immortal

Is God a living being or something entirely different?

The ontology of God is very different, he is made of divine light rays of the numinous(not to be confused with empirical Photons). He dwells in every living being and he exists behind the Intellect and all the opposites in this world like male and female, good and bad, hot and cold etc reconcile into a unity at his place.

Anyone with your position is ignorant of their own religion.

 

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/why-christians-shouldnt-accept-millions

No, you have not done your home work. We are not really concerned about the age of this universe, our concerns are different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0w0eshXr2U

You, immortal, are totally ignorant to your own hubris...

Some of the members need to implant this url in their minds while arguing with me. Please.

Why God Hates Pride?

!

Moderator Note

Immortal,

 

We've received several complaints over the past few weeks on various posts of yours. Your debating style needs some serious work. Particularly in this thread, where it seems that anyone who does not agree with your ideas about religion is ignorant and confused. There are in fact 2 logical fallacies in there; 10 points if you can name them.

 

Simply, you are not the be all and end all authority on religion and you do not get to claim yourself as such and that others are wrong simply because they disagree with you. That's not how this forum works and we would very much appreciate it if you could take this into consideration when posting here in future.

You can't go on your own way, rejecting YEC. Rejecting YEC is the same as rejecting the fall of man and if you reject the fall of man, then how can you be saved in the first place which is what is required for you to be a Christian?

 

You're trying to play it both ways. If Buddhists have to be fundys, then so do Christians.

 

edit: And if you don't agree with me, you are "ignorant and confused" and you "have got no idea as to what you are doing".

Anyone who takes such a literal interpretation of the Bible as those YEC are certainly ignorant of their own religion.

http://www.gnosis.org/library/valentinus/Valentinian_Scriptural.htm

Immortal,

 

Would you follow the advice of a PhD?

 

You summed up the Vedic body of knowledge, with an arbitrary chariot metaphor. No doubt these people wish for others to view their detailed understanding of the various barriers we common folk have, between us and an understanding of the "truth", as an indication that we should subjigate ourselves to those blessed few, who know all the tricks of the trade.

 

I'll throw in with the scholars at the universities, first, thank you.

Do you really know how deep the rabbit hole goes?

http://hermetic.com/pgm/mithras-liturgy.html

I would advice you, Deepak chopra and a bunch of people who try to epistemologically link quantum mechanics with Vedanta to abandon this approach of yours. Sam Harris seems to know more about mysticism than Deepak chopra and people like you when he said that mysticism is about sitting inside a cave for weeks for gaining wisdom and immediate insight and its not about non-locality or anything to do with QM. These guys don't give a damn fuck whether the universe is local or non-local. I abandoned that approach of yours long time back and I have move forward and even everyone should do that.

Immortal,

From Wiki:
"Meta- (from the Greek preposition μετά = "after", "beyond", "adjacent", "self", also commonly used in the form μετα- as a prefix in Greek, with variants μετ- before vowels and μεθ- "meth-" before aspirated vowels), is a prefix used in English (and other Greek-owing languages) to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter."

I would agree that there is intellect that is "beyond" or "after" or "adjacent to" the physical. We, after all, are intimately entwined with the physical, yet we have intellect. This proves only that abstraction is possible. Not that abstraction must first exist to cause the physical.

"Without that mind which is the product of a divine God this reality would not have existed..."

You have the cart before the horse, and assume that without a big cart prototype in the sky, there would not be carts at all. This appears to be incorrect. Abstractions must come after the thing that is being condensed, and understood.

Which brings us directly to "self". Why is this a part of the definition of metaphysical? Because, when you place the cart and the horse in correct position, the combo works. The "mind" you speak of is evidently present in the combo. Present in the physical, present in the math. Self evident.

A divine God is therefore an addition to the mix, an abstraction of yours, that is not required by the atheist. The "spirit" that drives the horse can be anything we wish. It can be the whip god, or the oat god, or the muscle god, or the god that lays the road before, or the hoof god that causes there to be friction between the motive of the horse and the road.

A mind that is an abstraction of all that is intelligent is defendible. But it need not be a first cause. It cannot be a first cause. Because it is an abstraction of what already exists. The abstraction must come "after" the thing.

