Audie
Veteran Member
Make that 100 for creoclaims
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To those who do not believe in spiritual beings (Gods, Buddhas and so on)
- Thread starter Spirit of Light
- Start date
Make that 100 for creoclaims
Audie
Veteran Member
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We do see our theists espousing the most ridiculous sorts of things,
and no two can agree.
It certainly as the appearance of a deficiency on the
part of those afflicted with theism.
"Atheist" is a term that gets it backwards.
Its like if someone has coronavirus and thinks those
who do not areacoronaviusists.
And are lacking in some way.
Maybe you're seeing your own mind and misinterpreting it as an external principle.
@Polymath257 made the case I was preparing to make about how, when two sources disagree on what is perceptible, we can decide whether one group is seeing something that is not out there, or the other not seeing something that is out there. We interview the seers independently to see how well their accounts coincide. I like to use the example of the red-green colorblind boy, who after learning that Santa Claus was a hoax, as was the snipe hunting trip, and 52-card pick-up, begins to wonder if the red-green thing is also some kind of hoax – an elaborate prank.
He decides by asking people who claim to see red and green and who have not compared notes what color a given numbered sock is. He asks them what color is sock number 1, 2, 3, etc., and records their answers. It’s the uniformity of their responses that gives him his answer. They agree, and he concludes that they really see these colors. Had this been a hoax, he would expect the answers to be varied.
When I perform an analogous study on people claiming to have spiritual knowledge, guess what I discover?
The same thing that everybody else is seeing, as is the case with the sun. Unfortunately, since no two of these people can agree, and since I have no reason to believe that peak experiences of insight are anything more than me experiencing only my own mind, that's what I believe, and why I don't look for anything there any more.
I found my answers elsewhere.
I don't want to see what can only be seen by faith. I rely on reason applied to evidence.
This is a conceit you allow yourself. I see nothing about these people that I envy. I see people endlessly searching for meaning and purpose, a search I ended over three decades ago when I found answers that have served me well since, and which I therefore have no incentive to modify, or as others say, no incentive to continue searching.
Although many consider it a virtue to be searching for a lifetime, my guess is that if one is still seeking, he has an unsatisfied need, and if he has been seeking for decades and decades, he's going about it wrong and will never find what he's looking for, like a man searching for his keys for decades. When I look at these searchers, I don't see anything admirable about them, and nothing extraordinary about their thoughts. They don't seem happier, wiser, or smarter. They seem lost.
What we experience is what matters. Understanding what underlies experience and is thus outside of experience is of secondary importance. With death, experience ceases whereas what underlies it presumably does not, but becomes irrelevant once the experience of it vanishes. The opposite would not be true. If experience could persist after whatever you call truth disappeared, that would be fine. It's experience that matters, not so-called ultimate, absolute, or objective truths that we experience in a way you call distorted.
It's a common phenomenon. We tend to see agenticity (personhood) when none is present, as with an animal running when hearing a sound in the forest, and probably a source of the belief in spirits, along with witnessing death and doing the math: live person minus what equals dead person? What left when death ensued?
Here are a couple of interesting words:
Apophenia - the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data
Pareidolia - a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus being perceived as significant, a form of apophenia
Audie
Veteran Member
I read about how American Indians used to go on a spirit quest,
via such means as going alone to a hill top, to there pray, fast,
and generally wait about until they finally got a vision.
I dont doubt for a moment that it worked!
I do doubt that there was anything they saw that existed
anywhere outside their own heads.
Maybe our heroes of woo woo would like to tell us otherwise.
Spirit of Light
Be who ever you want
Why is it a problem to be a beliver?
Audie
Veteran Member
"Believers" end up believing all sorts of
ridiculous things, EVEN IF some of them
manage to find something true.
It is a gullible mindset that is ripe for exploitation,
as has been shown millions of times over.
Spirit of Light
Be who ever you want
I think people misunderstand my goal with this OP and my answers to some questions that arose. I am not out to judge those who do not believe in a God or Buddhas or other beings. All I was hoping for was to gain some new understanding of why those who do not believe or maybe are on the fence think like they do.
I do not have any bad feelings toward those who attack me or others who have a belief or follow a spiritual path. And I am now totally fine with people that say things that before may have hurt because it sometimes hit a weak spot within me. I am actually happy both believers and none believers can discuss or ask each other questions about why we think or believe what we do. I am not here to judge other people than my self. but yes sometimes I ask questions that get me in the firing line
All I wanted was to understand you better, not to make my own understanding better or higher than yours because many here have a lot of good spiritual wisdom they share.
I do not have any bad feelings toward those who attack me or others who have a belief or follow a spiritual path. And I am now totally fine with people that say things that before may have hurt because it sometimes hit a weak spot within me. I am actually happy both believers and none believers can discuss or ask each other questions about why we think or believe what we do. I am not here to judge other people than my self. but yes sometimes I ask questions that get me in the firing line
All I wanted was to understand you better, not to make my own understanding better or higher than yours because many here have a lot of good spiritual wisdom they share.
Setting aside for the moment the problematic descriptor "supernatural" there's been some science done that verifies certain people are not capable of thinking in particular ways. I remember running across a study about visualization a few years back that I found very surprising at the time. Apparently, people exist who are incapable of visualizing. That's right, if you ask them to picture something in their "mind's eye" they can't do it. There's just nothing there. It boggles my mind, because visualizing is something that is so easy for me I can't even imagine what it would be like to be incapable of it. A lot of how I interact with the otherworlds is through visualization, so someone who can't visualize wouldn't be able to experience the otherworlds in that way at all.
