The problem is that by your own statistics, these things you are calling evil that are present in Christianity and Judaism haven't lead to any more actual evil than you see in Eastern faiths. It's not as though 'Malignant use of us vs. them' has turned Christian countries into violent, backwards shitholes that your typical Buddhist nation has surpassed. The shining beacon of civility, advancement and equal rights in the Middle East is a nation composed of a bunch of Jews, not a bunch of Jains. So the criteria you list aren't demonstrably evil. All that's demonstrable is that you don't like them.
So for example, suppose Christianity is true (after all, you’ve done nothing to say that it isn’t, you’ve only argued that it’s ideas are naughty). Suppose there really is a theistic God that wants us to believe and do certain things, and will reward us if we do, punish us if we don’t. In that scenario, all Eastern Religion would accomplish is producing a bunch of flakey people who lack even the basic ability to comprehend the universe as it exists. This would be true if Nietzsche was right, as well: if we really are nothing more than the greatness we make for ourselves, then Taoism teaches people to be useless clods of flesh that do nothing better than stay out of the way of those who actually accomplish things. If the Marxists are right, and our happiness and worth are tied purely to our material conditions, then Buddhist’s teaching of avoiding materialism at all costs is a catastrophic error that is leading billions of people to poverty and starvation for no reason.
The Abrahamic Religions are only inferior in that they aren’t as good at promoting your particular ideological values as the Eastern Religions are, that’s all.
I like your presentation [not agreeing to all the points] and that is what philosophy is about, note Bertrand Russell’s,
The difficulty here is you raised too many questions where in most cases we have to dive deep into the 9/10th below the tip of the iceberg to get answers [I am very confident to answer, but tedious & time consuming to present].
For most of the main elements I have raised, I have made it a point to ensure an exhaustive study of each of them to ensure I am not ignorant of the main contentions and that I have answers for them. I have collated these information and principles over many many years and as such, it is impossible to present them in a limited forum and posting like here. Thus what I have presented are mere outlines.
Re many of your questions, I have provided information in bits and pieces in my other posts and I understand you are likely to have read them all, but it is quite tedious for me to repeat them at different times for different posters who asked.
For example you asked,
“I would love to see where you gather proof that people kill based on their holy texts.”
This is ABC. Here is an example I quoted very often. I don’t have a readily available list so I have to do a tedious google search everytime I have to produce it or them in other cases. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4716909.stm
There are a tons of evidence which can be gather from the WWW-Net that show how Muslims relied on their holy texts to justify their evils of violence, intolerances and cruelty.
I anticipate the loose term ‘evil’ will be problematic. I have done an extensive and exhaustive research on the term ‘evil’ covering every aspects & perspectives out there [e.g. conventional, social, psychology, biological, neurosciences & its subs, psychiatry, anthropological, historical, theological, Philosophy, ancients, modern, religious, spirituality, etc., etc.] and thereupon compile a framework and taxonomy for it.
Based on the work done I am quite confident whenever I use the term ‘evil’ and I am always on the look out for any perspectives of it that I may have overlooked.
Because the term ‘evil’ is prevalent and will also crop up in philosophical discussion, I would suggest you do a similar project like what I did, then we can share notes.
There is another principle of “substance over forms”.
Most the questions you raised involve the diversified forms. However if we make it a point to understand the underlying principles behind the various forms, we will be understand most of the diversified forms.
Thus if I understand the philosophy and principles of religions in general, I need not have to understand the full diversified forms of each religion. In this case, as an enhancement theory has to be supplemented with experience that reflect the core principles. For example, we need not have to know how different people all over the world, produce, prepare and eat their food. The basic principle is to understand the generic principles of the hunger impulse, the digestive system, nutrition and other relevant basic elements, because there is a generic human being.
Unfortunately I cannot answer you post point by point, and since you are already into the serious of philosophizing (i.e. questioning broadly) it would be favorable for you to compile the questions as a checklist for further understanding and exhaust them by doing extensive research on them. With the WWW-Net on hand, that is quite easy but imo it may take 5-10++ years (perhaps more) to get a good picture of the questions you raised above.
Duality and “us versus them” is inherent within humans which is a double-edged sword. It is ‘evil’ if used malignantly.
My thesis highlight the malignant use of the “us versus them” within the core principles of the Abrahamic religions and proposed ideas to deal with such abuses.
It is not possible. Perhaps it is Confucianism and other ideologies but not Taoism.
There are but they are on the fringes of Christianity proper.
Newton had to get hit in the head with an apple before inventing the ‘laws’ of gravity. I would have ate the apple and called it good with that, because who gives a shit? People who are afraid of suddenly dropping off the face of the Earth? Let them worry about it.
And Einsteins theory of relativity makes me laugh.
Cant say much about Kant, though. Never even heard of him until today. I wonder if he ever recanted anything he said.
Actually, the very first time I ever heard the theory, I seriously thought it was a joke. Later, I was more than a little disturbed to find that people were taking it seriously. But for the cause, I went to the trouble of proving the theory to be absurd, despite the alleged “evidence”.
There was no “Newton’s Apple”, it is a parable told to children.
As for your apprehension concerning Einstein and Kant: ignorance leads to bliss, and your humour.
A parable… I think you mean ‘a metaphor’, which I can now see the possibility of now that I consider it. A parable is a story with a moral value while the story of Newton’s apple really has no moral value, only that it fell on his head while he was sitting under a tree and it caused him to consider the effects of gravity in greater detail. But, to consider it as a ‘metaphor’ you then think of adam and eve and the apple (used to be a fig in older stories) and that he was hit on the head with a bunch of knowledge which he then used to propel himself forward.