If one is to consider that reality can not exist without god, then one must also ask how then, can god exist? What is required for abstract mind to pop into existence? It cannot pop. So it must be derived from what already existed, or it must have always been. And if God could have always been, why not just cut out the middleman, and consider that reality always was, in some arrangement or another?

Which leaves us with your assumption that a divine god must exist, for reality to exist, as a mere unsubtantiated guess on your part. With no proof, no evidence, no factors pointing directly toward such a thing being required, or even possible.

Regards, TAR2




We can arrange the physical to correspond with all sorts of abstractions of ours. But we cannot create or destroy matter or energy themselves. They already exist. The physical embodies already all that we may derive from it. And by my reckoning, the universe has not yet done, what it is going to do next. If the universe is to be seen as having a mind, then we are an example of it, and not different from it.

The entire Vedantic philosophy can be summarized as follows:

1. "We meditate on the effulgent glory of the divine Light; may he inspire our understanding."^[19]
2. "We meditate on the adorable glory of the radiant sun; may he inspire our intelligence."^[20]

S. Radhakrishnan, 1. 1947, 2. 1953

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

Even if Wigner were not dead he would be an authority on physics, not religion and so , even if argument by authority were not a logical fallacy he would be a poor example on two grounds.

Is that the best you can do?

Science and religion are converging, there is no conflict between science and religion. Is that the best you can do as an atheist?

I agree with Penrose that 2 +2 is 4 without the need for any human intervention.

That was not the argument of Penrose.

But there's no need for divine intervention either

Divine intervention is taking place 24*7 days of a year, all evidence of science is pointing towards the existence of a metaphysical mind and a metaphysical intellect. Without that mind which is the product of a divine God this reality would not have existed and without that intellect human beings would not have discovered mathematical truths.

Here's a list of about 20 pages of Christian sects.

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

which makes your assertion "only a few religions survive" absurd.

As is the claim that it is " backed up by science."

Did you saw that when you revert back from those branches all those different sects unify itself into Early Christianity?

Science would call for real evidence and you have provided none, you just keep playing at being Humpty.

I am talking science.

immortal, does your version of religion have anything to say about lying?

No, why?

you might think you can but in reality you cannot and if you just stop for a few seconds and realize how full of hubris you really are you might realize it...

Yes, yes you guys are standing on the shoulders of dwarfs.

I'd like to see immortal's thoughts on the subject.

Take a simple example, "In Christ dwells all the Pleroma of Deity in bodily form" - Colossians 2:9

"Pleroma is also used in the general Greek language and is used by the Greek Orthodox church in this general form since the word appears under the book of Colossians. Proponents of the view that Paul was actually a gnostic, such as Elaine Pagels of Princeton University, view the reference in Colossians as something that was to be interpreted in the gnostic sense."

The orthodox Christian community don't know the things which exists in their own religion, they interpret that word Pleroma as fullness, to fill because they cannot accept the fact that the Christ's body represents the totality of divine powers or aeons instead they think Christ's body represents flesh and believe in a different means of salvation and believe in the end times, they don't know that they can be one with Christ in this present life time. One who is well versed in tradition knows which interpretation is right and which is wrong, which was seriously taught by our ancients and which interpretation was ridiculed.

As one teacher says, "The scriptures are ambiguous and the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition." (Irenaeus Against Heresies3:2:1). Only those who had received these secret apostolic teachings could correctly interpret scriptures.

The problem is not specific to Christianity, the problem persists in the Vedas and the Upanishads as well.

THE SECRET OF THE ISHA

 

It is now several thousands of years since men ceased to study Veda and Upanishad for the sake of Veda or Upanishad. Ever since the human mind in India, more and more intellectualised, always increasingly addicted to the secondary process of knowledge by logic and intellectual ratiocination, increasingly drawn away from the true and primary processes of knowledge by experience and direct perception, began to dislocate and dismember the manysided harmony of ancient Vedic truth and parcel it out into schools of thought and systems of metaphysics, its preoccupation has been rather with the later opinions of Sutras and Bhashyas than with the early truth of Scripture.

