The Buddha in the story did not follow up: " "I am the rightfully self-enlightened one" with "while you are an ignorant clod whose proximity to the temple of the only Truth is a stench in the nostrils of the Creator." — Valentinus

Well, he didn't follow up with that there on the spot, but he elsewhere made very disparaging remarks about people (and that's putting it mildly).

Do you think that because so many religious and other preachers make a point of airing their contempt for other people, this means that a response other than shaking one's head and going one's way is called for?

For Plato,
/.../
But that doesn't mean that people shouldn't make an effort. By definition, the Platonic philosopher is one who loves knowledge and wisdom and actively seeks after it. And as the saying goes, "seek and you shall find" .... :smile: — Apollodorus

And what is the place of women in all this?

Power is a problem only when it is misused. This is why it is important for all philosophers, beginners and experienced, to place themselves in the proper power context vis-a-vis one another.

This is why, traditionally, the cultivation of virtues is a preparatory stage to philosophy proper. — Apollodorus

Okay.

Hatred justifies everything, doesn't it.

See, you're not practicing anekantavada.
Q.E.D.

"I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People." Dr. Fauci — James Riley

Neither do I.

The only valid proof is personal experience and this may well be subjective and distinct from other people's. This doesn't necessarily mean it's just imagination. — Apollodorus

When you put it this way, spiritual advancement is sometimes indistinguishable from mental illness. This is cause for alarm.

If one is not religious or does not believe in the Gods, one obviously need not worship or pray to them.
What a bizarre claim!!
— baker

Why is that so bizarre?

Remember, they sentenced Socrates to death for failing to live up to the religious standards of their jurisdiction.

It is a matter of his rude disregard and intolerance for views on Plato that differ from his own. — Fooloso4

Oh. This seems rather mutual.

Plato bridged the gap between the religion of the masses and the philosophy of the intellectual elite. This is what his theology does. It offers the less spiritually advanced a path to higher intellectual and spiritual experience. — Apollodorus

But he never walked that path himself, did he?

This is crucial, because if he never did what he instructs others to do, then on the grounds of what should we trust him and his advice?

But can atheists do it in a way that will have the same positive, life-affirming results as when religious people contemplate the Forms?
My personal experience is, they can't. Without that religious foundation that had to be internalized before one's critical thinking abilities developed, contemplation of "metaphysical realities" doesn't amount to anything.
— baker

Not religious but moral and intellectual foundation.

But can a person have this moral and intellectual foundation without first being religious?

/.../ If the philosopher is intellectually and spiritually not ready, then they must revert to the preparatory practices, otherwise they are wasting their time.

Indeed. But can one do those preparatory practices outside of religon?

It's amazing how light we can make of life and death ...

The phrase “upward way”, ano odos, indicates that Platonism is a process of vertical progress that takes the philosopher through a hierarchy of realities ranging from the human experience to ultimate truth, and that the means of entering it are righteousness (dikaiosyne) and wisdom (phronesis}, i.e., ethical conduct and spiritual insight. — Apollodorus

There's a similarity to this in Early Buddhism: In Early Buddhism, the basic prongs of the practice are sila, panna, samadhi (morality, wisdom, concentration).

However, if we encounter Gods or other metaphysical entities on our way to the highest, we will know this as and when it happens.

A similar sentiment can be found in Early Buddhism regarding the efficacy of the practice.

Plato has a hierarchy of divine entities consisting in ascending order of (1) Olympic Gods, (2) Cosmic Gods, and (3) Creator God who is the Good or the One. The One is the unfathomable and indescribable Ultimate Reality, and the goal on which the philosopher must fix his mind.

All we need to know about the One is that it has two aspects, one in which it looks as it were “inward” and has no other experience than itself, and one in which it looks “outward” and sees the Cosmos which is the One’s own creation.

A similarity to this can be found in Hinduism. A hierarchy of gods, the notion of a Supreme Deity (I'm a bit rusty on this by now).

If one is not religious or does not believe in the Gods, one obviously need not worship or pray to them.

What a bizarre claim!!

For example, starting with the astronomical facts, if you are facing north, you have the Sky above and the Earth below, the setting Moon in the west is to your left and the Sun rising in the east is to your right. By picturing that arrangement in your mind, you organize your inner world, and put yourself in touch with a larger reality. The simple acknowledgement of Sky, Earth, Moon, and Sun, already has a psychological and spiritual effect on your psyche.

Yes, similar can be found in Early Buddhism (e.g.).
Further: frames of reference.

In Jungian terms, you may create a mental mandala consisting of an outer circle described by the twelve Olympic Gods representing the heavens with the twelve houses of the zodiac and twelve months of the year. Inscribed in the outer circle, you visualize a square with Sky, Earth, Sun, and Moon on its four sides. Inside the square, you visualize the ocean with the Island of Paradise (the Island of the Blessed) in the center, and think of yourself as being there.

