Do you understand what the buddha meant? Please claim something so i can make my point from pages back about it being an ideal to claim something. i can assume from my limited understanding that the buddha was saying, "it is harder for a man with egoic baggage to get into heaven, than for a camel to go through a very small gate." Why is most everything you posit the extreme of any idea? Like it can't be, "get rid of attachment as is humanly possible for you in this lifetime", it has to be "have no personal identity". I actually do think we will go through a phase where we will quite possibly not get to keep even .01 % of our identity, but it won't likely be before dying.
Since you have referred to Buddhism several times and expressed an aspiration toward Buddhism, I took it that it goes without saying that you know that one of the central tenets of all official mainstream Buddhist doctrines is that the Buddha taught there is no self, no separate personality, no individual personality, and that these, at best, are merely an illusion.
And also, that since you have referred to Buddhism several times and expressed an aspiration toward Buddhism, I took it that it goes without saying that you know that this tenet is controversial in the Buddhist community itself, and actually difficult to support with the Pali Canon. The essay that I linked to on the importance of belief in karma and rebirth was written by a Buddhist teacher and scholar who maintains that the Buddha never taught there is no self, but only that he said that the things we usually identify with (body, feelings, thoughts) are not the self.
So I asked you "Do you understand this to mean that the Buddha told them to maintain the stance "I have no personal identity"?" to see which side of the controversy you are on.
No, i am saying that what i can't believe is that God would be so totally insane as to intervene somehow in this material realm only to tell us the opposite of what is true. If i did, i could become a gnostic or kabbalist, but i don't. I can understand a lot of the message may have been lost in translation, but i don't think it makes sense to turn the whole thing upside down and say, "God sucks because he hates almost everyone, so let's worship. By the way god is love." I don't "have to" do anything other than breathe and eat etc., but i don't believe something that is evil or even half-decent, deserves to be worshipped. Feared maybe, but not worshipped. I "have to" believe what i believe until the belief changes. I don't understand where you are getting all the gritting of teeth and maintenance it takes to have a simple belief that white is white, and if the christian God is anything sensible, then it can't be something not sensible. It is actually a lot easier to believe that than in some God you "have" to call "good" when it doesn't seem good, and you don't think the word applies. I don't have to grit my teeth and try to force a cognitively dissonant idea to be used in my ideology.
It's interesting how in this, you never question your own values, only God's - you believe to know what is true, and if it is should turn out you're wrong, you're willing to go to hell, rather than change your sense of right and wrong.
no, a pure epistemic egoist would, not a normal, reasonable person who feels they may have something to learn.
Frankly, now I think you are arguing just for the sake of arguing with me, and/or to appear good.
I wonder what it feels like to know you can never be wrong again?
I would presume you already know that, given that you believe that it is clear to you what a reasonable epistemic position is.
no. christianity, as generally understood, is basically a religion deeply influenced by western philosophy. So martin luther didn't sit around waiting for someone to ok his ideas - he was told by his predecessors in the west (starting with plato's cave maybe) that the group is not always more correct than the individual. Were Luther's ideas "divine inspiration, irrefutable words from God," or were they just something that made more sense than some other interpretation? I mean someone saying, "the pope isn't always right," doesn't have to be taking every bowel movement for God when he says it, for it to be the truth.
Speaking of Luther - some believe that Luther was suffering from scrupolosity, and that his turning away from Catholicism was actually a misguided attempt to manage the scrupulosity.
I find that in some schools of Hinduism, for example, they don't have this problem: all apparent evil of the world is explained away with karma and reincarnation; and God, even though He is the one making this horrible world ruled by karma and reincarnation possible, is good anyway, because this world is not the alpha and omega of existence, instead, it is only a virtual reality in which living entities are allowed to play out their desire for enjoyment that would be independent from God.
that's great, i just don't happen to believe in it because it doesn't make sense to me that we shouldn't respect our feelings and ideas, and instead look at it all as "false".
Where did anyone say that you should not respect your feelings and ideas and instead look at it all as false?
This is real. It may not be everything that is real, or even the most important thing that is real, but it deserves some respect and honor anyway.
If only you'd respect and honor other people's feelings and ideas ...
i was asking you to show me i am wrong about using reincarnation as "past and future", instead of "past and biological lives". I really don't claim to be an expert on buddhism, but it seems like a useful interpretation, even if it is only a metaphor. That link you posted doesn't do it for me without a better explanation.
I don't understand. Could you restate the problem, or point me to the post where you first brought it up, please?
Descartes started with the idea that a demon was tricking him, so he can't start with "god is true", or any other catholic idea, otherwise his "proofs" would be invalidated.
I said:
I think Descartes is an extremely poor example. Note that all along, he had full conviction in the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
He did not arrive at this conviction by following the steps he worked out in his philosophy!
In his philosophical works, he indeed tried to f work out reasons for belief in God. But
IRL, for himself, he did not use those. He did not have to rely on his philosophy for his belief in God. At the end of the day, he could blow out the candles on his writing desk and go to bed, and sleep peacefully, sure of the Catholic doctrine. Which is not the case of those who are not already theists/Catholic and who are trying to follow the steps he worked out in his texts: they don't arrive at the same conclusions Descartes did.
i am not relying on descartes philosophy anyway, i am just saying that he understood epistemic independence and epistemic interdependence are good to use together, not to pick one or the other as a pure position. First you accept that you are thinking, that you can't but do otherwise and nobody else is going to do it for you, then you accept that you may not think everything correctly, then you try to make sense of what you think along with what other people may think. It isn't that difficult.
Again, these philosophical games can be peacefully played by people who are already sure, like Descartes, of some basic premises, the validity of which they never establish in their texts, but take them for granted.
unintelligent to act that way. If someone says, "do this" and doesn't provide a way for you to do that, perhaps you just can't do it, but if you can do it and want to do it, and you are just too unintelligent to realize you can kill two birds with one stone that is too bad. I think this has more to do with manipulative communication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication than anything else.
People want to teach the other person that they can't be told what to do, and since they can't communicate well, they do it by hurting themselves, instead of just saying, "i'm not doing this because you told me to, i wanted to anyway."
Interesting interpretation, sounds very American.
I don't think this is what goes on in psychological reactance.
What is so difficult about trusting yourself enough to know what you need to do? I am not even saying it is easy doing it, but knowing it shouldn't be that hard.
The difficulty is not about "trusting yourself" (that's a problematic term anyway).
The difficulty is in not knowing whether something is indeed a need, or a mere desire.
The difficulty is due to knowing, based on past experience, that there is no guarantee that acting on a desire will lead to happiness.
The difficulty is in figuring out what a worthy goal is.
The difficulty is in not knowing what will lead to true happiness, and what will not.
