Happy commercial non-denominational autumn holiday

[Rex]

The word tree, even the memory of a tree, is not the living, breathing tree. To forget that difference is to objectify. When we objectify we blindly harm others and self. Being blindly caught in concepts is the source of outer harm - like environmental destruction, terrorism and wars. Being blindly caught in concepts is also the source of inner harm - our suffering.

I think this is where T Rex is going wrong.

I'd love to chat with you about that SER8.

Can we move this thread to the Rugby League Forum?

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

lol
When I have more spare time Rex I propose to try to comment on some of your posts in this thread.

 

[Rex]

Will check in and look forward to the comments and challenges, SER8.

Challenges are adventures into the unknown. And challenging assumed truths is like spring cleaning the mind.

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

So are you saying there is no real debate, the question as to the existence of god is merely semantic?

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The word tree, even the memory of a tree, is not the living, breathing tree. To forget that difference is to objectify. When we objectify we blindly harm others and self. Being blindly caught in concepts is the source of outer harm - like environmental destruction, terrorism and wars. Being blindly caught in concepts is also the source of inner harm - our suffering.

The source – you should clarify that. Being blindly caught in concepts is the source of environmental destruction? Terrorism? Wars? Yes I think your argument is starting to unravel at this point?

 

[Rex]

So are you saying there is no real debate, the question as to the existence of god is merely semantic?

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The conflict over God is primarily semantic, yes, because most people are arguing about their concepts, their intellectualisation, their theory about God, not about God.

And I am also saying that if you need to "believe" in God, you have not experienced God. To need to believe in anything means you don't really experience it to be true. Do you need to believe in your hand? Do you need to believe in life?

And similarly, if you need to "believe" there is no God, you again are caught in concepts and are not open to experience. Do you need to believe you don't have three hands? No you just see it. And if you were open-minded, meaning open to looking for truth, then you are open to the possibility of other people having seen God (according to their meaning of the word God) in their own experience. It is an arrogant, egotistical and effectively blind person who cannot be open to the possibility of others seeing something they haven't, or of themselves seeing something in the future that they haven't seen so far. Yet people talk with proclaimed certainty, one way or the other. We live in an ambiguous, multi-dimensional world, and certainty of concept may be seen as the refuge of a mind unprepared to deal with ambiguity.

Often people argue about vastly different concepts of God - it's like one person is talking about apples and another about zebras and they both assume they are talking about the same thing.

The word tree, even the memory of a tree, is not the living, breathing tree. To forget that difference is to objectify. When we objectify we blindly harm others and self. Being blindly caught in concepts is the source of outer harm - like environmental destruction, terrorism and wars. Being blindly caught in concepts is also the source of inner harm - our suffering.

The source – you should clarify that. Being blindly caught in concepts is the source of environmental destruction? Terrorism? Wars? Yes I think your argument is starting to unravel at this point?

Not sure what you are saying about "your argument". I haven't got a series of points cleverly put together into an argument to fit a pre-determined outcome. I am no lawyer. I am just reporting what I see. Each observation stands alone, independent, by itself. I am open to being shown where my vision is faulty.

Explain the source of harm? Take away the terrorist's concepts, and where is his motivation to murder and maim? Take away the capitalists concepts and where is his motivation to damage through unconstrained greed? Take away the army's concepts and where is the motivation to wage war, to murder and maim? One group's army is another's terrorists. Concepts. Fixed and ungrounded beliefs. Take away the individual's concepts and where is the suffering? In all cases, it is delusion that leads to harm. Delusion through faulty concepts. In all these cases, imagine people fully present, without being driven by crazy concepts, where is their problem if not in believing their faulty concepts? Might sound unrealistic to some, but it only takes a shift in one person's viewing lens to change his own experience, and potentially to flow on to others.

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

Semantics – Rex isn't it just as arrogant, egotistical, and apparently blind to blandly assert that most people are arguing about their 'concepts' etc, not about god? I dispute your assumption, and anyhow, who cares what most people mean, why not stick to what we here want to talk about? I accept the existence of gravity, for example, but I dispute the existence of God, meaning the all-knowing creator of the universe, who had a son called Jesus, who can choose to answer our prayers, etc. That God, you know the one I mean.


Belief - yes some things cannot be sensed directly in the way that your own hand can be. So, do you believe in your appendix? Would you be irrational to deny its existence? Your argument about belief appears to lead to a conclusion that we cannot or should not use reason to understand the world. Is that your position?