 

Veda and Vedanta ceased to be guides to knowledge and became merely mines and quarries from which convenient texts might be extracted, regardless of context, to serve as weapons in the polemic disputes of metaphysicians. The inconvenient texts were ignored or explained away by distortion of their sense or by depreciation of their value. Those that neither helped nor hindered the polemical purpose of the exegete were briefly paraphrased or often left in a twilit obscurity. For the language of the Vedantic writers ceased to be understood; their figures, symbols of thought, shades of expression became antique and unintelligible. Hence passages which, when once fathomed, reveal a depth of knowledge and delicacy of subtle thought almost miraculous in its wealth and quality, strike the casual reader today as a mass of childish, obscure and ignorant fancies characteristic of an unformed and immature thinking. Rubbish and babblings of humanity's nonage an eminent Western scholar has termed them not knowing that it was not the text but his understanding of it that was rubbish and the babblings of ignorance. Worst of all, the spiritual and psychological experiences of the Vedic seekers were largely lost to India as the obscurations of the Iron Age grew upon her, as her knowledge contracted, her virtue dwindled and her old spiritual valiancy lost its daring and its nerve.

 

Not altogether lost indeed for its sides of knowledge and practice still lived in cave and hermitage, its sides of feeling and emotion, narrowed by a more exclusive and self-abandoned fervour, remained, quickened even in the throbbing intensity of the Bhakti Marga and the violent inner joys of countless devotees. But even here it remained dim and obscure, shorn of its fullness, dimmed in its ancient and radiant purity. Yet we think, however it may be with the Vedas we have understood and possess the Upanishads! We have understood a few principal texts and even those imperfectly; but of the mass of the Upanishads we understand less than we do of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and of the knowledge these great writings hold enshrined we possess less than we do of the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians. Dabhram evapi twam vettha Brahmano rupam!

 

I have said that the increasing intellectualisation of the Indian mind has been responsible for this great national loss. Our forefathers who discovered or received Vedic truth, did not arrive at it either by intellectual speculation or by logical reasoning. They attained it by actual and tangible experience in the spirit, — by spiritual and psychological observation, as we may say, and what they thus experienced, they understood by the instrumentality of the intuitive reason. But a time came when men felt an imperative need to give an account to themselves and to others of this supreme and immemorial Vedic truth in the terms of logic, in the language of intellectual ratiocination. For the maintenance of the intuitive reason as the ordinary instrument of knowledge demands as its basis an iron moral and intellectual discipline, a colossal disinterestedness of thinking, — otherwise the imagination and the wishes pollute the purity of its action, replace, dethrone it and wear flamboyantly its name and mask; Vedic knowledge begins to be lost and the practice of life and symbol based upon it are soon replaced by formalised action and unintelligent rite and ceremony. Without tapasya there can be no Veda. This was the course that the stream of thought followed among us, according to the sense of our Indian tradition.

 

- Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad

I can unify all the Hindus, I can unify all the Christians, I can unify all the Buddhists. Can you do that?

Immortal, i don't know your life experiences but I have not just read about religion I've experienced it, from the most fundamentalist Christians, pass me the rattle snake but hold the strychnine, to speaking in tongues and traditional Catholics (who the pagans say are really just male dominated pagans) and attended calling the circle and calling down the moon with witches, yes they do it nekked and sweaty, and they take their rituals very seriously, I felt honored to have been allowed to attend. I've talked extensively with the adherents to many religions, most of them did little but try to convert me, a hopeless cause.

 

The Pagans seemed to have the healthiest attitude toward their religion, they admit up front that most of it is made up or gleaned from legends and old writings but they do have a idea of "what feels right" their rituals are based on what feels right to them and they do not proselytize. You have to seek them out, they are not exactly hiding but they know history and mostly prefer to do their rituals in private outdoor settings. Witches like poets...

 

the main thing is that all of them have no real basis in empirical reality. neither does yours, i do understand how important ritual is to the adherents of any religion, it's something they all do and it keeps the group together but ritual has no bearing on the veracity of the religion and neither does ancient writings, you have to believe via faith.

