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Author Topic:   Christianity is Morally Bankrupt
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3763 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 247 of 652 (696615)
04-17-2013 11:27 AM
Reply to: Message 243 by GDR
04-09-2013 1:57 PM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
There is no "right and wrong", there are only unskillful actions that prolong dissatisfaction and skillfull actions that bring happiness. It does not matter what you believe, if you do unskillful actions you suffer, and those actions can be thoughts, words or bodily actions. There is no god judging if something is "good" or "bad", just an impersonal universal mechanism.
I think the concept of god is a psychological defense mechanism created by humans as a response to the emotions of curiosity and fear that surge when people reflect about certain aspects of existence that they don't understand.
A simple question for believers:
If god really is all-powerful, how come he has not been able to overcome anger and the other unskillful emotions?
I doubt that some being that has not been able to conquer his own mind and emotions has the power to create universes.
And another question:
If god created the universe, then who created god?
Believers asssume that everything has a beginining and an end. How come god does not have one? And if god is capable of not having a beginning or end, then why can't the universe be the same? Why do you have to invent something that is similar to a human to be timeless?
I think this points to wishful thinking. WE HUMANS want to be eternal and all powerful, so we create a god that lives out our dreams.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 243 by GDR, posted 04-09-2013 1:57 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 248 by NoNukes, posted 04-17-2013 11:47 AM Sombra has replied
 Message 250 by GDR, posted 04-17-2013 4:43 PM Sombra has replied
 Message 263 by Stile, posted 04-20-2013 12:06 PM Sombra has not replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3763 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 249 of 652 (696645)
04-17-2013 1:01 PM
Reply to: Message 248 by NoNukes
04-17-2013 11:47 AM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
Hi.
I think you didn't understand the part about skillful or unskillful actions. I did not imply that morality has no place in this world, as nihilists (atheists?) like to believe.
My point is that dissatisfaction and suffering, is traceable to distinct causes endowed with ethical significance; it is the inevitable result of our own inmoral actions returning to ourselves. Our actions are not threads in some invisible handiwork of divine perfection (like people who believe in god think), nor meaningless pulsations of nerves and brain (like nihilists think), but expresions of ethically significant decisions having an integral place in a morally intelligible world. They are seen as choices for which we bear full responsibility before an impersonal universal law that ensures the preservation of an equilibrium between deeds and their results, so that virtous deeds bring forth happiness and evil deeds suffering. As to what is virtous and what is evil, I repeat, there are no intrinsically "good" or "evil" actions, only skillful or unskillful (only things that bring happiness or suffering to you and others, depending on the prevailing conditions).
As to my questions, care to answer any of them?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 248 by NoNukes, posted 04-17-2013 11:47 AM NoNukes has not replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3763 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


(1)
Message 253 of 652 (696669)
04-17-2013 9:33 PM
Reply to: Message 250 by GDR
04-17-2013 4:43 PM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
Thanks for the welcome!
GDR writes:
I’m not sure how you are using the word unskillful here.
About the right and wrong/unskillful thing. What I mean is that conventional opinions of what is right and wrong are flawed. Even if every single member of a society, or why not, this planet, agree that a certain thing is right, it can still be wrong.
What is important in morality is the volitional action, the intention, behind the word, thought or bodily action. These underlying motives or roots can be classified into six, three of them I call unskillful - greed, aversion, and delusion. Any action originating from these three is called unskillful. I don’t call it wrong, because for example, it is not considered wrong to want to earn more money to buy yourself a fancier car. But it is based on greed. The counterpart to these unskillful roots are the skillful ones. Instead of greed we are capable of generosity and detachment, instead of aversion we are capable of compassion, sympathy, gentleness, and instead of deluded we can be wise.
The law of morality would then be as follows: the unskillful are conducive to suffering for oneself and others (among other things that I leave out because they arer’t part of our discussion). The skillful type produce benefits to oneself and others (again, among other things).
You agree with me that our actions have a consequence in the here and now, and to that I add that the obvious — our actions also affect the future. Understanding morality as such, skill IS a moral issue. Generosity, compassion, etc. are skills that are to be developed, if we want to have a better present and future.
