WeSee claims to be a christian and she doesn’t understand christianity greenfuse…she hasn’t got a clue, so don’t listen to her. She has a false teaching interpretation of christianity, that’s all.
Jesus was referring directly to individuals who thought they were christians in Matthew 7:21-23…individuals who thought their belief and filthy rags good works would be good enough for them to enter heaven rather than being born again of the spirit.
WeSee hasn’t the first clue what being born again of the spirit means.
You have to be born again of the spirit first to do good works …See what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:1-21
WeSee believes her belief in God and her filthy rags good works will earn her a place in heaven.
No it won’t
See also what biblical scripture says about a MERE belief in GOD…in James 2:19
What do you have in mind when you say “he was called to bring the promise of the Tanakh to fruition, albeit in a different way than expected”? Details please. The more specific the better. You seem to have very definite things in mind with the phrase “tragic prophet” for example.
Also of what importance is accepting a “historical Jesus” given your other beliefs?
For some reason, many toss out charges of ad hom without really understanding what it is and is not, like you’ve done here. See if you can get a better understanding of the term.
It wasn’t an ad hom. Despite your claim that you “got that”, it’s evident that you still didn’t understand the OP. Based on your latest post, it’s clear that you still don’t. If you’re going to continue to insist that you understand the OP when it’s evident that you don’t, then I don’t know what to tell you.
I suspect that part of your struggle to understand the parable is that you have little to no experience evaluating conditional logic? Is that correct? If so, I can walk you through it.
I have explained this elsewhere, but I’ll give you a rundown.
I tend to avoid speaking in terms of the supernatural, yet it is difficult to deny that history sometimes reveals something almost mystical in the way human lives and events unfold. What appears mysterious, however, need not imply invisible spirits or miraculous interventions. Much of what we experience as “mystical” can be understood as the subtle interaction of psychological forces, social pressures, inherited traumas, and patterns of behaviour that operate beneath our conscious awareness. Modern research in psychology and trauma studies suggests that these hidden influences shape individuals and entire communities in ways that are often difficult to perceive directly.
At the same time, human perception is deeply personal. We interpret the world through stories, symbols, and metaphors. We tend to anthropomorphise forces that are in reality more complex than any single narrative can capture. Yet this tendency is not necessarily a mistake. Narratives help us make sense of our experiences and orient ourselves morally. They provide language for impulses and intuitions that might otherwise remain inarticulate. The key is to recognise that these stories are tools for understanding rather than literal descriptions of external agents directing our lives.
Over time, people observe patterns in the world and create stories to explain them. These stories often take the form of religious language. In my own case, for example, I encountered the social teachings of Christianity and felt what people might call a “calling” to enter nursing. I do not mean that I received a supernatural message assigning me a task. Rather, the circumstances themselves seemed to call for a response. The suffering I saw and the ethical framework I encountered combined to produce a sense of moral necessity. The situation called, and I answered.
I suspect that something similar may have occurred in the life of Jesus. When one reads the Gospels carefully, he appears as a man who recognised the condition of his people and felt compelled to respond to it, much as the prophets of Israel had done before him. His interpretation of Israel’s vocation seems to have centred on the idea that the people were meant to serve as an example for the world, a “light in the darkness” or the “salt of the earth.” For Jesus, this calling was distilled into what he described as the sum of the law: to love God with all one’s heart and to love one’s neighbour as oneself.
Of course, the Hebrew Scriptures contain far more than these two commands. They are a vast collection of laws, narratives, poetry, and reflection. Yet Jesus, like certain rabbinic teachers of his time, treated these two principles as foundational, seeing everything else as commentary upon them. One is reminded of the well-known rabbinic saying attributed to Hillel the Elder, who summarised the law in similarly ethical terms.
The difficulty, however, lies not in articulating such principles but in living them. Human societies have a persistent tendency to resist the demands placed upon them by moral visionaries. Rather than confronting the collective responsibility such teachings imply, communities often look for a single figure to blame or remove. The pattern of the rejected prophet runs throughout the history of Israel and, indeed, throughout human history more broadly. It is easier to silence one voice than to reform an entire society.
