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Yipsl
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 Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 5:14 am Post subject: |
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| Broggin wrote: |
| I've always been amused by folks who swing from one ideological system to another, comparing each as if they were indeed clothes, in this case the aforementioned "undies", and picking and choosing among them depending upon their state of mind at that particular time. As if each one was somehow "truer" than the next. As if one or another will eventually lead to the path of enlightenment and understanding, and all will be good and joyus once that certain ideology is found. |
Ataraxik made this about my religion, yet the post he refused to respond to did not mention religion at all. It was about the culture of science. The only times I've mentioned my religion on the UFO board was when folklore was involved and why I felt the anecdotal evidence supported Christianity's view of cosmic evil over my prior humanistic religious views that man merely has an evil impulse that wars with his good impulse.
I believe the Christian EDH has as much validity as Keel's and I see the two as the most viable UFO explanations, that rather complement each other. All that Keel lacks to believe in traditional Christian demonology is faith in Christ. Otherwise, he agrees with much of what Christian Ufologists are saying.
My point above is that Ataraxik is not responding to anyone but Carol. That makes it easy from a debunker's standpoint and it quite evades the issues. You can make this about religion, or the lack of it all you want, but you won't get anywhere, though you'll get accolades from the usual suspects. It still won't address the issues of why debunkers ignore the evidence for fringe phenomena, ignore their own cultural prejudices and live with blinders on; much like the believers they castigate.
| Broggin wrote: |
It's amusing, because each is nothing more than the failed attempts by others to put to rights their inability to make sense of the world they were born into. Being an atheist, I've found it very simple to look at these with my reductionist blinders firmly in place of course, and see that each is no better than the next, and some downright hideous. I think it speaks to several things personaly about those doing this picking and choosing. |
When one looks at a failed attempt, I'd say it's when infidels simply cannot get on with their lives without spiritual beliefs and have to create their own little humanistic churches complete with filk hymns that support their reductionist worldview. Perhaps you're not one of those, but Ataraxik called himself in an infidel on another thread. The funny thing is, we're all infidels to the radical Moslems, but that term has no meaning in the troubled history between Biblical religion and atheism.
| dr wu23 wrote: |
| Quote: |
| yipsl: It 's that meandering pathless path that's led nowhere. Try examining your axioms again and maybe you'll find your way home. |
My 'pathless path' has nothing to do with your own personal confusion and yo-yoing.
And more to the point..there is no home to get to and nowhere to go . It is already in you and right where you are sitting now.
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Yo yoing. Not at all. Let me paraphrase Scam: If you had read all my posts over the years, you'd have seen a consistent search for the truth. I never changed my Biblical religion at all. I had a personal experience that led me to accept Christ.
If I'd gone from pathless path believer following Krishnamurti while signing posts and e-mails namaste to a Sam Harris fan bashing Christianity to simply claiming agnosticism, then that would be yo yoing, unless of course, that was really being consistent in just finding ways to separate from one's Presbyterian past while remaining obsessed with the alleged failures of monotheistic Biblical religion.
You're going to love nirvana, that is, until you find out what it really is. My advice is to reexamine your axioms and reconsider the evidence. I'd hate to see you continue as a poster child for Calvanism. Do Presbyterians do the TULIP thing? Me, I'm just a George MacDonald style universalist who might as well be a semi-Pelagian. I believe that all men are innocent in their depravity and that Satan is really at fault, which is why God's conducting a rescue mission through Jesus.
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dr wu23
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 2158
Location: Indiana
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 11:05 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
yipsl said: o yoing. Not at all. Let me paraphrase Scam: If you had read all my posts over the years, you'd have seen a consistent search for the truth. I never changed my Biblical religion at all. I had a personal experience that led me to accept Christ.
If I'd gone from pathless path believer following Krishnamurti while signing posts and e-mails namaste to a Sam Harris fan bashing Christianity to simply claiming agnosticism, then that would be yo yoing, unless of course, that was really being consistent in just finding ways to separate from one's Presbyterian past while remaining obsessed with the alleged failures of monotheistic Biblical religion.
You're going to love nirvana, that is, until you find out what it really is. My advice is to reexamine your axioms and reconsider the evidence. I'd hate to see you continue as a poster child for Calvanism. Do Presbyterians do the TULIP thing? Me, I'm just a George MacDonald style universalist who might as well be a semi-Pelagian. I believe that all men are innocent in their depravity and that Satan is really at fault, which is why God's conducting a rescue mission through Jesus. |
There are so many wrong conclusions in your post that it's hard to know where to start.
