Too Taboo To Chew! (Religion) (Page 14 of 16)

*Self honesty. I realize that perception is dualistic and arbitrary. Literally perceiving reality in a sequence of frames. According to perception, reality unfolds as though cause and effect were the case...but I have not observed an actual cause...only effects that we arbitrarily deem to be causes.
There are plenty of other ways of seeing that do not require cause and effect as a belief system in order that reality remain coherent...in fact, these alternate perspectives even account for the appearance of cause and effect.
Remembering that I believe that consciousness is the ground of all being, not matter, here is a short story that illustrates different ways of seeing that have no impact on whether what is perceived remains coherent.

~~~
Three monks are sitting on a bench outside the monastery on a breezy day.
"Look at the flag moving" said the first monk.
"Surely, it is not the flag that is moving, but the wind" said the second monk.
"You are both mistaken" said the third monk, "it is consciousness that's moving".
~~~

Now, to the first and second monk, reality appears 'visually' the same as it does to the third monk...for most practical purposes, it makes no difference at all which perspective one takes there.
With the third monk however, there is recognition that the 'frames' of reality aren't causing one another, but that each frame arises not from the last frame(cause and effect) but from the hand of God himself. He recognizes that the rosebud does not 'cause' the rose, but that each arises spontaneously in the moment from its true source; God.
*Please note that this answer comes from the level of personal experience, and not from the level of absolute truth.

I can show you how to do a bunch of magic tricks with sleight of hand and misdirection. Once I show you how to do them, you can identify the critical information that you were missing back when the tricks appeared magical. Being told that it is an illusion affords you the opportunity to consider what you are seeing in a different context... 

'Why' questions are a matter of cause and effect...so they don't exactly adhere to the requirements of an explanation about the lack of reality of cause and effect. I'll try and explain the idea as though you were asking 'how' it could be that perception of absolute truth is limited.
The short explanation is that perception separates things into subject/object, and that it separates things into content/context. Say you are perceiving a cat...the cat is separate from you according to perception, and thus, unknowable in its full essence. You cannot simultaneously know what it really means to be you, and what it means to be the cat...the cat is outside you...it is information to your mind that is trying to build a reality that's equivalent to the reality outside yourself out of using input data. Even if the mind could collect enough data to recreate reality within itself, it will be a replica of reality, and not the genuine article. Perception, by virtue of being perception, is limited to a segmented reality...it is not capable of grasping the entirety of the absolute.
As for content/context, it may help to give an example of that as well...with perception, there are false attributions that naturally arise. Perception has a focal point...what one sees is effectively the content of awareness...so you look at a chair in the room, and it is the content of your awareness, and the context of the chair is the room...the chair exists relative to the room...x distance from the wall, in n proportion to the dresser, etc. The sense of scale is derived from comparison.
Perception, by virtue of being separate from that which is perceived, is limited in its capacity to know what is perceived.
I was born and raised in Canada...and via perception, I can learn about China, and talk with people from China, and accumulate all the information there is to collect concerning China, but I will never know what being born Chinese means, because perception is limited and seemingly personal(and limited by the fact that it is personal).
As for whether perception will end via the doctrines of enlightenment...no, it won't. Perception is just a poor investment. It is like a tiny television screen in the middle of an enormous stadium. We sit so close to it, thinking that reality is only accessible via this tiny screen. The doctrines of enlightenment simply suggest that we step back from the screen, and realize that what we are is not the content of that screen. Perception may persist...the body(something that is perceived) may go right along doing what it has always done...there's nothing personal about enlightenment, as there is no individual that gains from it. It is literally a selfless act...submitting to the will of God at the total abolition of any sense of personal will.

I'm not interested in representations...I'm interested in substance. You can represent love through a doodle of a heart, or through a gesture of charity...but those are representations...I'm interested in the substance. So the substance of God is Love...I accept and agree with that. So you are saying that God, before creating the universe, Loved himself.
What I'm saying is that 'before' time, is not actually 'before' time, because 'before' IS a time. For God to exist before time is a contradiction.
Now, you might say that God exists outside time...but then you cannot infer that God transitions between states, as states are temporal...God could not transition from a state of being okay with there not being a universe, and spontaneously change(because changes happen over time) and suddenly decide to create a universe. Time is the observation of change...an artifact of perception. If God changes, then God is subject to time.

