immortal

I admire your ability to recognize those who have divine inspiration. Would you consider making a list of which ancient authors have God's approval? I see no reason God couldn't relate this list to you. It could potentially help many of us who do not have superhuman powers so that we are not led astray by false prophets.

There is no need for any supernatural powers, all it requires is simple common sense.

It's kind of funny that you can get away with that on a science forum. It's proselytizing (unorthodox preaching, in fact) and you couldn't support it with a team of sympathetic researchers.

Since all evidence is in favour of me I don't need to get away with it, if its anything its you guys who are getting away by not allowing me to discuss here, what are you guys afraid of? The existence of those Aeons can be tested or falsified just like any other idea and it has implications for science. This might be a science forum but in the religion sub forum we got to understand religion in its own milieu and should not try to understand religion using the epistemology of science. Big Bang and origin of life has nothing to do with religion, religion deals with different things entirely.

"Roger Penrose contends that the foundations of mathematics can't be understood absent the Platonic view that "mathematical truth is absolute, external and eternal, and not based on man-made criteria ... mathematical objects have a timeless existence of their own..."

Just so we're clear... at the heart of the problem is the following...

and that nobody recognizes that such things exist? That is the heart of the problem?

 

I'd just like to be the first to say that I'm glad I don't share your problems.

That's a cop out to escape from the facts of nature.

Irenaeus, who was divinely inspired, says that Valentinian texts aren't divinely inspired.

That's funny, you are saying as though the Holy Spirit guided only Irenaeus and did not guided Valentinus. The fact of the matter is both of them defend their theology using the works of Paul, the divine cannot be broken, just as the deliberately forged pastoral epistles will deceive no longer even the refutations of Irenaeus will deceive no longer.

At the heart of the problem was the nature of Christ, his body is not made of flesh and blood instead the totality of divine powers(Aeons) make up his body and hence in Christ dwells all the pleroma of Deity in bodily form. How can Christianity bear any fruit when majority of the so called Christians for over thousands of years do not even recognize that these Aeons exist and that they form the body of Christ?

I very well know what I'm fighting for, either stop misinterpreting the Pauline Epistles and accept these explicit teachings or keep it separate from Christianity.

Its not my problem if some of them here are too lazy to read these pages from 264 to 271.

http://archive.org/stream/stpaulsepistles02lighgoog#page/n275/mode/2up

You can't use Philip; it's a forgery. Those are the rules, right?

There is a good agreement among the scholars that Gospel of Philip is an Valentinian Text.

Paul-->Theudas-->Valentinus(divinely inspired)-->his followers-->Gospel of Philip.

Paul-->Pauline Epistles<--Pastoral Epistles(deliberately forged and deceived to have been written by Paul) <--third person(politically motivated to suppress freedom of women).

Even a school kid knows the truth about it.

I love the double standards that allow you to say both this

 

 

And then quote from the gospel of Phillip as proof of the nature of christianity when that gospel is not held as canonical by a vast majority of those who call themselves Christian. You hold your opinions as incontrovertible facts that would deny those who assert their own christianity if it is at odds to your interpretation - and yet when challenged claim not to position yourself as an authority on religion. The whole point of this thread was your continued differentiation of religious and not religious - and other members challenging you to give a non-personal response; so far you have not.

Do you know that the bible can be interpreted at three different levels: cosmic, kenomic and pleromic. The Christians that you are speaking of are at the cosmic level and hence they were called as lower Christians, the quoted passage from Gospel of Philip is at the highest pleromic level and contains the heart of the truth about Christianity. So you should love their double standards and not mine for they don't accept the things which exists in their own religious scriptures. Its not my problem if the majority of the Christians don't understand or have higher knowledge about the secrets of the kingdom of God.

Luke 8:10 He said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, "'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'

Its not just a problem with Christianity, its a problem with Hinduism and Buddhism as well, I have gone to Hindu forums and criticized Hindus for not seeing the truth which exists in their own religion.

Smarta Tradition includes the followers of all the six Darsanas (systems) of Hindu philosophy. The basic idea of Smartas was belief in Vedic practices.Vedas are non-sectarian . The Smartas found that you can not bring about a unity among different sects or revive the Vedic practices without bringing together the six systems of Philosophy. The Vedic rituals are based on Purva Mimansa. The Bhagavad Gita which contains the Sankhya and Yoga concepts is revered by the Smartas.

I have gone to Buddhist forums and criticized Buddhists for not seeing the truth that exists in their own religion.

According to Tibetan Buddhism and Bön, Dzogchen (Rdzogs chen or Atiyoga) is the natural, primordial state or natural condition, and a body of teachings and meditation practices aimed at realizing that condition. Dzogchen, or "Great Perfection", is a central teaching of the Nyingma school also practiced by adherents of other Tibetan Buddhist sects. According to Dzogchen literature, Dzogchen is the highest and most definitive path to enlightenment.

It doesn't change the fact that at one time in the history of humanity these were the dominant religions on earth and were widely discussed by our ancients everywhere on earth.

There is no such thing as one true biblical canon which is the only divine inspired book of all, we need to analyse each work case by case and consider all the works of late antiquity into account.

The Gnostic Bible

INTRODUCTION

1. The Gospel of Thomas

2. The Gospel of John

 

PART TWO

 

Literature of Gnostic Wisdom

 

INTRODUCTION

3. The Book of Baruch • Justin

 

SETHIAN LITERATURE

4. The Secret Book of John

5. The Reality of the Rulers

6. The Revelation of Adam

7. Three Forms of First Thought

 

CONTENTS

8. The Three Steles of Seth

9. The Vision of the Foreigner

10. The Sermon of Zostrianos

11. The Baptismal Ceremony of the Gospel of the Egyptians

12. Thunder

13. The Letter of Peter to Philip

 

VALENTINIAN LITERATURE

14. The Gospel of Truth

15. The Gospel of Philip

16. The Letter to Flora • Ptolemy

17. Commentary on the Gospel of John • Herakleon

18. The Treatise on Resurrection

19. The Prayer of the Messenger Paul

20. Valentinian Liturgical Readings

21. The Secret Book of James

22. The Round Dance of the Cross

 

THOMAS AND OTHER SYRIAN LITERATURE

23. The Songs of Solomon

24. The Song of the Pearl

25. The Book of Thomas

 

ADDITIONAL LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM

26. The Exegesis on the Soul

27. On the Origin of the World

 

CONTENTS VII

28. The Paraphrase of Shem

29. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth

30. The Gospel of Mary

31. The Naassene Sermon

 

PART THREE

Hermetic Literature

 

INTRODUCTION

32. Poimandres

33. The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth

34. The Prayer of Thanksgiving

 

PART FOUR

Mandaean Literature

 

INTRODUCTION

35. The Ginza

36. Hibil's Lament from the Book of John

37. Songs from the Mandaean Liturgy

 

PART FIVE

Manichaean Literature

 

INTRODUCTION

38. On the Origin of His Body

39. The Story of the Death of Mani

40. Kephalaia

41. The Coptic Manichaean Songbook

 

VIII CONTENTS

42. Parthian Songs

43. The Great Song to Mani

 

PART SIX

Islamic Mystical Literature

 

INTRODUCTION

44. The Mother of Books

 

PART SEVEN

Cathar Literature

INTRODUCTION

45. The Gospel of the Secret Supper

46. The Book of the Two Principles

Some of the texts which didn't had a place in the New Testament. Therefore all the works should be analyzed individually case by case and should be classified and their doctrines should be put to test and falsified.

Cos the opinion of a 15th century cabbalist is real currency on a science forum.

The only ones who are experts in interpreting the oral traditions of Mishnah, Talmud, Zohar and Midrash and follow it correctly.

"Saying that someone is wrong with valid evidence is not insulting, you said I have distorted opinions, let's see whose visions are distorted and whose aren't, saying that my visions are simply distorted won't do anything, you need to show how."

OK, (I think this link will work,, it's what I got when I typed "define religion" into Google.

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define+religion&aq=f&oq=define+religion&aqs=chrome.0.57j60l3j0l2.6057&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

Whereas what you said was "That's what being religious means to become identical with God. Being religious means not to establish the Gospel all over the earth and not converting as many people into Christianity, the latter are not religious people for they don't know what being religious means."

 

So, compared to all the accepted definitions of the word, your vision of what "religious" means is distorted.

Not really. There is no room for such ignorance in this age and time and I will not allow it.

Sufism

Rumi or Jelaluddin Balkhi (1207 – 1273), from the book “Rumi: Selected Poems”; Penguin; trans Coleman Banks, 1995.

 

“It's the man who was looking for treasure... He wants me to finish his story...

Don't think of him as a seeker, though. Whatever he's looking for, he is that himself. How can a lover be anything but the beloved?

Every second he's bowing into a mirror. If he could see for just a second one molecule of what's there without fantasizing about it, he'd explode.

