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I haven't the slightest idea what owning a computer has to do with casting doubt on Buddhism but Eshly is sometimes just as confusing as young Gurney who knows more big words than you can find in a dictionary. I rather think I require an interpreter to fathom his posts on occasion.

At this point I am wondering where Reverend Browning is since he usually takes an interest in these matters. I am sure he can drown out these rebellious children with his usual torrent of words.

I abhor attacks on major religions even though I consider them all to be complete nonsense. However a certain amount of respect is due to people of various faiths.

I belong to a wonderful religion known as the Free Spiritualist Church of Canada. I think I am the only member of my church but even so I do have a large congregation which I minister to all over Canada. They donate quite generously I must say.

"Live simply and frugally."

I believe thats in the second tenent of Buddhism. I wasn't actually using that to attack you, just pointing out the irony of a Buddhist with a computer.

He probably bought a second hand one. Or got it as a gift. So do stop talking nonsense Eshly.

You mustn't or shouldn't be attached to material objects. You mustn't allow physical desires to control you. It doesn't mean you can't use or enjoy luxuries just as long as your able to let go. There's more to buddism than that of course but thats the part you were attacking.

Eshly if your so logical I assume you've tested your mothers love for you and not simply taken it on faith that she cares?

Thoughts can be stupid, but they can't be dangerous or evil only actions can be dangerous or evil.

I wouldn't insult the christians if I were you they may get inquisitive.

I've got some neighbours thet are Quakers, chances are you know nothing about Quakers since one of their first rules is to not push their religion on anyone. They are Christians and have nothing to do with the Pope.

Henry Kissinger was responsible for the Deaths of over 300,000 People in Cambodia and Louse. His crimes against humanity was far greater than the Popes. He was also never arresred. Do not confuse politics with religion.

Eshly wrote:Gary: I am not an expert in Buddhism, but I think the fact you own a computer undermines it somewhat. ... .

Eshly, clearly you aren't an expert in Buddhism. I live in Korea where about a third of the population is Buddhist, though not 'peasents' (sic). I know Buddhist monks who own and use computers. If monks don't see the irony of owning computers, maybe you should rethink your ideas or do some more research.

Amish owning computers would probably be ironic, though.

Don't give in to the 'synasism' (sic). Be an optometrist!

Shad

gypsyfish wrote:

Eshly wrote:Gary: I am not an expert in Buddhism, but I think the fact you own a computer undermines it somewhat. ... .

Eshly, clearly you aren't an expert in Buddhism. I live in Korea where about a third of the population is Buddhist, though not 'peasents' (sic). I know Buddhist monks who own and use computers. If monks don't see the irony of owning computers, maybe you should rethink your ideas or do some more research.

Amish owning computers would probably be ironic, though.

Don't give in to the 'synasism' (sic). Be an optometrist!

Shad

Brilliant!

Mark I'm dissapointed that I've dissapointed you, but I reject being disspointed on the basis that you're being dissapointed is on the basis that I was being stupid. Honestly, look up William F Buckley, find a video of him. You will understand my point exactley.

EDIT: What was said about Kissenger.

Now, mon ami Eshly

Eshly wrote:Gary: I am not an expert in Buddhism, but I think the fact you own a computer undermines it somewhat.

Faith is generally used as a word to describe something you believe but you cannot know, for example:

"How do you know he didn't sleep with her?"

"..Emm, I just took his word on faith."


And finally: No, we do not have to be careful about insulting the beliefs of others. Unless they are Muslim in which case we need to do it over the internet, because doing it in public gets you killed. But we can insult the Christians all we like, what are they going to do, hold a fate?

Ofcourse you need to critisize religions and their Gods. The pope is currantly in Britain and the UN had to recently make the Vatican a regocnised country in order to give him diplimatic immunity. Without it, he would have been arrested for perversion of the cause of justice and been given several years in jail. Unfortunetly justice never happens in this world.

You do need to openly critisize peoples thoughts, especially if they are dangerous, evil or stupid.

Eshly. You do not realise how many contradictions you are making in the respect that you do not practice what it is that you preach. I abused logic, to make the point implicitly that rationalism has it's boundaries and that faith is part of the human condition. I should point out, this is not maliciously directed at you as you may feel other responses are, although I disagree with your arguments vehemently which accounts for any ardency in my voice.

First of all, you made a joke about Muslims being aggressive. The first law of rationalism and militant atheism is to question your beliefs, your sources and to look for evidence if someone tells you something. So because the media publishes some nonesense about muslims all being evil imperialistic savages, bent on world domination do what YOU propose and ask the question: is this really true or is this fear-mongering, nonsensical drivel that amounts to essentially what some may even define as some form of propagandic method? Well lets have a look at some evidence.