Created somethingness out of his own ability to do so doesn't mean anything.
If I create a bird out of my own ability to do so, that says nothing about what I did. What is the bird made of? Is it made out of something that didn't exist prior to the bird being made?
Either God made somethingness(the universe) out of nothingness, or God made the universe out of himself...which would have to be matter and energy. This computer would be God...my hands would be God...there could not be anything that is not god, unless 'not-God' existed before the universe, and that's what God made the universe out of.

The search for an ultimate cause as a point in time is the pursuit of the perspective that you're maintaining...not the one that I'm supporting.

Take an animation loop for example...arbitrarily, any frame could be the starting point....and it would go on forever and ever and ever and ever....and if you traced it backwards, you couldn't find a beginning that way either. The beginning is not a consequence of the frames. You cannot trace the appearance of the frames back to a first cause, because there's no such thing as a first cause....every cause is an effect.
you can however trace the existence of the animation to its source which is the artist/God. To analyze the artist in terms of the sequence of frames is absurd.
The present is inescapable...nothing apart from it exists except to the imagination.

-Rob

The word 'limited' does not necessarily mean 'fatally flawed'. For example, all 10 foot pieces of rope are limited to a reach of 10 feet. So when I say that all perception is limited, I mean that it is like a rope that is not infinite in length. If Creation is a revelation of God's own Self, then what we are trying to perceive(God) is infinite, and the means by which we are trying to perceive it is wholly incapable of perceiving it in its totality. At best, perception may allow for an approximation of what God is...but a photograph of a chair is not a chair. With an approximation one falls short of being a participant with what is perceived.

I can know the limits of my own perception, and that reliance upon perception falls extremely short of the absolute. Socrates knew that he did not know...(and knowing is a form of perceiving).   

Truth is verifiable only by identity with it, not by knowing about it.
Discovery of Truth begins with faith. First I hear of a far away land called China...I have faith in the trustworthiness of the person who told me, and so I begin to research China and collect all the information that there is to find about China and Chinese people. I have a good approximation of what China is. Finally, I visit China...now the evidence is all really moot. My research is moot. I'm in China, rendering the approximation virtually inert. I don't question whether I am actually in China based on the evidence that I collected over the years, because authentic experience trumps perception.
Experiencing God beyond perception is the ultimate answer. You can't perceive the absolute with any trustworthiness because perception is too limited to grasp the absolute. It must be experienced.
Truth is verifiable only by identity with it, not by knowing about it. 

If Science thinks it can uncover every detail of the absolute then yes...but as far as science's application to a linear mode of perceiving the world goes, it is not incompatible with ,y world view at all. Up to its 'limit' science is completely viable. It ensures that within the domain of linear perception(/its limit), we can procedurally arrive at trustworthy answers. Science does not perceive as God perceives God though...so it cannot see the absolute as it is.

That which is real cannot be threatened. 'Evil' is not the opposite of Truth, but its absence. Evil no more threatens Truth than the absence of heat("cold") threatens heat. To be at one with the Absolute is the end of Evil.

the past and future are artifacts of perception. Like frames that appear in an animation before the one that we are currently seeing, and after it. To think that this frame is the result of past frames is a consequence of belief in linear causality. To think that the last frame does not exist equally in the present when we are not looking at it is false...its existence is just as real.
To think that the past is not also present is like thinking that the things you can't see...like the back side of your compute monitor, isn't there simply because you can't see it. The limits of perception do not lend themselves well to describing reality. 'What I saw already and do not continue to see' is the past...only because perception has a limited capacity.

Firstly, there's no lack of hope in my world view...it is a world view that believes in the perfect order of things. Enlightenment is 'whatever is the answer'...it is an ineffable state as it is beyond description/perception. Knowing that perception is limited, i can at least be sure that to reach the absolute I must go beyond it.

I agree with this...and to me, it means that description of God as 'first cause' is inaccurate, because to God there is no time. God knows existence from beginning to end; every frame. I'd sooner think of God as the Source of creation, than as the cause of creation. To call God a 'cause' is false, because causes exist in time, and God does not. Time exists in God. A 'first cause' in time(and of time) would be within the world, which is within God, who is not within time.
Revelation of God occurs to perception...and as we evolve in oneness with God, so expands the capacity of perception up until we transcend the need for it.

I don't think it's accurate to say that God has a particular character...that's an anthropomorphisation. Character exists as a quality within God, but not of God, as God is ineffable. My objection was mainly concerning the fact that you said God created the world out of his own ability to do so...which means absolutely nothing insofar as an explanation goes...I could say that I create purple flying zebras out of my own ability to do so...but that's not an explanation, just an outrageous claim. One would be better off admitting that one did not know, than to believe that this could stand for an explanation. At least say 'out of God's mysterious ability to do so', lol.

