To those who do not believe in spiritual beings (Gods, Buddhas and so on)

[QuestioningMind]

In my understanding of God or Buddha it is awakened beings, meaning they see the truth as it truly are, at their level of awakening. so yes even Gods have different understanding of the purest truth.

Sorry, but you're being terribly vague here. You're defining God as an 'awakened being' and then try and define an 'awakened being' as a being that sees truth as it truly is, at their 'level of awakening'. You can't hope to define 'awakened being' by using the phrase 'level of awakening'.

Please CLEARLY define what you mean by 'awakened' and 'awakening'.

 

[Spirit of Light]

He was a fully developed buddha, hes dead now

his body yes

 

[Spirit of Light]

Sorry, but you're being terribly vague here. You're defining God as an 'awakened being' and then try and define an 'awakened being' as a being that sees truth as it truly is, at their 'level of awakening'. You can't hope to define 'awakened being' by using the phrase 'level of awakening'.

Please CLEARLY define what you mean by 'awakened' and 'awakening'.

Seeing truth as it actually is. we on earth see truth in a very distorted way, because of our ego

 

[Ayjaydee]

his body yes

That and his consciousness are all that there was. The candle is extinguished

 

[stvdv]

Got any contrary evidence? As everything written about a guy who lived 2500 years ago and left no written claims of his own, it's obviously an opinion

I have no evidence, hence I make no claim.

My Master told me a lot about Buddha. So, that's hearsay for me and no personal experience what I know about Buddha. So I can't give any contrary evidence.

 

[Ayjaydee]

I have no evidence, hence I make no claim.

My Master told me a lot about Buddha. So, that's hearsay for me and no personal experience what I know about Buddha. So I can't give any contrary evidence.

So neither of us has anything but an opinion

 

[stvdv]

So neither of us has anything but an opinion

I can only speak for myself, and about Buddha I have no personal experience yet, so for me it's just hearsay (opinion) so far.

I see you just came to RF, so probably you missed out on RF Rule #3 or so (took me like 1 month I think, before I found these Rules), there it says we should always write "I believe...." if it is an opinion, never write it as a claim (and esp. if you write about others).

 

[Ayjaydee]

I can only speak for myself, and about Buddha I have no personal experience yet, so for me it's just hearsay (opinion) so far.

I see you just came to RF, so probably you missed out on RF Rule #3 or so (took me like 1 month I think, before I found these Rules), there it says we should always write "I believe...." if it is an opinion, never write it as a claim (and esp. if you write about others).

Wow! That condemns 90+% of the claims in here! Lol

 

[stvdv]

Wow! That condemns 90+% of the claims in here! Lol

Yes. Good to know, isn't it?

 

[HonestJoe]

May it be that you are just not able to see or hear the supernatural beings that are called Gods, Buddhas, and so on? Maybe you just look at it the wrong way? or your spiritual vision is not tuned to the right frequency? Would it be possible for you to explain what you expect to see or hear to get your proof of an existence of God or other spiritual beings?

If we had proof, we wouldn’t believe, we’d know. Belief exists because of the absence of proof.

Also, why did you only ask your question of non-believers? Isn’t is equally possible that people who do believe in one set of “supernatural” concepts could be wrong? Maybe we’re all wrong and the truth is something nobody has ever imagined. I can’t speak for anyone else but I don’t see how believing in any specific answer to this ultimately open question would make any kind of sense.

If you want to get in to the area of evidence and “proof” though, there are a few fundamental aspects that are required. The first would be a well-defined formal hypothesis, a description of exactly what you’re proposing as truth and therefore what measurable effects you predict as a result as a consequence. That would form the basis for testing the hypothesis.

Also, if you’re going to propose any new fundamental physical principles – the existence of the supernatural or the spiritual for example – you really need to clearly define, hypothesis and support them before using them as a basis for more specific claims. A core problem in this area is that believers make specific claims and when they’re challenged on them, dismiss those challenges with arguments like “the supernatural is beyond the reach of science”, “God doesn’t provide proof” or “your spiritual vision is not tuned to the right frequency”.

 

[blü 2]

May it be that you are just not able to see or hear the supernatural beings that are called Gods, Buddhas, and so on?

The first answer to the question of life, the universe and everything was, you'll recall, 42. And when that was thought unsatisfying, it was necessary to build a much bigger computer, which we know as Earth. We know these things are true because we have Mr Douglas Adams' word for it.

And my path across the earth, attentive to these questions and their answers, has led me, as you also know, to materialism, not least because none of the alternatives make sense to me. Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is that there's no test that will distinguish the supernatural from the imaginary, nor is there any reason to think such a difference exists.

Maybe you just look at it the wrong way?

Look at what the wrong way, exactly?

or your spiritual vision is not tuned to the right frequency?

I like a good ghost story as much as the next human, and it's a grandpa's lot to see all the Harry Potter movies, which we greatly enjoyed. What have I left out?

Would it be possible for you to explain what you expect to see or hear to get your proof of an existence of God or other spiritual beings?

This is the nub, I think. Either God is real / gods are real, or not. And if not, then God is imaginary / gods are imaginary because there's nothing else they could be.

For God / a god to be real, [he] would have to exist in the world external to self, which is the same thing as nature, the realm of the physical sciences. In that case there must be a definition of [him] appropriate to a real being, such that if we found a suspect we could determine whether it were God / a god, or not. There appears to be no such definition. If anyone has one, at the least, so far they haven't told me.

Leaving only the possibility that they're imaginary.