His imagination and he himself, would vanish, with all his knowledge, obliterated into a new birth, a perfectly clear view, a voice that says, I am God.

That same voice told the angels to bow to Adam, because they were identical with Adam.

It's the voice that first said, There is no reality but God. There is only God.”

(from the poem In Between Stories)

Judaism

Kabbalah: The meaning of God

 

"An impoverished person thinks that God is an old man with white hair, sitting on a wondrous throne of fire that glitters with countless sparks, as the Bible states: “The Ancient-of-Days sits, the hair on his head like clean fleece, his throne–flames of fire.” Imagining this and similar fantasies, the fool corporealizes God. He falls into one of the traps that destroy faith. His awe of God is limited by his imagination.

 

But if you are enlightened, you know God’s oneness; you know that the divine is devoid of bodily categories — these can never be applied to God. Then you wonder, astonished: Who am I? I am a mustard seed in the middle of the sphere of the moon, which itself is a mustard seed within the next sphere. So it is with that sphere and all it contains in relation to the next sphere. So it is with all the spheres — one inside the other — and all of them are a mustard seed within the further expanses. And all of these are a mustard seed within further expanses.

 

Your awe is invigorated, the love in your soul expands."

 

"The essence of divinity is found in every single thing — nothing but it exists.... Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ein Sof emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid! Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say, “This is a stone and not God.” God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity."

 

- Rabbi Moshe Cordovero

 

God is that which Is — YHVH, one of the main Hebrew terms for this Reality, might even be translated “Is.” God is not an old man;God is What Is. The Infinite is everything. It is the only thing.

 

“God” is an imprecise name for the only thing in the universe that actually exists.

Christianity

"Christ has each within him, whether human being or angel or mystery" (Gospel of Philip 56:14-15).

 

"People cannot see anything in the real realm unless they become it...if you have seen the spirit, you have become the spirit; if you have seen Christ, you have become Christ; if you have seen the Father, you will become the Father" (Gospel of Philip 61:20-32 cf. 67:26-27)

Buddhism

Padmasambhava said:

 

My father is the intrinsic awareness, Samantabhadra (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་པོ). My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality, Samantabhadri (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་མོ). I belong to the caste of non-duality of the sphere of awareness. My name is the Glorious Lotus-Born. I am from the unborn sphere of all phenomena. I act in the way of the Buddhas of the three times.

Hinduism

Shankara, the eight-century Indian saint, whose insights revitalized Hindu teachings, said of his own enlightenment:

 

"I am Brahman… I dwell within all beings as the soul, the pure consciousness, the ground of all phenomena... In the days of my ignorance, I used to think of these as being separate from myself. Now I know that I am All."

Rabbi Moshe Cordovero calls such people as fools.

We will do no such thing. This is not your forum and you don't get to dictate how and when the rules apply to you. You can either follow them or risk suspension. Up to you.

This is in response to a PM on suspension. Saying that someone is wrong with valid evidence is not insulting, you said I have distorted opinions, let's see whose visions are distorted and whose aren't, saying that my visions are simply distorted won't do anything, you need to show how.

Why do you ban me? For saying that Timothy is definitely out from the biblical Canon? I never said I am an authority on religion, I am a layman who go according to evidence and when anyone offers solid evidence in favour of his position then members and including mods should accept it rather than saying that it is a logical fallacy so that they can continue to be lazy without truly making an effort to investigate religion so that they can continue to hold onto their flawed positions.

A member quoted from Timothy as an example for religion suppressing freedom of women and you expect me to blindly accept his example, never. Everyone knows the truth about Timothy that it was deliberately forged in order to purposely suppress freedom of women, which in fact gives more support to my position that it is not religion which is responsible for poverty in some countries rather its social, natural and political factors which are the main factors responsible for low hygienic and low standard of living in many countries and not due to any supernatural/divine factors.

 

Authorship of the Pauline epistles

 

The Pastoral Epistles

The Canon Debate summarizes the position of S. E. Porter as follows:

 

...if the church and its scholars are no longer willing to accept the Pastoral Epistles as written by Paul, perhaps it should eliminate them as forgeries that once deceived but will no longer, rather than creating strained theological justifications for their continued canonical presence.^[50]

Either accept that this forum like other forums is outdated or accept that you guys don't go by evidence and change this forum name or fix your double standards first before giving silly excuses for banning me.

Secondly anyone who has seriously studied religion should arrive at the following conclusion, this is not a matter of opinion and without giving genuine valid reasons one cannot escape or disagree with this conclusion, saying that you're entitled to your opinion won't do. If this sounds like I am insulting to other members then that is not my problem.

 

Dr. Wallace further writes on how the primal Buddha, Samantabhadra, who in some scriptures is viewed as one with the tathagatagarbha, forms the very radiating foundation of both samsara and nirvana. Noting a progression within Buddhism from doctrines of a mind-stream (bhavanga) to that of the absolutised tathagatagarbha, Wallace comments that it may be too simple in the light of such doctrinal elements to define Buddhism unconditionally as "non-theistic":

 

"Samantabhadra, the primordial Buddha whose nature is identical with the tathagatagarbha within each sentient being, is the ultimate ground of samsara and nirvana; and the entire universe consists of nothing other than displays of this infinite, radiant, empty awareness. Thus, in light of the theoretical progression from the bhavanga to the tathagatagarbha to the primordial wisdom of the absolute space of reality, Buddhism is not so simply non-theistic as it may appear at first glance."

—Dr. B. Alan Wallace^[37]

The Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace has also indicated (as shown above) that saying that Buddhism as a whole is "non-theistic" may be an over-simplification. Wallace discerns similarities between some forms of Vajrayana Buddhism and notions of a divine "ground of being" and creation. He writes: "a careful analysis of Vajrayana Buddhist cosmogony, specifically as presented in the Atiyoga tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, which presents itself as the culmination of all Buddhist teachings, reveals a theory of a transcendent ground of being and a process of creation that bear remarkable similarities with views presented in Vedanta and Neoplatonic Western Christian theories of creation."[/size]^[39] In fact, Wallace sees these views as so similar that they seem almost to be different manifestations of the same theory. He further comments: "Vajrayana Buddhism, Vedanta, and Neoplatonic Christianity have so much in common that they could almost be regarded as varying interpretations of a single theory."^[40]

Wow, this thread smells like hypocrisy and ignorance. Its like sitting at a table with stupid people, who really have no clue what they are talking about try argue.

Okay, what do you know that we don't know.

The above scripture shows that the divide between Christians and non-Christians is just too big for us to have any real common ground. Because I can't help, and in order to avoid a perpetual quarrel that is going nowhere, I feel I should just let it go.

Not really, Paul had surpassed everyone in his lifetime. I am a follower of Helios and I defend Christianity and Judaism more than any believers and non-believers who pee on the Cross, the divide is not so big as you think so, only ignorant and unwise men quarrel with each other, the theology of Christians, Jews, Hellenic religions and eastern religions are one and the same, only names change in what they are describing.

The last thing what we want is to raise our kids brainwashing them to think that anyone who is worshipping a different God than their own is a devil worshipper. That's the last thing we want really.

Does anyone know of a good book or review article that discusses (or even speculates) on this question?

Its because she uses an algorithm, living organisms are quantum information processing systems.

[latex] Grover's Algorithm[/latex]

[latex] (2Q +1) sin^{-1} (1/ \sqrt N) = \pi / 2[/latex]

where,

N = number of elements that the algorithm can search for a given number of yes/no queries Q.

[latex] Q =1 => N =4[/latex]

[latex] Q =2 => N = 10.5[/latex]

[latex] Q =3 => N =20.2[/latex]

i.e. for three triplet codons or for three yes/no queries it can search up to 20 elements or effectively distinguish up to 20 elements.

The Triplet Genetic Code had a Doublet Predecessor

It gave a Http 500 error when the site was accessed via mobile and it has slowed down a lot, especially the mobile version, at first it was fast.

But you acknowledge that it's still religion. Why is that? It seems inconsistent with your position.

So science should be based on meritocracy for you but when it comes to religion anything goes, that shows your own double standards for you make one rule for science and an another rule for religion. Only those who are in the right process of Henosis are religious and your examples doesn't qualify itself as religion, your examples fall into the domain of groups who are more influenced by social and political factors rather than by divine or by any God. Those groups will claim anything and even say that they are executing the divine word of their God but anyone can easily see that they are not even loyal to what their own religious scriptures are saying.

In the older software versions there was a welcome note saying "We welcome discussions at all levels and for all those who have a love for science" something like that, I don't remember it exactly and it is true, I post here just because for the love of science, that's all.