-Rob

The what happens when we die question depends on what we are. The body dies. We don't...but whether there is an individual self that persists or not depends entirely on what you think an individual self to be.
Again, that anything could 'happen' also depends on how one considers reality...whether in the context of the absolute, or in the context of time. You seem bound and determined to consider things in the sense of time...in which case I can give an explanation that is not reflective of the reality of the absolute since the reality of the absolute is not subject to time.
What persists upon death, in the case that there is a 'something' identified with anything that might persist, is the ego/sense of self. Now, the afterlife is a more complex thing, as it is consequent to conditions of the ego...what the ego cannot fathom, it cannot experience. People who have 'out of body' experiences experience themselves as still having at least a spiritual/etheric body, since they can't fathom not being identified with a form.
The ego persists for so long as is necessary in order to evolve past it...whether it be by means of reincarnation, or in some other realm that somehow reflects the afterlife that the ego has imagined for itself. In Buddhism, the ego keeps reincarnating until the point of realization that there is no self to reincarnate...which isn't really a realization at all, since there is none left to realize it. It is not an infinite cycle of reincarnations...just as many as is necessary in order to transcend the personal self (or in Christian terms: until one is able to die unto themselves that they may have life.

As for the triune God...I wholeheartedly consider God in that manner. It is actually a nondualistic concept. God(which is beyond description) is descriptively(that is, to perception) understood in 3 forms...in transcendent form(God), immanent(as Christ/in man), and as the Holy Spirit of Life. ...like the Dance, the dancer, and the energy of the dance. Descriptively, we can consider them separate...but they are not so.
In any case, I don't think that any of these actually denotes personhood or individuality, as in all the forms, God is beyond personality.

The two parts in bold seem contradictory to me. If Creation is the self revelation of God(which I agree, it is), then God must be Creation...otherwise Creation is not self-revelation, but revelation of something other than God. If God knew the beginning and the end before he created Creation, then he knew himself before he created himself? these are the things that I find most incoherent about what you are sharing. I object to any description of God that is time based, as God is not subject to time.

'Knowing' has got nothing to do with the point of existence. 'Being' is the point of existence. There is a huge difference there. If knowing were the answer, then God could just give the knowledge to us, and we'd willingly surrender our wills to him since we'd easily see the absurdity in not doing so.

You said that God is Love. So you think that the absolute means 'Personal Love' or 'Personal Loving Love'. Surely that misses what you're trying to say...and I think that clarity might come if you could clearly define what 'personal' means. Surely you don't mean that a person is a body? and that it is personal because of something related to bodies?
In the dictionary it means 'of or pertaining to a particular person'...but what is a person?  It is such a critical notion that gets ignored so often.

Love needn't be personal. It is subjective...but not necessarily personal. I suppose that warrants further explanation...though I've gone over the idea quite a number of times already: The subjective and objective, in the context of the absolute, are one and the same.
In the I Corinthians passages about Love, Paul describes love as though he were listing off the qualities of an object...he makes no mention of a particular person completing a particular end of a love agreement.

I can paint with Love...and it is not personal. The painting isn't alive. I don't know if the painting will ever belong to someone else...it is not personal, but it is Love. Just because love may affect persons, does not make it necessarily personal. It is only personal when we perceive it as such. Even without Creation, God is Love, right? No object is necesary...Love IS the object of love.

Inference is something that minds do...not that things do. We infer connections based on our perceptions.

Falsity is not a 'thing' any more than 'cold' is a thing. They are each the absence of a 'thing'. In the sense that one is indifferent to the idea of a flying spaghetti monster, God is indifferent to falsity, because falsity is not a thing apart from misperception of God. God, not being threatened by misperception, is neither threatened by falsity. God is Love...not Love vs. Hate(which is truth and falsity existing together as you described: oblivion).

-Rob

At a brief glance I'd say that faith were better explained as what the arrows represent on the Science side of the diagram. The faith side is funny, but inaccurate in a general sense(and unfortunately quite accurate in the specific sense of a select number of 'believers').