With the previous reasoning, we can solve the difference between murdering your neighbor and stepping on an ant, without the need for a general agreement. (I am of course, talking in the context of morality, this by no means renders useless the justice system, courts, jails, etc.).
GDR writes:
It is my belief that the Christian God is a god whose essence is one of love...
Greed and aversion lead to any and all negative emotions — fear, anger, depression, disappointment, anxiety, distressed — you name it. If god or any sentient being feels ANY of these emotions at all, it is because there is greed and aversion in his mind. It is not posible to feel anger or distressed if there is no greed or aversion in your heart. Besides, when you are angry you are suffering, and hurting yourself. A wise being does not hurt itself.
A wise being, has no greed or anger. Instead there is generosity and compassion. When he sees someone hurting another he feels compassion for both. The one being hurt is obvious, but the agressor is also suffering from anger, and will suffer from the consequences such as fear of revenge (and possibly a real revenge), maybe a social punishment (jail, torture?), remorse, and any other moral consequence to his unskillful action. The wise being feels compassion because he understands that the real enemy is not the body of the aggressor, but the ignorance in his mind that caused his greed/aversion and eventually his anger.
Thus, the god that everybody believes in, whether it’s the text from the Bible or any personal interpretation that anybody can fabricate with their imaginations, is not only not almighty (since he does not have the power to overcome his weakness in mind), he is not even wise. Why? Because they create him in the human image (and not the other way around, as the bible suggests), and as such has the same human weaknesses and limitations as the human imagination.
GDR writes:
The point is that from primitive times onward we always had a sense that there was something more than just the physical. It really has only been in very recent history that that has been questioned, and that something can’t be real unless it is proven.
I also know that as I get older I realize that although my body has aged that there is something that is just me and that doesn’t seem to be aging. It is nothing that I can offer up as proof. I think that non-believers believe as you do that believers such as myself don’t have the courage to face up to death. Frankly, I’m just looking for the truth.
You are dead on about this one. You could not be more correct. There is MUCH more than the physical, in fact, I think the physical is the least part of it!
In fact, here lies the basic problem for everybody. You have mistakenly assumed that your body is the self. Your body is only a part of you. You are also composed of feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness. You know this. We don't need proof, everybody can experience it and prove it to themselves. What better proof than that? When you dream, you don’t have your body with you, but yet you exist. You experience things, you percieve, you have emotions, you react, you are conscious. Not only dreaming, but also in certain mental states you may have run into in your life, maybe daydreaming in a park, using drugs, having sex, playing an intense sport or something. You lose perception of your body, yet you exist. People with near death experiences will tell you the same. This happens in certain states of concentration, which we have all experienced sometime or another in our life, and if you haven’t, you should. You just have to look closely. You read earlier that delusion leads to greed and aversion.
This is exactly the delusion I talked about. We are deluded about ourselves. About what we really are. If you end this delusion about a self, you end greed, aversion, and any other type of suffering for you or others, and achieve perfect mental health.
This leads to my next point. If you stop considering your self to be ONLY the body, then you can time travel. You have memories of the past, you get caught up in them and suddenly you have mental images of a previous time in your head, and a feeling of maybe nostalgia, and other related thoughts and perceptions start to come up. There it is! You are in the past. If you have a great capacity for concentration, you will be completely in the past, if your concentration capacity is small you will be with your body more than in the past with your mind. But your mind is in the past, complete with emotions, perception and all the others. Who says that this particular experience is not real? It is real! Its just not CONVENTIONAL reality, its YOUR reality, and in it your actions also have moral consequences, just like the real thing! Conventional reality is the one we can all agree on (like fiat money, its being real comes from everybody agreeing that the paper is worth something). But as I said there are things outside conventional reality that have moral consequences (which makes it real enough for me, whether I am awake, asleep, or in meditation, I try to watch over my actions).
The same thing applies to the future, when you make plans for something you are living in the future, to some degree. I also believe that physical time travel is possible, but that is still out of our reach, given time maybe the scientists will crack it.