Iraq, as an example: a third world country loosing a war against libya, whose army was some farmers with a few rocks and probably goats as their cavallry. Hussain had, in the very literal sense, shook hands with the US as he was gassing the kurds and commiting other war crimes that he was later to be executed for. But when the US has a pretext- no prise for guessing what it is- their very accurate and infallible media system reports the situation that Iraq is due to take over the world with its militant islamists bent on destroying western civilisation and replacing it with a slaughterous and pillaging sytem. So what does evidence tell us? That the media, due to bias, the infamous enemy of reason, sometimes isn't honest with the truth and just occasionally might like to initiate fear and feelings of vulnerability upon its readers.

Lets take a look at some more evidence because as science says, if something is true, you can repeat it and get the same results, correct? So how about the infamous Osama Bin Laden. Again if you read the media, then you will know the facts, because the media gives the truth, the hole truth and nothing but the truth... . The 'facts' would be that he hates America and the UK because of its horrible values on freedom, women's rights, democracy, diplomacy and their general saintliness. Well, if we would like to be scientific, then we should listen to what Bin Laden has to say, because in the same way as religious documents, when someone's words are repeated through another's mouth, then distortions, generalisations and deletions occur. So why does he hate America? Well he despises the US and their friends, Britain, for being a terrorist state. He gives historical evidence, with relevant accuracy to evidence his argument. He knows his politics, he knows the underhanded-ness of the US; in fact he was even on the recieving end of it when the US was poking their noses into afghanistan in the 80s and providing the mujahideen (of which Bin Laden was part of) with weapons to fight off the soviets. But we're not supposed to be reminded of that fact too often. We are also told that he is a muslim and it is his faith which gives him this ideology. The facts, the evidence: the truth, suggests otherwise. He has a very stupid ideology of 'an eye for an eye'. In fact, he is doing back to the US what it has done to others in being a terrorist. This is where he goes wrong- murder is wrong, weather its an atheist, christian or muslim doing it, but Bin Laden's behaviour has nothing to with religion other than it is a cosy pretext.

So what am I saying? I am saying that I have been to a mosque, a good proportion of my friends are muslims, I have studied islam to some extent. This means I'm bias! No, it means that I have evidence. Of course I don't agree with everything islam has to say, otherwise I'd be a muslim. But some of the kindest and most charitable people I know are muslims. Its debatable about correlation. But the facts are that islam has nothing to do with Bin Laden, he twists the Koran in the same way his right wing opponents twist it to demonstrate what an evil religion it is.

Furthermore, if you praise rationalism, which I am guessing you likley do, then the absolutley worst logical argument you can use is induction. Even Bertrand Russell did not disagree. In other words, you HAVE to- in accordance with being rational- treat each muslim you meet, not as a sum of their 'label' but as an individual, free of preconceptions. Unless, of course, you reject the holy word of Bertrand Russell?

On that issue, he was not a fan of religion. I would happen to agree with him. I believe religion appears to be some excellent philosophers who have been completley misunderstood. Religion, in my opinion, is inhibiting to self discovery: which is at the heart of true faith and knowledge. But back to Russell, he abhored the catholic church quite justly. They have a history of oppression, torture and violence. Fortunatley today those powers are no longer excersisable, but as someone who knew much about physics, Bertrand would have known their detremental impact on scientific development. That is, as an example, how they made the reign of the aristotlean ptolemic solar system reign for, if I remember correctly over 500 years. The heliocentric or later, as suggested by Johannes Kepler, the heliostatic model, was later much more difficult to implement without being burnt at the stake.

But what the question has to be asked, how detremental is militant rationalism being on science? Einstein, arguably one of the greatest philosphical minds to have walked the planet, was not governed by reason, but by his imagination and as he professed himself, his hunches. Once he had a hunch revealed to him by imagination, he would look at expressing it in calculus in a way that made sense. I would have to argue that his approach seemed to work quite... rather, relativley, well- that is, of course, if you look at the evidence. Einstein is not the exception though, I mentioned Kepler who had the same 'hunches' which provoked him to go and seek evidence for his claims. Same with Newton. Now, were Einstein strictly rational and obedient to that dogmatic doctrine, he would be confined the very limited and limiting box of logic.