This fits what we know in other ways. So far, it appears that all cultures around the world have some or other supernatural beliefs, but the sheer range and variety of those beliefs rather underlines the point that they're imaginary. Two explanations for this occur to me. The first is that we've evolved to think in terms of gods because, like a common language, a common pool of stories, and folk-histories, and heroes, and a common set of customs, they're good for tribal solidarity, hence aid survival and breeding. The other is that supernatural beliefs are an artifact of the evolved human trait of interpreting puzzles in terms of explanations. No doubt there are other possibilities, but they don't include real supernatural beings or real magic (the alteration of reality independently of the rules of reality, usually just by wishing).

Or so it seems to me.

 

[Jim]

Is any sort of belief in a higher power necessary for spirituality? I don't think so. But then the concept of a "spiritual realm" as any thing in reality does not seem to be reasonable to me.

What I call “spiritual” has nothing to do with higher piwers at all. It’s about non-physical values, virtues, and possibilities in life.

 

[ChristineM]

May it be that you are just not able to see or hear the supernatural beings that are called Gods, Buddhas, and so on? Maybe you just look at it the wrong way? or your spiritual vision is not tuned to the right frequency? Would it be possible for you to explain what you expect to see or hear to get your proof of an existence of God or other spiritual beings?

Given the 100% lack of evidence for supernatural and gods i would say it's not just that i am not tuned in to them or am looking the wrong way.

What i would need to see is absolute, 100% proof, confirmation. How this would be arranged is not my problem. A god should at least be capable of providing evidence for their existence that is adequate to convince a human being.

And then he/she/it would have several searching questions to answer as to things like why the suffering and why hide when in need

 

[Jim]

Sometimes I feel trees talking to me. Not that I hear words or even sounds. Watching the branches moving and the leaves rustling in a breeze feels like someone talking to me. It might even give me new ideas, or comfort me, as if it were a person talking to me. I can see that as a reason to think of that metaphorically as coming from some kind of being that I can’t see, hear or touch, but that doesn’t give me any reason to think that there really is such a being. One example of what I might need for that is to see the movements of leaves and branches responding meaningfully and consistently many times to what I say and do.

Many things happen in my life that give me good ideas, and help me, in ways that feel like a person doing it. It works very well for me to think of that metaphorically as my imaginary God communicating with me and doing things for me, but that doesn’t give me any reason to say that He really exists. For some purposes it works very well to imagine electricity in a circuit flowing from the positive terminal to the negative one, but that doesn’t make it true.

I’ve always heard of people having hallucinations, thinking that they saw and heard things that weren’t really there, and it has never occurred to me to doubt that it happens sometimes. Are you saying that you always believe in the reality of everything that anyone says they see and hear sometimes, like ghosts, or visions of Mary mother of Jesus for example? Do you believe that she really has visited every person who ever said she did?

 

[Jim]

May it be that you are just not able to see or hear the supernatural beings that are called Gods, Buddhas, and so on? Maybe you just look at it the wrong way? or your spiritual vision is not tuned to the right frequency? Would it be possible for you to explain what you expect to see or hear to get your proof of an existence of God or other spiritual beings?

I wouldn’t deny the reality of anything that anyone says that they’ve experienced, without investigating it together with them. If they say that it can only be experienced by people with the right kind of training, I wouldn’t deny that either.

Just now, thinking about some of your other posts in this thread, a thought came to me that this might actually be about people denouncing and ridiculing your beliefs in some beings. Some of that kind of behavior might be people trying to look good to some other people, and maybe fishing for “Like”s.

 

[Audie]

Ok. Explain purple.

One could demonstrate the existence of light to a blind
person. You cannot see air, can you? But you
can easily be convinced that it is there.

"Purple" is about a wave length, analogous to
wave length in radio waves. Which you also cannot
see.

Granted, the blind cannot see purple but it is not
woo woo,and a person of even modest cerebration
can get the idea.

From my pov, the notion that those who do not
do "spiritual" are not lacking something, but rather
it is those who think they do.

The rather idiotic ramblings of some of our theist
sorts here have no counterpart among the atheists.

That could be a Sign.

 

[Jim]

May it be that you are just not able to see or hear the supernatural beings that are called Gods, Buddhas, and so on? Maybe you just look at it the wrong way? or your spiritual vision is not tuned to the right frequency? Would it be possible for you to explain what you expect to see or hear to get your proof of an existence of God or other spiritual beings?

I think that there’s a lot of resentment against some God beliefs because those beliefs have been used a lot to excuse and camouflage cruelty, violence and oppression. Denouncing some group or category of people is a popular way for people to feel virtuous or look good to others, and people who believe in those Gods are popular targets for that.

 

[Spirit of Light]

I wouldn’t deny the reality of anything that anyone says that they’ve experienced, without investigating it together with them. If they say that it can only be experienced by people with the right kind of training, I wouldn’t deny that either.

Just now, thinking about some of your other posts in this thread, a thought came to me that this might actually be about people denouncing and ridiculing your beliefs in some beings. Some of that kind of behavior might be people trying to look good to some other people, and maybe fishing for “Like”s.

Why would i fish for likes. My OP was asked to understand. Not to be liked or dislikes

 

[Spirit of Light]

I think that there’s a lot of resentment against some God beliefs because those beliefs have been used a lot to excuse and camouflage cruelty, violence and oppression. Denouncing some group or category of people is a popular way for people to feel virtuous or look good to others, and people who believe in those Gods are popular targets for that.

But isnt it humans who are evil, and not Gods?

 

[Mock Turtle]

As others have pointed out, perhaps it is not the atheists and agnostics who have any weaknesses but those more ready to believe so readily.