Forums were never considered to be credible sources, it is just a starting place to get yourself familiar with a subject and if you are interested in the subject go and research things for yourself, I always felt that this forum required a biology expert but it doesn't necessarily mean that having too many experts on the board will guarantee us in providing the correct scientific consensus of sorts on particular subject matters, there is actually no consensus in physics and biology right now on the theoretical foundations, having more Phd's will indeed increase the standards of discussion but as other members have said if you expect them to spend considerable amount of their time on a forum answering to your questions then you need to pay them.

Immortal,

 

Concerning mind body dualism. There are figurative things I believe in. I am open to the general notion that that "my" existence is not completely framed by my birth and eventual death. There is some ownership of, and responsibility for the evolutionary chain that led to me, and the thread that will be carried forward by my relatives, close and distant. Based on empirical evidence...such as the fact that half the instructions for my TAR organism existed soon after my mother was concieved, and 1/4 of my pattern lived in my infant grandmother...and so on in halves...way back to Lucy. Empirically true as well are the carbon based lifeforms that have been constantly enriching the biosphere of the Earth, with molecules required for my existence. I am beholding to these, real, empirically verifiable organisms. They are real, and did live and die on this planet. This planet which is real, and not an illusion.

 

But the evidence also shows that my consciousness is intimately married to my human organism, the body/brain/heart group that is named TAR, has a particular real, but deceased mother and a very real and very alive father. My mother's soul is "with Jesus" because she loved Jesus and lived with Jesus in her heart, and now she resides in my memory and the memories of all that she touched in her life. You can parse the figurative and literal into that statement in various ways, but it can be parsed without demanding that Jesus was the literal son of a literal rule giving, anthropomorphic God.

 

It can be understood as Jesus being a symbol of mankind, in much the same way as half gods in several traditions have human and divine characteristics, and God can be taken as all the history and expanse of "being" that existed prior to, and allowing the emergence of conscious man. This general "being" shows itself to us all. We know it was before our birth, and we know it exists now, and we know it will continue to exist after our death. It is exactly NOT an illusion. It is evidently the case.

 

To consider mind and body separate considerations, under the circumstances is not practical. There is no part of you, no "essence of you" that would have meant anything at all out of the context of reality. You already have full membership to reality. Mind and body are intertwined. Everywhere I go, there I am...and other obvious experiments can be run to prove this to be empirically true.

 

So where is your "proof" that life and consciousness is an "illusion", when everything real suggests the exact opposite? You can not find a single god, or a single adorning jewel, anywhere, or any time in the natural history of the planet we reside on, or anywhere within our telescopic or microscopic view. No recorded pictures, no footprints, no anything. And no evidence of an identifiable "soul" making some natural transition from one "organism" to another. Figuratively sure, but literally? I don't think you have any evidence of this. Why, in the thousands of years that reincarnation has been believed in, has not anybody thought to leave a trail, or marker that they could then show to us, the "next time" they were born?

 

And if this "separate" soul would have an indentity that was transferable from John McCoy in seventh century British Isles to Ming Qi in 12th century Mongolia, would it be the soul of Ming Qi or John McCoy that we would be identifying? And what, (god forbid) if John McCoy would have had Western thoughts and been a far enemy of Ming Qi?

You guys need to understand about the divine light rays that I speak of in my OP in order to understand the secret of the Vedas.

The Theology of Julian's Hymn to King Helios

This summarizes very satisfactorily the role that Julian has chosen for the Sun Gud , a deity to whom his devotion was very real. There is heartfelt testimony to this at the beginning of the hymn (130C):

"For I am a follower of King Helios. And of this fact I possess within me, known to myself alone, proofs more certain than I can give. But this at least I am permitted to say without sacrilege, that from my childhood an extraordinary longing for the rays of the god penetrated deep into my soul; and from my earliest years my mind was so completely swayed by the light that illumines the heavens that not only did I desire to gaze intently at the sun, but whenever I walked abroad at night, when the sky was clear and cloudless, I abandoned all else without exception and gave myself up to the beauties of the heavens; nor did I understand what anyone might say to me, nor heed what I was doing myself"

Hymn to King Helios

"But this visible disc also, third[21] in rank, is clearly, for the objects of sense-perception the cause of preservation, and this visible Helios[22] is the cause for the visible gods[23] of just as many blessings as we said mighty Helios bestows on the intellectual gods. And of this there are clear proofs for one who studies the unseen world in the light of things seen.[24] For in the first place, is not light itself a sort of incorporeal and divine form of the transparent in a state of activity? And as for the transparent itself, whatever it is, since it is the underlying basis, so to speak, of all the elements, and is a form peculiarly belonging to them, it is not like the corporeal or compounded, nor does it admit qualities peculiar to corporeal substance.[25] You will not therefore say that heat is a property of the transparent,[26] or its opposite cold, nor will you assign to it hardness or softness or any other of the various, attributes connected with touch or taste or smell; [134] but a nature of this sort is obvious to sight alone, since it is brought into activity by light. And light is a form of this substance, so to speak, which is the substratum of and coextensive with the heavenly bodies. And of light, itself incorporeal, the culmination and flower, so to speak, is the sun's rays. Now the doctrine of the Phoenicians, who were wise and learned in sacred lore, declared that the rays of light everywhere diffused are the undefiled incarnation of pure mind. And in harmony with this is our theory, seeing that light itself is incorporeal, if one should regard its fountainhead, not as corporeal, but as the undefiled activity of mind[27] pouring light into its own abode: and this is assigned to the middle of the whole firmament, whence it sheds its rays and fills the heavenly spheres with vigour of every kind and illumines all things with light divine and undefiled. Now the activities proceeding from it and exercised among the gods have been, in some measure at least, described by me a little earlier[28] and will shortly be further spoken of."

Emperor Julian and Neoplatonism

"Referring to the Phoenicians, Julian cites their teaching that "the rays of light everywhere diffused are the undefiled incarnation [imbodiment] of pure mind." Modern scientists are within an ace of confirming some of these more recondite facts for themselves."

Many people are slowly recognizing that this is true. This is what Aurobindo argued for and this is what I am arguing for in this thread, this is the secret of the Vedas, the divine light rays of the holistic Sun-deity which is one of the most ancient preserved religion of the world, no one has preserved this religion like we have, it pre-dates Christianity, Islam, Hinduism etc and when we bring back this knowledge it will be more powerful than all the exact sciences put together.

On free will. I took a pee a few minutes ago, and I did not require the assistance of the urination god.<br />Nor did I pray for his permission.

 

Regards, TAR2

You are not in control of your life.

Don't tell us that reality isn't real.

Why shouldn't I tell that to you guys when all evidence is in favour of my position?

At a physics conference attended by several hundred physicists (including the two of us), an argument broke out in the discussion period after a talk. (The heated across-the-auditorium debate was reported in the New York Times in December 2005.) One participant argued that because of its weirdness, quantum theory had a problem. Another vigorously denied there was a problem, accusing the fi rst of having “missed the point.” A third broke in to say, “We’re just too young. We should wait until 2200 when quantum mechanics is taught in kindergarten.” A fourth summarized the argument by saying, “The world is not as real as we think.” Three of these arguers have Nobel Prizes in Physics, and the fourth is a good candidate for one.

 

This argument recalls an analogy that refl ects our own bias. A couple is in marriage counseling. The wife says, “There’s a problem in our marriage.” Her husband disagrees, saying, “There’s no problem in our marriage.” The marriage counselor knows who’s right.

 

- Quantum Enigma, Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner

This time religion is going to correct science be rest assured of that.

!

Moderator Note

immortal, as John Cuthber said, you need to either back up your assertions or accept that you don't have any evidence and STOP MAKING STATEMENTS AS IF THEY ARE ESTABLISHED FACT.

 

Your account is currently under staff review. You have failed to provide adequate support for your claims on multiple occasions, which is against the rules you agreed to when you joined.

I'll be happy if the mods first apply those rules upon themselves before applying it on other members. I did gave numerous evidences in support of my specific claims.

Did you actually read that link? it says nothing about gods... yours or anyone else's ..

Start accepting these facts first then I'll show you how gods are real as a logical consequence of that.

Oh boy. What is there to say to this?

 

How can ritual prove anything about reality? To suggest that religious believers verify their theories by performing rituals is to suggest that they are all completely nuts.

 

And for a person to persistently call people who disagree with them stupid is very revealing.

 

Immortal - you are way off. You say - "The message of all these religions Buddhism, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta(Hinduism), Neoplatonism, Gnostic Christianity etc are one and the same and i.e. Gods are real and these Gods are everywhere in all aspects."

 

This just gives away your failure of scholarship. Anybody here, assuming they know how to do a simple literature review, will find it easy to verify that this is not true. It is not even worth arguing about it.