Aside from physical limitations that some people have with sensation and perception, there are also mental limitations that have been imposed by a person's cultural upbringing. If someone has been taught to think inside some particular box with some particular set of assumptions, they will process incoming information in a way that conforms to that paradigm. I notice this especially when it comes to topics of religion, because in spite of their being abundant evidence for gods, you will constantly see people switching off and ignoring all of it. This only happens because they have their paradigm with particular assumptions that makes it so they cannot consider the evidence in the same manner as someone with a different way of approaching it.
Both of these realizations - that we have physical and mental limitations on how we understand the world around us - help remind us that "reality" as we know it is largely a construct. I sometimes use phrases like "map of the territory" or "painting of the landscape" to convey this. If you want to "believe in" these "spiritual" beings, all you need to do is use the correct map of the territory that will allow you to experience these things. We could call this "paradigm shifting" I suppose? Some folks are really good at it, and some people are apparently incapable of it. Regardless, I find it important to remember that our maps are not the territory whether we are making "spiritual" or "material" assumptions about the territory.
Aside from physical limitations that some people have with sensation and perception, there are also mental limitations that have been imposed by a person's cultural upbringing. If someone has been taught to think inside some particular box with some particular set of assumptions, they will process incoming information in a way that conforms to that paradigm. I notice this especially when it comes to topics of religion, because in spite of their being abundant evidence for gods, you will constantly see people switching off and ignoring all of it. This only happens because they have their paradigm with particular assumptions that makes it so they cannot consider the evidence in the same manner as someone with a different way of approaching it.
Both of these realizations - that we have physical and mental limitations on how we understand the world around us - help remind us that "reality" as we know it is largely a construct. I sometimes use phrases like "map of the territory" or "painting of the landscape" to convey this. If you want to "believe in" these "spiritual" beings, all you need to do is use the correct map of the territory that will allow you to experience these things. We could call this "paradigm shifting" I suppose? Some folks are really good at it, and some people are apparently incapable of it. Regardless, I find it important to remember that our maps are not the territory whether we are making "spiritual" or "material" assumptions about the territory.
It's not, just as it isn't to not be such. So why assume one side is missing something? The OP was loaded with such.
Spirit of Light
Be who ever you want
There is no assumption at all. All i did was to ask a question. to understand more.
I think you need to look at the OP - seems like some assumptions appear there.
I may be one of those people. I never get anything past very vague, almost shadow figures. And I usually don't get even that much. When asked to visualize, I generally imagine a *bodily* sensation of how the thing would relate to me: how my arms would have to be to feel it or something like that. I *never* get definite colors or anything more than simple, shadowy outlines which usually disappear quickly.
At one point, when I was a kid, my teacher was talking about imagination and having images in your head and I got very upset because I thought I just didn't have an imagination. And in a sense, I don't: I don't get images. I *can* imagine what it would be like to fly, but that is mostly in the bodily feelings, and not any actual image.
And you may have a point concerning this (in)ability and the visualization of 'otherworlds'. But, for example, while reading, I *can* get a feeling of what it would be like to be on 'Ringworld' (as an example), but I just don't get specific images (except, to some extent, to remember the artwork from the cover of the book).
But this is precisely why I want *consistency*. If all that is happening is imagination, then it isn't 'reality'. maybe you don't make a distinction between these?
Spirit of Light
Be who ever you want
I did as you suggested and can not see any assumption in the OP, only legal question to people. Why do you think I assumed something? and what is the assumption you think i did?
Audie
Veteran Member
Interesting.
You perceive "attacks" that are not there,
but cannot see your own assumptions, tho
they be plain as tire tracks on a white carpet.
There are an easy half dozen. Are you
sure you cannot detect even one?
Pseudo Reptile @Mock Turtle... how about you name a few
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Wow, that's so weird to me! Thanks for sharing. The inability to visualize is sometimes called "aphantasia" (see Aphantasia - Wikipedia). Apparently it's something of a spectrum - folks who can very vividly picture things (which let me say, is super helpful when doing art) and folks who can't even get shadowy outlines. It's pretty fascinating, I think.
Yes and no. Making distinctions between how we experience various aspects of reality is important and unavoidable, but unlike most in my culture, I call all of it "reality." I do this in part because it makes no sense to me to call something that has such a significant (often tangible) impact on our lives "not real." Following from that, I also don't like how the label "not real" serves as a way to to shut down thought and exploration. It is too easy to fall into the trap of "not real, doesn't matter." So I just eschew that sort of labeling altogether.
Assumptions like - the existence of such - spiritual beings (Gods, Buddhas and so on), hence any method being necessarily wrong or better than any other for detecting such, and the existence of any spiritual vision, for example. Given that the existence of Buddha perhaps has more evidence than for most others. And as mentioned, perhaps it isn't the non-religious who have any of these supposed faults but that the religious having others.
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Pudding
Well-Known Member
Gods exist? And i can't see/hear them? But some specific Gods' believers can?
Nope, i haven't been convince to believe any of that is fact.
I have no interest to look for any God.
If any God exists and are still alive, and they want me to believe they exist, they then shown up and convince me they exist; if they try but fail to convince me they exists, then whatever; if they don't want to convince me they exist, also whatever, as their wish.
If no God exists, then it's sure that Gods will continue to remain invisible and silence and indeed i cannot see/hear them.
I cannot see/hear Gods because my spiritual vision is not tuned to the right frequency? Some specific Gods' believers can see/hear Gods because their spiritual vision is tuned to the right frequency?
Nope, i haven't been convince to believe any of that is fact.
I expect to see or hear convincing evidence or argument establishing that any God/spiritual-being exists, in order to get me proof of an existence of God or other spiritual beings.
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Audie
Veteran Member
Audie
Veteran Member