Santa V God

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Paladin

As I understand it, you only need three to qualify as a crowd


Thanks for the Batchelor quote, I really enjoy his work along with people like Tony Parsons, Jan Kersschot, and Jeff Foster.
I still maintain that it is in the best interest of the religious to keep the individual from contacting actuality directly without the baggage of a self propped up by dogma. Even Buddhism has a tendency to do this as you point out.
Notice how quickly the religious people are to react when it is suggested that all their religious striving is only to avoid the terror of existential angst.

Say it isn't so, Paladin!

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by Paladin

Thanks for the Batchelor quote, I really enjoy his work along with people like Tony Parsons, Jan Kersschot, and Jeff Foster.

Look, I enjoy reading your posts but just when I've finally beaten my reading list down into single figures...then BAM you come along with some more. Cut it out!!!

In retaliation: Michael Leutchford.

s.

[cyberpi]

I am a witness testifying counter to the atheists: God is real, living, and discoverable.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Our textbooks teach empirical knowledge for the purpose of broadening the mind. Religion teaches fanciful supposition, suppresses logical scrutiny and imposes a top down dogma.

My point exactly... do people teach, or do textbooks teach? You've got the textbook as being causal. Do you not choose from the information?

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Smokers claim they enjoy it, their lives are not richer or longer lasting for it.

Yes good point: leading a life that feels richer internally may corrupt the life externally.

Originally Posted by Paladin

Notice how quickly the religious people are to react when it is suggested that all their religious striving is only to avoid the terror of existential angst.

I would say intellectual curiosity of existence played a role... I've never had your terror of existential angst. It seems that you really want the religious to merely be avoiding an alleged terror. You would have to describe this terror since you are the one who has experienced and defined it. Or... do you merely define and suggest things that you've never personally experienced?

[Paladin]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

I would say intellectual curiosity of existence played a role... I've never had your terror of existential angst. It seems that you really want the religious to merely be avoiding an alleged terror. You would have to describe this terror since you are the one who has experienced and defined it. Or... do you merely define and suggest things that you've never personally experienced?

Your swift response seems to validate my point, but regardless, you say you have never experienced existential angst? Then good for you, congratulations on having sufficiently insulated yourself from the idea that you can "strut and fret your hour upon the stage..."

[wil]

lookee what I found on interfaith.org

May 16, 2008
Religious Education contravenes children’s human rights

by David Masters

A committee of MPs has released a report contending that forcing school children to engage in religious acts of worship and religious education classes could constitute a breach of their human rights. The report from the cross-party joint committee on human rights states that any child of 'sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding' should have the right to opt out of religious ...

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by Bandit

I understand and am in complete agreement. It is really a horrible thing. You have good insight to what is really happening that can only come from actually seeing all this from a distance & in this particular case, distance is good! The only thing is what we both see and just want to make sure, is it has to happen on its own & not with force because doing it through a communistic approach is just as bad. Yes?

I am not sure why it takes the public so long to figure out they have been lied to (in both religion & politics) but do you think it has to do with many of us being raised to not be able to distinguish fact from faith? IN other words, the religions preach/brainwash their beliefs as absolute fact & therefore they do not know how to acknowledge or understand there is a difference between fact & faith?
Or do you think they just keep using all that to keep their global powers?
I mean you have to be a very good double talking liar these days if you want to win an election because it is as if people are not interested in honesty & will believe anything but the facts. ROFL!

I totally see where you are coming from with religion being the biggest conditioner to accept the lies. This is the second beast that gives power to the first beast & has been going on since forever. Funny how that works.

It is like an addiction or handicap, a crutch that so many do not know how to walk on their own, a very hard habit to break, but first the people have to ackowledge its stronghold, as we both have. It kills & divides people while all along thinking train wrecks are good for us. Those removing the structures as in rejecting the religions are more prominent & at large numbers than ever before (approaching the 4th largest group). While these still hold beliefs they do reject the structures and have abolished them for themselves. More will figure it out in good time, so we are making some progress for the better in that respect. Cutting off the second, two headed beast is not easy and each person will have to do it for themselves.

I do think we are on the same page with all of this, but express it a little different.

I am not used to people agreeing with me so much.... is this a trick ?

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by Paladin

Your swift response seems to validate my point, but regardless, you say you have never experienced existential angst? Then good for you, congratulations on having sufficiently insulated yourself from the idea that you can "strut and fret your hour upon the stage..."

No, I don't think I have ever experienced your existential angst, especially not with any degree of terror. Can you describe it in further detail? Would a person with their life threatened experience it? Would a coward have existential angst? Would a fear of death be the existential angst? What exactly is this terror of existential angst that you've defined and attributed to others?

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by Snoopy

Yes, perhaps more the realm of the poet rather than the Western philosopher. Given that reality is not something abstract and so cannot be grasped with words, it is surely appropriate for a philosopher to use whatever means possible to try (and ultimately fail) to “get the job done.” This is why I think one finds that in Eastern philosophy you may find subjective, objective and poetical approaches, often within one paragraph.

s.