This tendency also shapes expectations of what a messiah should be. Many people imagine a charismatic, philosophical warrior and a leader who triumphantly clears the path and solves the problem on behalf of the people. Yet the path Jesus appears to have offered was quite different. It was not a broad causeway built by power and spectacle, but something more like a narrow and difficult track: a transformation of conduct, compassion, and responsibility that each person must undertake individually.
In that sense, the disappointment that followed his message is understandable. Jesus was pointing toward a demanding moral journey, one that could not be delegated to a hero. People often prefer a saviour who removes the burden rather than one who reveals that the burden belongs to everyone.
Importantly, this tension should not be reduced to a criticism of the Jewish people of that time. The pattern is universal. Every culture struggles with the same reluctance to accept difficult moral responsibilities. The impulse to seek scapegoats, to long for heroic deliverers, and to resist uncomfortable truths is not uniquely Jewish - it is profoundly human.
I believe this historical Jesus pointed to a profound problem and conflict in society that today is at the root of our problems.
An ad hominem (“to the person”) fallacy occurs when someone shifts the focus from the debate to a personal attribute of the opponent. Focus on the topic shifts to focus on the person. Your response to me above fits this to a nice little T, you moron (you moron is an insult, here, and not an ad hom.)
Attacking Competence: Phrases like “something you are failing to understand,” “out of your depth,” and “admittedly ignorant” are direct attempts to discredit my position by labeling me as incapable or uneducated on the topic.
Questioning Rationality: By stating that “all that’s required is the ability to reason soundly,” the speaker implies that my disagreement stems from a personal inability to think logically, rather than a valid difference of opinion. In other words, you opted not to reason on the topic and focused on the person.
Dismissiveness: Instead of explaining why the parable is simple or addressing my specific points, you use the charge of ignorance as a reason to stop engaging (“I don’t know what to tell you”).
So, in addition to being an ad hom. it was rude and included insults. Their inclusion does not take away from it be ad hom. You could try to pretend the post is not a context, a stand alone random utterance, so that you can call it a mere set of insults rather than an ad hom. And, yes, this allows you to be a different kind of moron. In context, however, you opted to dismiss my points based on to the person points rather than to reason, present a counter argument.
Could it be just an insulting post?
and not an ad hominem fallacy but just an insulting post?:
Since you make claims about me being ignorant “ignorance” and having a “lack of depth” as the sole reasons to dismiss my posts, it functions as a classic ad hominem abusive fallacy.
In other words, since you were so fucking lazy and dismissed my post based on claims about me personally, rather than addressing the points I made, it’s an ad hom.
And, in case, you don’t realize it…not responding to a post and either insulting the person or using ad homs. or both are signs you can’t rely on intelligence or reason to respond.
But here’s the irony. Your ‘defense’ is essentially. Those weren’t ad homs, they were insults, as if that’s makes it fine. A little maturity in you might have led to you opting to respond to my points and apologize either for the ad homs that were in that post or for what you consider mere insults. But you seem to lack that maturity.
Thanks. This helps. Wasn’t what I had in mind, but I can run with this. Gives me a better idea of what you have in mind in general.
Seems like we agree on truth as the ground of being.
Seems like we agree that ultimately it’s about transformation.
From what I can tell, we differ on what transformation entails. You seem to be indicating a "transformation of conduct, compassion, and [moral] responsibility ".
The message/role of Jesus was so much more far-reaching and all-encompassing than that of a “moral visionary…pointing toward a demanding moral journey”. Jesus was pointing the way to the ground of being itself: Truth. While moral responsibility is an important part of Truth, it is only a part. Transformation ultimately entails becoming one with Truth; the transformation of an unrighteous individual to a righteous individual . The standard for transformation is ceasing to commit sin. Until then, there is no Spirit of Truth, salvation, eternal life, living in the kingdom.
John 6
63It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh provides no benefit; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit, and are life.
John 14
15“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. 16“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; 17that is the Spirit of truth
21“He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him.”
John 12
48He who rejects Me, and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.
No “historical Jesus” necessary. No “tragic prophet” necessary. Only the words Jesus spoke while preaching His gospel from the beginning of His ministry through the crucifixion.
