Really? That's what you have to say? Don't waste my time. If you don't have a logical, philosophical, reasoned response to give, then you can go give an unreasoned, illogical, baboon mating call to some barn animal instead of wasting my time here.

Argument from contingency:

1) Matter arises from consciousness.
2) Matter cannot arise from my consciousness, because my consciousness is contingent.
3) Matter and my consciousness derive from a necessary consciousness.
C) God is the necessary consciousness that created all contingent consciousnesses.

I accept consciousnesses of others because I believe all is consciousness.

It just happens to be true, but that wasn't to associate British Empiricism with Satanism.

so what and what does it say about the problem of freedom and family? — Tobias

You cannot have freedom and nominalism. If nominalism is the predominant worldview, the only ones who have "freedom" is the money power. If nominalism is the predominant worldview, then family is impossible. There are only atomistic individuals, no community, no tribe, no family, no society.

The United States of Nominalism. The United States was founded by people like Thomas Jefferson, who was a British Empiricist. This is not a secret. And Benjamin Franklin who was an open Satanist. This is just obvious to anyone who reads.

Right, so I have been saying that a Guru's "expertise" or lack of cannot be demonstrated in a way that a musician's, artist's, engineer's, doctor's, etc can; such that an unbiased observer would have to acknowledge the expertise or lack of. You haven't said anything that demonstrates this is wrong, you have just argued against a claim that you wouldn't be able to test it yourself over a period of many years or a lifetime, which is a claim I haven't made. — Janus

Sigh. That's literally the opposite of what I've been saying. And you're unable, or unwilling to understand or listen. Hence, this conversation is over.

Ditto, for much of ancient philosophy, sophistry, and religion. That's why Sophisticated Skepticism is a good tool for digging-out nuggets of truth. :smile: — Gnomon

You are a sophist.

Yes, by comparing different "expert's" opinions on a topic. Ancient Greeks, Hebrews, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists addressed similar philosophical topics, and arrived at different conclusions. Yet, thousands of years later, modern philosophers continue to debate the same old "truths". So, I carefully select from among those truth-theories the ones that best fit my personal understanding of how & why the world works as it does. That's why my worldview is pretty eclectic, but not beholden to any particular school of though:cool: — Gnomon

No, actually they didn't. Because various religions and philosophies deviated significantly from the organic root, it appears that way to someone unlearned. In reality, all civilizations had the exact same understanding and the exact same truth. They all had means, bonified and true means, to experience mystical union with the Divine. Then, various factions, such as Zoroastrianism, Abrahamism and Buddhism, broke away and ever since that point more and more fools and rascals have deviated from that path. Modernists and Postmodernists are just the latest iteration of the bunch.

Your opinion is as irrelevant to me as anyone else's, there's no meaning and purpose in life by your worldview, so there's meaning or purpose to anything you say. So quit wasting my time, quit wasting your time.

t. I seem to get along fine without any spirit guide or guru. Of course, I may be missing something important. So that's why I keep my antennae tuned to search for truths wherever they may originate. For me, the final arbiter of Truth is my own feeble reasoning ability.

Nobody said you should shut your reasoning off. And you're not getting along fine at all, your whole worldview is a massive self-contradiction. If you were truly interested in the truth, you'd actually be listening to what I've been saying. But you're not. You're already convinced in what you already want to believe.

Having said that, it's clear from this dialogue you've already shut your reasoning off without my external intervention or the intervention of any guru.

And even then, if you have only your own experience to measure against, you might be deceiving yourself. It's always going to be matter of faith, that is inescapable. Ultimately everything, even trust in science and inter-subjectively testable knowledge is a matter of faith to some degree.

Right, so this is just skepticism. Which I reject. If it's all subjectivity, then my subjectivity rejects yours. This is just foolishness. You're correct, everything requires some degree of faith. This is the basic problem that Agrippa's Trilemma points out. You either have to accept an infinite series, or you need to accept arbitrariness or circularity. There is no escape from the contingency of our beliefs. That doesn't mean we just go into pure skepticism because the question is difficult for you. That's laziness.

