Truce!!!

Varuna:

With consideration, only No. 1 holds true, and not as a conclusion.

I wouldn't, but that doesn't change the reality that unperceived meaning is unperceived.

Then naming at least one shouldn't be so difficult?

Our individual qualifications in defining the meaning of this or any given word depend solely on what we are able to make it mean.

No, a word is just a name for whatever meaning it is given.

All truths co-exist, yes, but it cannot be concluded that they co-exist equally. In truth, one truth is bound to surpass another, if only in expression.

What I mean is that the idea of meaning comes down to our desire to make it, as opposed to our will to accept anothers.

Well, what about them?

Only if they were to be taken as the sum of my experience, which they cannot. The sum cannot be taken, only added to.

Religion is an insult to intelligence.

 

This would imply that something exists that one chooses NOT to experience. One's experience is not all that exists, or rather, reality exists beyond what one chooses to experience. Unless, of course, one chooses to experience the whole reality.

True, but meaning may exist regardless of whether or not it is perceived. Existence is not dependent upon perception.

How about this? Believers are conscious of something that Atheists, apparently, are not conscious of.

Do you believe you create meaning? Why then is your meaning always recognizable? You know, something that already existed before YOU created it? Why not create something entirely outside of your experience? Something good, of course.

Either way, regardless of whether or not it has a name, the meaning exists.

A metaphor is one experience that is synonymous with another. It is important to realize, of course, that there is no perfect metaphor.

Well, you have to love that.

Not really. An insult is a phantom of the ego, it disintegrates when it meets real intelligence.

Religion is a great invitation for you to use your intelligence. There is something to all of this that is worth knowing, but you have to think if you are going to claim you are intelligent enough to know what it is that some pretty freakin brilliant people have been talking about for the past three or four or five thousand years.

If you can't or won't do that, well . . . how can you know anything about a path you haven't traveled.

Peace and Love

 

Don't won't to interupt your convo, but I seen this idea repeately come up and wanted address it. That isn't the case, especially with gnostic atheism. Two different people can experience or be conscious of the same thing and interprate it entirely differently. The mental interpratation of such would include many factors, including cultural, education, inteligence capacity, genetic, psychological, etc. Similar to two people riding a rollercoater, one gets physically ill and another has a great time. More closely to the point would be to look at how many different religions there are, and how similar but still very different they are.

 

Which is why it is no conclusive truth..

No, if one chooses to experience the whole of reality, one will still only experience ones own.

The pleasure in creating beyond oneself partly resides in being able to love the necessity of all that is past. If I was a destroyer, what would your advice to me be?

Stay on track! The existence of meaning is not in question, but the existence of meaning in itself.

If you can realize there is no metaphor for the universe itself, you should also be able to understand that a metaphor is in no way synonymous with what it may descry.

I think you mean that it would be best to love it.

No, really, it is, but yes, I agree, it needn't be, which is what you seem to be saying.

Religion is an invitation to lose oneself in another, or an idea. When it invites intelligence it invites its own end.

lol Yes it's quite possible, after all, I am a believer too, just not in god.

No, for meaning to exist, it is always perceived. There is a 'whom' for all meaning, a self, being. The meaning of existence is not existence itself, but its highest perception.

 

VARUNA AND DEJA VU!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!

No one gives a shit. Deja vu, your an Atheist. Only a personal experiance will change your mind. You won't turn into a believer over the internet.

Varuna, your wasting your time. He's an Atheist. He won't change his mind because of some crap he saw over the internet.

Both of you are arguing for the sake of trying to beat eachother. This will go nowhere. Nehtier of you are interested in trying to convert the other one. Just interested in trying to beat the enemy.

Look at what your doing and see for yourself that it's pathetic. I was there once too. Varuna, cut the crap and find something useful to do with your time.

 

That's an impressive font size Yeal, and yes, you've got it, I'm an atheist.

 

Thank you.

 

hahaha, awesome post Yeal.

 

Can anyone explain me, why they should "shut up" ?

 

What is wrong with going no where?

What if they aren't trying to beat the enemy, but trying to learn about the enemy.

 

Sorry Yeal, but, well, it IS a forum.

?

Reality exists. Perceived or not.

One of the most common intellectual/cultural/spiritual illnesses making the rounds today is the belief that identity is indelible, innate, genetic.

If you believe you are a "destroyer" then you ignore a huge portion of your own reality, while using your worst beliefs to excuse your worst behavior. By doing this, you invite others to ignore a huge portion of your own reality. You risk subhuman treatment by those others who believe THEY have the legitimate right to destroy the bad guys.

You are a human being, with a thousand different identities (american, male, young, atheist, etc.) none of which fully expresses what you essentially are. Who you are has as little to do with your ego, your thoughts (stupid OR brilliant), beliefs, opinions, fears, desires and so on as it does the brand of socks you wear.