-Rob

The vast majority of people don't actually examine their faith. I was raised a Christian, and I went to a Catholic elementary school. If anything, the Christians that I have met are Christians on a leisurely basis(like a lot of atheists that are atheist by 'default'). Virtually none of them could describe the pillars of the faith, let alone discern between Catholic and Protestant doctrines. They don't 'ignore' contradictory evidence, because they're not concerned with evidence. They usually don't have opinions on most matters like abortion or sex or what have you, until questioned and asked to form said opinion, at which point they may form said opinion based on their religion, or not. In daily life, the matters of their faith are as influential as the colour of shirt that they're wearing. Their faith may be comfortable/comforting, but not something that they are actively applying to things in place of reason as per the 'Science' side of the chart.
The 'Faith' side of the chart suggests that faith is an alternative to science and reason for most people. At best it loosely applies to an occasionally overly-vocal minority, but at worst it is a generalization that suggests that Faithful people and Scientists are not operating by the same means and processes, when I'm certain that's not the case since I am both reasonable AND faithful.

As far as people thinking they're right goes, that's not exclusive to any person or faith or anything. It is impossible to believe something that one knows to be false. We may naively assert humility by saying that we are surely mistaken or unaware about some things, however, none of us has any idea what we're wrong about. You and I and everyone out there secretly believes that our view is the right view -- scientific, religious or otherwise.

...and I really have no idea what you were trying to say with the bit about there being 'only one true religion'. So what if you've seen someone say that a different Christian denomination from theirs was totally misled? It's not a majority or even a large minority that does this. Few know enough or are concerned enough to know the difference between the different branches and sects. The Faith by default representation is no different than it would be for atheists by default. Not having questioned something is not the same as ignoring evidence. There is evidence for belief too.

-Rob

If you do have any evidence, could you make it a little more compelling than this so called atheists nightmare.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4

LOL the theory of evolution was first introduced in 1859....ever since, as soon as new evidence and knowledge is gained, the theory is expanded and improved and some people think this makes it a flaw??? While the Theory of evolution is at this time the best explanation we have, it is still a theory and not a Law.

If you have any particular issues with evolution, feel free to join in the discussion.

I don't have time to address all of your points atm, I ill try and get to them when I can.

If that lets you sleep better at night fine, in this context I think the two are interchangeable but whatever....

What are you talking about? The definition states :

"2. belief that is not based on proof:

not based on proof

I'll say it again

not based on proof

you might want to re-read it, it then goes on to say " He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact." That means he had no proof, just just thought it would, or had "faith" it would. In science, that's a great way to postulate a hypothesis and you need people to do that, but without any experimentation or proof it will never be accepted as legitimate.

The science side of the chart requires experimentation, does the evidence support the idea, theory created, new evidence, can the original theory be modified or improved etc etc....that is completely different to a religion, whose fundamentals cannot be experimented on, tested or proved false or true.

No it's not

I never said they render each other entirely false but only 1 version can be the real version. I'm sure I don't have to tell you but if you are a christian you believe that Jesus was the son of God and the only way for salvation and forgiveness of your sins is through him. If you don't accept he is the son of God, you are pretty much screwed. It is a fundamental part of Christianity that you must accept Jesus or you will not be saved. Now there are no sub-clauses in there that I have heard of that say if you are a nice person and believe in Allah but deny Jesus you still have a ticket to heaven, so regardless of similarities in the ultimate being they worship, only 1 version will lead your immortal soul to salvation.

The Jews do not recognize Jesus as the son of God this and neither do the Muslims, so while they do worship the same God, it is part of their doctrine that people who believe otherwise will be punished.

That is the point though, its the details that the religions use to differentiate each other and try to say that theirs is the true path.

I don't have time to address the rest right now, but all this is off topic.

The whole point of the chart was to show that people of faith have blindly accepted religion without ANY evidence of the existence of a supernatural being that created everything.

Unless you have such evidence, with regards to your belief system, you were told an idea, given no  supporting evidence whatsoever and have spent the rest of your life blindly accepting it. It doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you haven't applied critical thinking to your religious beliefs.

I'll drop the off topic stuff because it really is off topic...but to the above quote I'm compelled to reply.

Firstly, I was born into a Catholic family.
For most of my early life, I had only feelings of conflict and loss with religion...it didn't make sense to me. Issues like 'first cause' were on my mind constantly...and I couldn't wrap my mind around them.
Even while attending a Catholic elementary school, I didn't understand the purpose of Jesus or God in my life. I lived a Christian life because it was practical, and the moral foundations seemed to be of integrity...treating each other with love and kindness seemed good. My religiosity however, was not 'faithful' at that time though...just convenient.
Over the years, I strayed from Catholicism, and even went through a phase of atheism...
It wasn't until I had subjective experiences of Divinity that I actually became faithful though. And I can't really give you any more information on the subject of those experiences except to say that they were spontaneous, nonverbal states of realization that occurred to me...ineffable, but more real than anything else I've ever experienced.
Upon having said realizations, I came to understand religion differently, and to see it as much more profound than I ever could have imagined...and the conflicts between the teachings of various faiths has dissolved with the realization that the conflicts themselves are imagined and based on errors in the interpretation of context.