You are badly misinformed and you fail to acknowledge that fact either due to your arrogance or you are showing double standards. I have politely explained to you that your views on eastern mysticism are wrong and I even gave you evidence from literature and you carelessly ignored it by saying "its not quite my thing" which clearly shows that you and people who hold the same position as yours cherry pick those things from the literature which suits your ideology and ignore those which explicitly shatters your cornerstone beliefs and by replying to this thread in this way you have shown why my accusation in the original post still stands.

Yeah fair enough, I have his whole book but it would be really hard to read from that copy, if you can buy it or else if you're really interested in it, I can send you a PM of chapterwise links to it.

Thanks but it's okay. I read a bit more and it's not quite my thing. Nothing wrong with it but not quite aimed at me.

 

I suppose I have been keen to say that I am an atheist here because I assumed it needed saying without any ambiguity for any credibility. For many people God is a person who created the universe intentionally, interferes in the laws of nature, lives somewhere 'out there' or 'over there' and must be worshipped blindly as opposed to admired and aspired to. I would not want to be associated with that idea. But there is a more subtle idea of God that makes sense to me. This would be the God of Schroedinger, Schopenhauer and the Upanishads. I have no problem with this God and won't argue with you about His importance. But I will not mention him on a science forum any more than I have to.

Before you criticize that its a failure of scholarship on my part let me remind you one thing, much of the views which I hold is based on the views of the Sanskrit scholar Devudu Narasimha Shastry who was under the tutelage of S. Radhakrishnan, the works of whom which you often cite without knowing the implications of it. Leave these scholars behind I can show why your views are wrong by simply citing the concept of non-dualism that exists in different traditions.

Take Kabbalah for example:

Concealed and Revealed_God

"The nature of the Divine prompted kabbalists to envision two aspects to God: (a) God in essence, absolutely transcendent, unknowable, limitless Divine simplicity, and (b) God in manifestation, the revealed persona of God through which He creates and sustains and relates to mankind. Kabbalists speak of the first as Ein/Ayn Sof ("the infinite/endless", literally "that which has no limits"). Of the impersonal Ein Sof nothing can be grasped. The second aspect of Divine emanations, however, are accessible to human perception, dynamically interacting throughout spiritual and physical existence, reveal the Divine immanently, and are bound up in the life of man. Kabbalists believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but complement one another, emanations revealing the concealed mystery from within the Godhead.

According to Kabbalistic cosmology, the Ten Sefirot correspond to ten levels of creation. These levels of creation must not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways of revealing God, one per level. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes. "

Adavaita Vedanta is not anything different from Kabbalah, here the absolute transcendent, unknowable divinity is known as Brahman and the manifested personal God is known as Ishvara and this personal God is an emanation of Brahman and he is the first-born of all creatures and all other gods form the body of this God and dwell with in him.

And this thought is no where well expressed than in the Valentinian tradition and they where looking for something beyond the Father i.e. non-dualism means being one with God and that's what the Gospel of Philip explicitly says,

"People cannot see anything in the real realm unless they become it...if you have seen the spirit, you have become the spirit; if you have seen Christ, you have become Christ; if you have seen the Father, you will become the Father" (Gospel of Philip 61:20-32 cf. 67:26-27)

This non-dualism or apotheosis was achieved through the means of ritual and this is what Iamblichus who was well versed in the Egyptian mysteries taught, just intellectualizing these things is not enough you need to have practicality and that's what Iamblichus introduced into the Neo-platonic school of thought.

"Unlike most religious movements, the Valentinian eschatological myth does not present events that are postponed until the afterlife or the end of the world. They believed that those who had gnosis experienced the restoration to Fullness (pleroma) here and now through visionary experiences and ritual.

They believed that the experience expressed through the myth was real and that through visionary experiences (gnosis) and ritual one could experience the events it described. Thus the "myth" is not merely a teaching story. It is a metaphorical description of the experience of redemption."

- Realized Eschatology(Valentinian Tradition

That's how much the importance of silent ritual worship is given in these pagan religions and anyone can practice Theurgy anytime one doesn't need any justification from modern science for it, the polemic ideas of these pagan religions are itself quite compelling enough to investigate them and perform those rituals.

One criticism of Gnosticism though is how they dealt with the problem of evil, they made the Demiurgus a lesser god and identified it to the Jewish god and portrayed him as an evil god which was strongly criticized by Plotinus in his Ennaeds,

Criticism of gnosticism by antique Greek Philosophy

"As a pagan mystic Plotinus considered his opponents heretics[69] and elitist blasphemers,[70] arriving at misotheism as the solution to the problem of evil, being not traditional or genuine Hellenism (in philosophy or mysticism), but rather one invented taking all their truths over from Plato,[71] coupled with the idea expressed by Plotinus that the approach to the infinite force which is the One or Monad cannot be through knowing or not knowing (i.e., dualist, which is of the dyad or demiurge).[72][73] Although there has been dispute as to which Gnostics Plotinus was referring to it appears they were indeed Sethian.[74] Plotinus' main objection to the Gnostics he was familiar with, however, was their rejection of the goodness of the demiurge and the material world. He attacks the Gnostics as vilifying Plato's ontology of the universe as contained in the Timaeus. He accused Gnosticism of vilifying the Demiurge, or craftsman that crafted the material world, and even of thinking that the material world is evil, or a prison. As Plotinus explains, the demiurge is the nous (as the first emanation of the One), the ordering principle or mind, and also reason. Plotinus was also critical of the Gnostic origin of the demiurge as the offspring of wisdom, represented as a deity called Sophia. She was anthropomorphically expressed as a feminine spirit deity not unlike the goddess Athena or the Christian Holy Spirit. Plotinus even went so far as to state at one point that if the Gnostics did believe this world was a prison then they could at any moment free themselves by committing suicide. To some degree the texts discovered in Nag Hammadi support his allegations, but others such as the Valentinians and the Tripartite Tractate insist on the goodness of the world and the Demiurge."

Its actually wrong to call the creator of this universe an evil god like the way the Sethians did it or even to make him a lesser ignorant being like the way the valentinians did it, demiurge is actually the first emanation of the One and this was the view of the Neo-platonists and also the view of Advaita and Kabbalah.

That's how much ignorant you are when you say that Advaita is atheistic, its the most silly thing I have ever heard. I being a follower of Advaita Vedanta of Shankara myself one of the things which we strive for is to go beyond the Holy Father and plead him that he reveals the non-dualistic truth to us so that he reduces his intense rays which is impending on us.

13 One thing, they say, is obtained from the worship of the manifested; another, they say, from the worship of the unmanifested. Thus we have heard from the wise who taught us this.

14 He who knows that both the unmanifested prakriti and the manifested Hiranyagarbha should be worshipped together, overcomes death by the worship of Hiranyagarbha and obtains immortality through devotion to prakriti.

15 The door of the Truth is covered by a golden disc. Open it, O Nourisher! Remove it so that I who have been worshipping the Truth may behold It.

16 O Nourisher, lone Traveller of the sky! Controller! O Sun, Offspring of Prajapati! Gather Your rays; withdraw Your light. I would see, through Your grace, that form of Yours which is the fairest. I am indeed He, that Purusha, who dwells there.

- Isha Upanishad, works of Shankara.

I am not citing from any new age works, this is from the Vedas and the Upanishads, either accept that you were wrong or accept that you are a dogmatic absolutist who don't even know the implications of your own position, no wonder you doesn't want to argue with me, using logic you might prove that the universe is a unity but it is through ritual that you prove that assertion and make it practically happen in reality.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are various evidence in literature which criticize your position. A good review of the literature will do it.

"Richard H. Jones is the author of a dozen books on science and religion and on Eastern mystical traditions. He has an A.B. from Brown University, Ph.D. from Columbia University, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He lives in New York City. His interests include science and religion, the history of science, philosophy of mysticism, the scientific study of religious experiences, Asian religions (in particular Madhyamaka Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta).

Piercing the Veil: Comparing Science and Mysticism as Ways of Knowing Reality

This book explores an area in the field of "science and religion" that scholars usually neglect -- science and mysticism. It examines the recent efforts of popularizers and scholars who see a convergence of modern science and various Asian schools of mysticism -- in particular, Madhyamaka Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. The works examined include the Dalai Lama's The Universe in a Single Atom: The Conver gence of Science and Spirituality, the essays in B. Alan Wallace's Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground, the physicist Victor Mansfield's Tibetan Buddhism & Modern Physics: Toward a Union of Love and Knowledge, and Fritjof Capra's best seller, The Tao of Physics. The entire New Age idea of any "quantum mysticism" is shown to be groundless."

- Richard Jones books.com

Quantum physics is not epistemologically compatible with mysticism, in the former we deal with photons, quarks, quantum fields etc where as in the latter we deal with Gods, rituals and eternal Platonic forms. Much of mysticism is not even concerned with the empirical world at all, they are least bothered whether the universe is local or non-local, if there is any similarity between quantum mechanics and mysticism then it is their similar conclusions about the nature of reality of the empirical universe that's all, mysticism stands on its own it doesn't require any justification from modern science, if its anything the experimental results of quantum mechanics provide us additional compelling reasons to perform the rituals of the pagan religions and study their polemic ideas.