 

your assertion that none of these people are religious is insulting. you do not get to define religion anymore than the snake handlers do. It's your belief and you have a right to them but you do not have a right to your own reality...

I have not excluded the pagan religions, its there in all the religions of the world, my definition is the unanimous message of all the religions of the world.

http://gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm

This definition will not change just because there are frauds and there are ignorant people who don't know the central message of their own religion.

What makes your position fundamentalist is obvious: you are asserting that there is One Right Definition, and (implicitly) also asserting that you, specifically, have it.

 

It doesn't matter which religious affiliation you claim -- or even IF you claim religious affiliation at all -- for purposes of identifying fundamentalism. What marks your position as fundamentalist is the notion that you (and implicitly, you alone) Have The Right Answer.

Yes I have studied those religions and I know the central tenet of religion and that's the right definition of religion.

Oh C'mon, what will you call someone who deliberately manipulates results of an experiment and publish it as facts motivated by a hidden political or a personal agenda? We call him a fraud. This is sheer double standards on you guys for you make one rule for science and an another rule for religion, your assertion that we should call them as holy, sacred and religious even if their beliefs are wrong is bs. I call them what they deserve i.e. frauds and those who are not aware of the true message of their own religion as ignorant. Sounds fair to me.

Multiple attempts have been made to get you to accurately acknowledge other posters' bases for identifying a practice or set of beliefs as religious vs. nonreligious, all to no avail. There is no engagement on your part, only out of hand dismissal and No True Scotsman (with an occasional ad hominem for good measure).

It is not an ad hominem when its well evident in your posts that you guys are ignorant of religion.

You JUST said:

 

 

You can't have it both ways.

You can't go on your own way, rejecting Buddhist cosmology is same as rejecting Adi Buddha and if you reject Adi Buddha then how can you become one with Adi Buddha in the first place which is what is required for you to be a Buddhist. Whether earth is flat or not, this has nothing to do with it.

OK, this is a banana.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Apple.jpg

 

You guys seem to assume I have made my own personal definition of religion banana and since this definition is not agreed by everyone instead of accepting my definition you guys want to make me as a separate sect and want to call me a fundamentalist.

That clearly shows that majority of the atheists are liars when they say that it is their very investigation of all of religion is what has made them to hold an atheistic position, that's a lie, they have not studied all of religion. No, its you guys who have the wrong notion of what being religious means and its you guys who have named an apple as a banana without seeing the obvious.

But, if true religion is about being one with God, then those of us who are not so blessed are necessarily ignorant of it. We can not know it.

You just thanked us for stating the obvious.

 

But, before you bother to ponder that too much, perhaps you should answer Chad's rather telling question.

You guys seem to assume I have made my own personal definition of religion and since this definition is not agreed by everyone instead of accepting my definition you guys want to make me as a separate sect and want to call me a fundamentalist. The framework for my definition of religion is built on its own, I don't have to make up anything or cover it up, its there in all the religions of the world, since I accept one sect from every religion of the world that would make me the most liberal person and not a fundamentalist. I hope you guys know the meaning of being liberal at least.

 

Completely unresponsive. I'm guessing that's not likely to change any time soon.

It was right on the money, I earlier gave you a precise definition as to what it is required to be a Buddhist. Your ignorance and inability to precisely define Buddhism and religion as a whole is not my fallacy.

 

There are tons of people who are philosophical Buddhists but not religious Buddhists, i.e. they endorse and see the benefits of principles derived from Buddhism (like detachment, attempts to minimize or eliminate suffering, etc.) but reject the explicit and implicit claims of supernatural cause and teleology (the mystical version of karma, rebirth, souls, demons attempting to lure the Buddha away from Enlightenment and Other Capitalized Abstractions, and so on..). Such people also reject, pay no heed to those attempting to establish an orthodoxy (they couldn't care less -- in terms of their own belief of what counts as "correct" Buddhism, what the Dalai Lama or any other famous teachers might advise, though they may take an interest in such teachings generally).