Hence, I also agree with the posibility of a timeless being. But I see nothing in your reasoning that excludes the possibility of a universe also being timeless, and this implies, you agree with me that the universe can be timeless, which negates the existence of a creator, or at the very least, renders a creator useless.
Anything I just wrote you can prove for yourself with your own life experience. Who needs gods or science? Just kidding! I understand both are necessary in our world
Thanks for your detailed reply

This message is a reply to:
 Message 250 by GDR, posted 04-17-2013 4:43 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 254 by GDR, posted 04-18-2013 10:54 AM Sombra has replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3763 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 256 of 652 (696810)
04-18-2013 6:21 PM
Reply to: Message 254 by GDR
04-18-2013 10:54 AM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
Thanks GDR for taking the time and consideration to read my very long post and answering. I have a hard time finding people that are interested in talking these things with me and hearing my opinions, so I think I found the perfect place!
GDR writes:
Absolutely. I think of it in simpler terms though. I see our motivation as being either at one end totally selfish and at the other totally unselfish. There is of course the line that runs between them with right in the middle being an act that has no negative impact at all on anyone else and is neither moral nor immoral.
You are correct. I forgot to mention the neutral actions. And yes, you can simplify it further into selfish/unselfish such as you say, but keep in mind that this morality thing is a highly complex mechanism that we are GREATLY simplifying for the purpose of discussion. For example, you may have the intention to act in accordance with the generosity, compassion, etc. skills to assure yourself a more pleasurable present and future. If you look closely, even though you generate no suffering for you or otrhers, it is still greed! Because of this, your actions will produce pleasure now or in the future, but will not totally eliminate suffering from your experience. You can see how it gets complex, right?
GDR writes:
To a large extent I agree. We all believe in a god or gods in our image. However where we differ is that I believe that God speaks through us in the "still small voice" or our conscience and that we can no matter how imperfectly gain knowledge of God. We can distinguish between good and evil and know that at a deep level that we should choose "good". As a Christian I believe that God is perfectly good.
That still small voice is not a god, it is the knowledge you are obstructing with your self-delusion and the subsequent greed/aversion snowball. When you clear your mind of these mental obstructions wisdom/common sense will arise by itself. It doesn’t differentiante between good and evil (because as I said, there is no such thing), it just knows the effect of having one intention or another and chooses the obvious one, the one that is common sense, the one that brings pleasure to you and others. This small voice has a lot of knowledge if we care to think beyond our delusion of self/ego, beyond our greed and aversion. But what normally happens is we aren’t skilled enough to see beyond our egocentrical point of view, and act based on what will give us inmediate sensual pleasures (pleasure experienced by our bodies). In fact we have built an entire way of life around this called materialism or consumerism by some. But that’s another issue.
The issue at hand is that god cannot be perfectly good, because he suffers the same emotions as us. He feels love, among others like anger, dissapointment, distress. If you suffer self-delusion, you will try to keep things you like close to your ‘self’. This is called attachment/clinging. Love involves attachment: we love a person because that person gives us pleasure, belongs to our family or group, or reinforces our own self-image. And because it involves attachment, it involves suffering when the person you love does something you don’t like (or in the case of god, humans do things he disapproves of). This is the tipical explanation for god’s actions: he loves us. He gets dissapointed because he loves us, he feels anger because he loves us. I can understand this. But this necessarily implies he has not trascended the delusion of self, and subsequently can’t be perfectly good, because the root of all things we consider evil comes from the delusion of self.
Study this closely and you will find it to be true. Every evil deed, every example of heartlessness in the world stems from this false sense of ‘me’ as being distinct from all else that is out there. We have separated ourselves from the universe, even though we are inherently connected to it in many ways. We need its air, water and food, we are tied emotionaly, mentally and we are connected to it through its law of morality. But we insist on ignoring this and decide ‘I’ have to get more for ‘me’. And this gives rise to greed (or selfishness as you say).
God’s emotions like love are proof that he does not know this. He doesn’t understand how the universe works! How could he have created it!? He is not all-powerfull or all-knowing!
