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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

The Non-Religious Perspective (and Q&A)

Discussion in 'Archive: The Senate Floor' started by Kessel Runner, Aug 5, 2002.

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  1. cydonia

    cydonia Jedi Knight star 5

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    Jun 6, 2001
    I'm just teasing the heck out of you tc, i thought you didn't like the matrix. :)
     
  2. Kessel Runner

    Kessel Runner Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Apr 10, 1999
    That's a very good point TC. Sort of like bringing balance to the Force ;)

    Without people who strive to change things, things probably wouldn't change. Whether resisted or not, there has to be a catalyst for change.
     
  3. TreeCave

    TreeCave Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2001
    KR, makes sense. Without catalyst, people wouldn't know they might WANT to change. A friend in film once told me "they only make those dumb action movies because that's what people want to see." I pointed out to him that they weren't (at the time) making certain other types of movies, so how did they know the other types didn't sell? If they aren't there, people can hardly be expected to patronize them. If people like us don't at least suggest to people there are other ways for them to think, some of them will never have it occur to them in the closed cultures where they live.

    I'm just teasing the heck out of you tc, i thought you didn't like the matrix.

    I just never saw it. See, a few months before TPM came out - which was like one month after The Matrix came out - I gave up on trying to get into film. It was not pleasant. So I stopped going to non-SW movies - almost entirely. I definitely didn't see The Matrix because I had known or worked with some people involved in making it, so it was just a nasty painful reminder of what I'd given up.

    But the other day it hit me - I'm back in film despite all my best intentions, so why not watch it? It was good, though I agree with you it's overrated by people who think it's like the most amazing movie ever.

    But yeah, between that, Pi, Dark City and everything else I've watched lately, much "question reality" has been inspired in me. Not that I ever thought reality was for real anyway. :D
     
  4. Master-Aries

    Master-Aries Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 4, 2002
    Enlightenment in itself is questionable, belief structures seem to have tendency to facilitate the beginnings that eventually lead to the compromising of the individual for the greater good as a whole.

    The surrendering of that what makes one unique.

    Simply stated in order to truly embrace the idea one has to forgo any, and probably all learned, and or perceived realities one may have believed in or existed in.

    True, one may have commonality with the group when one first joins, but eventually somewhere along the line one breaks down one?s own beliefs, to maintain the now newly gained commonality.

    Enlightenment tends to follow that same path, one begins to embrace the teachings, but I believe eventually one looses perspective and reality begins to blur.

    The tendency to see others as inferior to oneself, I believe puts us on the same course that is inherently dangerous.

    Therefore I question the truth Enlightenment puts forth, is it there to build or breakdown the reality one has as an individual developed over ones lifetime.

    Sincerely

    Master-Aries
    (MA)
     
  5. TreeCave

    TreeCave Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Jul 28, 2001
    Enlightenment in itself is questionable, belief structures seem to have tendency to facilitate the beginnings that eventually lead to the compromising of the individual for the greater good as a whole.

    Actually, I don't think this is what enlightenment's all about. It's the loss of the illusion of separateness. It's only an illusion that we are separate from each other - we are all parts of a whole. It's not about losing individuality so much as about realizing how your individuality connects with every other individuality in existence. Once you realize your place in the cosmos, your individuality begins to make a lot more sense, which enhances your individuality.

    Put another way, enlightenment is about losing your EGO, not your individuality. There is a difference. Ego is a subjective, and therefore flawed, self-image. Individuality is about consciousness, about gaining full consciousness, which eliminates the need for ego.

    I hope I've put this well enough to make sense.
     
  6. emilsson

    emilsson Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 5, 1998
    I tend to see this illusion that hides reality in the same way as some zen buddhists does. These zen buddhists states that humans percieve reality through their definitions of phenomena. From interacting with people we form definitions of them. The same goes for things like animals, mountains etc. Zen buddhism has a story about a teacher who said something like:
    "First mountains are mountains and water is water. Then mountains are not mountains and water is not water. But when one reaches Enlightenment one sees that mountains are really mountains and water is really water".

    According to the zen philosophers I have studied "mountains are mountains, water is water" means that one sees a single mountain and call it mountain because it fits the definition of mountain. But once the definitions break to give away for a deeper understanding mountains are not mountains because they are so much more than the definition says. And when Enlightenment comes one starts seeing mountains for what they really are, not as they should be.

    Put another way, enlightenment is about losing your EGO, not your individuality.

    It also means the ego holds no centre position in your worldview. Instead the centre is placed on all beings or all that exist(at least if you're zen buddhist). You still know you're an unique individual but also a part of a greater whole.