I do not recall hearing about such a thing in any Dharmic religion that I know of, though.

The point I am making is that contemplating the Forms, e.g. the Good or the One, is an essential element of Platonism and Socrates repeatedly speaks of the need for the soul to look at intelligible or metaphysical realities “alone on its own” whilst turning away from the world of appearance (Phaedo 79d). But this is something that actually transcends religion. It is a highly flexible and adaptable procedure that can be practiced by anyone, including atheists and Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims or Jews, and using cultural elements from any tradition.

Similar can be heard from, say, the Hare Krishnas. I see no point in trying to go into who borrowed (or stole) whose ideas. I also think that the similarities could possibly be only superficial and overrated, and not some kind of evidence that the process is true/real.

The problem appears to be the same as with some other religious martyrs.
If someone is so sure that things are exactly as they should be and that nothing happens without God's will -- then what exactly is going on??

That's lame then, to combine mere curiosity with matters of life and death.
— baker

Yeah, I think curiosity about matters of life and death is lame too. — Tom Storm

The issue was mere curiosity.

Matters of life and death, given that they are matters of life and death, should be approached with the according earnestness, as opposed to treating them as a mere hobby.

You did not list simply disagreeing with the interpretation.
Assuming that criticism is only a result of a bad reaction to a manifestly true account is the rhetoric of an apologist, not of a critical thinker who judges for herself. — Valentinus

The question was how come some people are bothered by Platonism (their extensive critical communications on the topic being evidence of being thusly bothered).

If they are simply disagreeing with the interpretation, why the extensive communication?

I am continually reminded of the story from the Buddha's first encounter with another person after he attained enlightenment. Namely, so the story, after he attained enlightenment, the Buddha wanted to tell people about it. So he told the first person he met on the road, "I am the rightfully self-enlightened one." The man shook his head, said, "May it be so" and went his way.

What I want to know is this: How come more people aren't like this man?

Curiosity. Something to do. The idea galvanises so many wars and conflicts and animates so many internecine feuds, even on these virtual pages. How could one not be intrigued? — Tom Storm

That's lame then, to combine mere curiosity with matters of life and death.
As it is, you appear to rest comfortably in the idea that God is a mere paper tiger.

Are you a theist? I forget.

I believe that if God exists, he is a Trumpista, a Social Darwinist. I guess this makes me a resentful prospective theist.

Are we living in an age of mediocrity?

Clearly not. This age is well below the mean. — Banno

Yay!

I read Christian literature because I was raised with it and I enjoy atheism more the more I understand the true place of Christianity. — Gregory

Indeed, coming to terms with one's past can be a reason to read the Bible (if one was raised Christian).

Can we say than the the Bible can only give us something subjective? — Gregory

That would make it rather useless.

I try to be aware of the various interpretations people hold. — Tom Storm

Why? To what end?

Interesting how?

Unless we're talking about a simple curiosity (or more like: attempts to relieve one's existential boredom), the pull one feels toward an acient text surely has something to do with the historical reception and influence of said text.
— baker

The Bible is not just a religious text. It is linked to ethics, literature, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. The Bible is also a huge topic for Philosophy of Religion. Some books in the Bible such as Psalms and Job has huge significance in Literature, and people read and study them for the literal merits. — Corvus

But there is more!

Whence the significance of the Bible?
Why the assumption that there is something powerful about the text itself?

There is no restrictions saying, only the religious people must read the Bible.

The question was, why do the non-religious read it.

One's interests can be further analyzed, and I think this is the relevant aspect of reading ancient texts.

Oh. A hobby, then, with no real life application?

It's well known that when people face adversity together it can bring them together. — Janus

Hatred and contempt bind people closer together than love, indeed.

In any case I was taking with your generalising human nature by implying that everyone is primarily motivated by self-interest,

That is your inference, not my implication.

I wasn't generalizing human nature. I'm saying that the people who do as described above (from aggressive drivers to employers who have their employees work in unsafe conditions) often happen to be the same people who are enthusiastically in favor of the covid vaccine. When a person proves, with their behavior, that they do not care about others, it's hard to believe that they got vaccinated out of concern for others.

Mr. Riley and Mr. Wood, for example, certainly didn't get vaccinated out of concern for me. They don't even care enough to actually read what I say; they don't care enough to check whether the hatred and the contempt they have for me is in fact over something I actually said.

That some vaccinated people, due to breakthrough infection, are spreading covid is undeniable. That they are superspreaders has not been established. That said I think even the vaccinated should be adhering to the normal protocols designed to minimise transmission as long as there is covid in the community.

