say, your God was invented by a great ape, but not yet quite human.
Formalized religion came later still, when “offerings” were made to appease and incur the favor of the gods.
The strange thing is that you are just as atheist as I am for all gods that have ever existed, except I reject the existence of 1 more god than you do.
Do you believe in all the gods that have existed in human history?
If not, we do have that atheism in common, no?
How many times do I have to say it?
Of course I’m talking about Reality-as-it actually-is. Undivided entirety. The non-relative infinitude of everything and nothing.
(so the question addressed to write4u is obviously (or should be by now) rhetorical and sarcastic)
No, that is your God. The one you adamantly claim you don’t believe in, but can’t stop talking about.
I’m starting to think you are one of those Google algorithms that “thinks” it’s elaborate parroting “skill” qualifies as sentience./s
Guess I’m done with you unless you have a sudden epiphany and realize that what I keep repeating is what I actually mean.
So do I and I am right while you are wrong!
Of course you believe in your God. You invented it, as millions of other people have .
Of course I do not believe in any God . I never invented one.
I don’t talk about God unless someone else adamantly keeps talking about Reality being God. I feel compelled to correct your mistaken beliefs.
You want to keep slinging insults instead of engaging in an informative conversation, like I am doing, including providing links to “known” facts, instead of engaging in mystical sophistry and completely ignoring what we do know about the Universe.
p.s. I am using the term sophistry in the most benign sense. I would never accuse you of lying.
Reality-as-it actually-is, okay so that’s the stuff scientists study, atoms and such, biology, laws of nature, gravity and such.
Do you understand what I’m trying to say, “Reality-as-it actually-is” must permeate through the “membrane” of our perceptions (senses, body & brain) then be translated into the thoughts of our mind, and the nonstop internal dialogue humans have going on inside of us.
Meaning that your sense of reality will always have a bit of the shadow play about it.
We can do our best, using critical thinking skills, to push ego aside and add layers of objectivity to our understanding of “Reality-as-it actually-is” - but we can never "touch"it.
Incidentally, I believe “Physical Reality” is a better, much more to the point label.
“Reality-as-it actually-is” seems to be begging a judgement call. Who’s reality, a Christian’s, a scientist’s, a gardners, or tree hugger’s, etc., which in any event is asking what the human mind thinks reality to be.
Which totally misses the point that Physical Reality unfolds with or without us thinking about it or presuming we are thinking it into existences, etc.
Earth created humans with our amazing human mind. Our minds created God.
Would God have been a possible answer? Sir, I only ask the question to yourself because I am not clear.
The thing that I don’t do and you do, is disassociate our sentient existence from the rest of existence.
What valid justification is there for it? The Universe, as an emergent characteristic of Reality’s infinitude, manifests life and awareness, to no less a degree of Realness than it does the electromagnetic spectrum and turnip greens.
There is no hierarchy of importance, or of “Truth” in the non-relative context of Entirety (aka Reality-as-it-actually-is). But that does not invalidate in any way the back and fourth of Human inquiry. We navigate our existence based on picking and choosing from the relative context of our localized experience.
All understanding of the nature of Nature is approximate until it isn’t. Since our Being is not something other than All of THIS.
There are thousands of years of testimony to the fact of the innate seamlessness of our Existence with the potential for existence.
I’m not going to waste time investing in more obfuscation of that (to whatever degree is possible moment by moment).
To own something requires something other to own. It is an example of our usually unexamined relativity centric thinking (not unrelated to anthropomorphic projection).
Relativity centric thinking, being optional.
For instance when contemplating the sense of “I” associated with “your” experience…what/where is it, and what/who is owned?