I can see that this is the impression I have given, although it is more existential and touches deeper than a simple moral imperative. Many of his sayings suggest an existential and spiritual sensitivity to life itself. When he says, “Look at the birds of the air…” or points to the lilies of the field, he seems to be drawing attention to a profound harmony within the natural world. These moments in the Gospels feel less like instructions and more like invitations to perceive reality differently and to recognise a kind of trust, order, and participation in life that human anxiety often obscures.
In passages such as these, Jesus appears deeply attentive to the immediacy of existence. The birds do not worry about tomorrow, the lilies do not strive to display their beauty, and yet both participate fully in the life given to them. The point seems not merely ethical but experiential and his followers are being asked to rediscover their place within a living whole rather than standing apart from it in fear and constant calculation. His teaching often seems aimed at dissolving the illusion of separateness that feeds anxiety, rivalry, and the endless pursuit of status or security.
For that reason, some readers perceive in Jesus’ words a spiritual intuition that resonates beyond the boundaries of Jewish tradition alone. When interpreted through a philosophical lens, these sayings can evoke the sense of an underlying unity in life and a perception that the divine is not distant but intimately present within the fabric of existence. In this sense, Jesus’ message can be read not only as a call to ethical reform but also as an awakening of awareness.
It is therefore not entirely surprising that interpreters from other spiritual traditions have sometimes recognised echoes of their own insights in the teachings of Jesus. Commentators from the tradition of Advaita Vedanta, for instance, have read the Sermon on the Mount through the lens of non-duality. Within Advaita, the ultimate insight is that the apparent separateness between the self and the ultimate reality, often expressed as Brahman, is an illusion. The deepest truth is unity.
From that perspective, certain sayings of Jesus appear strikingly familiar. The emphasis on inner transformation, the call to purity of heart, the warning against anxious attachment to the world, and the sense that the kingdom of heaven is not merely a political future but a present reality, all of these can resonate with the spiritual insights associated with teachers such as Adi Shankara or, in more modern times, figures like Ramana Maharshi.
When a Vedantic swami such as Swami Prabhavananda, reads the Sermon on the Mount and perceives an affinity with his own teacher, he is likely responding to this deeper spiritual current. What he hears in Jesus’ words is not primarily a theological doctrine about a particular religion, but an expression of awakened perception, a way of seeing the world in which the ego loosens its grip and the underlying unity of life becomes visible.
Whether one ultimately interprets Jesus within Jewish prophetic tradition, Christian theology, or a broader comparative spiritual framework, these moments in the Gospels reveal a teacher whose insights reach beyond mere rule-keeping. They suggest a man who had developed an acute sensitivity to the living world and who invited others to enter into that same awareness. In that sense, the ethical teachings may be only the surface expression of a deeper transformation of consciousness—a change in how one experiences oneself, others, and the whole of life.
You quote exclusively the Gospel of John, in which Jesus is saying things that my pastor attributed to the resurrected Christ and to some degree, you can understand that. I see this Gospel evolving out of a direct comparison with Dionysus, though the version that has remained tends to obscure this fact. In other words, the words placed on Jesus’ lips may represent the community’s reflection on who they believed the risen Christ to be. That does not necessarily mean the Gospel is “inventing” Jesus, but that it is interpreting him through a later theological lens.
At the same time, the world in which the Gospel of John emerged was not purely Jewish. By the late first century, Christianity was already moving through the wider Hellenistic culture of the eastern Mediterranean. This meant that Jewish ideas about God and messianic hope were increasingly expressed using Greek philosophical and religious language. One of the most striking examples is the opening of John: “In the beginning was the Word.” The concept of the Logos reflects both Jewish wisdom traditions and Greek philosophical ideas about the rational principle ordering the universe.
Within that broader Hellenistic environment, parallels with figures such as Dionysus have often been discussed. Dionysus was a god associated with wine, divine presence among humans, and the transformation of ordinary reality into something sacred. Some scholars have pointed out intriguing thematic resonances:
The miracle of turning water into wine at Cana.
The symbolism of the vine and wine as a source of life.
The idea of a divine figure who reveals hidden truth and offers a form of spiritual rebirth.
None of this necessarily means that the author of John deliberately copied Dionysian mythology. Rather, it suggests that the Gospel was written in a cultural environment where Greek religious symbolism was widely understood. The author may have expressed the significance of Jesus in ways that people within that world could recognise and relate to.