What is the difference?

So whatever you THINK you are talking about when you speak of God may have nothing to do with reality. Agreed?

Both may be true.

Religion does not have to be an insult to intelligence. But you have to think about what it actually means.

The Bhagavad Gita, The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), The Sacrifice of Isaac, the Zen Koans, until you start working with the meaning of these, You are allowing a set of assumptions to take the place of your intelligence.

What is God? How can you claim knowledge about an entity you "know" does not exist? Isn't that an inherent contradiction?

By whom?

See? Maybe this is what we're talking about.

Regardless of perception, existence and meaning do not compete against one another. Meaning exists, and existence is meaningful.

 

No-one said it doesn't. You however have suggested that choosing to experience the whole of reality will result in such experience.

That doesn't answer my question, but don't worry about it. What kind of creator do you imagine me to be?

Oh? What does who I am have to do with then if not me?

The difference is there is no meaning unless it is created. Meaning does not exist in itself.

No, it may have everything to do with it, but one would without doubt fail to articulate exactly what one meant by it.

Do I? Perhaps. At any rate, I have. Could you tell me what it means?

lol
How so? What if I hadn't had a chance to read them? Will my intelligence then be usurped by assumptions? What if these had never been written? You may as well have said that "Until you have started 'working with the meaning' of the whole of the worlds literary works you are allowing a set of assumptions to take the place of your intelligence."

What kind of edifying advance to my intelligence do you see occurring from a thorough engagement with the meaning of Isaacs sacrifice?

Knowledge is suddenly belief is it?! God is an old word that confuses more than it enlightens. It is most often used to obscure what people are afraid to put into more words, not to mention 'think of'.

Existence is not meaningful unless it is perceived to be so. To assert otherwise is a supposition to no end.

By those who perceive it, who else?

Which is? How is god the right word for what you mean by it? Or don't you know what you mean by it? But if you do, why not say what you mean rather than use a word which by virtue of its rich history tends to confound meaning?

 

Well, the choice itself is not the experience, but it is an important first step.

How do you express your creativity?

The idea is simply that however complex, or simple, your identity may be, you are more than your identity.

What is meaning? How do you create meaning?

So, reality and thought are unequal? Thought and words? Words and meaning?

I find more meaning every time I do anything with it. If there is a definitive limit to all meaning, I have not found it yet.

I think it is not a matter of reading everything as much as it is connecting with the inspiration for these writings.

There are many vitally important ideals expressed in this story. One big one is the idea that Sacrifice is NOT an act of destruction. Sacrifice means to make something sacred by giving it away, by recognizing its primary relationship is to the divine and humbly accepting that you have no real claim to custody or ownership. Paradoxically, you cannot completely enjoy your gift, whatever it is, until you give it to the good that is beyond your imagination.

Your intelligence, for example, is not really yours. If you hoard it, if you hide it away and never allow it to come into contact with anything good, it will wither and fade. If, however, you selflessly apply your intelligence to something creative, benevolent, inspired, wise, unfying, transcendent, then it will flourish beyond anything you have ever imagined.

Pick your favorite genius and consider what would have happened to their gift if he or she had not given it their absolute respect and appreciation.

Not necessarily. Maybe if you know what you believe. I can't say I know entirely what belief actually IS.

I believe humanity will still exist in a hundred years. I can't say I know it is true. I hope it is true. Could it be that belief is a form of desire?

God is a name. Those who misunderstand the name do not think it means anything more than what they thought when they were children. Many people seem to stop thinking creatively about the divine within the first decade of their life.

Any thought about reality that you have not examined since childhood is going to be a distortion of that reality. Is there any other aspect of your life where you believe the absolute truth on the subject is accurately expressed by your childhood thoughts? Love, sex, school, work, art, money, death, life, etc. Are any of these things what you thought they were when you were a child? Do you believe these things ceased to exist in the light of your adult understanding?

Did your ancestors DNA mean anything a thousand years ago? How about the laws of physics? How about all of the metabolic processes that are keeping your body alive today? Those are meaningful. If you perceive them in their entirety then you know reality better than any Nobel Laureate.

Meaning exists. It simply isn't sought by those who seek advantage in the suffering of others, those who kill the innocent, and start wars, and violate the unity of humanity and the divine, and violate the primal inspiration of all that exists.

That is the error made when one abandons all meanignful questions about what is good.

The healthy alternative is to simply ask a good question.

Peace and Love

 

An important first step towards...?

Come on, I'm sure you're creative enough to enjoy guessing! By living Varuna! In thought, in countless acts and gestures, but firstly and lastly in thought, or to put it madly, to myself. I read again your advice to destroyers, or to me were I one, and I suppose you did answer my question after all.

