I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be flippant or condescending. Fighting the intellectual battles around here in this forum has taken a lot out of me. It's like exploring something very beautiful in meditation only to see it destroyed by unspiritual people. There are things to experience that are so beautiful, experiences that are profound and worth exploring. But seeing those experiences get trampled is more than I can bare. That's why I had to say it was a spiritual journey. I didn't mean to offend you.
Is Atheism Irrelavent?
- Thread starter Mazulu
- Start date
I assume you have learned some Russian during your stay in the USSR . Here is some slow movie in a documentary what your atheist in power did to the arrested 135000 evangelicals and killed 85000 of them by firing on them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZEhIuhipWE
I'll be experiencing a beautiful couple of hours this evening when I attend the Andre Rieu and JSO..........I'll proabably whip the Mrs up out of her seat for a dance when they play the Blue Danube, and make a bloody big old fool out of myself!
Have an awesome time!
How do you get from absolutely nothing, to the big bang singularity without a God to create it. There is a way, but you can't do it all at once. You can't get something as complicated as our universe to just pop into existence without pre-existing conditions that support it.
Let's borrow from semiconductor physics the idea that an electron excites out of it's conduction band, and leaves behind a hole. Inconceivably long ago before there was anything at all, there were things that would pop into existence with their anti-thing, and then annihilate again. The first thing-(anti-thing) pairs that existed were completely unlimited. Random pairs would pop into/out of existence, and possibly many different things simultaneously until they began to interact with one another, and create restrictions upon one another. Time did not exist yet, so these things that popped into existence were immutable and unchanging, other than the fact that they could annihilate one another.
Gravity is the negative potential energy that balances positive energy. Gravity is the space-time continuum trying to recombine with energy, but it can't because space-time continuum and energy are assymetric.
Let's borrow from semiconductor physics the idea that an electron excites out of it's conduction band, and leaves behind a hole. Inconceivably long ago before there was anything at all, there were things that would pop into existence with their anti-thing, and then annihilate again. The first thing-(anti-thing) pairs that existed were completely unlimited. Random pairs would pop into/out of existence, and possibly many different things simultaneously until they began to interact with one another, and create restrictions upon one another. Time did not exist yet, so these things that popped into existence were immutable and unchanging, other than the fact that they could annihilate one another.
Gravity is the negative potential energy that balances positive energy. Gravity is the space-time continuum trying to recombine with energy, but it can't because space-time continuum and energy are assymetric.
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Vinaka vakalevu!
Yes, many believers don't know what Communism is all about and are compelled to label it Atheism.
So what, there is more written about Orcs in LOTR, does that make Orcs real?
Nonsense, you are attempting to lump in those who don't believe in gods with believers in gods.
Why would science waste it's time with that when there are far more important things than appealing to delusional idiots.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
That depends. I don't think that Theosophists are necessarily crazy, just because of their 'ascended masters' ideas. More broadly, I don't think that everyone who believes that their prayers are answered is crazy. Psychiatry and clinical psychology are careful to make a distinction between healthy religious experience and symptoms of mental illness.
The whole subject of the different ways that religious believers believe that prayers are answered, and precisely how they believe they are in contact with their purported higher powers, is a wonderful source of topics for threads here in the philosophy of religion area of Sciforums. As is the question of how healthy and pathological religious experience might be distinguished. That kind of discussion is what these forums should ideally be about.
My point is that everyone simply throwing school-yard insults and moral condemnations back and forth at each other isn't the best way to explore these fascinating questions. Sciforums needs to raise its game.
The Platonic tradition in the West has historically interpreted our knowledge of logic and mathematics, and our exercise of reason more broadly, in terms of an ascension. Supposedly these things involve our knowing timeless and eternal relationships that hold true in Plato's world of forms, or as later Christian Platonism would have it, in the mind of God. Reason has traditionally been thought of as the divine sense.
And in India the higher meditative attainments are often interpreted in similar ways, as visions of higher transcendental realms.
Ideas of visionary ascensions to higher realms are actually quite common in the history of human ideas and examples can be found in just about every culture known, all the way back to prehistoric shamanism.
As far as ghosts, spirits, angels, gods, goddesses and God go, I don't believe in their actual existence. But I am very interested in how people who do believe in higher personal powers imagine that these purported beings interact with human beings like themselves.
I'm not entirely sure what to make of all of this stuff. Personally, I tend toward a stoutly physicalistic view of things. But I definitely retain an interest in these older and more traditional interpretations of reality and while I think that their literal truth is unlikely, I'm not as willing as some here on Sciforums to ridicule them as nothing more than bullshit. At the very least, they reveal very interesting things about the deeper levels of human psychology. I don't for a moment want to label everyone who holds these kind of beliefs as crazy.
Stalin lasted, what like 30 years? Christianity reigned in Europe for over a thousand years.
This is good to read, Mazulu...but who are these ''ascended masters'' you speak of? I saw you mention this here and there, maybe you explain this elsewhere, and I just missed it.
Who Are The Ascended Masters and the Path of the Ascension
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ5Mev4-GqM
They don't seem to mention Mohammed! Or did I miss it?
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
This is good to read, Mazulu...but who are these ''ascended masters'' you speak of? I saw you mention this here and there, maybe you explain this elsewhere, and I just missed it.
I can't answer for Mazulu about what his beliefs are and aren't.
But here's a Wikipedia article on the ascended master idea. (The article's quality is uneven, but it should give you an idea.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascended_master
The idea seems to have been popularized 100-150 years ago by Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. In the years since, many others have taken up the idea and produced different versions of it. It basically consists of the idea that great spiritual teachers of all traditions all teach some core esoteric teaching, along with the idea that these teachers are reincarnated on some higher spiritual plane after their bodily deaths here, from which they still guide those spiritual seekers on this plane who are capable of tuning into them.
Dudes that are high.
"High" on what exactly?
Yes, I looked at the video earlier and also looked it up on wikipedia. Thank you, both. I was a little taken aback...''ascended masters'' believe themselves to be...dwelling in another dimension? Oh really?
So, this begs the question...who (or what) decides how to define spiritual enlightenment? [If we could answer this, perhaps we would be gods(goddesses) ourselves.]
In all seriousness, is there a definition we can all agree upon, when it comes to enlightenment?
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
do you even need to ask this?
lol!
It should be your goal. You should to try and attain perfection, as God is perfect. Work out what leads to perfection. Who is hitting the mark on all agendas? I am certain we can overcome our errors.Yes, I looked at the video earlier and also looked it up on wikipedia. Thank you, both. I was a little taken aback...''ascended masters'' believe themselves to be...dwelling in another dimension? Oh really?
So, this begs the question...who (or what) decides how to define spiritual enlightenment? [If we could answer this, perhaps we would be gods(goddesses) ourselves.]
In all seriousness, is there a definition we can all agree upon, when it comes to enlightenment?
In fact we should all be pointing out faults in each other, and learn from it, for it would be great to think that there would be future Sciforum Ascended Masters.