    Lastly, about helping. That's a question I have pondered too since I have gone into education. As I see it help can mean many things. As a teacher it foremost means to inspire and to See students as they are. I spell see with a capital S to highlight I'm talking about a very profound experience that happens when you realise someone looks at you and sees you for all that you are and still likes/loves you.
     
  7. Master-Aries

    Master-Aries Jedi Youngling star 1

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    Sep 4, 2002
    Ego is the replacement of instinct, man has evolved the loss of instinct to embrace emotion hence ego.

    Enlightenment now wished to suppress emotion and therefore ego, to obtain the true sense of being. As result man has not only compromised his initial purpose by suppressing instinct, he now does it again by suppression ego and eventually emotion.

    Can man exist without emotion and ego, and are we now not replacing one doctrine with other. As far as I can see Buddhists try to obtain Enlightenment for the ultimate emotional high.

    Is this now not evident in the ramifications one sees everyday where people do amazingly horrific acts to each other, as I believe a result of not truly knowing who they are.

    The Buddhists have lived sheltered lives their blatant lack of interaction has blinded them to the greater atrocities that man as a whole have committed, the positive attributes man has embodied are far and few between, are these positive attributes not as a result of ego.

    Before one can remove ego form ones existence one should know what lies ahead, this has not been achieved, as long as man has existed the inherent fear of the unknown has dictated the path man follows.

    If one is to change the perceptions man has, man needs to know, and enlightenment is merely a replacement not an evolutionary change.

    Therefore I see the compromising of the inner personality by suppressing emotion as the downfall of enlightenment.

    Sincerely

    Master-Aries
    (MA)
     
  8. emilsson

    emilsson Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 5, 1998
    If Enlightenment means suppressing emotitions, why does the Buddhist scriptures describe an Enlightened one as someone who is full of love and joy?
     
  9. Kessel Runner

    Kessel Runner Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 10, 1999
    Just on an aside, I find it fascinating that all of us self professed non-reglious types seem to be very intrigued and well versed on a multitude of faith systems.


    As for the whole "enlightenment" question, I'd have to say that I agree with TC a bit more on this. Englightenment is not about suppressing the self, but rather understanding that the self is part of a larger whole. A greater "self" which is a universal/global perspective. If you look at the amount of work and difficulty it takes to truly find "enlightenment" like the buddhist monks, etc, then it seems clear that it is not about a group mentality, because it's such a small group that understands it.
     
  10. Master-Aries

    Master-Aries Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 4, 2002
    This is the conflict; enlightenment is available to the few and not the many, while religion panders to the emotional needs of many.

    So I reiterate is religion and any faith system as KR put it, merely an evolutionary process man has to bear before reaching the next level, as I believe enlightenment is not the next level merely a step, to what?

    As enlightenment has for many years been pondered, surly the next level has been reached. Already there are signs that religions are fading, but in its place a sense of hopelessness and self-centeredness are replacing the defunct religious structure, and not enlightenment, or a new wave of old faith systems such as the old Anglo-Saxon belief system before Christianity. (Lord of the Rings)

    Where the power of the earth and the natural powers of nature are harnessed by Women who are the respected leaders of this faith.

    Now I am not advocating this faith but more and more peoples are now turning to old faiths to sustain them, if enlightenment was the answer people would have embraced it.

    The seeking of the greater self seems not to be an isolated process it seems that people have to congregate and share experiences under a ?group umbrella? to understand their point in the cosmos, religion does not offer that as God is all you need to exist.

    Therefore I believe man is not ready for the next level, as he constantly turns to the emotional sustaining faiths to sustain his pitiful existence.

    Emotion is still a key aspect in mans evolution and until man can reason and exist without emotion he will limit his progression.

    Sincerely

    Master-Aries
    (MA)
     
  11. Humble extra

    Humble extra Jedi Youngling star 5

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    Jun 12, 1999
    i think i need a workign definition of spiritual from you guys, and how it differs from having a religious belief
     
  12. Kessel Runner

    Kessel Runner Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 10, 1999
    Already there are signs that religions are fading, but in its place a sense of hopelessness and self-centeredness are replacing the defunct religious structure, and not enlightenment, or a new wave of old faith systems such as the old Anglo-Saxon belief system before Christianity. (Lord of the Rings)


    I think that the same structure of organization and community exist today that were the territory of religion in the past, only now it is the providence of commercialism, and "brands". The new religion/factionism in the modern Western World, is based on products.
     
