Ask a Radical Atheist
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Ichneumonwasp
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Piscivore,
I'm sorry that I haven't been following everything you have said recently (mainly because I agreed completely with your first post in the series and didn't have anything to add) and I'm too lazy to look back at all the posts, so please excuse me if you have already covered this topic.....
It occurs to me that there is a very important aspect to your view that explains much of religious practice -- it is theater. What happens in a theater is not created by a writer or the actors or the audience, but by all of them working together to create this 'other reality'. The same is true of religious ritual. Communion doesn't happen in a wafer or in a person's mind or with a priest but through all of them working to create another reality.
I wonder if the Greeks viewed theater in this way since it was part of a religious festival -- that the only sense of the divine we ever know is a social creation? It certainly speaks to our human community -- a real communion. Maybe that's what divine means? What we create together?
But, then, together we also created money and subprime lending practices...........
I'm sorry that I haven't been following everything you have said recently (mainly because I agreed completely with your first post in the series and didn't have anything to add) and I'm too lazy to look back at all the posts, so please excuse me if you have already covered this topic.....
It occurs to me that there is a very important aspect to your view that explains much of religious practice -- it is theater. What happens in a theater is not created by a writer or the actors or the audience, but by all of them working together to create this 'other reality'. The same is true of religious ritual. Communion doesn't happen in a wafer or in a person's mind or with a priest but through all of them working to create another reality.
I wonder if the Greeks viewed theater in this way since it was part of a religious festival -- that the only sense of the divine we ever know is a social creation? It certainly speaks to our human community -- a real communion. Maybe that's what divine means? What we create together?
But, then, together we also created money and subprime lending practices...........
Reduction of power until the rock is too heavy to lift. What's so impossible about that?
BTW
Those described as a god are NOT considered to be almighty. Almightiness is reserved for the concept of God. Traditionally, and grammatically, we distinguish between the two via capitalization in order to prevent confusion as to whom is being talked about. Your acceptance or disbelief in a god, gods, or a God is irrelevant to proper grammar. Actually, to me this comes across as being just as petty as my needing to spell Darwin as darwin because I don't accept his ideas-or to write president bush instead of President Bush in order to show I don't endorse his policies. Comes across as-well-childish. Annoying, to be exact, not so much due to the motive involved in the constant droning effort-but annoying due to the inherent irrationality which the practice demands.
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I think non-dualists want to be snickered at. The whole drama between non-dualists and dualists is just a giant "act out." They need each other.
Understand?
There are (at least) two problems with this little sound bite.
(1) The form of your statement, while self-righteous enough, posits a necessary dualism, and...
(2) It considers the two to be on a equal footing. Most atheists, I'm fairly confident, would be delighted to leave the label in the dust if they never to had to encounter that ridiculous concept ever again. I know I would. Sadly, there the concept is, in all its ridiculousness.
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Ehhhnt! Misses the force of the question, and rather embarrassingly so.
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It isn't sensorily any different. It is simply that the notion of selfhood is gone. There is a simple relationship between objectivity and non-duality. Objectivity is non-duality + selfhood. Experientially this difference can be a lot as the majority of thinking and acting occurs through the belief in personal selfhood.
I don't see it as being about recognising "that an individual is incapable of knowing perfect objective reality," personally. To me it's more about recognising that there actually is no one on the planet. This heightened, rather acute sense of individuality that nearly all of us experience, is simply created by the mind. For most, this is quite unrecognised until it stops for a while. Then it's like, My God! It is quite striking for a lot of people.
In becoming aware that belief systems are just abstractions and of no meaningful validity, so the tendency of belief to control behaviour begins to drop away. You become more who you are naturally, rather than as a socially and culturally conditioned being.
You are freed from the belief in personal selfhood, because you experience that often it is no longer there.
Non-duality, as a philosophy, will de-energise the tracks that philosophy has left in the mind. It's very hard to be non-dualist and much into philosophy, because non-duality destroys the assumption that philosophy is based upon. It's rather like a trojan horse that you invite into your computer, believing it to be something else, and which you suddenly become aware is decimating your existing applications. Only it's good.
The body still has a load of things that it needs - food, water, shelter, safety from danger, etc. You will experience acute identification with thoughts relating to these needs as usual.
Nick
Unfortunately my computer is already possesesd by the Microsoft Daemons.
Can get one here!
http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/
Click on "Daemons" tab.
I'll get a ferret and name it, "Kleinman."
