Can We Arrest Our Prejudice?

[lewisnotmiller]

You seem to be contradicting yourself and everything being discussed since the whole point is that if you get all the African Americans you're going to have the best NBA team, and if I get all the Jews, I'm going to have the best economy, religion, and mechanism for advancing culture and humanity toward a golden age of humanity.


John

Nope. That is actually one of the less insightful things I've heard here. If I get the best basketball players, I'll have the best NBA team. It's nowhere near as convoluted as your racial prejudices want you to make it.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I think Jews and African Americans (Ezek. 16:26) provide a dramatic scientific/historical example for much of what's said in the first three or four messages in the thread.

Since 1901, approximately 194 Jews have won the Nobel Prize. That's about 23% of all Nobel Prizes. Mind you Jews make up approximately 0.2 percent of the world population. ---- On the other hand African Americans, or blacks, make up approximately 20% of the world population, and have won about 10 or 15 Nobel prizes, about 2 percent.

Jews make up 2 tenths of one percent of the world population, and have won 23% of Nobel Prizes. Blacks make up a whopping 20% of world population and have won one tenth of the Nobel Prizes won by Jews. One in five persons on the planet are black. One in five hundred are Jewish. And yet Jews have won over twenty percent of Nobel Prizes?

Keep in mind the superiority being claimed in the early messages in the thread are related to economics, culture, and the advancement of humanity in general. ------The Nobel Prize, though not a perfect measure of any of these, is a reasonable gauge of who is producing thought products that are of serious value to culture, economics, and the advancement of society at large.


John

Damn slackers havent contributed but one American President as well. They're as bad as the womenfolk...

 

[buddhist]

The idea that physical pleasure is a pole contrary to spiritual growth and maturity is pretty prevalent in all meaningful thought. Even the agnostic Schopenhauer had some good stuff in that vein.

This thread merely goes a bit farther by singling out the phallus as it's symbolically marked for extinction in Judaism. And then finished off for good in Christian re-birth.

John

I agree that physical-ness exists opposite of spiritual maturity. I would disagree with you that Judaism & Christianity exists at the "spiritual maturity" end of the spectrum; they exist perhaps someplace in the middle. IMO the Dharmic religions are far more "spiritually mature" than Judaism & Christianity.

 

[John D. Brey]

But my example has served its purpose in showing me what lengths you would be prepared to go to for human efficiency, and all I can say is that there would always be enough humanists to stop you and yours from succeeding

. . . According to the Bible it's only a matter of time before everyone is given a number that allows a ruling authority to determine who can buy or sell. So if the Bible is to be believed humanism will itself adopt extreme measures when the situation dictates.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I agree that physical-ness exists opposite of spiritual maturity. I would disagree with you that Judaism & Christianity exists at the "spiritual maturity" end of the spectrum; they exist perhaps someplace in the middle. IMO the Dharmic religions are far more "spiritually mature" than Judaism & Christianity.

. . . I think they're more explicit concerning many elements of spiritual truth that are still hidden in Judaism and Christianity. But I think Christianity, and Judaism more so, are hiding (in many cases even from their greatest practitioners), protecting, the key to it all.


John

 

[buddhist]

. . . I think they're more explicit concerning many elements of spiritual truth that are still hidden in Judaism and Christianity. But I think Christianity, and Judaism more so, are hiding (in many cases even from their greatest practitioners), protecting, the key to it all.


John

What's the point of hidden, esoteric mysticism?

I find the open hand of the Buddha far more inspiring. "I have set forth the Dhamma without making any distinction of esoteric and exoteric doctrine; there is nothing, Ananda, with regard to the teachings that the Tathagata holds to the last with the closed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back." - DN 16 Mahaparanibbana sutta

 

[oldbadger]

. . . According to the Bible it's only a matter of time before everyone is given a number that allows a ruling authority to determine who can buy or sell. So if the Bible is to be believed humanism will itself adopt extreme measures when the situation dictates.