Over time, as Christian orthodoxy developed, these possible cultural dialogues were largely downplayed. The tradition emphasised continuity with Jewish revelation and the uniqueness of Christ rather than highlighting parallels with other religious traditions. As a result, the surviving form of the Gospel tends to obscure the extent to which early Christianity was interacting with the surrounding religious landscape.
Seen from a broader historical perspective, the Gospel of John can therefore be read as part of a creative meeting point: Jewish prophetic spirituality, emerging Christian theology, and the symbolic language of the Greek world. Early Christian writers were not operating in a vacuum but were interpreting their experience of Jesus in conversation with the ideas and symbols already circulating in the Mediterranean world.
In that sense, the Gospel of John may represent not only a theological reflection on Jesus but, following Paul, also an attempt to articulate his significance within a much larger spiritual conversation that included Judaism, Greek philosophy, and the mystery traditions of the time.
As I have pointed out above, the words you attribute to “the beginning of His ministry through the crucifixion” have, in my view, evolved out of an interpretation of the historical Jesus. The “I AM” sayings found in the Gospel of John, such as “I am the bread of life,” “I am the light of the world,” and “before Abraham was, I am,” are presented as occurring throughout the narrative of Jesus’ ministry, from its early stages to the events leading to the crucifixion. Yet many readers, particularly those approaching the text historically rather than theologically, see these statements as reflective of a later stage of interpretation within the early Christian community.
From that perspective, the language of these sayings appears less like the voice of the historical teacher who appears in the Synoptic Gospels and more like a retrospective theological reflection. The author of John presents Jesus through the lens of a developed Christology, in which the identity and significance of Jesus are interpreted in light of the community’s post-resurrection faith. The result is a narrative in which Jesus speaks with a level of self-definition and metaphysical clarity that feels different from the more indirect, parabolic style preserved in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.
In that sense, the “I AM” declarations can be understood as part of the evolving effort of the early Christian movement to articulate who Jesus was and what his life meant. They frame him within a symbolic and theological narrative that emphasises divine identity and cosmic significance. For believers, these statements express profound truths about the nature of Christ. For readers who approach the texts historically, however, they may appear as literary and theological constructions shaped by the reflection of the Johannine community rather than verbatim sayings of the historical Jesus.
This does not necessarily diminish their significance. Instead, it highlights how religious traditions often develop through interpretation. Communities remember a teacher, reflect on his life and death, and gradually express their understanding through increasingly symbolic language. The Gospel of John may therefore be read as the culmination of such a process: a work in which the memory of the historical Jesus is woven together with the theological insights of those who believed they had encountered his enduring presence.
From my point of view, then, the “I AM” sayings form part of a supernatural narrative that emerged through this interpretive process. I can recognise the coherence and spiritual power of that narrative while still viewing it as a retrospective theological construction rather than a direct historical record of Jesus’ own words.
You are no authority on the bible or Jesus’s sayings Bob.
You have to be born again of the spirit to understand the bible as Jesus explained to Nicodemus in John 3:1-21
Are you born again of the spirit Bob? Do you even know what that means?
The spirit,soul and body are separate because God’s word has the power to do this.
Hebrews 4:12
You exist Bob..because you need to exist to claim that you don’t exist….so you can’t cancel yourself out which proves that +=- and -=+ philosophy is incorrect.
As you can’t cancel yourself out you have two choices and two choices only.
Are you a misrepresentation of reality (an illusion) or are you a representation of reality (a non illusion)?
You still choose the former Bob and are still trapped in binary a “prisoner of consciousness” as a result…..so you have no understanding whatsoever of the reality Jesus spoke of.
You can’t understand reality until you accept the metaphysical because God has designed it that way.
Well Bob, looks like this is going to be much more difficult than I had hoped. Not even sure where to begin.
Let’s try this.
You seem to be foisting concepts from those other than Jesus upon the words attributed to Jesus - not unlike the retired pastor in the OP. How is such a methodology sound? How is it more sound than allowing the words attributed to Jesus to speak for themselves?
I ask a simple question: “How do I explain a fascination with the Gospels when I reject the supernatural explanation?”