One more double standards is that you don't reveal what the controversy is to the public instead you are playing around with lives of people which is very decietful and cunning, what are you afraid of? No one put the controversy in the right context other than Max Planck I think,

"Still other physicists had different views. Marin argues that Max Planck, an adherent of Christianity, framed the controversy as the objectivity of science and Christianity against the mysticism of Schopenhauer and his popularization of Buddhism and Hinduism."

- Quantum Mysticism gone but not forgotten

Its a battle between orthodox Christianity and the pagan religions, a battle between atheists and atheistic scientists vs theists and religious scientists, a realistic philosophy of science vs an idealistic philosophy of science.

"According to Marin, the opposition to mystical interpretations of Quantum Mechanics that Einstein and others had stemmed from their adherence to the philosophical school of realism. Yet in the 2007 Nature paper An experimental test of non-local realism, Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues wrote that, "Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of ‘realism’—a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs. According to Bell’s theorem, any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in space-like separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum predictions. Experiments with entangled pairs of particles have amply confirmed these quantum predictions, thus rendering local realistic theories untenable. Maintaining realism as a fundamental concept would therefore necessitate the introduction of ‘spooky’ actions that defy locality. Here we show by both theory and experiment that a broad and rather reasonable class of such non-local realistic theories is incompatible with experimentally observable quantum correlations. In the experiment, we measure previously untested correlations between two entangled photons, and show that these correlations violate an inequality proposed by Leggett for non-local realistic theories. Our result suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned."[17] Professors Richard Conn Henry and Stephen R. Palmquist, commenting on that paper, stated: "Now we are beginning to see that quantum mechanics might actually exclude any possibility of mind-independent reality and already does exclude any reality that resembles our usual concept of such (Aspect: 'it implies renouncing the kind of realism I would have liked')." They concluded their commentary by adding that in their view, because of these findings, "a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism."

- Quantum mysticism

At the heart of this controversy is the human mind and strong AI which Roger Penrose has argued in his three books The Emperors New Mind, Shadows of the Mind and Road to Reality. This is one of the main reasons why I am on the theists side and not on the side of atheists. One of the main pagan beliefs is the existence of Nous, a metaphysical human mind other than the brain and if this hypothesis turns out to be falsified the entire mystery religions of paganism will be falsified and my intutive reasoning suggests me to put high stakes on the mystery religions of the pagans.

Immortal, seriously ? I can't believe you said that. That sentence makes no sense at all. Just because it is postulated that agnihotra helps bring rains, you say that we have to believe in Agni God ? You have no concept of science whatsoever.

This is the religion forum and here we should speak about Theurgy or the Theurgical sciences and not about the exact sciences like physics or chemistry. Do you realize that you are digging your own graveyard by mixing science with religion when you said that the ghee somehow affects the atmosphere? That's the most silly argument I have ever heard, don't try to rationalize eastern mysticism. You are just showing double standards by placing western philosophy on a pedestal while arguing about eastern mysticism without understand it in its own milieu.

Significance

"Agni, god of fire acts as the divine model for the sacrificial priest. He is the messenger who carries the oblation from humans to the gods, bringing the gods to sacrifice, and interceding between gods and humans (RgV.1.26.3). When Agni is pleased, the gods are generous. Agni represents the cultivated, cooked and cultured aspects of Vedic ritual. Together with Soma, Agni is invoked in the Rig Veda more than any other gods."

The rituals only work because the Brahmin priests invoke the gods and we need to adopt their model of the cosmos while arguing about eastern mysticism.

It might, or it might warm the air and reduce the probability of rain.

I'm willing to bet that nobody has done a proper double blind controlled study.

So it's unreasonable to assert (as Immortal did) that " if agnihotra works in bringing rain to regions affected by drought then start taking the existence of these gods seriously because without Agni there cannot be Agnihotra." because it begs the question: it presupposes that the effect is real.

 

It's also a logical fallacy in that he said "because without Agni there cannot be Agnihotra."

This like saying that without Father Christmas, there can be no ritual of leaving cookies out for him (and carrots for Rudolph too).

 

It's clearly simply not true.

You yourself have confessed that you have no interests in religion and without understanding how these rituals work you have in prior dismissed it as rubbish, for someone who is not interested in science much of what science says seems nonsense to him but the one who has studied both science and theurgy knows very well how both are done and how intellectual those ideas are.

Why not read some thing about theurgy and do a controlled study by invoking the gods and an another trial without invoking the gods and figure out the truth for yourself?

THEURGY: RITUALS OF UNIFICATION IN THE NEOPLATONISM OF IAMBLICHUS, GREGORY SHAW

Theurgy and the soul, The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus

I'm going to remain firm in my position that a ritual or dance cannot make it rain until something more than an editorial page or woo woo website is cited.

That's a common belief in this part of the world.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/67973-how-silly-is-this/

Most people don't realize the implications of this, as Richard Dawkins says Jesus walking on water and born of a virgin mother are all empirical assertions which can be transformed into a scientific hypothesis and such a world in which these things are possible or a God exists will be of a completely different world. There aren't too many options available to us either rate yourself as 7 in the Dawkins scale and be a strong atheist or rate yourself as 1 and be a strong theist and any other compromising position is sheer double standards, no wonder why these two extreme positions annoys a lot of people.

 

I read that in a newspaper and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to find it it now. But, I did find this link that describes the poin : http://www.agnihotra.com.au/effects-agnihotra-and-homa-therapy-water-resources

That's exactly the kind of double standards that I am talking of, if agnihotra works in bringing rain to regions affected by drought then start taking the existence of these gods seriously because without Agni there cannot be Agnihotra.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni

Agni with his consort Svaha.

Oh yeah? Give it whirl, you got nothing and your continued claims of scientific evidence are nothing but horse feathers, I for one say you should put up or shut up...

Moontanman calls facts established from experiments as horse feathers. LoL

Observer in Quantum Experiments

Its your beliefs which are horse feathers Moontanman not mine. You guys need to give up these two beliefs urgently if you expect people to give back respect to you guys.

1. Your belief in free will

2. Your belief in the existence of an empirical reality independent of the human mind.

Because facts established from experiments contradicts both of those beliefs strongly. Sooner or later this will be introduced in schools.

Immortal,

 

I thought you were defending Indian traditions? What is with the Taoism?

Do you really know how many traditions I am defending? I am defending at least four to five traditions both from western religions as well as from eastern religions, that's one of the strengths of my argument and not my weakness. Having investigated the religions of all these cultures I hold very high liberal thoughts and I'm not here only to defend the Vedas and the Upanishads. I am here to defend Vajrayana Buddhism, Neoplatonic Christianity, Neoplatonism, Taoism, Kabbalah and the Smarta tradition of the Vedic Aryans.

"The Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace has also indicated (as shown above) that saying that Buddhism as a whole is "non-theistic" may be an over-simplification. Wallace discerns similarities between some forms of Vajrayana Buddhism and notions of a divine "ground of being" and creation. He writes: "a careful analysis of Vajrayana Buddhist cosmogony, specifically as presented in the Atiyoga tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, which presents itself as the culmination of all Buddhist teachings, reveals a theory of a transcendent ground of being and a process of creation that bear remarkable similarities with views presented in Vedanta and Neoplatonic Western Christian theories of creation." In fact, Wallace sees these views as so similar that they seem almost to be different manifestations of the same theory. He further comments: "Vajrayana Buddhism, Vedanta, and Neoplatonic Christianity have so much in common that they could almost be regarded as varying interpretations of a single theory."

Contrary to your belief all these traditions can be put forward as a single theory, its coherent and consistent. This is one of the reasons why I insist that different cultures across different timelines and disconnected places have come up with similar theories about the origin of the cosmos which need to be taken seriously and not to be dismissed by giving silly excuses that they were all on LSD.

 

So consider the arbitrary aspects of the traditions you cite. The difference in the number and roles of the Gods in the Chinese traditions and the Indian traditions. Does this not tell you something? If these gods were actual, there would not be a difference in the count. Everyone would count the same. As in when two scientists on different sides of the world perform a measurement of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, there will be a consistency that will suggest that there actually IS a distance between the Earth and the Sun that changes in a regular and predictable fashion.

 

Your 31 gods, and the 3600 or whatever of the Tao plan, do not suggest this same consistency and predictability. The patterns don't match. Where the descrepencies can be found are in our traditions, and in our incomplete analogies, and in our own abstractions. The greater reality on the other hand has a consistency and truthfulness that remains unaffected by any projection we might place upon it. It is more likely that the universe informs us, than that we inform the universe.

