You tell me, what does it matter? Why do you keep calling people atheists who you haven’t confirmed are atheists?
Should I just assume you’re something that you haven’t said you are? Would you think it’s good if I kept referring to you as “that trans guy”? If you wouldn’t like that, maybe stop doing it to others
In the whole scheme of things it doesn’t matter Flannel because with the correct unbiased philosophy that God adopts for his creation there are moral absolutes and laws so it doesn’t matter whether you’re only a mere atheist or a mere theist.Mere atheism or mere theism won’t help you as I keep trying explain to Ichthus.
So if it doesn’t matter, then it should be easy for you to quit calling him a +=- atheist, or whatever you keep calling him. You said you listen, prove it. Start listening.
Josh,are you an atheist?
I got baptized as an adult. I thought I felt the Holy Spirit.
I went from church to church, religion to religion, guru to guru. Most of the time, there was something very rotten in the state of Denmark, and I moved on.
I hung out with Christians, I hung out with Buddhists, I hung out with New Agers and theosophists. I studied theology. I studied Taoism. I listened to Advaita Vedantists. I listened to and read pantheists. I read atheists. I wrote a lot about religion. I purchased a subscription to a Bible scholar’s courses.
I don’t really know the truth about religion, but I intend to try to find out.
The only thing I will say for sure is that there are a lot of people who are simply looking for someone else to give them the answers, because they don’t know how to evaluate specific claims for themselves. If you read something in the Bible, and it happens to be the case, but the only reason you believe it is because you read it in the Bible, then you won’t have much of a leg to stand on when you meet someone who has a different opinion and is backed up with research, arguments, and experience. Even if you trust Jesus, or Buddha, or whoever, you should try to figure things out for yourself. That’s my position.
The big religions got established doctrinally once ruling class intellectuals began abusing ordinary communal language and inventing super-empirical ‘a priori’ truths (magical words) that revealed the secrets of the universe… secrets, i should add, that only educated men like Plato and Newton could know. And being burdened with the capacity to know the mind of god gave these intellectuals the privilege… nay, the right, to rule over men. And so shall the governance of men reflect the order of the cosmos… the State shall be the kingdom, and the king shall be the ambassador of god.
Yeah, the whole thing is a giant sham. Just read some Rosa Lichtenstein. She’ll sort you out.
Are you an atheist a theists or an agnostic Josh? Not that any of them matter one jot?
I don’t really like any of the labels. I see good and bad points in all of them. I am even ambivalent about the word “God”. I pray to a higher power sometimes. But all the labels seem to do is divide people most of the time. People get more concerned about who’s in their in-group and who’s in their out-group than they are actually being God-like or Christ-like or enlightened or whatever they’re actually supposed to be doing.
I will eventually take an official position, I feel, but I’m not at that stage just yet.
Hi Promethean.
I don’t think I have the education level in Hegel, Marx and Engels that is required to understand what Rosa Lichtenstein is talking about. Any suggestions?
That does no work, since these concepts are historically and culturally defined.
To promote the idea they are “insight” would be to suggest these concepts would be more or less universal - but only a very narrowly defined apprehension of history and culture would support that.
What non-Western or traditional cultures find common place can be very hard to understand - and I would think they find their own endemic assumptions unproblematic.
For my money there is a reason that “realism” often comes with the word naïve as a qualifier.
You have to follow a statement like that with an argument. Else you are going to be ignored
You’re right, but I am trying at the moment to build my worldview from the bottom up. From the most basic fundamental principles. Asking me to impose historical, cultural, and biological context onto what I am saying when I’m simply trying to do some logic on some definitions is a top-down approach. Strictly speaking you have to already have epistemological and metaphysical and scientific and historical conclusions established before you can consider those contexts. So I can either assume I can do conceptual analysis or I can assume an anthropological and biological story, and I choose the former. I wouldn’t even start studying science or history or anthropology until I’ve studied various philosophy topics first. Philosophy seems more fundamental in the hierarchy.
I’m not going to hold realism as a dogma. I do accept that there are a priori truths though. So, fairly committed to rationalism, not so committed to realism.
Josh,
I merely tell you how things are in reality.
Sculptor,is,by his own admission a psychotic atheists who believes that he is nothing more than an illusion because he doesn’t understand consciousness.He lives in his own reality….not actually reality.
He’s an ungodly man and freely admits it because he’s an atheist.
Forums are saturated with ignorant atheists preaching their religion.I am merely warning you about them.
Then you do not really understand your place in the world and are not able to assess with any credibility the sources and orgins of your concepts.
This has led you to a place where you think Plato’s forms are real and not just an historically and culturally contingent assumption. Plato was ignorant of the deep history of humanity and the ideosyncracies of his own thinking.
This means you are stuck in a small and limiting sphere of exceptionalism and parochial thinking.
Now if you will refelct upon out friend here on the Forum…
He’s willing to let in know how things are “in reality”. He’s Plato in this argument.
Totally locked inside a very small minded area of thinking, blinded by the “obvious” theism and the weird obsession with +/-.
Sometimes thinking is not the answer Josh.Just “be” and learn about consciousness which is separate from thoughts.
There is almost a 50-50 split between Platonism and nominalism among professional philosophers. So I have a hard time believing my situation is as grave as you say it is.
What would you have me do? Forget about epistemology and metaphysics and go learn etymology?
This is not a response.
You need to “be” (SOUL) first,before thoughts.This involves the metaphysical.Atheists don’t do the metaphysical Josh which is why they don’t understand consciousness.The SOUL does have the ability to understand consciousness.The SOUL is separate from the binary processing biological machine body.The SOUL needs to understand that awareness is separate from consciousness and for there to be awareness there needs to be something that is aware which is the SOUL.
So what is the SOUL aware of?
The SOUL is aware of the vibratory nature of consciousness or the in and out of the moment consciousness states.
If the SOUL is in the in the moment consciousness state then it’s not in the out of the moment conscious state and vice versa.
The psychological experience can be explained scientifically because all of the sciences are interconnected.
I might sound flippant but I’m serious. You seem to think it’s a big problem to hit a bunch of philosophy topics and ignore other topics. What would you have me do?
What is this? Why are you receding so easily? If you have some well grounded reason for believing Plato’s Theory of Forms, demonstrate it. This is the right place for it. You’re here to defend your ideas. Sculptor’s response is not the measure on which your value as a thinker will be judged here, your arguments are.