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Wayfarer

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There's been a lot of discussions of calvinism on this forum lately, but I don't think it's the place for it. Calvinism really has nothing to do with ...
July 16, 2017 at 00:04
There is a sutta (i.e. teaching) where the Buddha encounters two young Brahmins who ask him about how to pursue union with Brahma, the highest good. F...
July 15, 2017 at 23:15
Well, not really. They are the 'on' and 'off' indicators in an electrical pulse; it is where programming language is converted into physical instructi...
July 15, 2017 at 22:38
Actually the story of the transmission of the Buddha's words is thus. After his death (or pari-nirvana) the monks all gathered for a council. One monk...
July 15, 2017 at 22:34
Right! Makes sense to me. That is an effective analogy for the way the brain~mind 'constructs' reality on the basis of sensation, perception, judgemen...
July 15, 2017 at 22:22
Why can't there be a mountain range with no valleys? That would be just great - everything would be 'up', there would be no 'down'. The other great ad...
July 15, 2017 at 22:19
Well, if you're going to call yourself 'Mad Fool'.... :-| Do you think Brahma is the same god as Jehovah, or a different God? And do you think that Hi...
July 15, 2017 at 10:55
@Wosret- I'm not trying to 'condescend', merely to introduce a bit of clarity to a discussion about a subject that is near and dear to me.
July 15, 2017 at 10:38
What I'm trying to explain to you, is that the Buddha lived and taught in a place where the Hebrew bible was unknown, and that he didn't address his a...
July 15, 2017 at 10:37
Apparently.
July 15, 2017 at 10:31
I concede that's the meaning, but I don't think it's the style.....
July 15, 2017 at 10:27
I kind of get what you're saying Woz, but it's a very idiosyncratic take on the subject. It is useful in these discussions to try and relate what is b...
July 15, 2017 at 10:18
I'm not, Fool. I'm answering the question, but you're seeing the answer through your preconceived notion of what constitutes 'religion', so you're una...
July 15, 2017 at 10:16
He was,however, founder of one of the major world religions, which would be unlikely had he found 'nothing at all'. The traditional expression is that...
July 15, 2017 at 09:37
I've tried to explain to you, with examples from texts, that the Buddha didn't talk about the matter of 'God' at all, but from what you're saying here...
July 15, 2017 at 09:31
It's not 'an argument', it's speculation. The phrase 'finding God' is meaningful within particular domains of religious discourse, typically Christian...
July 15, 2017 at 08:29
July 15, 2017 at 06:16
Not according to the doctrine of privation, which says that evil doesn't exist - what we see as evil is the mere privation of the good, which is compa...
July 15, 2017 at 05:35
That's not 'on one account', it is true even according to its most ardent advocate, Dawkins, whom you mention. He frequently observes that Darwinian t...
July 15, 2017 at 05:03
I'd prefer to think of it as the latter. 'Before' is a matter of perspective - which only a mind can bring to bear. Magee on Schopenhauer. Kant himsel...
July 15, 2017 at 01:31
Doesn't that mean, by definition, 'a being of which we have no knowledge'?
July 14, 2017 at 23:48
This is more history than philosophy. One of the major themes of the Enlightenment was the 'rejection of metaphysics', right? Metaphysics was associat...
July 14, 2017 at 23:20
Two short articles on same. Quantum Mysticism: Gone but Not Forgotten What we call 'Reality' is Just a State of Mind.
July 14, 2017 at 22:49
Challenges the reality of 'mind-independent objects'. That's it.
July 14, 2017 at 22:44
No, I'm sure he wasn't. He would have absolutely detested the kind of subject we're discussing. Mind you, Freud himself is now a museum piece, consume...
July 14, 2017 at 22:34
That's where the new-age woo comes in. I too watched What the Bleep years back, Fred Alan Wolfe was interesting, but all the Californian-style philoso...
July 14, 2017 at 22:32
Whilst reason dictates against discussing such a recondite question with a person whose forum name is 'Mad Fool', I will hazard a reply. The basic iss...
July 14, 2017 at 22:24
Why 'beings'? By beings, are you referring to billiard balls, trees, stars, and mountains? In normal discourse, there is only one type of entity that ...
July 14, 2017 at 22:11
Your problem is that before 'quantum nonsense' was discovered, many Leading Scientists were of the view that Science had just about cracked 'the myste...
July 14, 2017 at 22:06
aha, so even tardigrades may not survive Scott Pruitt... :-(
July 14, 2017 at 12:16
Rationalist philosophers such as Leibniz, Spinoza, and Descartes, to name a few, were religious. Thomas Aquinas' works are scrupulously rational. Ther...
July 14, 2017 at 08:53
But again, what is the motivation behind the mathematics? What is the problem that the maths is trying to solve? Why go to the bother?
July 14, 2017 at 05:19
actually, casting about for ideas as to who might best represent the idea of 'spiritual but not religious', the figure that springs to mind is that of...
July 14, 2017 at 00:40
Which simply reaffirms the point that I was making - that your reason for rejecting 'spirituality' is that it is too near religion. Regarding the quot...
July 13, 2017 at 23:45
I don't think the philosophy forum is the place for proselytizing or defending the One True Faith . My advice to Beebert was 'meta-religious', not apo...
July 13, 2017 at 23:13
It means many things, but in this context, it means taking something a source of moral authority or a basis for normative judgement.
July 13, 2017 at 21:34
An opportunity for one of my all-time favourite quotations: Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 bookBeyond Objectivism and Relativism: Sc...
July 13, 2017 at 11:01
The classic formulation of the problem is from Hume, as I'm sure you know; there's a decent summary of it ]on wikipedia. I take it to be the initial r...
July 13, 2017 at 10:49
The word 'spiritualism' always reminds me of Victorian psychic research - seances and spirit mediums. In any case, the kinds of ideas that are encount...
July 13, 2017 at 03:39
You don't seem to grasp how much more radical the notion that there are many worlds, or parallel universes, is, than that of heliocentrism, which had ...
July 13, 2017 at 02:14
And, as I responded, the fact that it implies 'two Alices' means that, as far as I am concerned, it is not realistic.
July 13, 2017 at 02:02
As good a place to start as any is Max Weber's notion of disenchantment: Note the allusion to the 'death of god' in the final sentence. There is also ...
July 12, 2017 at 23:34
Well, I think you are, although I wouldn't phrase it in such obviously pejorative terms. What is the motivation behind those who are 'spiritual but no...
July 12, 2017 at 21:03
Evil as the privation of the good is not my invention, it originates with Augustine. The point is that evil has no reality of its own, it is comparabl...
July 12, 2017 at 10:49
That is about the sum of your objections to many things said in this thread, isn't it? ';Sounds religious'. It's like the topography of an underground...
July 12, 2017 at 05:50
Feel free to leave any time.
July 12, 2017 at 04:50
hard to tell whether russia or alt-right trolll; best not to feed, regardless.
July 12, 2017 at 04:21
Foreword to The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, published in 1930. The wikipedia entry goes on: Emphasis added.
July 12, 2017 at 00:48
There is no 'Copenhagen model'. It is not a model or even a scientific hypothesis. The 'Copenhagen interpretation' refers merely to the kinds of thing...
July 12, 2017 at 00:45
I do think this is a blatant distortion of the Christian message. Also consider the following. Some Christians are locked into their inherited underst...
July 12, 2017 at 00:10