I realised one day that there is enough out there, from Judaism, Hellenism and also from the East, that give plausible explanations. The miracle, as far as I am concerned, is life itself, and the fact that we are sentient beings with imagination. That is where our divine inspiration comes from, as well as our need for narratives.
It is awakening to that, seeing through the illusion, valuing truth, beauty, unity and goodness, loving the source of being and my fellow beings that liberates us from all fundamentalism. It helps us value the diversity of traditions and remain curious.
You might be surprised to hear that I agree with Harris in rejecting the supernatural interpretation of Jesus. I believe Jesus was a man who responded to what he perceived as an existential need of his people that would also benefit the rest of the world. If he was apocalyptic in his outlook, it was because he feared that the Roman occupation would deteriorate if Israel remained a hotbed of uprisings - a prediction that would prove correct. The stones of the temple would one day be pulled down, and the survival of the tradition was already being sown in the synagogues which they rebuilt in the diaspora.
Sam Harris’ satire of Jordan Peterson’s position reveals a general truth: you can find deeper meaning in any text. This is the weakness of psychological interpretations. Yet we must acknowledge the work of the scribes during the Babylonian captivity, who gave their defeated and dispossessed people a meaningful narrative. They wove defeat into a covenantal story of faithfulness amid loss and compiled the Torah to sustain identity without land or temple. However, later prophets were focusing on asocial behaviour as a sign that temple rituals had lost their meaning. Their ‘portable ethic’, emphasising obedience and memory, equipped Jews for survival and prefigured post-70 CE rabbinic shifts towards study and prayer.
Jesus also emphasised private, heartfelt prayer (Matthew 6:5–8) and spiritual circumcision over ritual, as in the Sermon on the Mount. He presumably warned of the end of the Temple and foreshadowed a spiritualised faith, similar to the concepts promoted by rabbinic sources, such as viewing Torah study as a ‘sacrifice’ and rabbis as the new priests. These concepts were rooted in Pharisaic traditions rather than Christian influences, and initially, both his followers and the Pharisees were looking for a new direction. Both traditions emerged ‘as twins’ from diverse Second Temple Judaism, with the rabbis possibly reacting to the success of early Christianity in non-Temple worship.
Mine is a historical interpretation of what happened, although it does involve some speculation. While we can criticise past nations for creating such narratives, if we look at our own myths today, I think we can see that we still do it, and people still believe them. For example, as a British person who has emigrated, I have met many others who recognise the British imperial nostalgia for what it is and acknowledge the historical reality of the British Empire as a condemnation.
American exceptionalism should face similar scrutiny, enabling emigrants and historians to pierce the veneer and reveal power imbalances. This kind of self-criticism reflects the calls for ethical authenticity made by biblical prophets, proving that narrative evolution endures and sustains people through disillusionment rather than denial.
I have several problems with Sam Harris’ critique:
it’s implicit in his argument, or better put…for his argument to be fully valid, a religious organization could use a random text as the basis for a religion. IOW this would work. Unfortunately to test this we would need a lot of time and a religious organization to carry out this experiment, which would be made stronger if the people in it, the founders actually believed the recipie was a holy text. Otherwise he is just assuming that any text will work. Just because one can make up spiritual interpretations of the recipie doesn’t mean people will take it seriously as a holy text and I think it will sit uneasily next to the Bhagavad Gita, Tao te Ching, The Gospels, ‘The Pali Canon, or things like the oral traditions of the native americans, say. In a sense while mocking something for not being able to predict the future, implicitly comparing it to a scientific text, he is simply making an untested hypothesis, but presenting it as we know this would work.
So, why does this matter: well if his recipe turns out to lack much appeal and people can’t manage to center a religion around it, it does not function in the world the same way. It would then be a poor example.
Text are not, in religions, isolated from practice. He’d need to show that texts plus practice and likely plus community cannot be predictive of the experiences of participants. The current mainstream prioritization of belief over participation over time (not attendance, but practice and participation) is not his fault (Sam Harris’ fault). Skeptics and adherents alike seem to assume that the big thing is belief, rather than things like long term relation, participation, gaining skills via practice, shifts in experience through practice and so on. It’s not binary, but I think there is a radical overemphasis on believing over exploration and relation in Western Abrahamism.