 

Dragging things kicking and screaming back on topic, once again it remains the case that specific instances of arguing the "right" version of this or that religious doctrine doesn't change what constitutes a religion. Immortal's stance is plainly a case of No True Scotsman, and no amount of window-dressing will change that.

 

YES, many (if not most) fundamentalists happen to be religious. Doing things we may regard as harmful, or as "incorrect" (in quotes because the notion that there is One Right Way to interpret a religious doctrine is itself fundamentalist, hence the hilarious irony of Immortal's stance)...IS NOT some magical disqualifier/exemptor from religious status.

 

During the chattel slavery era in the United States, religious people debated and in some cases fought over slavery, yet the adherents behind both major positions towards slavery within such religious ranks (supporting and opposing) were still religious, because they all had something like the following:

 

*a moral narrative implicitly or explicitly identifying norms (for adherents) regarding what is to be considered good and bad;

*belief in some form of supernatural causality;

*an orthodoxy for such belief, administered/moderated by some authority figure (priesthoods, preachers, etc.);

 

It doesn't MATTER which -- if any of these factions -- got X doctrine "right" or wrong. They shared (and still share) in common certain general qualities of belief and practice which mark their (ever-feuding) systems as religions.

LoL, there is an orthodoxy tell your so called slayers of Buddhism to keep themselves away from Buddhism.

Distorted Visions of Buddhism: Agnostic and Atheist

http://www.mandalamagazine.org/archives/mandala-issues-for-2010/october/distorted-visions-of-buddhism-agnostic-and-atheist/

BTW, thanks to everyone for revealing your ignorance about religion.

Oh, so fundamentalists don't define YOUR religion, but they do for Buddhists..........

They don't define for Buddhists either. Someone needs to jerk you to make you realize that orthodox Christianity is not same as Buddhism, your comparison doesn't stand.

You're not a Christian because you don't accept the Christian cosmology of a YEC flat Earth.

Religion isn't about how Grand Canyon was formed or dogmatically asserting the shape of earth, that's a characteristic of fundamentalists who are not religious and who don't know what being religious means, religion is about understanding your relationship with the personal God and his relationship with the manifested cosmos, don't put me on the same boat with them, I want to sail the opposite way.

I am well aware of what is being discussed/asserted here and so far you have failed to show any of it to be anything but faith and belief, I have no problem with that but to assert it as empirical evidence your god is real is simply not supported by what you keep claiming is evidence...

No, there is too much mischaracterization of the Vedas and there are a lot of things being discussed here, one wants to throw these texts into the dustbin and another one says Advaita is not theistic and the other one was an ignorant Hindu, these things need to be fixed first before one can understand the soundness of my arguments.

Vedism is not Hinduism and its very important to separate those two. What is Hinduism? Hinduism is a word which outsiders call to identify a group of disorganized eastern religions of India which don't agree with one another just like the 9000 or so sects of Christianity who don't agree with one another. The problem with these ignorant Hindus is that these people keep hearing the secrets of the Kingdom of God but they don't understand it. The Gods of the Vedas are not same as the Gods of the Hindus, the Vedic people gave importance to different gods but in Hinduism hardly anyone seems to be worshipping them. Vedism is a very silent religion and actually its not even in the picture because majority of them don't follow or are not aware about it. The misunderstandings of these near enemies need to be fixed first before challenging the position of the far enemies i.e. atheists.

Why Vedism

http://www.adf.org/articles/cosmology/why-vedism.html

Now coming to atheists, you seem to have made up your mind that this position of mine is based on wishful thinking, however its not, anyone who has made a critical analysis of both science and religion based on its available evidence compels one to arrive at this conclusion. This is not wishful thinking, a theory has already been put forward and a fringe consensus has already emerged with in the scientific community itself and looking at all this its quite silly for you to say that this is my blind faith or belief, no its not. That's what nature is saying and we need to accept it.

"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."

This is the theory which has been put forward and experiments in quantum physics, bio-research feedback and consciousness studies have given support to this theory, this is no longer my beliefs any more, it has all the goods to be a well established theory, things have changed, this was my position right from the beginning and I stand by it.