I have no apprehension toward Einstein; his theory of relativity is bullshit. He claims that nothing moves faster than the speed of light and yet we’ve found things that do. That time is subjective to who experiences we already know; two people could be in the same room and for one the time could pass quickly while for the other the time could pass slowly and there is no true theory for that, is there? I find that my thoughts move faster than the speed of light at times; not all of them; but conversations I can have in my head can be quick when I bypass words and move onto base comprehension in terms of using words, which makes it hard for me to explain what I want to some times when I try to communicate such to others. In the space of a second, I could have a conversation that would take people weeks to have because of my dealings with my own subconscious where I’ve become cognizant of such interactions. In fact, some times, my conscious mind moves even that fast as I try to form words in my mind and slow it down to have a normal conversation at my pace, it will speed up at times, cut me off and have answers supplied before a question is even finished, showing that the subconscious is much faster than the conscious, to the point of moving faster than the speed of light and verging on time travel within our own mind.
I’m aware of it even now when I dip back into my mind for a second, just the mass of voices and concepts and ideas and words being passed around; not all of them intelligent. It is utterly fascinating to me and some times a bit annoying because I don’t really like being cut off mid-sentence and my own subconscious does such to me quite a lot, which forces me to work on my patience and tolerance of such if I wish to keep having conversations with it; which I do because I enjoy such conversations that I know I can’t create or engineer on my own. And, some times, it likes to fuck with me and argue with me and hate on me; certain parts of my subconscious anyway, as it is multi-faceted much like the world around us and does seem to have a variety of voices which leads me to believe firmly in group-consciousness; mass awareness. And, I can definitely tell the difference between certain voices and certain trends, to which I also believe in a vibrant and living reality because that is the fastest motherfucker to come into my head and I have great conversations with that one that I will never fully remember because even while it caters to me occasionally, the vastest amount of our conversations are held on that level without words where words may as well be moving faster than the speed of light themselves and if were spoken may sound like a high-pitched whir or buzz like a bee or silly-sing-song language all of its own; if we could speak that fast.
We can do the impossible in our minds in quite a few provable ways and I find that far more fascinating than Einstein’s theory of relativity, which needs to be upgraded and Newton’s laws of gravity which can’t truly explain such phenomenon as Coral Castle, especially when our gravity is created by a combination of centrifugal and centripetal forces along with whatever other energy becomes lended from the sun or from our own planet as it spins on its axis and through time and space on its own path. Gravity is the greatest illusion, for if were to stop spinning and stop moving, who is to say that we would be bound to the Earth as much as we are? And certainly some days we feel heavier than other days if we were to pay attention and on other days we feel lighter. Some days it takes me less effort to walk a good distance than other days and there is no reasonable reason for that as muscle mass is not lost within a week of having it and working on it tends to make it stronger, not weaker; and I do know the rules of work-out mechanics and muscles which leads me to believe that one some days the spin might be faster, certain period of time might see gravity be slightly stronger or weaker than it is usually based on certain principles that we can’t rightly measure to which we must rely on the genius of Newton to state laws of gravity that may not be laws at all, merely a surface viewing of something that has infinitely more variables to it than Newton could have dreamed of.
As for Kant, it sounds like he’s just a douche. No offense, I don’t know him or his philosophies, but you guys make him sound like a douche.
Your “amateur” comment demonstrate your silliness especially this is a site that specialize in philosophy.
The great philosophers produced works that are open to tight scrutiny by their peers. Whilst there are likely to be some degrees of subjectivity, this can be eliminated if we based our rating of “good” philosophers or a large numbers of polls with a reasonable large participations.
For example, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/greatest_philosopher_vote_result.shtml
This poll is supported by commentaries by existing philosophers.
In most polls on the 'Greatest Philosophers of all times" or 'Greatest Western Philosophers of all times" you will find Kant appearing within the top 5, if not top 10 and seldom out of the top 20.
If we regard the top 10 are credible “professional” [not re profession] and ‘good’ philosophers, then Kant cannot be labeled as “amateur”.
In any case if you think there are philosophers [dealing with philosophy in general*] who are “much stronger” than Kant, who [not Jesus, Paul and the likes] do you have in mind?
*If not in general but as specialists then one has to compare light to light, i.e. in specific areas such as Ethics, Logic, epistemology, metaphysics, etc.
If that is the case, you have a lot to catch up on Western philosophy-in-general. But since you are very inclined into philosophizing, getting familiar with Kant’s work will facilitate a greater grasp and a systematic approach to philosophy and understanding reality.
I understand the mentioned of ‘Kant’ sometimes direct people’s attention to ‘down there’, but one has to stay focus on intellectual philosophy proper.
As with any progressive humans, Kant reKanted many times in his lifetime.
For example;
In 1763, Kant wrote, The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God.
In 1781, in his Critique of Pure Reason, he denounced any possibility of the proof of God in reality.
His famous recantation was his awakening from his ‘Dogmatic slumber’ by Hume. This was when he metamorphosized from a pure dogmatic Rationalist to a middle path of pragmatism* between Rationalism and Empiricism. *btw not philosophical-pragmatism of William James.
The catch is, Kant’s philosophy is EXTREMELY difficult to understand and grasp.