Concepts as the source of harm - What I mean is this. Environmental destruction has been the result of pillaging our earth for private profit. Terrorism and wars are to do with building empires or purporting to resist them. The private profits and the empires are not just concepts. They are real, and they define massive power imbalances among sections of the world's population.

You say, 'take away the terrorist's concepts, and where is his motivation to murder and maim?' I'd say his motivation likely remains intact. His motivation might stem from watching his people murdered and exploited over an extended period of time. His terrorist strategy, on the other hand, certainly springs directly from his political beliefs -his concepts, if you like.

Is this what you are getting at –?
"Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too
Imagine all the people, Living life in peace …"

 

[Rex]

Semantics – Rex isn't it just as arrogant, egotistical, and apparently blind to blandly assert that most people are arguing about their 'concepts' etc, not about god?

No.

Mine was a pure statement of observation. It is based on wide observation. It is not fixed, infallible or inflexible. If the observations change, the assessment would change. In an instant. That position is a whole world away from "a person who isn't open to the possibility of others seeing something they haven't, or of themselves seeing something in the future that they haven't seen so far".

I dispute your assumption, and anyhow, who cares what most people mean, why not stick to what we here want to talk about? I accept the existence of gravity, for example, but I dispute the existence of God, meaning the all-knowing creator of the universe, who had a son called Jesus, who can choose to answer our prayers, etc. That God, you know the one I mean.

One word: metaphors

Jesus' teachings are dominated by parables (i.e. metaphors). Yet many churches and individuals in churches look to take the words in the bible literally - as if that is possible, helpful or meaningful. Are you? Are you interpreting the words and stories too concretely? I'm not asking you to drop a single belief you feel is working for you.

Belief - yes some things cannot be sensed directly in the way that your own hand can be. So, do you believe in your appendix? Would you be irrational to deny its existence? Your argument about belief appears to lead to a conclusion that we cannot or should not use reason to understand the world. Is that your position?

No. On the one hand there is using thoughts as tools, realising their inherent limitations, picking them up when useful and dropping them when not. On the other there are fixed belief systems to which we are habitually, intellectually and emotionally attached. Which do we choose, the tool or the master?

You accept there's no need to believe in your hand, but feel there is a need to believe in your appendix?

What are x-rays, cat scans, imaging technologies? They are extensions of our perceptions. What difference between being able to see through light in the visual spectrum, and seeing through imaging technologies (with the help of experts in this form of seeing)? They are both perception. If a doctor tells me my appendix needs to be removed, and I trust his expertise, then I approve its removal. No need to "believe" in an appendix. The appendix is "seen". And in a world of uncertainty and ambiguity, I learn to trust, based on experience.

Belief, like all other forms of conditioning, causes us no problems when the belief aligns with "what is". Trouble is that "what is" keeps changing, and beliefs tend to become rigid based on old perceived patterns of "what is". Then the beliefs no longer align with "what is". Bingo. Suffering. Insanity. Foolishness.

Concepts as the source of harm - What I mean is this. Environmental destruction has been the result of pillaging our earth for private profit. Terrorism and wars are to do with building empires or purporting to resist them. The private profits and the empires are not just concepts. They are real, and they define massive power imbalances among sections of the world's population.

On a relative level, I agree with what you say. The profits, empires and power imbalances appear real. In the conceptual world of our minds, the concepts of profits, empires and power imbalances are real. And that is how we interpret (create) the world. That is our believed story. Some may share our story. And others may interpret the same events differently, like has happened once or twice on this footy forum.

What if people no longer believed in the value of money, or of title deeds on property, etc. What are money and title deeds then? Myths? Superstitions? Their power relies on all people (or virtually all) being coerced to share the same beliefs in the same concepts. Without the shared beliefs, would you still consider profits to be real? Or would they be seen as imaginary?

You say, 'take away the terrorist's concepts, and where is his motivation to murder and maim?' I'd say his motivation likely remains intact. His motivation might stem from watching his people murdered and exploited over an extended period of time. His terrorist strategy, on the other hand, certainly springs directly from his political beliefs -his concepts, if you like.

Yes, and everything the terrorist tells himself about the story is his concept. Without THAT concept where is the motivation to murder and maim?

Meanwhile the people on the other side do likewise with their different (but essentially identical) stories and concepts, and the war intensifies. If the stories and concepts didn't come with huge emotional baggage, they'd just be stories, not fundamental causes of war.