Ok Immortal, I watched your videos, I saw no scientific evidence of the existence of your god, in fact the entire video danced around that concept in favor of the Vedas being historically accurate. This does not support the existence of your god but only the antiquity and relative accuracy of the vedas compared to what westerners thought happened in the area.

 

If there is some part you think i missed that was support for the existence of your god feel free to give me the time index of the statement.

 

Again it would seem that your idea of what constitutes Empirical Evidence appears to be evidently different from what everyone else defines as empirical evidence...

 

having said that if I take the narrators word at face value it is evident that Vedic Culture was mischaracterized due to prejudices of western researchers and some of the history described in the Vedas is accurate despite what the Western researchers thought to be true.

 

But at no point did the videos or the guy who made them claim the existence of your god or gods was confirmed by anything in the Vedas. the best he could do was say that the Vedic description of the universe was somewhat more accurate than other religious writings...

 

His claims of technology in the Vedas, while interesting, do not support this position either, in fact the whole thing is after the fact transposition of information that appears to describe technology but cannot be used to create technology is not indicative of anything anymore than ancient writings that describe flights to the moon were prophecy...

 

If you disagree with my assessment feel free to give me the time indexes for the information i missed...

Did you watched the end of the part-3 video especially from the time index 8:35 min to 9:56 min? This presentation was not given as offering evidence to the more esoteric side of the Vedas, I very well know what empirical evidence is, remember we are discussing two topics here, one topic is whether these gods exist out there or not and the other topic is whether the Vedas themselves support the literal existence of these Gods or not, when people are so ignorant with the Vedic religion and don't even see that this religion takes the existence of Gods very seriously then how will people take the former topic more seriously, simply put majority of the people have not understood the doctrine of the Vedas and when they realize it they will be very disturbed by this.

I certainly feel your pain. Have you considered weeding out your own double standards as a good place to start?

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 of human existence and in all aspect of human life, the doctrine of non-dualism doesn't make any sense whatsoever absent the view of the Gods, this is the central tenet of all these religions and if anyone else who misinterprets these religions rejecting the existence of Gods in these religions and only takes those things from these religions which suits them then they are seriously showing double standards and its a waste of time arguing with them. Go and ask that question to those people who show double standards not to me.

I am not sure if Buddhism in the west will ever coalesce into a coherent and distinct sect. Whichever culture Buddhism has encountered it has become assimilated into that culture, hence we see quite different sects of Buddhism. However, in the West instead of just receiving one form of Buddhism and assimilating it as in the past, we are exposed to various forms of Buddhism, into various places in the Western world. Anyway, this isn't a study of how religion spreads in the modern world. Bottom line there are some Buddhists who ignore the supernatural elements of Buddhism. Stephen Batchelor is probably the most famous example. Asked if religious, most seem to answer 'don't care'.

Stephen Batchelor is not a Buddhist and neither are you and a whole bunch of people who don't accept Buddhist cosmology are not Buddhists either.

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

Immortal,

 

"Out there, in the numinous?"

 

Perhaps here, in this statement, is the rub.

 

Let us assume that along the lines of Kant's thinking, we, as humans are in possession of the pure conceptions of "time", and of "space". That from this, we might suggest that here and now are two things that TAR and Immortal could agree on.

 

Out there? What could that mean, that is mutual to both our conceptions? Is a thought of mine, "in here" to me, but "out there" to you? I would think so. There is a lot of thinking that goes on during any one moment, here on Earth, and the portion of it, that is "in here" in this TAR brain is miniscule, compared to the whole of human thought currently going on (1 part in 7 or 8 billion or so) and dwarfed again, by the hundreds of thousands of years of human thought that occurred prior our lives.

 

If "in here" in this TAR brain/body/heart group, I was to reach Nirvana, or learn the "Secret of the Vedas", or speak to God and make him a promise...that activity would be "out there" to you. You could view such an event as having some objective characteristics, being as they are occurring outside of your here and now, without your participation, and some subjective charactistics, being as you know the difference between imagination and reality, and would know which parts of my activity you could reproduce for yourself, and experience in your own, here and now.