I agree with Sam Harris because he demonstrated that you could use patterns found anywhere to imply a “deeper meaning” in a text. This is sometimes weak, but there have been many examples. He specifically points to militant interpretations of texts, over which people have fought bitterly in the past and continue to fight today, which is incredibly contradictory when your ‘man’ is the ‘prince of peace’.
We must accept that we are truly dealing with the human experience of transcendence, which arises not only from abstract metaphysics but also from the living texture of consciousness itself. Throughout much of human history, this experience has been interwoven with art, ritual and, in particular, literature. It has been mediated through great narratives and poetic forms that have trained the imagination to recognise something beyond mere fact. Yet today, transcendence appears foreign or otherworldly, as though belonging to a spiritual geography outside the ordinary sphere of life. This estrangement largely reflects the marginalisation of classical literature - the domain in which humanity once explored and developed its encounters with beauty, truth, unity and goodness.
However, to be ‘taken up’ by a text shows us that transcendence has never actually left us. It is present whenever language expands our horizons, and the words of another consciousness invite us to experience meaning more deeply. Our idioms betray this: we say that a poem moves us, that a story lifts us, and that an insight takes hold of us. Such expressions reveal how intimately our speech conflates sensation and cognition, matter and spirit. It is as if, to register transcendence, we must borrow the grammar of movement, ascent or possession. This linguistic complicity is not an error, but a clue; it reveals how the human mind experiences the eternal through metaphors of embodiment.
How else could we describe transcendent dreams of truth, beauty, unity and goodness without stories? Narrative remains our primary metaphysical medium, the imaginative stage on which infinite realities become familiar. Through stories, we enact what theology or philosophy can only describe: the expansion of the finite towards meaning. In each genuine encounter with literature, we are not merely readers; we are read. The worlds of stories interpret us, and in that exchange, we rediscover the ancient vocation of being human: reaching beyond ourselves towards what we dimly sense as the more-than-human horizon of reality.
Religious texts are never isolated artefacts; they are brought to life through practice, which reveals the deepest convergences between traditions. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk whose passion for Christ burned with prophetic intensity, came to this realisation late in life. Immersed in monastic discipline at the Abbey of Gethsemani, he discovered that religious paths drew closest in the rhythms of prayer, silence and manual labour, especially the traditions he knew so well and transcending their doctrinal differences.
Merton was no cloistered idealist. A committed peace activist during the turbulent 1960s, he corresponded with figures such as Daniel Berrigan and hosted gatherings of activists at his abbey. Even as he critiqued war and racial injustice in his writings, he continued to do so. Many of the Eastern representatives he encountered, Zen masters, associates of the Dalai Lama, and Hindu contemplatives during his 1968 Asian journey, shared this pragmatic activism, which was rooted in non-violence and service. Merton himself embodied this ethos, viewing his monastic privilege not as escapism, but as radical service to the world. In his novice conferences, he pressed this point insistently, urging young monks to see their withdrawal not as flight, but as a profound offering, a ‘charism of liberty’, that would free them to embody Christ’s freedom amid a fractured society. This would foster personal integrity, inner peace, and authentic love.
However, as soon as we start fighting over interpretations, whether of biblical texts or scriptures from other faiths, we move away from this service-oriented mindset. Such conflicts entangle us in abstract ideas, breeding division where unity is needed. In my view, it is in the practice itself, contemplation, meditation and selfless action, that we must converge. Merton modelled this approach by combining Christian lectio divina and centring prayer with Zen mindfulness and Hindu insights. He insisted that Christians could enrich their monastic lives by studying Eastern disciplines without syncretism or compromise.
Similarly, I interpret Jesus as pointing relentlessly to personal, transformative practice while lambasting performative religion, outward shows that mask inner emptiness, much like the ‘combatant debates’ that plague us today. From our Christian perspective, we have much to gain from the contemplative and meditative depths of other traditions, which would reveal our profound connection. As Merton affirmed in Calcutta, we have reached a stage of maturity where our fidelity to Christ enables us to ‘learn in depth’ from the Buddhist or Hindu experience, thereby enriching the quality of our prayer and witness. In this shared silence and service, the walls of separation dissolve, revealing the one ground of mercy beneath it all.