Think outside the box. Think beyond the concept of self. Concepts are mental fabrications, just tools to interact/survive/get comfortable with our environment. That does not make them real (or false), nor the only way to interpret experience.
Remember the hard time Einstein and Bohr had when they were observing electrons behave as both particles and waves. It went against their fundamental points of view. A particle can’t be a wave, and a wave can’t be a particle, they thought. But what they observed said otherwise. The same thing happens here, you have to change your fundamental point of view and stop thinking in terms of self. If you have progressed all the way to realizing that self-delusion is the root of all things we categorize as evil, then you will understand that a ‘self’, be it human or a god, cannot be the ultimate form of existence, and thus cannot be the creator of what we experience as the universe.
GDR writes:
If however we are only experiencing a part of a greater reality where there are additional time dimensions then there has to be a first cause that resulted in the creation of the reality that we experience. Science tells us that as part of the universe we experience there was a T=0.
Well I don’t agree that there HAS TO BE a first cause. There might be, but its not certain. Yes science tell us that there was a T=0, but science is a tool, just like concepts, to interact, survive and make our environment more confortable. As such, it places pragmatical reference frames to do its work. For example, we measure movement and speed using a frame of reference (tipically the Earth’s ground), because without it we would not be able to detect movement. The same thing is done with time. We have looked back as far as we can, made mathematial estimations, and placed T=0 as a reference for when everything we can percieve with our 5 senses (we have 6 senses) started. This in no way implies that there HAS to be a first cause. It’s probable, but its not the only way.
The mind is the 6th sense, and as I said in a previous post, it can percieve past, present and future, it percieves feelings and emotions, and some people say it can percieve many other things like past lives, the future, ghosts, etc. BUT I don’t believe anything I have not experienced for myself. What I do know is that science has traditionally centered on the 5 bodily senses, and knows very little so far about the mind. I also know that, just like when looking outside to the universe with a proper telescope you see that it is infinite, when you look inside the mind with the proper telescope (clear your mind of self-delusion, greed, etc) you see that the internal world is also infinite, and I am constantly surprised and amazed with what I experience.
Again, thanks for satisfying my curiosity with this discussion. And by the way just to clear things up I am a male. I read Dr Adequate refer to me as a female. 'Sombra' means shadow in spanish, its just a nickname I got on the basketball courts!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 254 by GDR, posted 04-18-2013 10:54 AM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 257 by GDR, posted 04-18-2013 8:07 PM Sombra has replied
 Message 258 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-18-2013 8:51 PM Sombra has replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3763 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 259 of 652 (696871)
04-19-2013 11:48 AM
Reply to: Message 258 by Dr Adequate
04-18-2013 8:51 PM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
I was going to use shadow as username, but I figured it is a common word and somebody had already used it, so I went 'sombra'

This message is a reply to:
 Message 258 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-18-2013 8:51 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 260 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-19-2013 1:05 PM Sombra has replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3763 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 261 of 652 (696955)
04-19-2013 7:13 PM
Reply to: Message 257 by GDR
04-18-2013 8:07 PM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
Sorry for the long posts, I just feel I have a lot to say
I hope I don’t get banned from the forum, or bore you to death or anything!
GDR writes:
For myself I see our actions as being neither moral or immoral but more of an issue of the heart which goes back to motivation.
From previous posts, we already agree on this. The intention is moral or inmoral, not the actions.
GDR writes:
The question is do we have our hearts that love selfishly or hearts that love sacrificially.
I disagree with the distinction of selfish love and sacrificial love. But I guess this stems from a language limitation. Love as you say, is to broad a word, used for way to many things. In other languages there are hundreds of words that are variations of the english word ‘love’; they have a specific word for brotherly love, one for sensual love, one for the love a mother feels for her child, one for friendly love, one for the affection toward material objects, one for activities and so on. I read once that eskimos have many different words for snow, and figured that they commonly talked about it, so instead of using tons of adjectives to refer to the different types of snow, they just used a different word, making communication easier. This lead me to think, the english language has not talked about love deeply enough to need different terms for the different kinds. This is related to my previous comment about science not yet knowing much about the mind.