I've never followed Krishnamurti anywhere and I haven't read his material in years. I do agree with some of his ideas on going beyond the known.
I've never been a 'fan' of Harris ,but I do agree with some of his ideas about the problem with various organized religions.
I've always been an agnostic as I mentioned just recently even when I was reading about eastern ideology years ago.
You should only worry about your own axioms and if anyone should pay attention to what people post it's you since you constantly get it wrong and insist on placing people in the categories you wish them to be in. Everyday you sound more and more like a single minded fundie out to convert the sinners and save us all from hell. You were far more intelligent, interesting, tolerant, and humorous when you practiced Judaism.
_________________
"Some say the valley has always been haunted ever since River ran.
The rippling waters fast as the colors conceal the Green Man."
Roy Harpur from The Green Man
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Somerville Changeling
Joined: 09 Sep 2007
Posts: 198
Location: Central Texas
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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| dr wu23 wrote: |
There are so many wrong conclusions in your post that it's hard to know where to start.
I've never followed Krishnamurti anywhere and I haven't read his material in years. I do agree with some of his ideas on going beyond the known.
I've never been a 'fan' of Harris ,but I do agree with some of his ideas about the problem with various organized religions.
I've always been an agnostic as I mentioned just recently even when I was reading about eastern ideology years ago. |
You were a follower of Krishnamurti and Ram Dass in the same sense I'm a follower of George MacDonald J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, it's all about the influence in our worldviews that have remained consistent over the years. Even when I rejected the religions of the writers I admired, I accepted their stories as the core truth of spiritual reality.
It's not a crime to be a fan of Harris. I've heard he's a bit more reasonable than Dawkins, but not by much. The biggest problem I've seen with you over the years is that you demote Biblical religion to a lesser path than Eastern religion, and even than atheism. I've been waiting for you to provide evidence that supports your view that it's a "lesser path".
I've often told you that a pathless path is just a new path and that for any spiritual path to mean anything it has to go somewhere, reach conclusions, enhance experience. You simply capitalize "What Is" and "Reality" the way fundamentalists capitalize Heaven and Hell. At least the more literary fundamentalists try to present arguments for both.
We can both agree that what we see in this world is not all that exists, science has even finally arrived at that point of view, though none of us are likely to agree on the realities that lie behind the world we experience. I'll place my trust in Christ and take a mythopoeic path through fairyland on the way to Heaven. You can just be here now and see what happens, then we can compare notes down the line.
| dr wu23 wrote: |
You should only worry about your own axioms and if anyone should pay attention to what people post it's you since you constantly get it wrong and insist on placing people in the categories you wish them to be in. Everyday you sound more and more like a single minded fundie out to convert the sinners and save us all from hell. You were far more intelligent, interesting, tolerant, and humorous when you practiced Judaism. |
Judaism's view of evil did not support the evidence. I went where folklore and Fortean phenomena took me and that only provided two choices: Christianity or Gnosticism. I'm sure that Isis would have been thrilled if I'd gone Gnostic, and I'm sure that I'd had much fewer problems with you and the fundamentalist skeptics if I'd gone Gnostic too. After all, that fits the zeitgeist, so to speak.
I'm not out to convert the sinners. I only pray that sin cease, instead of sinners. I let God work in everyone's life. You've convinced me by your responses over the years that the Calvinists were on to something with predestination, though I'll take a Jewish spin on things and call it an in born inclination. I'm too semi-Pelagian to really accept that God creates people for destruction -- that would be the sort of god the Gnostics claim is the demiurge, or that Phillip Pullman imagines God to be in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy.
Note to Pullman fans: I'm one Christian who thinks that the studio should not take the references to God out of his works. Let it be gloriously atheistic and anti-God. That way, the infidels will finally have their recruiting film for little infidels. I'm for a marketplace of ideas, not censorship for religious reasons, let alone market reasons.
I changed my username because I could not log in today or post, even with a reset of the password. It kept saying the username was taken, so I asked Skep to switch my Folklore moderator privileges to my new username and I decided to deemphasize the Jewish side of my background and to embrace my mother's family history, especially as it pertains to folklore. I also got a response that the threads I tried to post in were invalid. One post did show up hours later.
_________________
My clan ancestor killed a wyrm. What Fortean feat did your ancestor accomplish?
Somerville clan motto: Fear God in Life
Material reductionism is the least substantial theory of everything that mankind has ever chosen to believe.
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