You reject a supernatural explanation and yet you exist because you need to exist to clam that you don’t exist and so your +=- and -=+ starting philosophy is proven to be incorrect because you can’t cancel yourself out……you exist and prefer to believe that you are a misrepresentation of reality (an illusion) which claims things rather than a representation of reality (a non illusion) which claims things …..you exist and prefer to believe that you are binary electrical signals …thoughts……you exist and prefer to believe that you are a lifeless biological machine programmed with binary software….that’s what you believe Bob…..Its far easier to accept that you are a metaphysical being who exists and is separate from a biological machine which processes binary data which is converted into sounds,visions and sensations which you interpret because reality science confirms it.
Though I wasn’t contradicting this part. . Yes, that part we can do. My critique was not aimed at his claim we can read stuff into pretty much any text. My central critique in the first part: the lack of empirical validity of Harris’s “recipe” experiment. It implies all sorts of things without evidence. Well, I made that case above.
This doesn’t really connect to my post, but you can manage to unify the large colonizer religions to a degree, but they are different from indigenous, shamanic and pagan religions. The denial and radical control of the body and sex, for example, doesn’t fit so well there.
But here’s my main reaction to your post. It isn’t really a response to what I wrote and it seems to me an AI created text, partly for that reason, but also in the style of the text. It seems to associate from what I wrote, but not respond to it, in the ways AIs often do unless the prompt are complicated.
And an irony: while Merton certainly found value in the sacred texts of other religions, he would not have bought Sam Harris’ argument. He thought the fact that he was grounded in his tradition and its texts essential to his recognizing similarities. And while he respected secular texts, they were those written by extremely intelligent authors who were focusing heavily on sacred and philosophical theme. TM wasn’t out there saying we can use recipes or advertising or laundry lists instead of sacred texts.
What Jesus mean’t by the parable of the sower is that those who truly believed in God would have all things explained to them …..those that didn’t wouldn’t.
I assume from what you are saying that you have a lot of experience with AI, but my main sin is using Deepl Write to ‘tidy up’ my English due to my speaking German 99% of the time. But, there you go.
I can assure you that the thoughts are my own, and, in fact, if you can access the posts going back to 2003 here on ILP, you will find that I have made a progression to these ideas in that time by my various conversations with numerous participants.
Of course, there are cultural differences, but you will find that humanity has a common denominator in its conscious experience, and a basic felt sense of “being here,” of sensing, suffering, desiring, and meaning-making, although even that has a spectrum depending on the level of awareness and mindfulness. Unfortunately, in the “modern world”, our attentiveness to the world around us is distracted by many things so that our conscious experience is demoted in favour of mental gymnastics.
The “denial and radical control of the body and sex” fits exactly into those mental gymnastics. My “awakening”, if you want to call it that, came when I began nursing and I discovered how the confrontation with the body at its most unguarded, in its dependency, decay, pain, intimacy, and also small, luminous moments of trust and tenderness, changed my view. I came to value shamanic insights as another of those accesses to the transcendental, deepening and clarifying what is structurally there in human experience, which, like Zen in the East, seems paradoxical to our Western ideas.
Looking at the context of Sam Harris’s comments, I think that Merton would have engaged with the idea, but that is just as speculative as you saying he wouldn’t. But my point is that even a man so passionately enthused by Christ could find the central and unifying experience of religion in its practice. This means that we should acknowledge our traditions but interact in how we express them. The point is not that religious texts are written by extremely intelligent authors, but that they are all trying to express a common experience among mindful people. Just as literature repeatedly engages with human experience, especially existential experience, so too do the traditions each have their own perspective.
The common denominators for me are unity, truth, beauty and goodness, which give rise to love in all of its forms. It is devotion to such transcendental values that is expressed in various forms of religions, whether theistic in some way or atheistic.
I sincerely doubt Bob is using AI to generate anything. I would guess that he uses it to check his own logic, coherence, and maybe even grammatical structure. As in a kind of expert proof reader, and an editor that can provide suggestions that don’t have to be enacted, but might prove useful or indicate a possible slight change of direction.