This is why I have had a volume of the writings of Lao Tzu for longer than any other book I own. Poetry, wisdom and philosophy combined without religion. (Though there are those that make it one). But it is no panacea and it has to be remembered that from the same origins we also have that textbook found to this day in any military academy of note, "The Art of War".

The reasons I have steered away from western style Buddhism is because (a) I always saw it almost as the ******* child of Taoism (with the addition of icons and the other paraphernalia of religion), (b) it is the reserve of the white middle and upper classes or those aspiring to be so, (of which I do not belong) and (c) it is or has become way too complicated. But I do recognise that of all the worlds major religions this one is the most benign. I know many Buddhists. White, western ones that choose it as a lifestyle along with careful control over their consumerist impulses and all the usual gestures toward environmental issues. That sounds derogatory but it is not meant that way. I'd rather have a world full of people like that than any other. But one thing I seem to sense is how little they really laugh. Its like Buddhism "al-la-west" seems to kill the child in them. But when I was in India and Nepal the laughter there was everywhere. It was completely infectious too. And even when you see the Dalai Lama interviewed he is always laughing and joking. But here in the west... maybe its just my bad luck to have only met a secret sect of Grim Buddhists, I dont know.

Tao

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

No, I don't think I have ever experienced your existential angst, especially not with any degree of terror. Can you describe it in further detail? Would a person with their life threatened experience it? Would a coward have existential angst? Would a fear of death be the existential angst? What exactly is this terror of existential angst that you've defined and attributed to others?

You know Cyberpi for a bright guy I might sometimes wonder about your ability to comprehend the simplest train of thought. But I do not.

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

My point exactly... do people teach, or do textbooks teach? You've got the textbook as being causal. Do you not choose from the information?

Not if you are being beaten, coerced or bribed at too young an age to comprehend. A book of botany does not use devices of trickery. It does not promise salvation or hell. It is about observable facts not about inherited superstitions. The text book is clear and unambiguous and prevents the teacher from adding fanciful interpretations. The Bible is confused, contains contradictory 'advice' and can be perverted to say whatever any crazy wants it to say. So books can be causal but they do not have to be. Usually they are tools.

But why do you keep asking me questions to which you already know the answer?

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

You know Cyberpi for a bright guy I might sometimes wonder about your ability to comprehend the simplest train of thought. But I do not.

So you have judged that I might not be bright enough to comprehend this terror of existential angst? If you are, then surely you are able to clarify for Paladin what this terror of existential angst is. Put it into more words to give it greater definition. Have you experienced it too? What exactly is it? I wish to learn more about it, so please put it into words and provide examples so that I, or someone else who has never experienced it, might comprehend it... without false assumption.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

But why do you keep asking me questions to which you already know the answer?

I often have a different answer or understanding than you... so I am interested in your answer. With a terror of existential angst, I have no answer... I have not experienced it. Hopefully you or Paladin can better describe it.

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

So you have judged that I might not be bright enough to comprehend this terror of existential angst? If you are, then surely you are able to clarify for Paladin what this terror of existential angst is. Put it into more words to give it greater definition. Have you experienced it too? What exactly is it? I wish to learn more about it, so please put it into words and provide examples so that I, or someone else who has never experienced it, might comprehend it... without false assumption.

Well you appear to have failed to comprehend what I was saying there.

Existential angst. Well you know that certainty that you have that God exists and the comfort it brings you? Well it is like the polar opposite of that. The certainty that there is no God and death means the end. For people brought up under religious influence, and that is everybody, realising this with a profound depth of perception can be a cold, dark, hopeless place. This is that angst.

But again you ask a question to which you already knew the answer. Most curious.

[Paladin]

Exactly Tao. You see Cyberpi without the idea of there being a comprehensible order to life, without the concept of self and other there is a terrific void that most people don't like to face. The nice thing about religion is that it panders to the individuals sense of self and its continuity. Even the idea of "meaning" in itself is arbitrary at best. So as long as you can come up with a story in which there is a self and that self continues if it does the right things and that in the end everything will be just swell, deus ex machina as it were, you will be just fine. And, since you claim immunity you have obviously accomplished just that. Nothing wrong with that if it works for you.

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by Paladin

I still maintain that it is in the best interest of the religious to keep the individual from contacting actuality directly without the baggage of a self propped up by dogma. Even Buddhism has a tendency to do this as you point out.
Notice how quickly the religious people are to react when it is suggested that all their religious striving is only to avoid the terror of existential angst.

I don't think that the religious can even contemplate existential angst in any personal way. You don't find out about it until you're well outside the box looking back in. You know, philosophy has a cutting edge just like technology. And philosophy, just like science, has moved beyond religion and it's medieval functionalism.

I think that a comparison analogy between fans of professional wrestling and religionists would be more accurate. I was never allowed to believe in Santa. I corrected that when I had kids!

Chris

[Paladin]

I dunno Chris, it would be unseemly to group people like Bishop Spong, or Thomas Merton or Br. David Steindl Rast into that group, but I hear what you're saying. I do find it hard to believe that any educated Christian would not have read Paul Tillich though.