| Author |
Topic: Guide to world religions |
melitoo
Cool Runner |
 posted Apr-19-2006 01:25 PM
   
quote:
Originally posted by fredurie:
Melitoo:http://www.buddhistinformation.com/buddhist_attitude_to_god.htm
I agree that both Taoism and Buddhism are belief systems primarily without a god-figure. However, considering atheism as a denial of god or a supreme being, I really don't feel that either of them falls within the atheistic category.
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fredurie
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 01:28 PM
Melitoo, does this answer your question:"The Buddha argued that there is no apparent rational necessity for the existence of a creator god. Because there is no direct experience involved and no rational necessity, belief in a creator is not essential to a religion based on phenomenology. Since belief in a creator is not necessary, a particular theory about life and the cause of the universe is also not necessary, though of course one is free to accept a theory if they like, so long as they do not remain attached to it."
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fredurie
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 01:43 PM
quote:
Originally posted by melitoo:
I agree that both Taoism and Buddhism are belief systems primarily without a god-figure. However, considering atheism as a denial of god or a supreme being, I really don't feel that either of them falls within the atheistic category.
If you sit and meditate, there is no God. Eventually there is no self.
There is a point of awareness, but the concept of a God is not there. "is there a God in Buddhism?"
"the answer is that question is irrelevant, and that the thought is a
barrier to your emancipation"
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PeterP
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 01:49 PM
Having read most of this entire thread, it looks to me like the only evidence the God ppl have attempted to present for the existence of God is the Big Bang. 11 pages and that's all they could come up with? (Which I easily refuted on page 9 btw). The only other attempts at convincing the non-believers seems to be these feeble attacks on the atheists and agnostics belief systems. Have you no other evidence besides the Big Bang? Now I'm not taking sides, but I would think the biggest evidence for the existence of God would be human consciousness.. the fact that we experience emotions.. that we know we exist. "I think therefore I am" type of logic. Why hasn't this been presented by the God ppl in all of these 11 pages, instead of these stupid semantic debates on what atheism and agnosticism mean, and telling ppl they don't really believe what they say.
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colby5402
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 01:55 PM
quote:
Originally posted by PeterP:
Having read most of this entire thread, it looks to me like the only evidence the God ppl have attempted to present for the existence of God is the Big Bang. 11 pages and that's all they could come up with? (Which I easily refuted on page 9 btw). The only other attempts at convincing the non-believers seems to be these feeble attacks on the atheists and agnostics belief systems. Have you no other evidence besides the Big Bang? Now I'm not taking sides, but I would think the biggest evidence for the existence of God would be human consciousness.. the fact that we experience emotions.. that we know we exist. "I think therefore I am" type of logic. Why hasn't this been presented by the God ppl in all of these 11 pages, instead of these stupid semantic debates on what atheism and agnosticism mean, and telling ppl they don't really believe what they say.
Holy guacamole. I AM invisible. And inaudible. And unintelligible.
C
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xerosaburu
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 01:56 PM
quote:
Originally posted by PeterP:
Having read most of this entire thread, it looks to me like the only evidence the God ppl have attempted to present for the existence of God is the Big Bang. 11 pages and that's all they could come up with? (Which I easily refuted on page 9 btw). The only other attempts at convincing the non-believers seems to be these feeble attacks on the atheists and agnostics belief systems. Have you no other evidence besides the Big Bang? Now I'm not taking sides, but I would think the biggest evidence for the existence of God would be human consciousness.. the fact that we experience emotions.. that we know we exist. "I think therefore I am" type of logic. Why hasn't this been presented by the God ppl in all of these 11 pages, instead of these stupid semantic debates on what atheism and agnosticism mean, and telling ppl they don't really believe what they say.
No one who believes in evolution has or can explain the origination of life in any kind of intelligent or coherent manner, nor can these explain how it is in 200,000,000 years the undirected laws of chemistry and physics operating in this open system has been able to organize higher and higher amounts of aperiodic organization. Until such time as those foundational assumptions being made by the "there's no God" camp can come up with more than a philosophic necessity for rejecting the God hypothesis, I feel confident that there is a God. Not one like many expect, but that doesn't matter to me.
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canter
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 01:56 PM
Interesting thread, cindyleigh -- thanks for the religionfacts link -- I have been looking for something like that for a while, and have spent a lot of time over the past few days browsing around over there.On a totally off-topic note, every time I read your name I think of:  
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melitoo
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 02:04 PM
quote:
Originally posted by fredurie:
If you sit and meditate, there is no God. Eventually there is no self.
There is a point of awareness, but the concept of a God is not there."is there a God in Buddhism?"