 

I would advise you to keep this in mind when you suggest that the secret of the Vedas is where I would be likely to find the truth, if only I was not a far enemy. With such statements you reveal your desire to enforce your plan upon the universe. And it simply just does not work, in that direction, when it comes to Gods and the nature of things. Maybe does in terms of humans being able to create tools and buildings and processes and governments and such, but the reach of our minds and the reach of our arms do not go by the same rules. What we think, need not fit with reality, what we do, absolutely does.

 

Regards, TAR2

Who said different traditions cite different number of Gods in their scriptures? Did you forget this so soon?

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

 

III-ix-1: Then Vidagdha, the son of Sakala, asked him. ‘How many gods are there, Yajnavalkya ?’ Yajnavalkya decided it through this (group of Mantras known as) Nivid (saying), ‘As many as are indicated in the Nivid of the Visvadevas – three hundred and three, and three thousand and three’. ‘Very well’, said Sakalya, ‘how many gods exactly are there, Yajnavalkya ?’ ‘Thirty-three’. ‘Very well’, said the other, ‘how many gods exactly are there, Yajnavalkya ?’ ‘six’. ‘Very well’, said Sakalya, ‘how many gods exactly are there, Yajnavalkya ?’ ‘Three’. ‘Very well’, said the other, ‘how many gods exactly are there, Yajnavalkya ?’ ‘Two’. ‘Very well’, said Sakalya, ‘how many gods exactly are there, Yajnavalkya ?’ ‘One and a half’. ‘Very well’, said Sakalya, ‘how many gods exactly are there, Yajnavalkya ?’ ‘One’. ‘Very well’, said Sakalya, ‘which are those three hundred and three and three thousand and three ?’

 

III-ix-2: Yajnavalkya said, ‘these are but the manifestation of them, but there are only thirty-three gods.’ ‘Which are those thirty-three ?’ ‘The eight Vasus, the eleven Rudras and the twelve Adityas – these are thirty-one and Indra and Prajapati make up the thirty-three’.

 

III-ix-3: ‘Which are the Vasus /’ ‘Fire, the earth, air, the sky, the sun, heaven, the moon and the stars – these are the Vasus, for in these all this is placed; therefore they are called Vasus.’

 

III-ix-4: ‘Which are the Rudras ?’ ‘The ten organs in the human body, with the mind as the eleventh. When they depart from this mortal body, they make (one’s relatives) weep. Because they then make them weep, therefore they are called Rudras.’

 

III-ix-5: ‘Which are the Adityas ?’ ‘The twelve months (are parts) of a year; these are the Adityas, for they go taking all this with them. Because they go taking all this with them, therefore they are called Adityas.’

 

III-ix-6: ‘Which is Indra, and which is Prajapati ?’ ‘The cloud itself is Indra, and the sacrifice is Prajapati’. ‘Which is the cloud ?’ ‘Thunder (strength).’ ‘Which is the sacrifice ?’ ‘Animals’.

 

III-ix-7: ‘Which are the six (gods) ?’ ‘Fire, the earth, air, the sky, the sun, and heaven – these are the six. Because all those (gods) are (comprised in) these six.’

 

III-ix-8: ‘Which are the three gods ?’ ‘These three worlds alone, because in these all those gods are comprised.’ ‘Which are the two gods ?’ ‘Matter and the vital force.’ ‘Which are the one and a half ?’ ‘This (air) that blows.’

 

III-ix-9: ‘Regarding this some say, ‘Since the air blows as one substance, how can it be one and a half ?’ ‘ It is one and a half because through its presence all this attains surpassing glory’. ‘Which is the one god ?’ ‘The vital force (Hiranyagarbha); it is Brahman, which is called Tyat (that).’

Did you not see that all those thousands of gods are just manifestations of these 33 gods, actually there is only one God, The Holy Father and all other gods are manifestation of him and you can find this in both Indian traditions, Egyptian traditions, Chinese traditions and as well in Neo-Platonic traditions. Non-dualism is the main tenet of all these traditions.

If you don't believe me read it for yourself.

"It is worth noting that Valentinianism shows an astonishing degree of similarity to another monistic system, the Advaita Vedanta school of Indian philosophy. In Advaita, the material world is an illusion (maya) attributed to ignorance (avidya) of the true reality. Through knowledge (jnana) of the ultimate reality (brahman), the world of multiplicity vanishes. True redemption (moksha) is the knowledge of one's true nature.

This raises the intriguing possibility of some kind of connection between the two. There was some awareness of Indian thought in the ancient Roman world. However, at the time of Valentinus, there was no systematic statement of Advaita thought. It is possible that Valentinus came into contact with some form of early Advaita Vedanta teaching. Advaita philosophy as it now stands was given its definitive form by Shankara in the 6th or 7th century AD. There also exists the possibility that he was influenced by Valentinian thought. Valentinians are known to have been active in the Middle East as late as the seventh century. It is possible that Valentinian missionaries or refugees may have made their way to India and come into contact with Shankara or his immediate predecessors. However, any connection between the two remains purely hypothetical. "

- Valentinian Monism

I am defending for Christianity as well here in case you guys are not aware of it. Guess what? Do you want to know the number of Aeons that existed in the Valentinian tradition?

"The order of Anthropos and Ecclesia versus Logos and Zoe is somewhat debated; different sources give different accounts. Logos and Zoe are unique to this system as compared to the previous, and may be an evolved version of the first, totalling 32 Aeons, but it is not clear if the first two were actually regarded Aeons."

- Aeon_(Gnosticism)

You guys have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. My position is consistent and well supported by scholarly evidence.

Oh god ! this thread is getting way too long. It's becoming filled with Immortal's ramblings. He is just presenting random thoughts in his head and providing a multitude of link to us, which we will never read anyway. This thread has just become Immortal vs Empirical Science.

Don't give such silly excuses like laziness for not reading my links and at the same time accuse me that I am going against empirical evidence. I can shatter your belief systems with a blink of an eye because my position is backed up by scientific evidence, don't underestimate these arguments, this will be taught in schools as facts in the near future and I have nothing to lose, you're the real loser by displaying your own ignorance. Actually this thread is not about immortal, this thread is about making people aware that both science and religion are basically saying the same thing about the origin of the cosmos and that there is no conflict between religion and science.

Immortal,

come on, you have missed the point again.

What real evidence can you offer for Yoga offering anything real?

 

In the meantime, here are some delusional people who think they can fly because they can bounce around on their arses.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=438UKM1Av1g

There are lots of evidence, read a good yoga journal or read this.

Yoga and Consciousness Studies

Sun Salutations

Immortal,

 

OK, here's my real concern. This near enemy, far enemy stuff of yours.

 

I can not parse it, within your explainations, as being the kind of objectively valid consideration you make it out to be.

 

If everybody is just a figment of everybody else imagination, there is no real battle going on, between real camps. This appears to me to undermine your thesis again. Either there is a real battle, between real camps and reality is not an illusion, or the illusion is reality, and the battle is not between you and me, but between various alliances of various of your 31 gods who you consider real eminations from Brahman, and I consider figments of your imagination.

 

If I try to follow your logic and consider my soul on some journey, whose destination is Brahman, It gets rather confusing, as to which of the 31 gods, are guiding my passage. Being that all 31 are eminations of Brahman, it would be rather odd to ever think you were not on Brahman's side in the story. You have to be some god's patsy, some god's fool, or some god's ally, because according to you, the real reality is the battle being fought by the divine forces drawing you toward Brahman and those keeping you away. But from my point of view, if this is true, then its all good, because the divisions themselves are eminations from Brahman...and one can easily consider the witnessing of empirical reality a directive from Brahman.

 

Bottom line, if your secrets are true, you do not get to chose the winners and losers, nor do you get to know whether you yourself are winning or losing. From this vantage point, you are in no position to have enemies, near or far.

 

Now where you might have some choices such as who is your enemy and who is your ally, is if you are a non-trancendental human soul, inhabiting a human body, with a human mind, with desires and feelings, able to experience hunger and pain, satisfaction and pleasure. With such a mortal soul, you are in a position to survive or to die, and it would matter greatly to you who was on your side in the matter and who was against you. Now it would make sense to have enemies near and far, and to have people on your side, protecting you and helping to maintain your safety and peace, and helping you to keep your belly full.

 

So which is it Immortal? Are your 31 gods actual entities, or are they figments of your imagination?

 

Do you have any empirical evidence, with which we could write a rule book, as to which of the 31 gods you have allied with, and which of them I have allied with, or are the rules only existing in your mind, and not "out there" for everybody's inspection?

 

Regards, TAR2

You guys need to understand the eastern mind, our model of the cosmos.

Macrocosm and Microcosm

Taoist views of the body

Inner Gods

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful.

Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

- Lao Tsu

The truth about this world is that Gods are real and they are everywhere. Near enemies are those who show double standards and ignore the explicit existence of Gods in these traditions and far enemies are those who are atheists. There is only two options either Advaita Vedanta is true and these Gods exist or Advaita is false and atheists are right. Since all empirical evidence is in favour of Advaita Vedanta of Shankara the conclusion is these Gods are real and they are everywhere and are in control of all our aspects.

Gods not only exist in heaven they dwell or reside with in our bodies. This is our view of the world. No double standards and no fuss, I am as straight forward as I can get.

Immortal,

 

I suppose you actually read the stuff you link?

 

"D'Espagnat's writings on quantum mechanics lay out with great clarity the genuine puzzles that quantum mechanics presents, says Jeffrey Bub of the University of Maryland, College Park. But he's skeptical about finding common ground among notions of reality from art, science, and spirituality. As he puts it, if there's something about the physical world that quantum mechanics isn't telling you, "it doesn't follow that those gaps can be filled with poetry.""

 

Do you take D'Espangnat so cherrypickingly, that you ignore the sound judgement of Jeffrey Bub?

 

Having a "gap" does not imply that it must be filled by cream cheese.

I very well read the stuff which I link to, no one here is filling the gaps in QM with poetry or classical music. I am filling the gaps in QM with 3000 years of eastern Vedic science.

And besides D'Espagnat himself is aware that there is a reality that exist, independent of "us". This is in direct opposition to your thesis, that you can predict the future, walk on water, become invisible and soundless, pass through walls and such, should you just concentrate on the task with the right frame of mind. In direct opposition on two axis. One, to imagine you can have superhuman powers over the "outside" world, you must admit first, there IS an outside world, an actual independent reality, for you to exhibit superhuman powers over. And two, to consider that success in "imagining" a change in the actual reality, is accomplishing an actual change, anyplace other than in your imagination, is patent delusion.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

No body said there is no reality independent of us. I am a Platonic realist. D'Espagnat's position is in line with me and with the view of the Vedas and the Upanishads.

You really only have two ways to go with this. This "secret of the Vedas". It either fails because it demands that actual reality does not exist, which is clearly a false ascertion.

It stands as one of the surviving religions because it asserts that this empirical reality is only a state of mind which is in line with facts established from experiments.

Or it fails because the human mind does not have the superhuman powers over actual reality, that it has over its own internal configuration and delusions.

All evidence is pointing to a metaphysical Mind and an Intellect and it is this is what is responsible for the retrospective creation of this empirical reality.

 

I do not need to learn this thing you say I must learn. It is a false thing you would have me submit to.

Empirical reality DOES exist independent of us, AND we have a very intricate and representative model of it built into the folds and synapses and connections of our brains.

"What we call reality is only a state of mind" - Bernard D'Espagnat. This empirical reality doesn't exist independent of us, that's the truth about this world something which you need to learn because your belief in the existence of this empirical reality independent of us is wrong and contradicts empirical evidence.

If I were to take a picture of a thing and show it to you, would you argue that the thing exists only in the 1s and 0s inside my digital camera? Or was there indeed the thing I took the picture of?

 

Consider the model of the world I have, and contrast it with the model of the world you have. Both are incomplete and I have images of it you have not seen, and vice a versa. You do not know what my dog looks like, and I do not know where you keep your toothbrush. But my dog is real, and so is your toothbrush. How would you account for this, without the assumption of an external reality, an objectively true world, where both my dog, and your toothbrush, exist?

Your dog and my toothbrush are phenomena, a spatio-temporal reality which has been given to us and not how it exists out there in the external world. The reality which exists out there in the external world which is the noumenon is completely different.

And what knowledge comes out of that?

Real Knowledge.

 

Part Three on Divine Powers

3.1 One-pointedness is steadfastness of the mind.

 

3.2 Unbroken continuation of that mental ability is meditation.

 

3.3 That same meditation when there is only consciousness of the object of meditation and not of the mind is realization.

 

3.4 The three appearing together are self-control.

 

3.5 By mastery comes wisdom.

 

3.6 The application of mastery is by stages.

 

3.7 The three are more efficacious than the restraints.

 

3.8 Even that is external to the seedless realization.

 

3.9 The significant aspect is the union of the mind with the moment of absorption, when the outgoing thought disappears and the absorptive experience appears.

 

3.10 From sublimation of this union comes the peaceful flow of unbroken unitive cognition.

 

3.11 The contemplative transformation of this is equalmindedness, witnessing the rise and destruction of distraction as well as one-pointedness itself.

 

3.12 The mind becomes one-pointed when the subsiding and rising thought-waves are exactly similar.

 

3.13 In this state, it passes beyond the changes of inherent characteristics, properties and the conditional modifications of object or sensory recognition.

 

3.14 The object is that which preserves the latent characteristic, the rising characteristic or the yet-to-be-named characteristic that establishes one entity as specific.

 

3.15 The succession of these changes in that entity is the cause of its modification.

 

3.16 By self-control over these three-fold changes (of property, character and condition), knowledge of the past and the future arises.

 

3.17 The sound of a word, the idea behind the word, and the object the idea signfies are often taken as being one thing and may be mistaken for one another. By self-control over their distinctions, understanding of all languages of all creatures arises.

 

3.18 By self-control on the perception of mental impressions, knowledge of previous lives arises.

 

3.19 By self-control on any mark of a body, the wisdom of the mind activating that body arises.

 

3.20 By self-control on the form of a body, by suspending perceptibility and separating effulgence therefrom, there arises invisibility and inaudibilty.

 

3.21 Action is of two kinds, dormant and fruitful. By self-control on such action, one portends the time of death.

 

3.22 By performing self-control on friendliness, the strength to grant joy arises.

 

3.23 By self-control over any kind of strength, such as that of the elephant, that very strength arises.

 

3.24 By self-control on the primal activator comes knowledge of the hidden, the subtle, and the distant.

 

3.25 By self-control on the Sun comes knowledge of spatial specificities.

 

3.26 By self-control on the Moon comes knowledge of the heavens.

 

3.27 By self-control on the Polestar arises knowledge of orbits.

 

3.28 By self-control on the navel arises knowledge of the constitution of the body.

 

3.29 By self-control on the pit of the throat one subdues hunger and thirst.

 

3.30 By self-control on the tube within the chest one acquires absolute steadiness.

 

3.31 By self-control on the light in the head one envisions perfected beings.

 

3.32 There is knowledge of everything from intuition.

 

3.33 Self-control on the heart brings knowledge of the mental entity.

 

3.34 Experience arises due to the inability of discerning the attributes of vitality from the indweller, even though they are indeed distinct from one another. Self-control brings true knowledge of the indweller by itself.

 

3.35 This spontaneous enlightenment results in intuitional perception of hearing, touching, seeing and smelling.

 

3.36 To the outward turned mind, the sensory organs are perfections, but are obstacles to realization.

 

3.37 When the bonds of the mind caused by action have been loosened, one may enter the body of another by knowledge of how the nerve-currents function.

 

3.38 By self-control of the nerve-currents utilising the lifebreath, one may levitate, walk on water, swamps, thorns, or the like.

 

3.39 By self-control over the maintenance of breath, one may radiate light.

 

3.40 By self-control on the relation of the ear to the ether one gains distant hearing.

 

3.41 By self-control over the relation of the body to the ether, and maintaining at the same time the thought of the lightness of cotton, one is able to pass through space.

 

3.42 By self-control on the mind when it is separated from the body- the state known as the Great Transcorporeal- all coverings are removed from the Light.

 

3.43 Mastery over the elements arises when their gross and subtle forms,as well as their essential characteristics, and the inherent attributes and experiences they produce, is examined in self-control.

 

3.44 Thereby one may become as tiny as an atom as well as having many other abilities, such as perfection of the body, and non-resistence to duty.

 

3.45 Perfection of the body consists in beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness.

 

3.46 By self-control on the changes that the sense-organs endure when contacting objects, and on the power of the sense of identity, and of the influence of the attributes, and the experience all these produce- one masters the senses.

 

3.47 From that come swiftness of mind, independence of perception, and mastery over primoridal matter.

 

3.48 To one who recognizes the distinctive relation between vitality and indweller comes omnipotence and omniscience.

 

3.49 Even for the destruction of the seed of bondage by desirelessness there comes absolute independence.

 

3.50 When invited by invisible beings one should be neither flattered nor satisfied, for there is yet a possibility of ignorance rising up.

 

3.51 By self-control over single moments and their succession there is wisdom born of discrimination.

 

3.52 From that there is recognition of two similars when that difference cannot be distinguished by class, characteristic or position.

 

3.53 Intuition, which is the entire discriminative knowledge, relates to all objects at all times, and is without succession.

 

3.54 Liberation is attained when there is equal purity between vitality and the indweller.

 

End Part Three

 

- The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Translation by BonGiovanni.