GDR writes:
Our actions are simply a natural result of the nature of our heart.
Completely agree. I just use ‘mind’, instead of heart, but we refer to the same thing. BUT I must add that, the nature of our heart is completely our responsibility, nobody made you a loving person, or a hateful person. You make yourself in to what you are. This means no thanking god for ‘good’ things, and no blaming the devil for ‘evil’ things. The following is the reasoning for this.
In accordance with what we agreed on morality, our actions have consequences. Our actions obviously have an effect on the physical universe around us, and also the minds of the people around us. But it also has an effect on our hearts. Some of your actions make you happy (scoring a game winning basket!), some of them make you sad (remember anytime we have been mean to our mothers, for example). These things have an effect on our heart.
Also, remember, thoughts.
Whatever you make your mind pursue with your thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of your heart.
For example, if we keep pursuing thinking imbued with lust, our mind is bent by that thinking imbued with lust. This in turn has an effect on our body and our awareness. If you spend all day watching porn you will have more probability (various factors go into your view of things) to look at things in a sexual way, to get a boner easier and when its time to see your wife, you will have a better probability of having a really good time (this would be a skillfull action if you are trying to cultivate sexuality). The same with other things. If I’m depressed its because my mind is inclined to constantly thinking about things that make me feel remorse, sad, sorrow, etc. This could be due to many things. A chemical in balance in the brain psychiatrists say. Or it could be due to a traumatizing event (the death of a son), pessimism, or a wrong point of view of the world. These are unskillfull uses of thought, because you are hurting yourself and others.
The same can be done in the other ‘direction’. You can incline the awareness of your mind skillfully toward generosity, compassion, etc. THIS IS NOT DONE BY SHEER WILL THOUGH. What is necessary is wisdom. You must come to the realization that what every single being is basically doing is run away from suffering when suffering is viewed as:
-Physical: things like hunger, thirst, aging, death, disease, stress, our environment(cold, heat, sun, rain, snow), and the obvious ones like getting hit due to violence, or a car accident, work accident or a sport injury, etc.
-Mental: like fear, hate, anger, distress, depression, grief, despair, sorrow, disappointment, anxiety, and many others.
-Deep mental level: the fact psychologists have come to, that we are always unsatisfied, we always want more. It is never enough love, friends, comfort, luxury, sex, anything we like. We are satisfied for a brief while, but after a little time, we want more, and if we can’t get it and haven’t developed patience, we start feeling the previously described mental and physical suffering.
This is all we do in life. We spend our time in jobs to fight of hunger with food, the environment with a society and a house, disease (and sometimes stress!) with medicine/drugs. As for the mental ones, the typical human response is to ‘release it’ into the world around you. We use all types of activities to ‘let out’ our mental pain, our stress. In a party, listen to the voices that say fun on the surface but fear underneath. Feel the tension and the pressure. Nobody really relaxes. We fake all the time. Watch in the stadiums the irrational fits of anger and frustration surging from people, camouflaged under team spirit or enthusiam. Drunks and fights. Look closely, we let out our insatisfaction in many ways. I am presently in this forum releasing the tension of curiosity. It gets worse from here, because we think we feel unsatisfied because we don’t have enough things. We think that if we had more money we would be happy. Or if we had someone that really loves us. Or if I were 5% body fat I would be happy. Or a fancier car, or a yatch, or a castle, and so on. This is what has led us to materialism/consumerism. Buy yourself something, apply a coat of superficial optimism (maybe in the form of a god?) and go on repeating the cycle. Then we mistakenly believe we solved the problem, or a god will take care of the details.
When our mind in its deepest level understands that we, like all other beings, are basically running from this suffering, with no secure refuge in which to hide from it permanently, we feel connected with all beings and compassion will naturally come pouring outward. You don’t feel sorry for them, you feel genuine compassion. We are not conditioning our mind to artificially feel compassion, we are just understanding something that is true. Similarly with generosity. You understand that everybody is chasing happiness, you feel connected to them because you deeply see that you are the same, and see the oportunity to make them happy by giving someone something you posses = generosity.