"the answer is that question is irrelevant, and that the thought is a
barrier to your emancipation"
True, there is no self, but there is Self. You have attained the higher level of realization which is a part of everything that exists. There are a number of gods/demons mentioned in Taoist teachings, even though alignment with them is not the primary goal. And that is why it is probably futile to consider theism of these religions from a western perspective. From our perspective they are not theistic as they do not identify and try to align with a singular, supreme, personified deity. Just because the deity does not meet our standard definition doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Again, I personally do not put non-theistic religions in the atheist category automatically. Perhaps this is an error on my part that I will hopefully correct with more study, but that is where I stand at present.
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PeterP
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 02:16 PM
quote:
Originally posted by xerosaburu:
No one who believes in evolution has or can explain the origination of life in any kind of intelligent or coherent manner, nor can these explain how it is in 200,000,000 years the undirected laws of chemistry and physics operating in this open system has been able to organize higher and higher amounts of aperiodic organization.Until such time as those foundational assumptions being made by the "there's no God" camp can come up with more than a philosophic necessity for rejecting the God hypothesis, I feel confident that there is a God. Not one like many expect, but that doesn't matter to me.
I think these things just crystallize out as the temperature of the universe cools. Whenever you have something going from hot to cold you're going to get more organization. Just as in the beginning all the forces were unified, then things cooled a bit and now we have electromagetism & gravity, etc. Just look to mathetmatics for an analogy. Take the mandelbrot set. If you didn't know any better you'd say the fractals have to be a work of God. But then you see how a simple equation can generate such complexity. Nothing mysterious there afterall. Nope, you don't need God for DNA. For consciuosness maybe, but not DNA.
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xerosaburu
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 02:21 PM
quote:
Originally posted by PeterP:
I think these things just crystallize out as the temperature of the universe cools. Whenever you have something going from hot to cold you're going to get more organization. Just as in the beginning all the forces were unified, then things cooled a bit and now we have electromagetism & gravity, etc. Just look to mathetmatics for an analogy. Take the mandelbrot set. If you didn't know any better you'd say the fractals have to be a work of God. But then you see how a simple equation can generate such complexity. Nothing mysterious there afterall. Nope, you don't need God for DNA. For consciuosness maybe, but not DNA.
You're confusing patterns which arise naturally and have low information content with the high information content, aperiodicity found in the biological world.Getting the information is key.
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mistaSteve
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 02:22 PM
That is actually a pretty good analogy.See also Wolfram's 'A New Kind Of Science' (but only if you have lots and lots of time) for examples of very simple systems that can generate great complexity. quote:
Originally posted by PeterP:
I think these things just crystallize out as the temperature of the universe cools. Whenever you have something going from hot to cold you're going to get more organization. Just as in the beginning all the forces were unified, then things cooled a bit and now we have electromagetism & gravity, etc. Just look to mathetmatics for an analogy. Take the mandelbrot set. If you didn't know any better you'd say the fractals have to be a work of God. But then you see how a simple equation can generate such complexity. Nothing mysterious there afterall. Nope, you don't need God for DNA. For consciuosness maybe, but not DNA.
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PeterP
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 02:24 PM
quote:
Originally posted by colby5402:
Holy guacamole. I AM invisible. And inaudible. And unintelligible.C
I'm sorry.. I do remember something along the lines of DNA and stuff. So are you suggesting that there is continuous creation going on in the universe, or a guiding hand, an intelligent force, something like that, as opposed to God winding up a big spring in the beginning and then letting it go on its own?
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PeterP
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 02:39 PM
quote:
Originally posted by xerosaburu:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by PeterP:
[b] I think these things just crystallize out as the temperature of the universe cools. Whenever you have something going from hot to cold you're going to get more organization. Just as in the beginning all the forces were unified, then things cooled a bit and now we have electromagetism & gravity, etc. Just look to mathetmatics for an analogy. Take the mandelbrot set. If you didn't know any better you'd say the fractals have to be a work of God. But then you see how a simple equation can generate such complexity. Nothing mysterious there afterall. Nope, you don't need God for DNA. For consciuosness maybe, but not DNA.
You're confusing patterns which arise naturally and have low information content with the high information content, aperiodicity found in the biological world.Getting the information is key. [/B][/QUOTE] When you start using words like "information" you're already on my side of the fence with my "consciousness" argument. There can't be information without consciousness. Information is not information without a consciousness to decipher it. I don't really know what you mean about aperiodicity. PI is pretty aperiodic, isn't it? And that arises naturally.
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xerosaburu
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 03:11 PM
quote:
Originally posted by PeterP:
When you start using words like "information" you're already on my side of the fence with my "consciousness" argument. There can't be information without consciousness. Information is not information without a consciousness to decipher it. I don't really know what you mean about aperiodicity. PI is pretty aperiodic, isn't it? And that arises naturally.