 

Thusly a clear distinction can be drawn, by any of us, of what ideas and forces, forms and reality, exist "in here" and what of these exists "out there" in the open, in the "greater" reality, in which, and of which, all our separate heres and nows are composed.

 

Moontanman asked you to show us where one can find your 31 gods "out there". We already know where to find them "in here".

 

Regards, TAR2

For Kant space and time itself are categories of mind, they are mental constructs, we only know of the phenomena and the world which is out there which is the noumenon is forever impossible to know.

It was this conviction that science cannot go beyond mere appearances of phenomena which compelled many of the physicists of the past century to look for alternative models of reality which gives us a complete objective picture of the world and it is this conviction which has led Bernard D'Espagnat to leave room for spirituality by saying science cannot fully describe reality.

The Scientist Who Leaves Room for Spirituality

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/03/17/the-scientist-who-leaves-room-for-spirituality/

Does Agni have a "human" soul? Is there a place and time that Agni knows as "here and now"? Is there a place and time where Agni can be found, that corresponds with the conceptions of the other 30 gods?

Does this conceptual "greater" world have any "mappings" to this one of ours?

The Vedas declare "Agnisomadmikam Jagath" means the world is a Agnisoma Mandala. This is similar to the concept of Pleroma of the Gnostics or the Hellenistic philosophers and you should be familiar with it to clearly understand this.

AGNI AND SOMA: A UNIVERSAL CLASSIFICATION

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/papers/2005%20SA%20AgniAndSoma.pdf

Immortal, I am going to recommend you watch the following video, it is mostly targeted at creationism but it makes some pretty good points about the Holy nature of various religious writings. You keep saying the Veda's are somehow evidence of God or some sort of god but the first five minutes of this video gives very good logical reasons why this cannot be true. I realize you will not watch this, but I feel the need to at least give you the opportunity to see just how irrational the idea that any writings, much less yours are somehow written by a deity. AronRa gives a very good summation of why this is certainly not the case and what we would expect a god to write...

 

Well, time to get the facts right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1_N4-kwGSA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN9wwevE0Us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnJz5Hhk4sU

"These Gods are not just elements of nature which our ancients deified in fact they actually exist out there in the numinous and they control all aspects of human existence."

Some book may say that this is true, but is there any actual evidence?

There are lots of evidence.

"Some scientists (like Wigner) believe that quantum mechanics makes certain dualist ideas about the mind/body problem acceptable again within mainstream science."

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..."

Science has already confronted with the numinous by recognizing a metaphysical mind and a metaphysical intellect in the platonic realm.

In what way is it different from this?

 

http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/170662/napkin/

When you apply negative theology to religion and consider the current available evidence only a few religions survive and this is one of them which is backed up by science.

As I indicated if you people keep insist that even fundamentalists who behead innocent people are religious then those who hold and follow the central tenets of religions which was the main teachings of Jesus, Shankara, Buddha and Moses might have to find a all new word to identify themselves with because religion itself seems to have been corrupted and actually that's what the trend seems to indicate.

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

I always thought spiritual and religious were synonyms and I still think it is and I always thought my definition of religion defined what being religious means. Now I realize why majority of the people differentiate between spirituality and religiosity with the amount of comparative studies, scholarly studies, archaeological evidence, modern science and cultural transfusion which questions the belief systems of the orthodox religions which mainly works on the principle of blind faith and people have started to realize that that's not what being religious means, its a good sign to see that people have started to realize that religion is not about believing instead its about doing.

"A study of the differences between those self-identified as spiritual and those self-identified as religious found that the former have a loving, forgiving, and nonjudgmental view of the numinous, while those identifying themselves as religious see their god as more judgmental.^[16]"

http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Books/2002/07/Spiritual-But-Not-Religious.aspx?p=1

But that doesn't mean that those who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious are truly religious people because many of these people are beginners, ignorant and confused people who have got no idea as to what they are doing, they do yoga and meditation without themselves being aware of the fact that they are worshipping a different image of God and are committing blasphemy to their own religion, if you are a Christian you shouldn't do yoga because that's blasphemy you are worshipping a different God, either identify yourself as a Christian or start calling yourself as a Sanatana Dharmin, they can be easily manipulated without the guidance of tradition and letting them define religion only creates more confusion. On the whole my definition of religion should be accepted as the correct universal definition as to what defines someone as religious because it constitutes the central tenet of all the religions of the world having the hallmark of our ancients on it.

