12 comments

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  Andy DeSoto

  10 months ago

  There's nothing inherently wrong with having the same spiritual convictions as your parents. What else do we have to go by? What feels right? What we intuit? What our religious experiences may suggest? Subjective feelings are not necessarily more correct than habits, behaviors, even faiths we were born into.
  
  Just because one follows a traditional line of religious thought doesn't mean they haven't exposed it to careful cogitation. After all, I probably know just as many individuals who have found faiths than left them, and I refuse to believe those changes are not a result of thought.
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  gregorylent

  10 months ago

  a lovely quote from a letter to the editor, from a seemingly simple man in chennai, published in the hindu, a well-respected english daily, commenting on some furor around richard dawkins book ...
  
  atheism is the summom bonum of a spiritual quest based on truth and reality
  
  ... which makes sense in the context of mysticsim and even of hinduism, brahman or god is impersonal and qualityless and s inseparable from the self.
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  Brent Rasmussen

  2 years ago

  Mystical feelings of connectedness are common - and they are natural products of the purely physical processes that go on in our brains.
  
  Ascribing this natural, chemical, material process to a 'Greater Truth' or a 'Great Mystery' is exactly the same as believing in the saving grace of Jesus. There is no qualitative difference at all. It is merely an argument from personal incredulity. Literally, "I don't understand it, so it must be a 'greater truth' or the 'great mystery'".
  
  No, sorry, it's not.
  
  That is NOT to say that the experience does not exist, or that it is not real. That is not what I am saying. It does exist. I have felt it myself. It is a wonderful part of how our brains work.
  
  But it is not god. It is not the Great Mystery. There are no Greater Truths. There is only this observable, material universe and our interactions with it. "Supernatural" is a semantic null. It means nothing.
  
  That is NOT a bad thing. Our material universe is unfathomably huge and indescribably fascinating all on it's own - without adding magical fantasy-land fairy tales to it.
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  gregorylent

  10 months ago

  brent, am curious, how can you tell that feelings of connectedness are natural products of physical processes in the brain? and is there a causative agent, or just an accident? and do we know the physical universe you are talking about only through the physical brain?
  
  who is the we that knows?
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  fred

  2 years ago

  What sin made you turn from God and killed your faith? The lust of the flesh? The lust of the eyes? or was it the pride of life? What is your God? You DO have one. Try to look at what someone from "the other side" says some day instead of seeking out those who tell you what you want to believe. Read "In Six Days," a book on creation written by 50 scientist.
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  Anthony Citrano

  2 years ago

  Brent -
  
  Thanks for the comment; I think I'm being misunderstood. When I refer to the Infinite Mystery & Greater Truths, I'm not talking about spirits, ghosts and such. What I am talking about are truths undiscovered; truths that are beyond us.
  
  If there "are no greater truths" then what the hell are physicists, biologists, cosmologists and neurologists hunting for? Someone ought to key them in. ;)
  
  Further, my instinct tells me that after we've evolved another ten or twenty million years, our base of cosmic understanding will be well beyond where it stands today. Relative to how our minds will work then and what we will know then, to call present homo sapiens blind would be giving us too much credit.
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  Josh

  2 years ago

  Although I agree with some of your points, I have to disagree with your comment that "our minds are simply inadequate" [to understand the Great Mystery]. Although I would agree that humans do not have the ability to sense the whole of the universe, e.g. low/high frequency sounds and ultra-violate lights, man has an amazing capacity to adapt and deal with new information. For example, we theorized that frequencies exist that we cannot observer, so we build machines to produce and observe sounds/lights that cannot be sensed by the naked ear or eye.
  
  As an Atheist, I normally don't engage in conversations about God unless I'm pressed. But once engaged, I often start with the following question:
  If aliens came to our planet, and likely they would be more advanced than us to reach earth, how would you tell if they were Gods? Wouldn't some of their advancements seem supernatural? If an Alien had the ability to change weather on demand, to "transport" people without visible tools or read our minds, would you get on your knees to worship?
  
  The genesis of this question likely comes from watching one too many Star Trek episodes, but it is still valid. Ultimately I haven't heard a good response, and normally the standard fall back response deals with having or lacking faith.
  
  I believe man's mind is the most beautiful object in the Universe. Has it been fully developed -- of course not -- but the potential is huge. I argue it is not inadequate, it simply lacks more information.
  
  Ayn Rand stated it best:
  The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence...Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith....The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. [Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual]
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  William Eble

  2 years ago

  I dont know what kind of pentecostal church you were raised in, but the one I go to is simply amazing. I dont hide behind any veil or covering, and I can prove the God I believe in through signs and miracles that will blow quantum mechanics out of their space time continum.
  
  All your Greater Truths and Great Mysteries are all in that book you put down a long time ago. But Im not going to be mad and yell through a comment, but rather love you. Too many time Christians rant and rave about these kinds of things, and never stop to see through the eyes of Christ. If I've followed the comments right, you're Anthony Citrano. Anthony, I love you, and God's waiting for you to come home.
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  justinus

  2 years ago

  Hi, it's very good articles ...thanks a lot for sharing your mind.
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  Richard

  2 years ago

  I came across this following a link from MySpace which appeared alongside a host of naive-realist, not to say fundamentalist, Christian links... and am really impressed to see this in the public domain, and being cared about and argued so passionately.

  
  I can't pin down my understanding of God exactly -- for most people who accept that the word 'God' is not meaningless that shouldn't be surprising. But I have major problems with Brent Rasmussen's over-the-top reductionism. We can discuss ethics rationally and dispassionately, but we cannot reduce it purely to physical phenomena observable by machines; we cannot discuss literature at the particle-physical level; there is no fundamental particle of philosophy. But that does not mean that these things are meaningless concepts. They are simply emergent properties of the system that can only meaningfully be discussed at the whole organism or the societal level.

  
  My sense of the sacred, of wonder, of what is holy is likewise an emergent property of the system. My starting point for exploring what 'God' means is 'the sum of everything I consider to be holy' rather than 'some supposedly really-existing super-person who is somehow supposed to embody everything that I am supposed to consider holy'. Brent, and Richard Dawkins, may seek to explain away my sense of the numinous as physiological in origin; but that in no sense negates or invalidates the experience. A neurochemical analysis of how a work of great artistry might move me to tears does not explain away that response; it simply describes it more fully and at a lower, less humanly-meaningful level. The experience, and my ability to discuss it with other people, and possibly a desire to act in some way motivated by it, remain untouched by such explanation.

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  sitka

  2 years ago

  Hola Anthony.
  
  Today is my first day in Peru. I arrived here to journey for a month, including ten days in the Amazon to do ayahuasca, which is a amazonian entheogenic vision medicine. I have been on a spiritual journey for years to find healing, clearing, myself, god.dess, etc....
  
  The best I can say in response to your essay is that I think you´re on the right track. Stay true to your center, your body, your heart. What comes from direct experience is more important than any amount of indoctrination or dogma. Much love and gratitude to shiva shakti, pachamama, and the source of creation.
  
  blessings on your journey.
  
  sitka
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  shaman sun

  10 months ago

  Thanks for sharing your journey. Your words speak much what I feel in my heart. And Wei Wu Wei! Glad to see I'm not the only one reading him!
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