In what sense? I'm sorry to let you down, but I am not more than who I am!
Perhaps you refer to my physical person? If it is of concern to you, I promise to donate my organs to the needy and my skeleton to the first trick or treater who takes to it.

Evaluation.

Yes.

So then, when you last did something with religion, what did it mean (to you)?

What, those writings in particular? Different things inspire different people no? Would you classify the inspiration for these writings as being 'god'? Sometimes it seems to me that god is the touchstone for everyone that would prefer not to come to grips with genius, but my vision is not quite so bleak as to have me believe it

In this you show your wisdom, and yet how you read this out of the tale I don't know! Can you help me with the following questions? Why did God find it necessary to test Abrahams obedience to his will? Wasn't God disgusted to discover that Abraham was prepared to murder his son in obeyance with his command rather than appeal to God for a reason? Why does God appear to have such bad taste?

How is my intelligence not mine when only I may demonstrate it?

It is.

I'm assuming you are inferring that I am one who 'misunderstands' the name God. I am happy to be categorized as a child in this regard!

lol Why do you think that is? You haven't wondered that it could be because 'god' and divinity are not synonymous?

No, my understanding of all these things grew up as I did, even my understanding of god. The difference was that back then in my innocence, I couldn't understand what people were trying to hide when they spoke of it.
Children are not stupid, they are more than capable of understanding that the revelation of something truly extraordinary would not necessitate grave seriousness, covetousness in speech, or indeed any of the trappings of religion.

You miss my point, but you prove it besides.

Again, the existence of meaning is not in question. To seek it is to make it.
Certainly the highest meaning is not found by those who seek advantage in the suffering of others, the majority of whom have religion or have been maimed in some way by it.

 

. . . ?

Thanks.

True, but however you identify yourself, there will always be some very real aspect of who or what you are that will go unnamed. You could spend the rest of your life listing all of the factually true names for who and what you are (literate, human, mammal, earthling, etc.) and still some aspect would go unnamed.

If you believe any one of these identities represents the whole, then you make the same mistake of the Neo-Conservatives and Fundamentalists. Isn't that what you (and I) are really worried about?

Hmmm, a Samhain Eucharist?

Evaluation does not create meaning, evaluation is recognition.

Well then, the question is: How do you recognize the relationships between reality, thought, words and meaning?

A transcendent glimpse . . .

These are good writings, but one could find the same inspiration anywhere, if one knows how to recognize it.

As I understand it, Inspiration is an expression of God, as is Love, Truth, Consciousness, Wisdom, Compassion, Creativity, Unity, Transcendence, etc.

If you can grasp why these are, ultimately, expressions of the same thing, then maybe hope is also possible.

Yeah, I don't know about that. You may be right, but it seems that genius is an outsider's name for inexplicable creativity.

Good! Question the stories. This is exactly what goes on in the Synagogue every day. Welcome to three and a half thousand years of Judaism.

A good question is a singularly creative act.

What if God did not find it necessary, What if it was Abraham's necessity that required a test? Or, more simply, the experience was for Abraham's (and Isaac's) benefit.

It is argued that God never intended Isaac to die. Abraham's (and Isaac's) experience led to insights that would never be attainable in any other way.

Disgusted? I don't know.

Good question. Is reality always what it appears to be? Or does most of it elude habitual perception?

Good question.

Well then, why not desire something good? Something not limited by one's own definition of "good."

I hope my assumptions are instantly forgotten. As far as I know, everyone (including you and me) 'misunderstands' the name God, and either seeks to know what "God" is a name for, or they don't.

I do wonder. I think they are not synonymous, but they are inseperable, like "water" and "hydration."

I agree.

Haven't you ever experienced the sense that "I don't know what this means, but I know it means something" . . . ?

Meaning is either recognized or it isn't. In my experience, those who "make" meaning often tell a story that reality doesn't.

Like music, politics, and comedy, Religion is one of those things about which many claim to have far more understanding than they actually have.

One shouldn't condemn all of this just because some don't do it so well. Just as Yoko Ono, President Duhbya, and Carrot Top shouldn't define what you think music, politics, and comedy must be, Osama, Jerry Falwell and Christopher Hitchens shouldn't define what you understand about religion.

Peace and Love

 

Evaluation is meaning. And so we go our separate ways!

See you!

 

Any time!

Peace and Love

 

Is it over? Is it safe to come out now? Who won?

 

I think so . . . For now anyway.

Sure is quiet . . .

Of course. Nothing to fear. Perfectly safe.

Won?

 

One sure fire way to shut me up for a while is for a creationist to post a 6000 character response. I just can't be bothered to read most of the past 7 pages of what I’m sure is just life changing monumental shit about how wrong I am to be atheist!! Shame I'll never read it!!



So congrats to Okiefreak as I’ve actually read some of your posts and in response to your question from page 2, “What religion were Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot?”. I’m sure they were all cults of personality which can become its own form of religion.