  13. Master-Aries

    Master-Aries Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 4, 2002
    In this matter I have no answer, as I have no factual insight in the ?spiritual? sense of the word.

    As my life has been forged by internal and external sources, spiritual enlightenment or spiritual euphoria is an unknown quantity, the closest definition is what I call the inner personality that what resides in us all, that what makes one unique, on the most fundamental level.

    The inner personality is inherent from ones birth, it is quantified though the inherent genetic personas transferred from one generation to another, I would be careful before saying it is the evolutionary steps taken for the continued mental development of man.

    It cannot be said that man is born with a personality at that is how he shall remain his whole life; there are factors that contribute to the continued growth of the personality until death. My point is this, since there is an inherent personality one should be aware of the possible conflict situations that may result in the breaking down of what has been in creation since man was aware.

    Now I am not saying that one has no conflict in ones life, granted we do things that we would not like to do but do them anyway we must, that is not the conflict, conflict is not appreciating that the particular person may have inherent difficulties with certain issues.

    This is a bit off the subject I know but it is the only explanation I can offer in response to your question.

    Though one should not confuse spiritual happiness with emotional happiness, as I believe religions abuse emotional euphoria by calling it spiritual closeness to God, feeling his divine inspiration or whatever.

    To this day the definition of spiritual escapes me for the moment, One is unique that is all that I need to sustain me

    Sincerely

    Master-Aries
    (MA)
     
  14. emilsson

    emilsson Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 5, 1998
    Oxford dictionary defines spiritual in this way:

    1 connected with the human spirit, rather than the body or physical things.


    For me spirituality means having a feeling, a mindset, of something that lies beyond the material world. I do not refer to divine beings. It deals more with sensing a sort of mystical truth. I think I have connected to mysticism because of this.

    I have to ponder this more.
     
  15. Humble extra

    Humble extra Jedi Youngling star 5

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 1999
    thanks aries, emil.......

    i ask as i have personally a rather negative perception of the term, to me it seems an active searching for something other than the real, the material.......seeking and finding solace where perhaps it does not exist..........that being said, a belief in the Enlightenment, the Rational could be said to be a spiritual faith of sorts........
     
  16. Master-Aries

    Master-Aries Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Sep 4, 2002
    Intriguing could you elaborate, it is a bit vague and your reasoning is intriguing.

    Sincerely

    Master-Aries
    (MA)
     
  17. TreeCave

    TreeCave Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2001
    Humble, you make a good point. Where I differ it this: I never sought evidence of something beyond the physical. My senses gave me as much evidence of "other" than the materially perceived as they did of the materially perceived. Only as I was conditioned to believe what you can't perceive through your five senses must not exist did I have any conflict. To deny the evidence of what your senses report is to deny that you have any perception of reality - and while I may well be schizo and this is all a dream, that's a pretty useless scenario, so I may as well work with what I appear to have in reality, as that's all any of us has, anyway.

    I simply "felt" an energy in the world that I couldn't exactly see, feel, taste, touch or smell. But I think rather than a 6th sense, it's simply all your senses working together in a way you don't consciously recognize. For example, how do you feel someone has walked into a room before turning to see them? Simple - they make sounds so low, or stir the air so gently that you ARE sensing them in a usual material way, it's just so close to imperceptible that you aren't consciously aware of having "felt" or "heard" anything. I believe probably all so-called "psychic" phenomena are like this.

    Perhaps in seeking to believe in the physical on the evidence of our five senses (which are part OF the physical realm, and therefore controlled by it, or whatever may control it), we're fooling ourselves into a comfortable belief that this is all there is, and there's no more we need be doing. This is just a possible argument, not something I intend to argue. It's just designed to point out who knows what reality is? The only real danger lies in assuming you really do know the score - assuming you really know there's a god, or not a god, or a Force, or no Force, or whatever. I've been both a deist and an atheist, and I have always admitted to myself that I may be very, very wrong about my beliefs, and am surely wrong about at least some parts.

    As Socrates says, true wisdom lies in knowing that you know nothing. (And that's pretty much the heart of agnosticism, isn't it? Although I have "chosen" to view life through an atheist perspective, I am still more agnostic in my overall belief that we know nothing, but only choose beliefs based on subjective experience and needs).
     
  18. Kessel Runner

    Kessel Runner Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 10, 1999
    Very intriguing deep stuff here.

    So, TC, then would you say that the "future seeing" psychic is in fact feeling the ripples through space-time? They are still using their five senses to understand or comprehend what they are "seeing"?
     
