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Sorry to be a bit late and be referring back to old posts.
Ev_G:
I'm focusing and quieting my mind and improving my powers of visualization and imagination.
Which you presumably can't provide any 'independent objective evidence' of? Also, why woudl you want to do this? In what way is visualization and imagination a 'power'?
Regular practice also focuses the will.
Again, how would you demonstrate this to a non-believer? What do you mean by 'the will'? Can you demonstrate that such a thing exists, independently and objectively?
In addition, the mere fact that gods don't exist doesn't mean that visualizing and calling on them doesn't have an effect. For example, it may help me to aspire to the better aspects of my self, or to certain specific aspects of my conscious or unconscious self.
I see. So by pretending that something exists, and calling on it, you are able to help yourself be a better person? Again, hard to demonstrate except to yourself, really. Also, why would you use non-existent entities rather than extant or previously extant ones, though? Surely there have been suitable personages throughout history with the qualities you wish to emulate? Why the silliness of God or Gods?
Also : conscious and unconscious self...what's that then? Can you provide some independent objective evidence for those descriptions of reality? Something that can be agreed upon by a skeptical enquirer who doubts such terminology has any 'reality' or basis in the same reality as Bill Clinton or Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Is the dichotomoy between imaginal and manifest in terms of 'reality' a fixed and reasonable one? In what sense do our thoughts 'not exist'? They have some kind of existence, surely? Not the same as Bill Clinton, perhaps, nor Niagra Falls, but they do, undoubtedly, exist. They have isness. They be. And, all manifest human creations begin life as just that : thoughts.
who cares:
As an atheist I have no problem working with metaphor. In my opinion magic is essentially a form of pre-modern psychology for self-improvement anyway so there's no conflict whatsoever.
You seem to suggest that modern psychology has replaced, by invalidating, magic and/or religion...is this so?
As an atheist you have no problem working with metaphor...not sure how the two are linked, tbh...atheist / metaphor. Surely, a more accurate and encompassing statement would be 'as a sensory perceptual experiencer I have no problem working with metaphor, just like everybody else'. All of our sensations are metaphors. All of our descriptions. Atheism has no particular claim over the ability to work with metaphor. I don't really see your point. We all work with metaphor, 'an expression in which the person, action or thing referred to is described as if it really were what it merely resembles'.
who cares:
'I'm sure we can all agree on a variety of what I'll call "independent objective events" such as Bill Clinton becoming President of the United States of America in January 1993
Again, I ask, independent of what? If you could clarify what this objective Universe is independent of that would clarify the point you are trying to make.
Your point re: if only the shamans and yogis had 'first have taken the time to discover whether their experiences were any more "real" than the voice a psychotic hears, images seen during an acid trip, or the celestial spheres'. Hmmm. How do you suppose these sages formed their metaphorical directions (or philosophies, whatever you want to call it). You seem to be assuming that something like the Yogas and shamanism was a bit of a rush job, people less canny than yourself making crazy, hasty leaps of logic and conclusion without adequately considering the implications or radicalness of what they suggested. Why is this, out of interest, other than because what they conclude disagrees with your own views.
Ev_G, also:
What I'm saying is that after having certain extraordinary experiences "shamans, yogis and seekers" may have been overly hasty to the extent that they postulated that these experiences were attributable to "God," whatever that is.
Could you explain this a bit more? The overly hasty part, and in what way the conclusions drawn by traditions pre-dating your existence by many, many millenia should have, or should now, reassess their conclusions in light of your personal knowledge and experience.
who cares, you ask :'Is anyone saying they should do anything?'..to which I would reply that this:
'...should be investigated to determine what, if anything, these experiences mean'
from Ev_G contains a fairly clear missive on how shamans, yogi's and seekers have gone wrong (until now, perhaps).
who cares:
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that they describe things that many people believe exist and others do not
A point I was pulled on when I stated that 'God' is a description of Reality...if we lay this one to rest, and agree that words are descriptions of Reality, then definitions become rather pivotal, wouldn't you agree?
I think a lot of the to-and-fro in this thread is over poor definition, which is largely what the abstract deals with: an attempt to pin down the meaning of Agnostic and Atheist.
How far have we got with this? Would anyone else care to summarise? We need a definition for God, obviously, otherwise 'atheist' isn't going to make much sense. By many definitions popping up in this thread, without clarification, I would be an atheist, though the terms are all a bit daft I think.
Finally:
toksik:
oh, such a shame your's is rubbish.
mine's simply marvellous.
y'know, it sounds just as wank coming out of your mouth as it does that pillock with the flash car or that fundie with hir saving light.
Hmm. Re-reading my post, it was very badly put. I see where you and Ev are coming from with the the revulsion. Apologies. What I intended, and failed to convey, was that I was a perfectly jolly secular materialist, born into a secular family, with no interest, in fact, an active dislike of spirituality in all its forms. Then I got brutally punched flat by a system which completely re-wired my experience and consciousness, and opened the way to a different view altogether.
Ev describes much the opposite, a life of dedicated study and pursuit of the Spiritual, two decades of studiousness and practice, which has culminated in a view and experience of a non-Divine Universe, in spite of the promise implicit in all the doctrine's and practices that experience of God awaits the student of such. Which presumably was something Ev desired or sought. 20 years is quite a while. Harvard Divinity and all that.
It engendered sympathy in me. I wasn't saying 'yours is rubbish'. Only that mine really is marvellous. I frequently marvel. I genuinely would be pleased if other folks had the tools that worked at their disposal. S'all. How it sounds ('wank' :-)) doesn't really change the fundamental nature of the experience at all, nor the fact that it is available and viable and experienced by enough people to be worthy of more investigation than to note that you don't experience it hence it must be delusion. |
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