John

Ha! ............. you don't believe in the bible, do you?
Look at it this way, every few decades someone gains total dictatorial control over a country or continent, and then crazed with power decides that this race or that race is pure, or whatever........ and then the rest of the world has to go in and weed that psychopath out. it's always a hard joutmey, that.

So anybody who preaches elitism could find it difficult to get a really strong foothold on a community. There'll always be the bigoted followers, quite often thugs, or so we've found here, but they don't get far.

 

[John D. Brey]

What's the point of hidden, esoteric mysticism?

I find the open hand of the Buddha far more inspiring. "I have set forth the Dhamma without making any distinction of esoteric and exoteric doctrine; there is nothing, Ananda, with regard to the teachings that the Tathagata holds to the last with the closed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back." - DN 16 Mahaparanibbana sutta

. . . In a sense, we could say that the deepest truths, the truths most hidden from our everyday self, are uncovered in the act of unveiling them. The very liturgy, or ritual, or mitzvah, that uncovers a truth, is the most explicit manifestation of the truth. . . Which is to say that it has to be hidden, to be uncovered. And in the most valuable truths, the act of uncovering reveals the truth, in the very act of uncovering it. It can't be perceived without the uncovering, making the esoteric a requirement for the exoteric.

Take circumcision for instance. The removal of the covering leaves a scar that threatens to open up to us truths of breathtaking relevance to the spiritual future of mankind. We can say this since in an exoteric sense, removing flesh, redesigning the male body, suggests of desecration of the flesh of the male body that God allegedly designed and created himself? Circumcision is either a desecration of God's original design, or, if not, then the scar marking a redesigning of that particular flesh (eliminating the veil) could be interpreted as the laying bare, the revelation, of the true desecration (X marks the spot), whose remedy requires firstly that the nature of the original desecration be revealed.


John

 

[John D. Brey]

Ha! ............. you don't believe in the bible, do you?
Look at it this way, every few decades someone gains total dictatorial control over a country or continent, and then crazed with power decides that this race or that race is pure, or whatever........ and then the rest of the world has to go in and weed that psychopath out. it's always a hard joutmey, that.

So anybody who preaches elitism could find it difficult to get a really strong foothold on a community. There'll always be the bigoted followers, quite often thugs, or so we've found here, but they don't get far.

. . . Unfortunately your theory explains the apathy and devolution taking place wherever we look ----since if being elite is bad, then devolution is good. It's a really interesting phenomena since demonizing the idea of being elite privileges laziness, vice, stupidity, and cupidity without striving or stretching, or trying.

. . . . See, I've inadvertently describe the nature of the majority of the prose and mindless stuff we see on a forum such as this. Everyone's drinking the Kool-Aide and glorying in the resultant flatulence.



John

 

[buddhist]

. . . In a sense, we could say that the deepest truths, the truths most hidden from our everyday self, are uncovered in the act of unveiling them. The very liturgy, or ritual, or mitzvah, that uncovers a truth, is the most explicit manifestation of the truth. . . Which is to say that it has to be hidden, to be uncovered. And in the most valuable truths, the act of uncovering reveals the truth, in the very act of uncovering it. It can't be perceived without the uncovering, making the esoteric a requirement for the exoteric.

Take circumcision for instance. The removal of the covering leaves a scar that threatens to open up to us truths of breathtaking relevance to the spiritual future of mankind. We can say this since in an exoteric sense, removing flesh, redesigning the male body, suggests of desecration of the flesh of the male body that God allegedly designed and created himself? Circumcision is either a desecration of God's original design, or, if not, then the scar marking a redesigning of that particular flesh (eliminating the veil) could be interpreted as the laying bare, the revelation, of the true desecration (X marks the spot), whose remedy requires firstly that the nature of the original desecration be revealed.


John

Well this is different from what you were talking about before, that those in Christianity and Judaism are actively hiding truths from even the "greatest practitioners".

 

[John D. Brey]

Well this is different from what you were talking about before, that those in Christianity and Judaism are actively hiding truths from even the "greatest practitioners".