  19. TreeCave

    TreeCave Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Jul 28, 2001
    So, TC, then would you say that the "future seeing" psychic is in fact feeling the ripples through space-time? They are still using their five senses to understand or comprehend what they are "seeing"?

    Basically. Unfortunately, this is where you are forced to get into theory, like it or not, which I think is fine as long as you are prepared to drop a hypothesis the instant it's proven wrong by other evidence of your senses. We all work with theories in life, in our relationships, in things we do, efforts we make, etc.

    Regarding future-seeing, I would hypothesize that you're just somehow seeing the cause and effect chain linking all events in more clarity than you can consciously imagine. In that sense, it's just a heightened version of knowing that if you hit a number on the remote, it will change channels. Actually, even that prediction is sometimes wrong - it takes two hits of the button, because the first doesn't quite connect with the remote sensor on your TV.

    OR, equally plausible but more complex, you could theorize that time is not as immovable as we imagine, and events within it bear specific types of relationships to events in the past or present. This is not much different from what I stated above, but it's verging on physics.

    Your other option is to take the illogical stance of the "proven negative", and simply dismiss the possibility of future predictions. Any apparent future prediction would then be a coincidence, a phenomena humans have (by consensus) agreed to dismiss as irrelevant. Why coincidences should be dismissed is not clear to me - while I agree that assigning them huge potentous meanings, or building a body of superstitiion around them would be silly, I don't see that they need be dismissed as meaningless. Obviously, some coincidences are not without a point - for example, the abuse cycle. You could think, "What a coincidence - the kid who was beaten at home grew up to be a beater in his own home. Weird!" Thank goodness it occurred to someone to study that coincidence and discover a readily apparent cause-effect link which, once understood, could lead to a reduction in domestic violence.
     
  20. Kessel Runner

    Kessel Runner Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 10, 1999
    My inherent skepticism approches "coincidences" and "miracles" with equal shares of disbelief and concern.

    I was watching some stuff on 9/11 last night and they were talking to the airphone operator who spoke with Beamer. Her name is Lisa. Beamer's wife's name is Lisa, the 911 operator she spoke to when it all happened was named Lisa. Is this sheer coincidence? Is this some sign that this operator was meant to be the person to answer that phone? Was this terrible tragedy meant to speak to her in a more personal manner than many of us have faced?

    Or was this just a case of a common name creating higher probability statistics that an operator named Lisa would speak to a man with a wife named Lisa and she would connect to an emergecency operator named Lisa?

    I can understand Lisa's driving need to believe there was some cosmic reason she answered the phone, but is it really possible to find the greater meaning here?

    Honestly, I'm just torn on this. But my tendency is to dismiss it.
     
  21. TreeCave

    TreeCave Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Jul 28, 2001
    I can understand Lisa's driving need to believe there was some cosmic reason she answered the phone, but is it really possible to find the greater meaning here?

    Okay, this one doesn't strike me as very meaningful, but then again, it's not my life, so it's not important to me to understand what these other people went through in the detail it they would seek.

    Here's an example of a coincidence I can't dismiss, yet can't find any useful meaning for at all. One night, I rented some South Parks, including the one where Cartman keeps wanting things from people and saying, "I'll roguechambeau (sp) you for it". The next day at work, the guys in the call center were jokingly arguing about who would take the next call, and one said, "I'll roguechambeau you for it". Now, since I'd rented that South Park, and it was an old ep, it's not as if this guy and I could have both seen it on TV the night before, so this was a very odd coincidence. Had it been a SW reference - SW being so incredibly common both in my life and so public domain even with non-fans - I would have dismissed it as just coincidence. But I don't watch SP all that often, and it's not nearly as well-known. So I do thiink this was very odd.

    However, I can't begin to see a point to it.
     
  22. Kessel Runner

    Kessel Runner Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 10, 1999
    Or what about the New York State Lottery coming up with the numbers 9-1-1 in that order on September 11th.
     
  23. sleazo

    sleazo Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Aug 13, 2001
    As a skeptic The lottery numbers in ny on 9/11 lead me to believe the lottery is fixed
     
  24. Kessel Runner

    Kessel Runner Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Apr 10, 1999
    Being a skeptic, have you ever been to Skeptic.com?
     
  25. Obi-Wan McCartney

    Obi-Wan McCartney Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 17, 1999
    I don't like religion cause I don't think there are blanket laws that cover every action in life.

    If you use religion as a guide for the keys to living a good life, then fine, but if you live your life dogmatically listening to religous ideology rather than forming a few of your own ideas, I think you're hurting yourself.
     
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