PI is not information rich. It's a simple ratio.
Sequencing in crystals is highly ordered or repetitive, but not informative. Once one has seen "Na" followed by "Cl" in a crystal of salt, for example, one has seen the extent of the sequencing possible. In DNA, however, where any nucleotide can follow any other, innumerable novel sequences are possible, and a countless variety of amino acid sequences can be built. What needs explaining is not the origin of order (in the sense of symmetry or repetition), but the origin of information, the highly improbable, aperiodic, and yet specified sequences that make biological function possible. To illustrate the distinction between order and information compare the sequence "ABABABABABABAB" to the sequence
"Help! The CH is becoming increasingly banal!" The first sequence is repetitive and ordered, but not complex or informative. The second sequence is not ordered, in the sense of being repetitious, but it is complex and also informative. The second sequence is complex because its characters do not follow a rigidly repeating or predictable pattern (though some CH’ers think so), i.e, it is aperiodic. It is also informative because, unlike a merely complex sequence such as "rfsxdcnct<e%dwqj", the particular arrangement of characters is highly exact or "specified" so as to perform a (communication) function. Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call "specified complexity") have "information content." That’s what needs explaining in order for me to go with the No-God camp. Demonstrate how this may be accomplished without a mind to order it all.
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Ray Andrews
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 06:17 PM
quote:
Originally posted by PeterP:
Having read most of this entire thread, it looks to me like the only evidence the God ppl have attempted to present for the existence of God is the Big Bang. 11 pages and that's all they could come up with? (Which I easily refuted on page 9 btw). The only other attempts at convincing the non-believers seems to be these feeble attacks on the atheists and agnostics belief systems. Have you no other evidence besides the Big Bang? Now I'm not taking sides, but I would think the biggest evidence for the existence of God would be human consciousness.. the fact that we experience emotions.. that we know we exist. "I think therefore I am" type of logic. Why hasn't this been presented by the God ppl in all of these 11 pages, instead of these stupid semantic debates on what atheism and agnosticism mean, and telling ppl they don't really believe what they say.
Well, Peter, I'd like to be able to say--like Jesus did--that "anyone who has seen me (Ray Andrews) has seen the Father" (God). Unfortunately, that project is not yet ready for public viewing. But I think you were on the right track in suggesting that our consciousness--our minds, wills and emotions--and even our very existence points to the existence of the One-Who-was-before-us and Who-IS-to-come, God the Creator, Maker of Heaven and Earth. Forget about the Big Bang, about what atheists do or don't believe, about Buddhists or Baptists or whatnot... Try to imagine a Perfect Man--with no limitations, no liability to death or decay, fully alive, pure light, embodying all we could ever imagine as "love." Like John Lennon said (albeit trying to prove an entirely opposite proposition), "It's not hard if you try." And then when you consider the distance between that Perfect Man and where you now stand, somewhere in the middle GOD WILL MEET YOU. [This message has been edited by Ray Andrews (edited Apr-19-2006).]
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cindyleigh
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-19-2006 11:00 PM
quote:
Originally posted by canter:
On a totally off-topic note, every time I read your name I think of:
HA! That is why in my real life I don't go by Cindy anymore. Who'd take me seriously?
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fredurie
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-20-2006 11:08 AM
quote:
Originally posted by melitoo:
True, there is no self, but there is Self. You have attained the higher level of realization which is a part of everything that exists.There are a number of gods/demons mentioned in Taoist teachings, even though alignment with them is not the primary goal. And that is why it is probably futile to consider theism of these religions from a western perspective. From our perspective they are not theistic as they do not identify and try to align with a singular, supreme, personified deity. Just because the deity does not meet our standard definition doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Again, I personally do not put non-theistic religions in the atheist category automatically. Perhaps this is an error on my part that I will hopefully correct with more study, but that is where I stand at present.
"Nirvana is the traditional name for the state of being (or non-being, if you prefer) wherein all clinging, and so all suffering, has been eliminated. It is often translated as "blowing out," with the idea that we eliminate self like we blow out a candle. This may be a proper understanding, but I prefer the idea of blowing out a fire that threatens to overwhelm us, or even the idea of taking away the oxygen that keeps the fires burning. By this I mean that by "blowing out" clinging, hate, and ignorance, we "blow out" unnecessary suffering."
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fredurie
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-20-2006 11:20 AM
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/notself2.html
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fredurie
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-20-2006 11:24 AM
Re., the Self:
"So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one's own or that of others — impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as "Do I exist?" or "Don't I exist?" for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood."
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melitoo
Cool Runner |
posted Apr-20-2006 12:25 PM
Self=Atman in Hinduism=Nirvana in Buddhism=Immortal in TaoismThe state of ultimate realization...essentially the same thing.
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