Like I said:

In fact, they are superspreaders, given the freedoms they have. — baker

That said I think even the vaccinated should be adhering to the normal protocols designed to minimise transmission as long as there is covid in the community.

But they don't. In fact, the whole idea of covid vaccination is that one can "go back to normal" once vaccinated.

He is certainly not avoiding persecution by not going into exile, which would have been a way of avoiding it. But can we say Socrates is not hiding something?
— Leghorn

That's the big question. If he is hiding something, what exactly is it that he is hiding?

And, if he is not afraid of prosecution, why hide anything? — Apollodorus

Viewing him as a martyr makes sense of his trial and death sentence.

Then why bother with the God concept at all?

Someone who uses this line of reasoning needs to show a necessary causal link between omnibenevolence (being all loving) and the removal/prevention of suffering. — Ghost Light

Indeed. But there appears to be no such causal link.

Other than perhaps -- "God lets us suffer because he wants us to be happy."

Cool. Coherent but unlikely.

For me if God is the jealous, dictatorial, error-prone fuck-knuckle he appears to be in the Old Testament, then we should blow a raspberry in his direction. — Tom Storm

This is what God loves and rewards:

I think you are worthless. — James Riley

I'm not willing to pay any of your bills. If you don't social distance, don't mask and don't vax, and if you get sick and go to the hospital and take up a bed that my wife or kid or me need for covid or some other reason, I will not only not pay your bills, but I'll rip the vent out of your mouth and dump your worthless carcass out the window and tell the Hippocratic Oath doc to forget your ass and get to work on me or mine. — James Riley

:100: — tim wood

Regarding the rest of your post, it's not worth my time. It's stupid Faux News, Tucker Carlsonesque BS. — James Riley

It's because right-wingers are doing so good in life that one should believe in God, _their_ God. They always win.

then we should blow a raspberry in his direction. — Tom Storm

And how is that supposed to help you?

Nah. I doubt anyone in this whole thing really thinks of others. It's just politically correct to say one is doing it "for others". It makes for such good PR.
— baker

How did you come to be such an authority on the motivations of others? — Janus

You think people change just like that, over night? Because of a pandemic?

we're supposed to believe that, for example, people who drive aggressively, who tailgate, cut in front, run others off the road etc. suddenly become paragons of compassion and empathy when a pandemic strikes? That men who refuse to wear condoms and who routinely risk the health and life of their female sex partners suddenly grew a conscience? Employers who have their workers work in unsafe conditions now suddenly "care about others"? Really? — baker

And don't forget that the fully vaccinated are still spreading the disease. In fact, they are superspreaders, given the freedoms they have.

That's right. Hatred and contempt are the noblest emotions of all.

Vote for Trump!

We are at the mercy of the free will of fools. Act accordingly. — Cheshire

See, you're just looking for a scapegoat. Instead of acknowledging the complexity of the situation, you opt for a simplistic outlook which makes it okay for you too see the world in black and white terms, making it easy to point fingers and to bask in righteous indignation.

The pleasure you get from despising those who aren't enthusiastically in favor of the covid vaccine is so intoxicating, isn't it.

It's more of a context for discussion. I'm trying to create a more of a space than a target. I think some people had/have doubts. Telling a person what they can not doubt is wrong in a way. So long as everything is prefaced with...this is about doubting certainty not informing public policy; then maybe people can raise their concerns without anyone being threatened by ideas. — Cheshire

But public policy is the problem.

For one, the official government outlets are offering simplified and thus misleading information about covid and about the covid vaccines. They paint a black-and-white picture of the situation which, indeed, makes things easier from an administrative/bureocratic perspective for the government, but not in terms of handling the pandemic. The fully vaccinated now get barely ever tested, and they behave as if all was well: and so they spread the disease unchecked (because being vaccinated doesn't stop one from being contagious).

For two, if one does get bad side effects from the vaccine, there is, at least in some EU countries no medical protocol for that, no protection. One is left to oneself. Because the covid vaccines are legally
still treated the same way as any other experimental medication.

For three, there are medical practices related to covid that have greatly complicated things for people. For example, people have been diagnosed with covid by their doctor, but no test done to confirm it. Now, when they try to get a covid pass (which is necessary for so many things in the EU), they can't get it, because a covid pass requires an old enough positive test. Further, those that have had bad side effects after the first dose of the vaccine, are left to themselves; even their doctors advise them not to take the second dose. But if they don't, they can't get a covid pass.


In short, the government and the medical establishment, given some very bad practices they have done in the past and are still doing them, are demanding too much trust from people.

If some bad shit happens because I got the vax, then Baker, et al, can say "I told you so!" — James Riley

See, that's just it. _I_ wouldn't tell you "I told you so".

But you don't care. You just put me into the same category with anyone who isn't all that enthusiastic about the covid vaccine.