In any case, I have most certainly applied critical thinking to my experience of religion...though that has not rendered it false or meaningless at all. The meaning of any of the details depends entirely on context...so it is a limitation to consider mere details as terms for contradiction. Rather than ignoring contradicting evidence, said evidence can be understood and contextualized in light of considerations that may appear 'ad hoc' to those who are skeptical. Once it is seen where the seeming conflicts arise from, the conflicts dissolve of themselves.

-Rob

Fair enough.

Could we say that it is subjectivity that is the limiting factor in any experiment?

Even experiments that are not performed carefully may produce results. Would it be wiser to say that a successful experiment is one that eliminates the influence of subjectivity to a high degree? (I'd say entirely, but then a degree of subjectivity seems necessary to even warrant experimentation in the first place)

It sounds like belief without proof isn't what's dangerous, but rather how much we let that affect our experiments that's dangerous. Like, an open flame by itself is fine...just don't get it too close to the barrel of gasoline...lol.

A quote from a favourite teacher goes as follows: "Be passionate for God, not for belief systems."
Now, in my quest to understand God/the Absolute(I consider these to be synonyms), I may adopt various belief systems along the way...and I apply them in much the same way that we use axioms...things that we assume to be true, if only because we're interested in what follows from doing so. And so it is with my faith...my faith is practiced via beliefs, but beliefs are not the substance of faith...the substance of faith truth itself. In this context, I think that faith goes hand in hand with the spirit of science, where theories are used a lot in science, though ultimately the concern of science is more to do with the actual laws of the universe. Of course, faith concerns the subjective reality of the experimenter though...but that's really all that separates it from science/reason which is concerned with the objective reality.

For me, I don't think enlightenment is possible until the subjective and the objective collapse in unity with one another.

Does this make sense? I'd like to try and clarify it further if it's not clear now.

Surely, regardless of whether there is a creator or not, there are things that matter to you, and there are things in your life that are meaningful to you in terms that extend beyond a figure of speech.
Even if we don't have exclusive terms for each type of 'purpose' that you described, we still know what is being talked about.

...In fact, I think we're in agreement if we could just get past the limitations of language, since you divided the two applications of the ideas according to subjective and objective implications...which is very much the angle that I am concerned with.

Subjectivity is so critical in understanding the purpose of anything spiritual. Nothing objective has any importance except in a subjective context. Examination of one's own subjective nature is precisely the essence of spiritual discovery.
Why is science important to scientists? Because it helps us to expand our knowledge base? So why is it important to expand our knowledge base? so that we can accomplish more things? And why is it important to accomplish more things? So we can have a better quality of life? And what makes that important?

It goes on and on and on, until one looks within and realizes that subjectivity is at the core of everything.

This is not to undermine the validity of objective pursuits and ambitions like scientific understanding or wealth or health...none of their value is compromised by the realization that subjectivity is king. We want our subjectivity to be true to the objective world...and that's good...
Subjectivity is the thing that matters most...without it, no objective discovery is possible, let alone worthwhile.

-Rob

That kinda sums up the whole science vs faith discussion. You had a purely subjective internal experience, with no other evidence that anything actually happened. Critical thinking (i.e: using the scientific method) would not accept that anything actually happened without some sort of corroborating evidence, that's the difference. You accept something purely subjective as evidence that something happened while I wouldn't. Its possible it was an hallucination or delusion rather than a form of divine intervention. Of course I could be wrong but without any more information on what happened I don't have anything else to go on.

I would be a fool to imply or believe that you haven't given a lot of thought to your religious beliefs (its pretty obvious you have) and I am not trying to imply that, the term critical thinking within the scientific method is a more specific term than just thinking about it a lot:

"The scientific method requires evidence, preferably derived from validated testing. Anecdotal evidence and personal testimonies generally don't meet the qualifications for scientific evidence, and thus won't often be accepted by a responsible skeptic; which often explains why skeptics get such a bad rap for being negative or disbelieving people."

As an aside:  I've re-read a few posts and I hope I'm not coming across too strongly, and offending you, its actually nice to discuss this in an open manner with someone who has actually thought about their religious beliefs for a change, too many people get offended the second you question them on why they believe something.