My experience is that non-duality will start to remove a person's choice in these matters. They will experience that it's much harder to abstract themselves into some moral or ethical world in their mind and decide "how they should relate." They will no longer be so able to buy their own bs. They will start to become real, regardless of what they think about it.
I agree. I'm not at all against the ego. I'm just aware that, physically, it's a great deal less substantial than most people believe. It's an idea, basically. You can still be in your power, usually more so. You can still state and maintain borders totally.
Samadhi states aren't necessarily non-dual. If they're experienced as happening to someone they're not.
Well, you are experiencing it right now as it really, really is, if you ask me. It's just that your mind is creating this "I" experience and it seems as though there is some limited entity somewhere to whom it is happening.
Nick
I like duality. There's no way I would be here on this list if I didn't. Once you're aware of the utter meaninglessness of all philosophies you're free to have great fun with duality, and learn stuff too.
Nick
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Perhaps you'd be willing to start a separate thread indicating what "the assumption" of philosophy is and how non-dualism "de-energizes" its tracks?
Powerball!!!
Non-win de-energizes the tracks of the Win...
Paulhoff
You can't expect perfection.
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Well, there is no soul, so that is out of the picture.
Body and mind, well the mind is a function of the brain, without the brain there is no mind, the brain is part of the body, like the heart, lungs, liver etc and without some of this parts there is no living body, so I must be a non-dualist, oh gee, another non-paying title.
Paul
But non-duality is only in opposition to duality as a belief system or philosophy. As a reality it accepts duality. Many non-dualists are acutely dual. I am. I hate all that well-meaning oneness bs. When I encouter it, which is a lot as I'm the manager of a new-age centre, I feel a concrete urge to give the person a hard time, to check out how much they are real and how much bs. Duality is great. Objectivity is great. As belief systems or philosophies they're of course utterly hopeless, but as tools to raise awareness or make things they can't be faulted.
Nick
That's a good answer. I like that, although you may have overstated the case just a tad. "Utter meaninglessness" and "all" might be a little strong....
But treating philosophies as toys is a great mentality. Tell me, is non-dualism a fun squeaktoy, too?
Win Powerball!!!
>Squeak!<
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If you want to start one I can contribute. The assumption of philosophy is the assumption of objectivity - that limited selfhood is absolute. Philosophy assumes that there is an isolated system of observation - you - observing a separate, or relatively separate, world. Once it is actually experienced that this is not so, so the ground on which philosophy appears to rest naturally starts to crumble.
I doubt many philosophers would bother with their musings if they realised that their cogitations are only made possible by some as-yet-untraced brain process, which causes the experience of limited selfhood to arise. I figure they would find something better to do. I suppose philosophy does have some practical uses though.
Nick
Is it possible, perhaps that atheists oppose theism as a belief system or philosophy? Atheists (that I know of) accept that the God-concept exists and accept that others think this God thing is something other than a concept. Perhaps I am missing your point...
I admit, I'm having some trouble parsing, "As a reality it accepts duality. Many non-dualists are acutely dual."
Please do start a new thread. Poor Piggy. His thread has spiraled well beyond it's initial intent...
Keep that spotlight on...
Win Powerball!!!
Non-dualism is the belief. Dualism is the behaviour.
Because non-dualism, as a belief, destroys the ground on which philosophies rest, so it is not that ones behaviour matches the belief. Good, eh!
Like I say, it's more that you take into your head this trojan horse, non-dualism, masquerading as just another philosophy, and then as you start to think upon its precepts, so you find all philosophies, itself included, being undermined. This, roughly stated, is the basic principle behind the most common non-dual philosophy, Advaita Vedanta.
Yes, it's digressing a bit.
Nick
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We are pretty much on the same page.
I'm saying that there is no experiencer as opposed to experienced except conventionally). There is just experiencing. What I wished to point out is that non-dual experiencing isn't metaphysically advantagous. It doen't give you the "real" world beyond experience. And it's more subtle than throwing everything into a blender.
You will probably point this our yourself, again and again, while most readers here continue to take it as metaphysics or the negation of self-awareness.
Good Luck!
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thaiboxerken
Penultimate Amazing
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I can't speak for her, but i feel bad that most people are delusional.
articulett
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I don't think I have any divine truths. That is the claim of theists not atheists. I just have garden variety facts and understanding that is available to all humans. I don't believe in "divine truths". Theists do. Moreover, they imagine they've accessed them. I am embarrassed for you and Jerome, but thankful that you come with your own irony...
Are you by chance a creationist? Creationists are a never ending font of irony!
articulett
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I'm just trying to find out what you think that is different from materialism or why it's more useful or what it "means". I don't think others are following either.