By the way, attention is one of the easiest and best things you can give someone. Thank you for giving me yours, I have learned from my wife that arguing with me is tiring.
So, like I said, the nature of your heart and therefore your actions are entirely your responsibility. That is why moral actions return you ‘good’ results, and inmoral ones ‘bad’ results. Because they are yours. So everything good that happens in your life is because you did something skillfully, not because a god loves you, and when bad things happen, its not because there is some ‘evil’ devil that hates us, it is entirely on us.
GDR writes:
...those that love sacrificially are happier people than those who love selfishly...
I disagree. Sacrifices are not necessary to make you reach happiness. Wisdom is the only thing necessary. In our quest for wisdom we will most probably run into sacrifices and suffering, but it is due to our delusions, and not a requirement.
GDR writes:
The point is about genuinely caring for all fellow world travellers
Agreed. GENUINELY caring about all beings. If you have a certain point of view of things, there is no need to ‘expense’ the self or make yourself uncomfortable, like I said in the previous paragraph.
By the way, I just kind of described a ‘method’ of developing GENUINE generosity and compassion. When I first learned of these methods I didn’t believe them. But if I streched my imagination it kinda made sense. It certainly made more sense than praying to a god to make me a better person (my initial intention was not making myself a better person, by the way). Furthermore, I can figure out for myself if it works or not. I just have to try it. That is certainly better than waiting to die to see if I can figure out if there really is a god or not. I said to myself it made sense to work at compassion, and progress at it. It certainly has been that way in every other aspect of my existence: ‘If I work hard at something I have a better chance of succeding at it’. Just pray and make myself better? I wish it were that easy. Nothing in this world is free, much less an incredible jewel of skill like compassion, able to bring incredibly good feelings to an unlimited amount of beings and never wears out. Everyone loves you for it. No way you get that one that easily.
I think it is like I said, our heart is our responsibility; I can’t make myself a better person if I don’t put any work in myself. Three years of practice later and I have no doubt of the efficacy, I know it works.
GDR writes:
We have no way of knowing whether it is a god or not. It is a matter of belief.
Yes we have a way of knowing. I know you didn’t ask but I do the following: You practice concentration to momentarily ‘weaken’ or ‘quiet’ the mental obstacles of greed/aversion, etc., and also practice a skill called mindfulness. This skill is a mental activity that comes before symbolic thought in our normal thought process and as such can’t be put into words. But its always there and is easy to experience. There are entire books on the subject and their only hope is to give you a vague idea of it. To know it well you must practice it a lot. Its something like this: when you first become aware of something, there is a fleeting instant of pure awareness just before you conceptualize the thing, identify and segregate it from the rest of experience, before you finish focusing your eyes on the object and your mind says ‘Oh, it’s a dog’. That is a stage of mindfulness. We usually run over it so fast and don’t notice, but its there. We usually focus our attention on symbolic and conceptual thought, which has been incredibly useful to create/discover language, communication, electricity, art, building houses, bridges, cities, societies, governments, medical advancements and other technology. This has led us to overdevelop the material aspect of our existence, and neglect what you would call spiritual (I call mental). Humanity has not had the spiritual advancement to accompany the material progress we have had.
Anyways, mindfulness has these characteristics that post-symbolic thought does not:
It is a nonconceptual present-time awareness that does not judge, criticize, categorize, compare, have biases or take sides, has no preferences, does not like good mental states nor try to avoid bad mental states, does not suppress or repress anything, sees all experiences, thoughts and feelings as equal. It is a goal-less awareness, it does not ‘want’ anything, it just observers. As present time awareness it observes the here and now, quoting a favourite book of mine: ‘staying forever in the present, surging perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time. If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize the process and say to yourself, Oh, I am remembering, that is thinking.’. Mindfulness is not thinking it is just awareness.