What more violent person than a person blindly believing his victim story?

Is this what you are getting at –?
"Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too
Imagine all the people, Living life in peace …"

If we drop attachment to all beliefs for just one moment, then reactivity settles. We stop pumping stress hormones through our bodies and start observing things we stopped noticing long ago. Staying with it, noticing our breath, the flowing energy in our hands, maybe even the subtlety of our heartbeat if we look long enough. We feel the tingling on our skins, see the long forgotten textures, shades and colours in the room, the infinite sky out the window, we smell the air, the stillness. Where's the problem, right now, only now. Can you find even one problem that is not to do with some time other than right now? Can you find one problem that is not a concept? EVERY moment is that one moment. Even the moment of death. That's what that song sings to me. So yes, that song is perhaps another way of saying what I'm getting at. But another person hears those same words and hears a very different song.

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

If a doctor tells me my appendix needs to be removed, and I trust his expertise, then I approve its removal. No need to "believe" in an appendix. The appendix is "seen". And in a world of uncertainty and ambiguity, I learn to trust, based on experience.

What if you don't trust the doc? Or don't know whether or not to trust the doc? How to decide? As you say, you base your judgment on experience. My own experience is entirely consistent with the law of causality, which as it happens is a basic assumption of science.

You advocate being open-minded to the fact other people have seen God (according to their meaning of the word God) in their own experience. You are saying (I am guessing) that what they know as God may be some as yet unexplained combination of natural phenomena, comprising physical matter. This then leads to a political discussion about the practical effects of religious ideology.

If on the other hand you are advocating being open to the possibility of a spiritual or ideal being that creates and continues to influence the world, what do you say about the problem I raised back in post #66 of this thread?

 

[Rex]

A fundamental problem for the religionists is this: there has never been a mechanism posed that could allow any interaction between the material world we all know and love and the so-called ideal or spiritual world that some would have us believe exists.

Other than by 'miracle'.

Unfortunately any miracle would by definition subvert the law of causality thus rendering it untenable.

Post 66.

Applying your logic to your own argument ...

If you only view the world through a material lens, you only see material. And as even physical scientists now accept, when you break it all down, there is no underlying component which is material. It is all empty of any fixed, permanent or even grabbable component of matter. How do you explain your theory of the universe only being composed of matter then SER8?

By miracle?

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What if you don't trust the doc? Or don't know whether or not to trust the doc? How to decide? As you say, you base your judgment on experience. My own experience is entirely consistent with the law of causality, which as it happens is a basic assumption of science.

OK so you want me to worship causality. Your Science God. And did you control that thought? Or was that simply cause and effect. Have you ever controlled anything? Or is it all effectively predetermined, cause and effect.

You advocate being open-minded to the fact other people have seen God (according to their meaning of the word God) in their own experience. You are saying (I am guessing) that what they know as God may be some as yet unexplained combination of natural phenomena, comprising physical matter. This then leads to a political discussion about the practical effects of religious ideology.

seeing everything that happens only through a single viewing lens will cause you to only see things consistent with that viewing lens. You see what you believe. You project (create) your world.

I am not advocating being open-minded. Be close-minded if you wish. And see how that works for you.

I'm saying that we become conditioned to form beliefs (cause and effect if you like). And those beliefs majorly distort what we are able to see. And to the extent that the beliefs don't match reality, we suffer.

Can beliefs be dismantled when they are no longer working for us? Say, for example, when we start destroying the planet or killing each other in world wars through fear, greed and ignorance? And what is the mechanism through which we can dismantle beliefs, to not be subject to the cause and effect of our conditioning?

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

The mechanism of course is the removing of the material cause and raison-d'etre of the offending beliefs.

It may be that we are at a stage where PM may be more apt than this general forum to continue.

Meanwhile the formulation in Post 66 remains unanswered. The empty space between the physical particles is no argument for spirit. It is simply empty space between physical particles.

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By the way - you do realise you are advocating for the Devil?

 

[Rex]

The mechanism of course is the removing of the material cause and raison-d'etre of the offending beliefs.

It may be that we are at a stage where PM may be more apt than this general forum to continue.

Meanwhile the formulation in Post 66 remains unanswered. The empty space between the physical particles is no argument for spirit. It is simply empty space between physical particles.

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By the way - you do realise you are advocating for the Devil?