I mentioned earlier, that faith is neccessery. It is faith, not evidence, which suggests the sun will rise tommorrow. It is, in fact, a massive leap of faith to even believe that what we see is what actually happens, which is just slighly damaging to the notion of empirical evidence. Rationalism, as much as it may profess to be independent of Empiricism, is in fact founded upon it- that is, that which is self evident and provides axioms for rational enquiry are empirically gathered. In fact, as Descartes showed, there is only one thing in the entire universe that does NOT take faith to believe in which is the mere fact that our perception exists. Beyond this, EVERYTHING else is questionable. Does china even exist? Does this computer before me exist. Does my body exist? Do you even exist? It gets quite irritating and because evidence might not exist and takes faith to believe in. If you say that faith is invalid because it is conclusions without evidence, then it takes faith to believe in evidence because the only evidence we have of anything is the evidence of our perception existing, in the form of us perceiving. So if you really don't like faith, then ALL you can accept is Cartesian doubt (What I have just described), which is what skepticism is. I get the feeling you have faith in the fact that china exists.

Faith is necessery and who is to decide what evidence is valid or not? For in order to propose that a certain 'more scientific' form of evidence exists, that is, non-anecdotal evidence, or self conviction, then you would use evidence in your argument to argue for it and you would commit the cardinal sin of using circular reasoning, which means you cannot accept that argument. In fact logic makes sense, according to logic which is another circular argument and logic commits suicide.

You have to have faith. More importantly, you have to let people believe what they wish. Humanity is in perpetual ignorance, which calls for a certain amount of relativism and subjectivism. Dawkins hates the statement 'well its true for me'. He said once, and I quote: 'Something is either true or it isn't'. Here is a man who praises the achievements of science and knows nothing of its own quantum logic and is completley ignorant therefore of the philosophical questions which plague much of metaphyisical modern theoretical physics. If he wants science, the cat is both dead and alive. I am in my time you are in your own time; there is no constant. Whatever my perception, the only thing that's real, tells me IS true... for me.

Militant atheism is founded mostly upon anger. I shall quote the Bhagavad Gita, oh no! A religious text! But as it happens, science (modern psychology) happens to agree with these quotes too.

“Delusion arises from anger. The mind is bewildered by delusion. Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered. One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.”

“There is neither this world nor the world beyond nor happiness for the one who doubts.”

''Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.”

Sam, what the hell are you talking about?

sam said "we all live in our own little world and if you really believe in something and think its true - then it is"...

there, brevity at its best...

EDIT - too many books, and not enough living - meant in a kind way...

Jean Eugene Roberts wrote:Sam, what the hell are you talking about?

Mostly the stuff that I was saying.

Edit: I can see why you might think that Iain, but thank God it's not fully true. I am quite the rebel you know

Edit... again: Mark, you do make me laugh sometimes.. Apologies for the eyeball killing.

**Wall of text critically hits you for 9001 damage.**

Rationalism has no limits, atleast if you can learn the words "I don't know".

Eshly wrote:
Rationalism has no limits, atleast if you can learn the words "I don't know".

And your still working on that part right?

Goodness gracious! Samuel is trying to depose my fellow Reverend Craig Browing by the lengths of his posts. I think he has succeeded too since Craig is nowhere to be seen.

Eshly wrote:

.robb. wrote:

Eshly wrote:Gary: I am not an expert in Buddhism, but I think the fact you own a computer undermines it somewhat.

Don't let ignorance keep you from making judgment.

Moronic.

Given that I've met real Buddhist peasents, and most "Buddhists" I find these days are very much not real. You can forgive my synasism.

Hmmm... so that means that all Christians are supposed to live like tha Amish and we shouldn't have all the scientific breakthroughs so many christian innovators allowed us to know?

Eshly, you really need to get a real taste of what the real world is about before shooting your mouth off... or, as it were, showing to the world what you don't know about the subject... Buddhist Monks might live a semi-basic life style but that does not mean they avoid technology. I'm betting you'll find many out there making their living from IT and electronic development.

I fear that young Tom simply wants to be seen as a Sh** Stirrer given his previous antics as a pseudo-braniac and now he's talking complete out of his hind-side about things he's oblivious of... I really do feel sorry for him... anyone that must know such an oppressed sense of existence.

Now a few folks have tried to explain "Faith" and it is important to understand that "Faith" is not the same thing as "Belief" in that the latter can be changed, Faith on the other hand can rarely be altered in that it is a matter of personal conviction or "Testimony"... trust me, there's a reason why certain souls of the past were willing to endure all matters of torment, refusing to decant their faith in (fill in the blank). This is one reason why the on-going hoopla of believer vs. cynic will never get anywhere; members of either side of the issue have "faith/conviction" that their position is the one and only truth. Catch is, most, regardless of which side they are on, have at least some sense of basis when it comes to their claims, including reasons as to why one went from being a believer to being a skeptic or vice versa (which does happen).

I have some very solid reasons as to why I believe in certain aspects of the Paranormal. this includes a perspective around such things that allows room for the skeptical theories as a revelation as to how "IT" is made to happen... how one can learn to become a "Psychic" as it were... after all, none of you would be "magicians" without knowing the secrets, would you?