What I find interesting about these meandering discussions is that the contemporary religious view is notably physicalist.
The traditional Western view of consciousness - obtained through belief in anamnesis - is that it is unique, quite separate from the natural world and makes the mysteriousness and magic of it. The modern Western ‘secular’ view of consciousness is that it is of a piece of nature and must conform to any or whatever of the dominant empirical “ontologies” - evolution, universal consciousness, etc. - that we are consistently reduced to.
Nietzsche’s acute analyses and uncanny insights still so often prove correct - religious thought consistently demonstrates itself to be a closed system. And, also, less stated but equally demonstrated, that science itself is grounded in religious thought.
You’re welcome to read up on it yourself, since the intersection between science and religion is now a huge research field, but here’s a brief article from, IMO, a not very good CDN magazine that attempts to make academia “pop.”
I think saying science is grounded in religious thought may be misleading, at least based on this article. Both are inspired by curiosity, wonder, and mystery. I think that both employed rudimentary induction, and sometimes deduction, but that science developed induction and deduction into the scientific method and formal logic up to set and number theory.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that religion does not tentatively accept its findings. That is why religious people often fear science will upset their apple cart. Faith does not stand up to evidence well and is not as reliable when making predictions such as is this airplane likely to get me to my destination in one piece and how much fuel will it take to make the flight.
With regard to religion being a guide to how to act, I think that requires ignorance of religions that practiced human or animal sacrifice, burned heretics at the stake, and justified and started religious wars.
I know the texts talk about the here and now too, for example in the Kalama Sutta, but from a practical use of time, wouldn’t ocean-surfing, going on year-long ocean cruises or snow-skiing or some other activity you might enjoy be a better use of a limited time in only one life?
This doesn’t seem to me to follow at all. It seems like my best bet to have a happy life is to be content with little and to be kind to others.
Hi @Jayarava
Wow!! Thank you very much for taking your time to answer my question so thorough. At the moment I am just blown away from reading it through. I need certainly a bit longer to take that in.
This is exactly what I was hoping for. Honesty and food for thought. @Meggers and you were kind enough to share this (with me). As I said I am not interested in arguing and picking things apart but I am certainly taking my time to digest your thoughts.
Funny that, I just read something yesterday at my clients place: “Eastern Religions want to empty their minds in meditation, we want to fill the mind with the empowering words of God during meditation”
Alex, it’s a negative and ugly idea. This is the kind of stuff Nietzsche was so critical about when he trashed Buddhism for being pessimistic and riddled with the sad passions. I never once had a problem with rebirth being forced on me in Japan, nor among my Chinese friends who are Buddhist, so that it’s coming up here speaks very poorly of Theravada and goes to show that it really is as fundamentalist and dogmatic as so many people familiar with it say that it is.
I remembered my interactions with you. I did not at all mentioned you or directly reply to your post to recommend you to read rebirth evidences.
This is still a Buddhist forum. I think unless the others requested me not to show them these I am not overstepping any boundaries here.
Unless you’re just telling me that a Buddhist monk can never, while you’re here, promote the right view of rebirth while in a Buddhist forum, to others (not you) who might benefit from it.
I am not at all recommending you to read it, and you can just ignore me if you wish. Or if it is not enough, feel free to block me.
This thread is open again. Thank you for your patience. It needed a major tidy up.
I have moved many of the posts discussing evidence of rebirth to a separate thread:
It is not against the rules (or indeed unexpected or unreasonable) for posters to advocate EBT-related beliefs on an EBT-related forum. However, this was off topic in the context of this thread. Please keep the discussion on-topic going forward.
Thanks for the multiple flags. As always, if you have issues with any posts, flag them to bring them to the attention of the moderators. Many of these flags were by community users on ad hominem argument, which is againt the guidelines. Please also refrain from this going forward.
Thanks again for your patience.
Regards,
suaimhneas (on behalf of the moderators)
To consolidate and emphasize: the cossetting of men here as somehow authoritative over women is blatantly apparent on this discussion board. And it is profoundly unfair, ignorant and offensive.
Dear Meggers,
I personally strongly disagree with your characterisations of my and the other moderator’s actions as being motivated by bad faith and sexism (and this reply is purely made off my own bat). I do not intend to publicly debate moderation decisions here (it’s against the guidelines also). However, after some thought, it felt fairest for me to leave your three posts here (since I was the one who tidied up the thread, it felt like a conflict of interest to do otherwise). I would suggest taking up any general concerns about moderators or moderation with the female-majority forum management committee (I’m not sure if they have a general tag, but I’ll PM you contact details). You will get a fair hearing there. I’m sure that the other moderators will be happy to also discuss your concerns via PM if you wish, but you may wish to “go upstairs”. I am not going to get into a further public discussion about all this and further such posts will be removed as off-topic here. Please instead directly take this up via PM with the forum management committee or the other moderators at @moderators.
Regards,
suaimhneas