. . . What I meant to imply is that the greatest exoteric truths within Judaism and Christianity are still esoteric to the greatest practitioners of the faith. There seems to be some sort of idolatrous tendency to worship the esoteric as the thing-in-itself, rather than open up the esoteric to exoteric examination.

Eastern religions have a great appreciation of deep truths in their exoteric reality. But I think there are some things hidden in Judaism and Christianity that are earth-shattering, and even beyond anything in the Eastern faiths. . . So far they've not broken out of the idolatrous worship of the esoteric as the completion of the faith.



John

 

[buddhist]

. . . What I meant to imply is that the greatest exoteric truths within Judaism and Christianity are still esoteric to the greatest practitioners of the faith. There seems to be some sort of idolatrous tendency to worship the esoteric as the thing-in-itself, rather than open up the esoteric to exoteric examination.

Eastern religions have a great appreciation of deep truths in their exoteric reality. But I think there are some things hidden in Judaism and Christianity that are earth-shattering, and even beyond anything in the Eastern faiths. . . So far they've not broken out of the idolatrous worship of the esoteric as the completion of the faith.

John

Then there's no valid reason to assume that Judaism and Christianity are more spiritual than the Dharmic faiths, since that alleged knowledge is hidden and is unavailable to be judged.

 

[John D. Brey]

Then there's no valid reason to assume that Judaism and Christianity are more spiritual than the Dharmic faiths, since that alleged knowledge is hidden and is unavailable to be judged.

. . . It exists in an esoteric shell that someone with sharpened eyes can pierce. Problem is that no one can open up an oracle for another person. I think the same idea is found in Buddhism.


John

 

[Sonofason]

. . . I find it difficult to believe anyone who doesn't like football can be spiritually enlightened?

I didn't say I don't like football. I said I don't care about it, and I have better things to do than to watch it. If I didn't have better things to do, I might watch it.
Nearly 500 Billion dollars was spent in 2015 on the sports industry in the United States alone. Worldwide it was 1.5 Trillion dollars. I think it is sick to waste so much money on something so trivial. How many people do you suppose that could have fed in 2015? I say it could feed hundreds of millions of people each year.

 

[buddhist]

. . . It exists in an esoteric shell that someone with sharpened eyes can pierce. Problem is that no one can open up an oracle for another person. I think the same idea is found in Buddhism.

Yes, everyone must directly see for themselves in Buddhism. No offense, but after 3 decades in Christianity, I found it to be a hollow shell mimicking elements of other and more ancient death & blood cults in comparison.

 

[John D. Brey]

Yes, everyone must directly see for themselves in Buddhism. No offense, but after 3 decades in Christianity, I found it to be a hollow shell mimicking elements of other and more ancient death & blood cults in comparison.

What brand of Christianity?


John

 

[buddhist]

What brand of Christianity?


John

Different variations of Protestant Christianity, along with Messianic Judaism and more "esoteric" versions such as the Essenes and Gnostic Christianity.

 

[John D. Brey]

Different variations of Protestant Christianity, along with Messianic Judaism and more "esoteric" versions such as the Essenes and Gnostic Christianity.

. . . That sounds great. I can't see how you could find that a hollow shell?


John

 

[buddhist]

. . . That sounds great. I can't see how you could find that a hollow shell?


John

Much of their claims I could not personally verify, claims which must be believed blindly in order to gain their ultimate goal (e.g. "salvation")

 

[John D. Brey]

Much of their claims I could not personally verify, claims which must be believed blindly in order to gain their ultimate goal (e.g. "salvation")

. . . Unfortunately I'm Barthian to the extreme. Which is to say I believe with Karl Barth that all genuine faith is blind faith. It's not faith if it's contaminated with empiricism, rationalism, or logic. Faith trumps all of them and manipulates them to make itself felt in the world.

I'm surprised you never experienced Buddhism as an outward expression of things that are still mysterious and perhaps even deeper than Buddhism in Christianity and or Judaism?


John