These so called seekers have differenced themselves with organized religion only to arrive at my conclusion of religion which I have already arrived at through my research. As I said when more and more people and religious scholars investigate religion and question beliefs which are held on prejudice they will realize that my views on science and religion were right and everyone should agree on it.

Where is the proof that the 31 gods, themselves, exist anywhere, but in your analogy?

 

Regards TAR2

 

Your underlying argument seems to be...if there is thunder, there must be Thor.

 

I do not think this works out, logically.

Its not my interpretation, its the orthodox interpretation of the Vedic tradition and that's how our ancients saw their world.

It wouldn't be terribly hard to argue that religion could itself cause poverty. After all, in many instances religion serves as a distraction from that internal friction that so often spurs one to action.

 

Humans very regularly take actions and do things with their lives to escape the dissonance they feel. That feeling of hunger is what causes us to find food. That feeling of thirst is what causes us to find water. That feeling of lust and love is what causes us to find a mate or a partner in life. It is the friction we feel between what we are and what we want to be that ultimately causes us to act.

 

We change our positions in life as a result of that unease we feel; as a direct result of that discontent we experience with our current state and due to the awareness of how far away our current state sometimes is from our ideal.

 

Religion, though, rather often serves to sooth the dissatisfaction in one's life... To distract the mind from the existential pain and awareness of the delta between what we want to be and what we are. Religion for a great many individuals generally replaces the desire to be better and to improve ourselves with stories and mythologies and ruminations and rituals. It often makes people more content with where they are, distracts them from where they want to be, and it often makes people less keen on striving toward something better... or out of poverty.

 

To be frank, I don't really think this is a very strong argument, but it is a valid one. There are times when religion could, in fact, cause one to unnecessarily live in poverty, and I haven't even yet bothered mentioning those instances where individuals give up everything they own, abandon the world of materials and goods, and choose willingly to walk away from comfort and security and safety to instead live in poverty as a direct result of their religious beliefs.

LoL, you don't know what being rich means.

3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

- Gospel of Thomas.

Chapter IV—Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi (I)

1. "Maitreyi, my dear," said Yajnavalkya, "I am going to renounce this life. Let me make a final settlement between you and Katyayani (his other wife)."

2. Thereupon Maitreyi said: "Venerable Sir, if indeed the whole earth, full of wealth, belonged to me, would I be immortal through that?" "No," replied Yajnavalkya, "your life would be just like that of people who have plenty. Of Immortality, however, there is no hope through wealth."

3. Then Maitreyi said: "What should I do with that which would not make me immortal? Tell me, venerable Sir, of that alone which you know to be the only means of attaining Immortality."

4. Yajnavalkya replied: "My dear, you have been my beloved even before and now you say what is after my heart. Come, sit down; I will explain it to you. As I explain it, meditate on what I say."

5. Then Yajnavalkya said: "Verily, not for the sake of the husband, my dear, is the husband loved, but he is loved for the sake of the self which, in its true nature, is one with the Supreme Self. "Verily, not for the sake of the wife, my dear, is the wife loved, but she is loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, not for the sake of the sons, my dear, are the sons loved, hut they are loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, not for the sake of wealth, my dear, is wealth loved, but it is loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, not for the sake of the brahmin, my dear, is the brahmin loved, but he is loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, not for the sake of the kshatriya, my dear, is the kshatriya loved, but he is loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, not for the sake of the worlds, my dear, are the worlds loved, but they are loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, not for the sake of the gods, my dear, are the gods loved, but they are loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, not for the sake of the beings, my dear, are the beings loved, but they are loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, not for the sake of the All, my dear, is the All loved, but it is loved for the sake of the self. "Verily, my dear Maitreyi, it is the Self that should be realized—should be heard of, reflected on and meditated upon. By the realization of the Self, my dear—through hearing, reflection and meditation—all this is known.

- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

Your society is very poor.