alt.education

On Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:21:07 GMT, Dave Oldridge
wrote:

>Liz wrote in
>news:k5k9g3tgep26hds2l303m2iq5h0qqr5b0l@ :
>
>> On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:21:47 GMT, Dave Oldridge
>> wrote:
>>
>>>Liz wrote in
>>>news:re74g39a3vug10bi2as93gds0f91k623b3@ :
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:38:17 GMT, Dave Oldridge
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>"L. Raymond" wrote in
>>>>>news: $.dlg@ :

[-----]
>>>>>What makes you think that these various ways of perceiving deity are
>>>>>necessarily either totally correct or totally wrong? And yes, some
>>>>>of my Tibetan friends make up their own "tutelary" deities and pray
>>>>>to them. But they are very careful to make up only the best gods
>>>>>they can.
>>>>>
>>>>>And their prayers can be as effective as mine. What's your point?
>>>>
>>>> The point is that the effect of prayers to made up gods can not be
>>>> distinguished from the effect of prayers to those gods that people
>>>> believe to be real. In fact, I am at a loss to name any attribute
>>>> that can be ascribed to "real" gods that don't also apply to made up
>>>> gods.
>>>
>>>Understand that ALL prayers to gods are to made-up gods. But those
>>>made- up gods are reflections of a reality that we cannot know in its
>>>totality. Which is why we're forced to invent.
>>
>> That is what I find disconcerting. If you know you are praying to an
>> invented god, why do you suspect that there is any reality behind the
>> invention? To me that is like believing that there really is a
>> Hogwart's because it was a very good story even though we know that
>> the Harry Potter series is fiction.
>
>I'm not saying that God doesn't exist. I'm saying that our view of Him
>is so clouded that our ideas about Him can be quite erroneous to one
>degree or another. In other words, not knowing, we fill in the blanks
>and sometimes fill them in wrong.

If, when knowing that you don't know, you still choose to "fill in the
blanks" when there is no reliable information on which to base your
assumptions, why would you qualify your statement with the word
"sometimes". In such a situation, the odds of inventing the correct
information simply by chance must be vanishingly small. Plus, even if
you happen to invent the correct solution, you would have no way to
verify such a solution.

You are an agnostic theist. You take the position that God© is
unknowable yet you still believe - understanding that what you believe
may well be wrong. Does it worry you at all that your ideation may
have absolutely no relationship to reality?

I am of the exact opposite persuasion. I take the position that God©,
if such a being exists, would necessarily be distinguishable from the
background noise of the universe. God© would be detectible, and being
detectible would present objective evidence of its existence that
would be amenable to examination. But there isn't any evidence that
any gods exist so I do not believe they do.

Since God© isn't detectible, we are left with testimony of mystics who
name the subjective experience of retreating into their own minds
"God". I place no reliance that their experiences in any way reflect
the supernatural. At one time I could consciously control many of my
autonomous physical responses and my state of mind, and there were no
gods there. It was a rather silly use of time, imo.



[----]

>Yep...but mysticism is not cold reading. It's very different form of
>consciousness.

As I stated, I'm not a mystic at all. I've discovered that this
consciousness is all I need. It is really a good, amazing, and
wonderful place to be.




> Buddhists sometimes call it nirvana--a state where
>subject-object dualities vanish (almost--then there's paranirvana where
>the samsara/nirvana duality vanishes, too).


Sounds like really good drugs.


To quote a former member of .: Mysticism is a disease of the mind.


Liz #658 BAAWA


Reality doesn't alter itself to conform to our beliefs. --
Gregory A. Greenman