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baker

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Bah, no. Eh. Buddhism is elitist.
April 19, 2021 at 13:44
Well, that's bizarre ...
April 19, 2021 at 13:42
It is impossible not to act. Even plumping oneself down at a crossroads is an action.
April 19, 2021 at 13:36
Religious/spiritual communities function like guilds. Religious/spiritual practices are intended to be taken up within the context of a religious/spir...
April 19, 2021 at 13:15
Great topic, but I have to go for today. Stuff to bake.
April 18, 2021 at 13:14
At a forum like this, a part (or sometimes most) of one's verbal performance is about performing for an audience, not for the poster one is replying t...
April 18, 2021 at 13:00
Oh, the unenlightened florist who hasn't yet learned how to chop wood and carry water again. Yesssss. I'm guilty of it too. But, in my defense, I'm aw...
April 18, 2021 at 11:03
Take a more down-to-earth example of a "private investigation": Recovering after an injury. You, with your particular injury, with your particular soc...
April 18, 2021 at 10:54
The florist feels no such need to convince others.
April 18, 2021 at 09:12
Yes, absolutely. I classify such utterances under "poetic ontology", "poetic epistemology", and other poetic suches. There's plenty of this in literat...
April 18, 2021 at 06:53
God is omnimax, by definition. One of the implications of this is that nothing in this universe can exist without God willing it and making it possibl...
April 18, 2021 at 06:42
It has been my observation that people say this when they don't want to get involved in the conversation, or when they try to present a problem as sma...
April 18, 2021 at 06:39
No. Nothing in this universe can exist without God willing it and making it possible.
April 17, 2021 at 20:01
Well, you've got that smug confidence. Unfortunately, said confidence doesn't guarantee knowledge of God ... or anything else, for that matter. But it...
April 17, 2021 at 19:54
Science, religion, economics, art theory, etc. -- they (can) all claim to account for the meaning of life, and not merely address it, indeed. (Leaving...
April 17, 2021 at 19:39
It's not just in reply to your posts. It's something I've been working out for myself. Maybe someone else benefits as well. I think that in some matte...
April 17, 2021 at 19:25
So your "God" is indistinguishable from being a mere figment of your imagination. And since you deny any relation to religion, your "God" is a mere fi...
April 17, 2021 at 19:11
How do you know that?? How do you know that?? The above two premises strike me as undecidable. The premises one uses should be true, otherwise the who...
April 17, 2021 at 19:05
While in religion/spirituality, "you" are the object of your investigation. Noone can do that for you, nor can you do it for anyone else.
April 17, 2021 at 19:00
I'm trying to give a context for approaching religion, a context that tries to make sure that one's involvement with religion isn't going to become so...
April 17, 2021 at 18:58
No. I'm saying one has to have those things, or else getting involved with religion is going to squish one. I'm sometimes amazed by high-calibre think...
April 17, 2021 at 18:57
And then there is the issue of power struggles between people. We could say that notions of subjectivity and objectivity are born of, created by the p...
April 17, 2021 at 18:46
Actually, it is controversial. It was controversial, for example, for Descartes who believed that animals have no feelings, don't feel pain, and that ...
April 17, 2021 at 18:06
Well, you're not a bat. Do you know what it's like to be a bat?
April 17, 2021 at 17:59
Sorry, I'm too daft, apparently, to discern the reference. B ...?
April 17, 2021 at 17:57
By having confidence in yourself, believing that you exist for a reason, that you're a worthy person, and so on. Yes, cheap self-help slogans, I know....
April 16, 2021 at 20:02
Insofar as someone is just repeating the claims of experts from a particular field, and is straightforward about doing so, it's not clear what the pro...
April 16, 2021 at 19:39
I think it comes down to why they say they believe something. On one end of the spectrum, there is the conman who, for the purposes of betraying other...
April 16, 2021 at 16:21
If there would be such a thing as the will of God, we would necessarily know it* and have no choice in the matter, unless he deliberately hid it from ...
April 16, 2021 at 16:11
Rather, what is so attractive in seeing other people as being mere numbers? Democracy is forcing people into that. Because in democracy, the only hope...
April 16, 2021 at 16:07
None of the monotheistic religions is in favor of (absolute) antinatalism. So someone is wrong here, you, or them. Will you argue that you have better...
April 16, 2021 at 16:02
There is something attractive about his smug certainty. Being able to prance around with a certainty like that -- that must be great! Yay!
April 16, 2021 at 15:51
It depends who the intended audience for such a case against God would be. Some (many, most?) theists will not even listen to someone who disagrees wi...
April 16, 2021 at 15:50
Doing a religious practice can never convince a person who doesn't already believe.
April 16, 2021 at 15:43
Here are some assumptions that religious people (of different religions) make and I learned them the hard way: "If a person visits a religious venue f...
April 16, 2021 at 15:40
But can it be said that the ordinary daily struggle for survival really is about acting in bad faith? If we accept the Theory of Evolution, and with i...
April 16, 2021 at 15:07
And sometimes, it's just more strategy. I think that a philosophically inclined person is in comparison to the ordinary, extroverted, socially adept p...
April 16, 2021 at 15:03
There are studies that show that religiosity plays a different role and has different effects if the person is living in a culture where the majority ...
April 16, 2021 at 14:35
God and sin. A sheer unsolvable theological problem. It's unsolvable for Abrahamists. There are more theisms than just the Abrahamic onces. Hindu (mon...
April 16, 2021 at 12:49
I don't think so. An example: I was once waiting in line at the grocery store. I was second in line. So I was waiting, standing still in my spot at th...
April 15, 2021 at 12:28
Or the person has different epistemic priorities and different epistemic standards than a philosopher. A bit of folk wisdom says "If you stand for not...
April 15, 2021 at 12:13
Yes, it's a claim. A claim made by relatively small, highly specialized groups of people. If one wishes to test those claims, one has to become a memb...
April 15, 2021 at 11:55
As with all studies, one interested in a particular field of study has to play by the rules of said field. This is true whether we're talking about th...
April 15, 2021 at 11:44
Why would one want to do such a study? Here I'm assuming you're talking about what is usually understood as "scientific study", and the topic are pers...
April 15, 2021 at 11:40
It's not clear how you can be sure that you know the truth about God. "God" is a term whose native domain are monotheistic religions which offer compe...
April 15, 2021 at 10:19
You said: from which I surmised that you hold that virtue can be found in metaethics, it's just that the virtue of Stoicism and Early Buddhism cannot ...
April 15, 2021 at 10:08
Thank you for the passages.
April 15, 2021 at 10:04
On the contrary, how could one not be interested in this private experience and how could one not explore it?
April 15, 2021 at 10:04
It's pretty much what practice according to Early Buddhism is about. See this article, for example: https://pathpress.org/notes-on-meditation/
April 15, 2021 at 10:02
Sure, the phenomenological perspective is useless for scientific purposes. But one's own experience is all that a person has, and all that is or can b...
April 15, 2021 at 09:54