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Happy to PM if you want to take this offline. But I'll respond to this one seeing as you put the challenge into the ether.

A person who only sees the world through the intellect might be called autistic or a sociopath. Our capability to experience life beyond our intellectual concepts is a core trait of being human, of being fully alive.

The person walking through an ancient forest trapped in the conceptual realm is restricted to believing thoughts - concepts, labels, judgements, perhaps potentials for "farming" the forest for profit. There is no depth to the experience. The "now" for this person is purely a theoretical dividing line between past and future. It doesn't exist. Only past and future exists in thought because that's where all thought resides - in memories and projection of memories.

The person free of thought experiences the sacredness of the ancient forest. They sense the beauty and stay in the beauty, without the need to label or judge, and without the need to try to hold on to the beauty. They live in the now, and realise past and future are only theoretical constructs, thoughts, that they don't even exist in reality. It is never the past, it is never the future. This second person experiences depth, the spiritual realm if you like. That is spirit. A miracle? Yes.

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If that is your concept of "advocating for the Devil", then guilty as charged I suppose.

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P.S. SER8, you missed the point about particles and emptiness, quantum scientists now see there are no physical particles.

 

[ManlyBacker]

I see, a person free from thought experiences 'God'. It is obviously better not to think. If you had just said that earlier it would have cleared up why I could dismiss the concept from the start

 

[Rex]

When you're looking, you're not thinking.
When you're thinking, you're not looking.

Simply the way the mind works.

Thought can only be creative or insightful when founded in fresh observation, not in belief.

 

[Fluffy]

nah, it can be found in both.

The best thoughts come between 2 mates with an empty case sitting beside them

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

Rex your worldview sounds serene but in the end allows for the possibility not just for every god under the sun but also for superstition of all persuasions, ghosts, black magic, voodoo, and the Loch Ness monster. And El Diablo himself.

You see, you are stuck with Sympathy for the Devil and 666.

While I have post #66 lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhkBg8wOBo

 

[Rex]

nah, it can be found in both.

The best thoughts come between 2 mates with an empty case sitting beside them

A few beers, the body relaxes, tension gone, where's that stress again? Where's those nagging thoughts of things you haven't done? Of whether you're good enough. Nothing's wrong with the world. It's all good. Just there enjoying good company.

If only we could find a way of quieting that incessant voice in the head without getting wasted. That would be bliss.

Have to meditate on that one.

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Rex your worldview sounds serene but in the end allows for the possibility not just for every god under the sun but also for superstition of all persuasions, ghosts, black magic, voodoo, and the Loch Ness monster. And El Diablo himself.

You OK SER8? Where'd you get all that from?

It's only a mind that believes passing thoughts that falls for anything unreal.

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

It's only a mind that believes passing thoughts that falls for anything unreal.

So on this basis you flippantly dismiss all those who believe in anything you deem unreal, such as ghosts, the Devil etc … ??


Yet wasn't the next quote your scathing attack on those who dared to deny the existence of god:

. . . It is an arrogant, egotistical and effectively blind person who cannot be open to the possibility of others seeing something they haven't, or of themselves seeing something in the future that they haven't seen so far.

The more words you churn out the more you contradict yourself.
So trapped in the moment that you can't think, or plan ahead?

 

[Rex]

It's only a mind that believes passing thoughts that falls for anything unreal.

So on this basis you flippantly dismiss all those who believe in anything you deem unreal, such as ghosts, the Devil etc … ??

I didn't flippantly dismiss anyone. I spoke of the nature of the mind, and the outcome when it unquestioningly believes passing thought.

Are you flippantly dismissing me now?

Yet wasn't the next quote your scathing attack on those who dared to deny the existence of god:

A scathing attack? Or a figment of your imagination?

. . . It is an arrogant, egotistical and effectively blind person who cannot be open to the possibility of others seeing something they haven't, or of themselves seeing something in the future that they haven't seen so far.

The more words you churn out the more you contradict yourself.
So trapped in the moment that you can't think, or plan ahead?

It's all very simple SER8. There is no contradiction. Why are you complicating matters by focusing on the finger, imagining flaws, rather than looking where it's pointing?

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

What now, giving me the (conceptual) finger?
I propose to contact the Dalai Lama to lodge a formal complaint about your behaviour.

(I would cc it to Werner but he is dead.)

 

[Rex]

No more advocating for the devil?

No more devil's advocate?