Wanted: Honest intelligent productive thinking to resolve the issue God exists or not.

originally posted by: Out6of9Balance
a reply to: neutronflux

God doesn't like sarcasm.

I agree!!

a reply to: ontogeny55

If you quote CS Lewis,
you should indicate that.

So I found one person's response to CS Lewis.
Deconstructing C.S Lewis on Reasoning to Atheism
I'm reading it now.



Now that is some Honest Intelligent productive thinking !

originally posted by: TzarChasm

originally posted by: Out6of9Balance
a reply to: neutronflux

God doesn't like sarcasm.

Or maybe it's just you.

a reply to: ontogeny55

”Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought.

And it also produces the sense of a me.....that does thought!!

Is there really a 'me inside' doing thought?

Is there really a thinker of thought?

When it is found that there is no thinker of thought..... then the one that is so desperate to be saved....will be lifted away.....it was not there to start with!!

There is no me.....so how can I be saved?

a reply to: pthena

So I found one person's response to CS Lewis.
Deconstructing C.S Lewis on Reasoning to Atheism
I'm reading it now

Thought can't be trusted.
But most are addicted to it.

But if thought stops....the true intelligence is unveiled.

Thought divides and makes stories about things which aren't.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Honestly now:

There are benefits to Evangelical Christianity just as much as there is benefit in your Non-Duality.

The benefit is a suicide prevention. And that's it as far as I can see.

A person is overcome by their mistakes, bad choices, overwhelming obstacles which prevent them from being proud of themselves. No way forward. Futility behind; futility ahead; what does it matter ?

Both systems offer "a second chance to live."

Christianity at least has the doctrine of Sanctification, whereby the believer actively works at living better, treating others with sympathy and charity.

Non-dualism on the other hand dismisses reality altogether. "Oh, those nasty things I did to people, hey they never happened! There is no me, there is no he that I hurt; all just a thing that seemed to happen. It didn't really happen, because nothing really happened."

But where is the Sanctification? Where is the point when you actually treat people as individuals ? How can you even respect an individual person if you don't even believe there are individuals ?

a reply to: pthena

There are benefits to Evangelical Christianity just as much as there is benefit in your Non-Duality.

Zen and Non Duality enriches no one.
There is nobody to be found.

originally posted by: pthena
a reply to: Itisnowagain

Honestly now:

There are benefits to Evangelical Christianity just as much as there is benefit in your Non-Duality.

The benefit is a suicide prevention. And that's it as far as I can see.

A person is overcome by their mistakes, bad choices, overwhelming obstacles which prevent them from being proud of themselves. No way forward. Futility behind; futility ahead; what does it matter ?

Both systems offer "a second chance to live."

Christianity at least has the doctrine of Sanctification, whereby the believer actively works at living better, treating others with sympathy and charity.

Non-dualism on the other hand dismisses reality altogether. "Oh, those nasty things I did to people, hey they never happened! There is no me, there is no he that I hurt; all just a thing that seemed to happen. It didn't really happen, because nothing really happened."

But where is the Sanctification? Where is the point when you actually treat people as individuals ? How can you even respect an individual person if you don't even believe there are individuals ?

When you don't believe individuals exist individuals don't magically vanish, they are still around.

We were taught to believe they are individuals and that this is the world but that is not necessary to perceive the world and to be alive and live with people.

No mind. The mind is the instrument used to be controlled.

Jesus wants you to be born again.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Concern for that which isn't causes all the troubles.

People are. Individual people are.

What does Erin the badyogi do ?
Yoga. She teaches yoga.
She teaches individuals, with individual bodies and minds.

That is Sanctification !

==========================

I was sitting on a couch with a drug numbed psychotic once, about 25 years ago.

He started telling me a very convincing and disturbing story full of blood and gore, a first hand account, and how he got away before any cops arrived.

Then he sort of lightened up and said, "The next day I prayed to Jesus, to make it go away. And he did. So it didn't really happen."

So did it never really happen, or was that a real event that happened and the disconnect from reality was the cause of his psychotic break ?

I kind of lean toward the latter.

a reply to: Out6of9Balance

We were taught to believe they are individuals and that this is the world but that is not necessary to perceive the world and to be alive and live with people.

Taught to believe ?

I remember a red brick wall from when I was in a baby carrier.
I wasn't taught that that wall was a separate thing from myself.
It was obviously a thing separate from myself.

If you think that the mind is merely a tool for brainwashing, then ... I don't know what to say.

Jesus wants you to be born again.

And then what ?

a reply to: pthena

a reply to: Itisnowagain

She's preaching to the choir here.
I already love myself.

and then what ?

Each other individual deserves that self love too.
She's sharing her gospel through that youtube video.

Life is more than talking or writing, see? With her I agree.

We don't live another's life. We live our own.
Other individuals live their own.

We live together in the Immanence that is God.
God we have in common with all individuals.

We share in deed and in word.
It takes considerable thought to organize words in such a way as to share something worthy of the hearer's inherent dignity.

Let us then think and let us then speak.

a reply to: pthena
You don't live your life......you are merely the witnessing presence.

"No You and No Me, Just the Loving Awareness in Which All Appears - Rick Linchitz"

It depends on your definition of what 'god' or 'a god' is. Aren't you 'god' from your own cell's perspective and 'a god' from mine?

a reply to: Itisnowagain

“Relationship is the fundamental truth of this world of appearance,” the Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore — the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature — wrote in contemplating human nature and the interdependence of existence. Relationship is what makes a forest a forest and an ocean an ocean. To meet the world on its own terms and respect the reality of another as an expression of that world as fundamental and inalienable as your own reality is an art immensely rewarding yet immensely difficult — especially in an era when we have ceased to meet one another as whole persons and instead collide as fragments.

That's only the opening paragraph I and Thou: Philosopher Martin Buber on the Art of Relationship and What Makes Us Real to One Another. I recommend that you read it.

I don't suppose that you've ever been a priest, tasked to be the mediator between the people and God. The tremendous responsibility that that puts on an individual.

I watched a documentary called "Hail Satan?" on Hulu, because it was recommended by a member of The Satanic Temple. Toward the end of that documentary, after the activism and conflicts with the privileged majority religion, the guy gets real. He's just a guy with a vision. Trying in the best way he knows how to share a view of reality. But he's only one man. He can carry only so much as a man can carry.

He's a priest; an atheist priest; mediating reality to people.
By mediating reality, he also mediates the Immanence within reality.

And that is real.

a reply to: Ahadu

Why yes.
Yes indeed.

And the other cells are brothers and sisters.
One big happy family.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

I haven't watched the Rick Linchitz yet.

I need to take a little break from this high stakes theology for a bit.
Mental health respite if you will.

All I can think of right now is the grand utopia if there were no teachers.

That grand utopia would resemble Lord of the Flies, William Golding.

Be back later. God willing.

=====================

Okay. I've decided to get off my high horse.
This soap box aught to be good enough.
...
What ? No soap box even ?
...
Alright then,
I'll just be for a bit.

Life is better when you don't need to know and lose all control giving it to God.