But here's the thing: they didn't tell me anything, because they don't know anything. All they did was speculate. They aren't smart enough and don't have the training to tell me anything. All they can do is question, wonder, speculate or regurgitate what others have said to make them scared. There is nothing wrong with that, I guess. But I don't live my life that way.

But here's the thing: You don't care. You don't listen. You think in black and white terms, all or nothing. No nuance, no detail, nothing. Like a total redneck. This is what puts many people off.

You're sending the message that anyone who is rabidly in favor of the covid vaccines is entitled to spew hatred and contempt at those who aren't, and that those others are obligated to accept that hatred and contempt on their knees.

Here making a note to myself to reply to these posts. I need to think some more to make my reply concise.

You speak like a true believer.

Now, the question is how come some people are bothered by this. (For they are bothered, given the extensive critical communications on the topic).

For your own part, you already have an explanation for this: they are spiritually inferior to you.

For their part, I'm not sure. It could be many things -- envy, feeling threatened, bewilderment. It's something I've been keenly trying to figure out.

I have to say the more I think about this idea of a god the less coherent and comprehensible I find it. If you reduce the idea to an anthropomorphized cartoon - a fundamentalist style of deity - it become more coherent, if less believable to me.

Do you have a view about what the most plausible form of deity could be? — Tom Storm

The God of the Taliban.

What do you think of the Paul Tillich style 'ground of being' conception?

That it's impotent.
At the end of the day, life is a struggle for survival. If a concept of God doesn't reflect that and doesn't help one to get the upper hand in said struggle, then it's impotent.

My question was, if philosophical inquiry leads to aporia, then why would anyone engage in philosophical inquiry? — Apollodorus

Well, this is why people quit philosophy, no?

According to Socrates, knowledge of higher realities can be acquired only by looking into them with the soul alone by itself.

Through the Socratic method, under the guidance of the teacher.

The claim to the effect that "philosophical inquiry leads to aporia" is spurious and unfounded IMHO. — Apollodorus

Not at all. The above claim probably best describes many people's experience with philosophy, namely, that it "goes nowhere".

Plato does no more than to put us on the right track. The Truth-hunting has to be done by each lover of wisdom or seeker after truth, personally. — Apollodorus

Provided we take for granted that Plato knows and take him as our teacher.

At any rate, I think we are more likely to arrive at truth by actively hunting for it than by perpetually questioning things and living a life of self-imposed ignorance, uncertainty, and doubt.

"And what is the result of stress?
There are some cases in which a person overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, grieves, mourns, laments, beats his breast, & becomes bewildered.
Or one overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, comes to search outside, 'Who knows a way or two to stop this pain?'
I tell you, monks, that stress results either in bewilderment or in search. This is called the result of stress.
AN 6.63

How are we to hunt for the truth, if we do it in some kind of vacuum, with no teacher or guide?
And how do we know whom to turn to to help us in our search?


Note how our notion of truth probably entails some kind of relating to others, however "thinking for ourselves" we might otherwise believe ourselves to be.

We should trust the experts, simply because we have nothing else to go on when it comes to making judgements in fields where we have little or no expertise.

What's the alternative? Trust no one? — Janus

No. But desist from making many judgments to begin with.
Obviously, this wil make one unpopular in certain circles where having a lot of definitive opinions is required. But realistically, there are rather few things that one actually needs to have a definitive opinion about.

On the other hand if someone wants to question everything and think for themselves, they will be obviously happier if they do that, no?

Because philosophers are known for being such a happy bunch!

Outside/inside certainly is a meaningful distinction — Constance

Why?

And, having read one dialogue that allegedly leaves the reader in a state of "aporia", why read another dialogue that leaves the reader in the same "aporetic" condition?

What I fail to see is how additional aporia can resolve the initial aporia.

Or is the intention to maximize the aporetic state until all reasoning ability has been suspended? — Apollodorus

Perhaps not deliberately. This is also how the practice of koans works. Namely, contemplating a koan is supposed to bring one's mind to a halt, from whence on one can "see things as they really are".

But nor should they claim that other people's personal experience is just imagination. — Apollodorus

But there is still an issue of power. Defining what is real for another person is an act of power.
It's not possible to do away with issues of power in interpersonal interactions of any kind, not even in philosophy.

There is also such a thing as lack of imagination. — Wayfarer

But then again, it's possible to be so open-minded that one's brain falls out.

Some think that dialectic is a method that leads to knowledge of the Forms. But how can someone know this unless they have completed the journey? That it does is something we are told not something we have experienced. It is a matter of opinion. Dialectic leads to knowledge of our ignorance. It leads us to see that philosophical inquiry leads to aporia. — Fooloso4

Not under the Socratic method.

Inherent in the Socratic method is the inequality of the teacher and the student, and the student's submission to the teacher.