Science has given us far more than the ultimate truth, your religion gives us nothing but false claims and demands for undeserved respect. You cannot support your religion giving you anything of substance, not even morals, it's empty and meaningless...

We hold the Kernel of Truth not the scientists, they are just prisoners of the cave.

Science cannot fully describe reality

Immortal,

 

So take your advice, as to what I need to do, to "understand" the truth, and park it away somewhere. I don't consider myself needing it. Show me instead, what I have yet to learn, about empirical reality. There alone is where what matters, to me, resides.

You need to learn this empirical reality doesn't exist independent of us in the external world, its all inside your mind.

It doesn't matter if they got their insight while visiting the bathroom and published it on toilet roll.

If what they say is not supported by evidence and a logically valid argument, then it's bollocks.

I said that to suggest that just because someone holds a Phd in this subject doesn't mean he knows more about the subject than others when they are getting much of their insights from the natives who are the real experts on the subject.

Please name a few of them...

The methodology of Yoga.

You cannot support this in any verifiable way, in fact this is complete nonsense, you assume something is true and then use that assumption to support your assertion. Nothing but horse feathers...

LoL, the enterprise of science is actually a dead end, science doesn't and cannot give you the ultimate truth.

Immortal,

 

In other words. If I am familiar with a concept, and the concept is of a real thing, why must I know the Indian pronounciation, to understand the concept?

That's the reason why I had started an another thread to answer these questions of yours.

The importance of ritual in religion

Science is not all there is, the scientific enterprise itself has forced us to question the existence of this empirical world independent of us. The very foundation of science is in question here. Scientific method is not the only method which works, there are other methods as well which works in bringing out knowledge which are practically useful.

The pagan religions should be understood in the context of the thread which I have provided above, which explains why the names of Gods are important, why ritual is important and why it is so important to worship Gods, it answers all your questions. This is how our ancients did it and that's how they discovered the truth about Brahman. This is not science, this is esotericism.

Immortal,

 

Should one have their own understanding of Brahman, or should one assume someone else's understanding?

 

Regards, TAR2

 

IOW-It may be possible that I know what I am confronted with.

I will put Brahman in the right perspective for you.

Idealism in Ancient philosophy

"The oldest reference to Idealism in Hindu texts is in Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda. This sukta espouses panentheism by presenting cosmic being Purusha as both pervading all universe and yet being transcendent to it.[1] Absolute idealism can be seen in Chandogya Upani?ad, where things of the objective world like the five elements and the subjective world such as will, hope, memory etc. are seen to be emanations from the Self."

(From Wiki)

One of the main important concepts that one need to understand about the Upanishads is Antharmukh and Bahirmukh. If you want to understand Brahman then first you need to understand about Indian Psychology.

Differential hypotheses between Indian and Western psychology.

The most important difference between the Indian and the Western approach seems to be about the existence of pure consciousness as postulated by the former. However, as far as “normal life” is concerned, ancient Indian psychology, especially as expressed in the systems of Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika have astonishingly parallel views with modern Western psychology (e.g., Raju, 1983; Sharma, 2003). But there are also some striking differences. For instance, in contemporary Western cognitive psychology, the relationship between brain and mind is seldom explicitly spelled out, but if one would press researchers to make a statement, most would probably resort to the view that cognitive processes co-vary with brain processes, and if pressed still harder, some might say that essentially brain processes produce cognitions and emotions (e.g., Damasio, 1999). The Indian view is just the opposite: the brain is used as an instrument by the mind (e.g., Raju, 1983).

Does the mind use the brain or is the reverse true? This is a very interesting question, which cannot easily be tested. One might, however, try to find evidence for whether mind exists independently from brain. If the brain is the basis for the mind, there should be no mind if the brain is dead. So a good starting point to examine the hypothesis might be to look for evidence on near-death experiences or on reincarnation (for some attempts do to so see Cook, Greyson & Stevenson, 1998; Stevenson, 1987).

Do the senses connect to their “sense-objects”? In Indian psychology, at least in the systems of Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika, Sāṁkhya, and Mīmāṁsā, it is assumed that the senses go out to their objects and contact them or even “become” the objects (e.g., Raju, 1983). Therefore, sense-organs such as the eye or the nose that do not really touch their objects seem to be not the whole story according to the Indian view. So one might, for instance, hypothesize that even if the visual sense in the Western understanding does not work any longer, the remaining part of the visual sense in the Indian understanding might still be functioning and an (incomplete) perception might be the result. This hypothesis might open up some interesting links to phenomena such as “blindsight” (e.g., Cowey, 2004).

- Peter Sedlmeier, Indian Psychology and the Scientific method.

These are the basic things which you need to understand first before understanding Brahman. According to Indian Psychology, Mind and Brain are two different things, Mind and Intellect are not just abstractions as you have thought, they literally exist in the external world out there, this is the reason why I earlier quoted Wigner since he argued that Substance dualism is slowly becoming more and more acceptable into the mainstream science.

Indian Psychology is not really concerned or is connected with the empirical world at all, it is a metaphysical theory. Normally in science we put those theories into the world of metaphysics which cannot be disproved or falsified. According to it, it places the Self(Brahman) as the origin of all these manifested cosmos of God and including this empirical universe, the five objective elements which are Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Outer Space and the subjective elements which are Mind, Intellect and metaphysical sense organs are the things which exists in the noumenon of Kant and these elements participate in the retrospective creation of this empirical universe which is only a state of mind i.e. this universe of yours is all inside your Mind and its not out there in the external world, what is out there is the manifested world of God. This is the reason why I said that this reality would not have existed without the existence of God.

Non-dualism means becoming one with God or the Holy Father, according to Advaita, God(Ishvara) is an emanation of Brahman and he exists behind the Intellect and what is beyond God(Brahman) is Unspeakable or ineffable, that's why they named it as Brahman or Ein Sof, no one really knows what it is. We can meaningful understand about God and his relationship with the manifested Cosmos but anything beyond is beyond from our Intellectual grasp.

This is the orthodox traditional take on Advaita and this is my position.

A PhD in religion isn't something I'd consider relevant when looking at the validity of someone's point.

I'd look at whether or not they constructed a valid argument backed by evidence.

The PhD's particularly in this subject visit India and learn things from the tradition and then they publish their work according to the perspective of Western philosophy.

Okay Immortal. I give up. I'll leave you continue to represent religion.as a lot of dogmatic nonsense impervious to analysis.

If your dream of placing Jesus in line with Shankara and Buddha need to become a reality then start taking the Pleroma of God seriously. Did you understand now why I criticized your position from the beginning?

And Buddhists aren't concerned with Buddhist cosmology, their concerns are different. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

This has nothing to do with "live and let live." It's a matter of basic intellectual honesty. Whether you -- or I -- or anyone endorses or opposes a specific act or practice is NOT the basis of whether that act or practice is identified as religious.

 

You keep ignoring this point as if pretending it's not there will magically make it go away. It won't.

We are arguing here as to what is the true word of Divine, whether the true word is to stone women and show inequality of gender or injustice to women or whether the true word is to strive for the equality of all humanity irrespective of caste, creed, gender or race. Simply put only those things which are from the divine are religious and which is not from the divine it is not religious. If you guys can't identify which is from the divine and which is influenced by other social, political and cultural factors then why are you guys arguing in this religious forum in the first place. Yes, its a matter of intellectual honesty, that's why I am going by evidence. I am separating cultural from Religion because the examples which swansont gave is culture and its not religion because it is not from the divine. Its wrong to blame religion or God for this.

Appealing to authority is also fallacious; an inaccurate claim made by well-known figures in a given field...is still inaccurate.

No, they are experts in the field and there is good agreed upon consensus in this matter and much of what they say is correct and accurate.

I repeat my previous question:

 

Do you acknowledge the fact that differently religious is still religious? (if no, then your position is a fundamentalist one)

 

Prediction: non-responsive / dismissive reply which won't include a yes or no (though I'd be pleasantly surprised to be wrong)

 

Only those who are divinized(have become one with God) and who are on the right path of divinization are religious and anything different is culture not religion. I know that would exclude almost everyone perhaps including myself but that's the true word of Divine and its no way a fundamentalist position, actually its the opposite, the most liberal position since anyone irrespective of gender, caste, creed, culture, country etc can become religious any time since there is nothing like you need to accept anyone or blindly believe in anything as your saviour or else you'll be judged for eternal damnation.

You've hit on my point while missing it entirely. No one in here is a definitive authority on what religion is and is not. What makes you think that you are any more of one than the others who have posted here?

I have studied it day and night. I have even tested these religions.

We will do no such thing. This is not your forum and you don't get to dictate how and when the rules apply to you. You can either follow them or risk suspension. Up to you.

Do you know what? To philosophize is to learn to die. When all evidence is in favour of my position there is no turning back.