Mindfulness is awareness that takes place without reference to the self. When you develop this tool and use it when you have calmed down greed/aversion, etc. you will be able to see what the still small voice is, and many other things of deep consequences. No belief necessary. You just have to develop the skills and see for yourself. But you tell this to people, and people don’t want to put the work in. They think they have more important things to do. People are lazy and prefer to pray to a god and hope he solves all the problems we haven’t taken the time to understand. This is one the reasons god exists in the first place.
GDR writes:
But we all have a fundamental point of view. You have just expressed yours and you form your world view around that.
We all have a world view, and are entitled to one. But its undeniable that our intentions are strongly influenced by the world view we choose, and thus our actions. I don’t think there is a correct point of view, but I think there is one that leads to compassion, generosity, greater happiness to all, etc, that does not require you to blindly believe anything, just reasoning and common sense. I don’t expect the whole world to use this point of view, I just know it’s a very useful one, and anybody seeking truth and happiness can make really good use of it if they like. Its all up to them. Everybody has free will, and are responsible for what they decide.
GDR writes:
As far as self-delusion being the root of all evil, I can’t see it.
...
I would say that all that we call evil flows from our love of self, and particularly at the expense of others.
You are contradicting yourself. First you say you can’t see self-delusion as the root, then you approve of just that with: all that we call evil flows from our love of self
For evidence of self-delusion as the root of all evil, just examine your own actions. Anything you have ever done, do or will do in the future, examine your feelings, perception, thought process and intention. You will find that every act that could be clasified into ‘evil’ or ‘wrong’ stems from either: greed, you desire something for you (it could be an abstract or physical thing); or aversion, you wanting to keep away something you don’t like (again abstract or physical). This may be hard to see for some and may require certain practice. If there is no self that desires something or keep something away, there is no evil. It is actually simple.
GDR writes:
We all delude ourselves in one way or another. It is part of the human condition.
Yes we all delude ourselves in one way or another, and it is part of the human condition. Its our choice though, we can be deluded and experience the pleasure of satisfying our personal desires (sensual or not) sometimes at the expense of others, (I admit that there is a lot of pleasure here), but we must pay the price and also suffer the consequences of inmoral actions. Or we can pratice to become non-deluded and view the world in a different way that brings deeper pleasures, some of them which are still unknown to us. Again, its our choice, and there is no "right" or "wrong" choice.
GDR writes:
No problem with that except I think there are many things that are true that I don’t have experience of.
I agree. There are many things that are true that I have not experienced either. I cannot draw any firm conclusion from anything I don’t know to be true, and would try at all costs to avoid my actions being based on something I cannot prove (like a god).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 257 by GDR, posted 04-18-2013 8:07 PM GDR has not replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3763 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 262 of 652 (696960)
04-19-2013 8:35 PM
Reply to: Message 260 by Dr Adequate
04-19-2013 1:05 PM


Re: it's all about knowledge and honesty.
Dr Adequate writes:
I think the problem with hedonistic systems of ethics is that they tacitly presuppose that people have a choice as to what will give them pleasure.
I think people don’t understand where pleasure comes from.
Dr Adequate writes:
So then we have to ask: given that he's a loony, what would make him happier, killing people or not killing people? If the answer is "killing people", then he is in fact "skillfully" getting as much happiness as he can out of life.
The loony we are talking about can kill all he wants, and may get a certain type of pleasure. But he is not getting happiness. I see it thus:
We can agree that he feels a strong impulse to kill. That impulse creates a great tension in his mind/body complex, and when he finally kills, he is alleviating that tension. That is the pleasure he gets, he is getting the satisfaction that comes from relieving tension. But he is not getting ‘happiness’, he is getting the satisfaction of relief. He is suffering a strong impulse to kill. He is alleviating the suffering of wanting to kill.
