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Originally Posted by
wacey
@
strrrng
I am not entirely certain? I know that Advaita and non-duality is a offshoot of the hindu/buddhists traditions. Generally speaking people often say the opposite of what they mean. This is a golden rule I observed years ago.
yeah... and maybe there is actually something to saying the opposite of what you mean, if you know what you actually mean lol, but then there's the aspect of language giving rise to false oppositions, so whatever.
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Certainly. I think that at a logistic level for the majority of believers, faith in that replica usurps the experience of what the replica is, well, emulating. This faith and this experiential knowledge are not the same thing.
yeah, and it's interesting, cause even though I said faith was more or less exclusive from atheism, the experiential knowledge you mention can actually produce a state of mind similar to what one would hope to gain from faith. I'm thinking of almaas' characterization of E6s as exemplifying "holy faith."
the only necessity of faith is the production of its absence. "first I saw trees and said 'illusion,' then the veil was lifted; then I saw trees and said 'trees' -- the catch being that this circular process isn't even necessary when one has the right paradigm. this is also what I think zizek was getting at when he said that only an atheist can believe.
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In the same way, Atheism and Faith in a creator are not the same thing. Yet they do have something to say to each other. Science seeks the lawfulness of events. It is the task of religion to fit man into this lawfulness.
maybe, I guess I just don't see religion going that far. it's a liberal arts indulgence that offers temporary color to a picture with no necessitated manifestation.
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I do know much about biology as well as evolutionary biology. I can say with 100% certainty and conviction that it is far more miraculous that life has no designer, no entity moving the pieces. The miracle is that we are here at all as a results of simple chemical rules multiplied into infinite complexity. That life, as a inborn rule of this Universe, can survive the mishaps and cruel circumstances is a testament to the wonder of life with 'no-thing/one' in control. Life, as it stands, cannot help but exist and our scientific inquiry has and will continue to discover the causes and consequences of why we are here. As a biology professor once put it, "Life hates an empty space".
maybe from a more experiential point of view, that "empty space" could be god -- with the paradoxical insight being that the space isn't just empty, and thus that god isn't extrinsically omnipotent.
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The existentialists may have had it wrong in that they prophesied that the emptiness meant nothing, that it was a void without wonder. This was their mistake, because they did go all the way through nothingness. Awe, wonder, and grace are found in the centre. Yet to find them a person must be a nihilist.
I think camus took it as far as possible by concluding the myth of sisyphus with the claim that "we must imagine sisyphus happy," so I pretty much agree with you, but I don't think nihilism is a necessity; rather, just a familiarity with the abyss. :)
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I was trying find a place for God. If not in the mind, then where do you suppose? Impossible to convince he is 'out there' controlling his creation from a cloud. Nope. The terrify beauty of a Cosmos uncontrolled and the awakened consciousnesses like ours who are forever sunk within it, only catching glimpes of the freightening emptiness that could confound our eyes, is where God must be. It is only belief in the self that denotes the separation from him to begin with.
well, there's also the argument that belief in the self could serve as a cornerstone for an understanding of god -- with the caveat that, as discovered by lacan, the self isn't some a priori, underlying unity that everything stems from, but the result of a symbolic failure, a seeming 'one' that is inherently out of joint with itself. god is all too human.
and maybe there's an argument to the effect that precisely because he isn't just in the mind, he actually isn't in reality; and so the mind transcends reality, but not in a solipsistic way, more in the sense that reality is included in the mind, or vice-versa; and god would be the self-replicating fractal effect of this dualistic interplay. again, not even necessarily more divine than humans.
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So, if he is not out there, yet he is not in here, so, where is He?
With humble and kind tone, I would say, "Yes, it does."
So, what is God then?
*shrug* he's walking a tightrope, we just happen to be somehow governing things (not in the biblical sense).