The ‘loony’ is not that different from anybody else. We all get desires that create a tension in our body, and satisfying that tension gives us pleasure. Sex is a good example. Our body, hormones and a sexy TV ad give us a boner, or at least provoke sensual desire. This creates a tension in your mind and body, and we do all sorts of crazy things to get some a**. We might not kill anyone, but we might hurt some people in our quest for sex (if we are skilled we can have sex without hurting anyone). The same with food, shoes, cars, etc., we generate the desire, then the tension, then the satisfaction of obtaining (again, we can enjoy food, shoes, cars, skillfully too) Some people do kill for sex, or rape, or kill for a car, or other things. Its up to them to use skill or not. The point is, we all suffer from the same problem. Aquiring things provide the aforementioned pleasure of relief, and sometimes work as a TRIGGER to release a deeper happiness. But the relief pleasure is not genuine happiness.
Genuine happiness is deeper than acquiring things you want. It involves having no worries, and clearly understanding the world. Undestanding that what you have is all you will need and not feel like you need something more. You don’t desire anything and therefore seek nothing, but enjoy to the fullest the things you actually receive. It is a deep peace, a knowing that nothing can go wrong because there is no wrong, only perpetual change. We want the things we like to be permanent and last forever, but everything is constantly changing and we don’t like that so we percieve/imagine an ‘evil’. If you adjust your view and stay with the constant change you will experience a deeper, truer happiness. You will look at every moment with the eyes of child, because you are aware to the fact that no 2 moments are the same(even with time travel, if you go back in time, that experience is different from the first because of your presence there). These ‘happiness’ feelings are not always accesible to our normal egocentrical state of mind. But sometimes we do percieve in our normal consciousness that ‘deeper’ peace. This is the result of past moral actions, present state of mind, many other factors, and possibly the trigger is that you finally achieved to buy yourself that new car you so wanted. But don’t confuse the deep happiness with getting an object. The proof of this is that the feeling never lasts. It just lasts for a short while. Depends on your mind. It might be a year or two and now you want another new car. Some might even want another new car that same week! The deeper happiness we all seek has to be permament, if not, it makes no sense, because we will be back to satisfying desires and alleviating tensions again.
As to why he feels the urge to kill? You can read my posts to GDR and my opinion of the root of all ‘evil’. In short he wants to keep something he doesn’t like away from him, or something he likes close to him, and his faulty reasoning leads him to believe that killing provides the desired effect (maybe they mocked him to much in school and developed fear and hate for people, and his mind concludes he doesn’t have to fear someone who is dead, for a quick example).
Dr Adequate writes:
I'm convinced that that's not very much happiness, but it may be the most he can get, being what he is. So then we have the merely empirical question: can he seek and attain greater happiness by voluntarily changing his own preferences? The evidence suggests that he cannot.
I have explained in Message 261 to GDR the reason for thinking that what we are is our responsibility. So, he can have an effect on who he is.
I think he can have an effect on the amount of happiness he can get. He just has to develop understanding and skillfully use his mind and body. I would not count on it though. A loony of this type probably has a lot of confusion in his mind. He probably had a really rough upbringing with no examples of generosity or kindness, and probably wont believe how he can become happier even if someone thoroughly explains.
You might ask yourself how is it his responsibility being a murderer if he did not choose where he was born, and who was going to raise him? The following is a probable answer.
His bad luck is his responsibility too. I have mentioned that I don’t think the body to be the self. We are also composed of mind, which can be categorized for simplicity into feeling, percepcion, mental formations, and consciousness. This way, his present body holds no responsibility for his luck in where he was born. But his mind does. His consciousness has commited inmoral acts before he had his present body, thus the outcome.
All this is metaphysical of course, and can’t be proven presently by us. But apart from this, everything else that I have said even in previous posts with GDR, can be proven by anybody with their own experience. As I said, no blind belief necessary. And anyways, someone can have a lot of bad upbringing and more, but it is ultimately his decision to kill someone who is screaming: Please don’t kill me! Nobody is forcing him. It is his decision, his responsibility. Some may have better ‘luck’ being born into places that foster understanding, kindness and wisdom, but that is not the sole determining factor into who you become or how you act.
So my conclusion is that he can attain greater happiness, but it is much more difficult given his specific conditions, than it is for someone who is not that deeply confused, or had as bad an upbringing.
Edited by Sombra, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 260 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-19-2013 1:05 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
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