No, I think you need to be intellectually honest and admit that as fallible humans we are all capable of deceiving ourselves about almost anything. The only thing which "keeps us honest" is inter-subjective feedback and agreement, which is impossible in the context we are discussing. The "expertise" or lack of it of so-called gurus simply cannot be inter-subjectively corroborated as it can with other professions. — Janus

Already answered. If you're playing the skeptic game, then there's no debate or dialogue. It's just a waste of time.

Well, at least you're honest. Have to give credit where credit is due.

Further, other people may be intolerant of one and demand that one justifies one's morality to them. Such as when Christians demand that non-Christians justify themselves to them. — baker

I've very well aware of Christianity's totalitarian terrorism against those who disagree with them.

I doubt it, I have several degrees and I've probably read more books in the last week than you have in your entire lifetime.

But by all means, indulge me.

True. Yet all the flavors of 'immateriality' are even more unsavory, more ad hoc or preposterous, and demonstrably more maladaptive for surviving & thriving as a natural species than materiality. — 180 Proof

Not even slightly. Consciousness-only ontology is the most parsimonious, and least ad hoc and preposterous.

That's the fruit of nominalism. That's what happens when you reject natural law, natural hierarchy and natural authority. Let the dupes, dopes and rubes run the country instead of philosopher-kings.

If you want to live your life chasing your own tail, I won't stop you.

Uhhh, no. Actually, everything I see in life I regard as fake. There's nothing authentic about human society or living on this planet. It's all a scam.

If you want to call the non-physical "natural" then I think you're stretching the definition.

Because those people have lost their minds.

There's nothing to argue against.

The point is that it cannot be demonstrated to any one else. Of course you are free to believe whatever you like. — Janus

Of course it can. You do the experiment yourself.

It's not supposition; expertise or lack of it can be demonstrated to anyone with an open mind in many, many fields, such that it would be clear if someone were deceiving themselves or trying to deceive others. This is simply not the case with so-called spiritual teachers. — Janus

Exactly. It's supposition. If you do the experiment, you'll find out for yourself. You're just rejecting it out of hand, based on ad hoc assertions and supposition.

You might become convinced that the spiritual experiment has worked and you have become enlightened. But you cannot demonstrate that to anyone else, and it is always possible that you could be deceiving yourself. — Janus

I haven't said I'm enlightened. And you can do the experiment yourself.

The very idea that there is "experiential knowledge" of the type you are claiming cannot be demonstrated in any way that an unbiased person would have to accept, so it remains a matter of faith. But as I said, there's no shame in that provided you are intellectually honest enough to admit it. — Janus

You need to be intellectually honest to realize that an experiment that anyone can perform is as objective as you can get, and is the total opposite of blind faith. It's more objective than many sciences, which cannot be done by anyone.

Don't worry about it. religious thinkers and philosophers often "talk past each other ". :cool: — Gnomon

No, true philosophy is mystical union with the Absolute. As it was with all of the ancient philosophers, those we have records of, and those we do not. Modern philosophy is nothing more than philodoxy, different opinions clashing with other opinions.

Lord Brahma is not the same as the philosophical conception of Brahman. The correct personage who is the embodiment of Brahman is Lord Krishna.

The seat of Narayana is the lotus of the heart. The knowledge of Narayana alone is the highest form of wisdom. Sri Krishna, the son of Devaki, who is the vanquisher of Madhu is the ultimate Brahman. He alone resides in all beings. He is both the causeless and the cause of everything. — Narayana Upanishad

I didn't say you should take my opinion, I said there is no way of knowing whether there are true gurus. If there were such a way you could demonstrate that there are or are not true gurus. So it remains — Janus

There is a way you can demonstrate it. You do the experiment, and you attain self-realization and God-realization.

I don't think that applies to anyone or anything. If someone claims to be a master musician, mathematician or athlete etc., whether or not they are deluding themselves is pretty much demonstrable. Life is short, so avoiding any path the verity of which is not at all demonstrable is simply being prudent, not being lazy. — Janus

All of this is just supposition.

comfort — Janus

Unless of course I find great joy or comfort in pursuing such a path, in which case my pursuing it would be based simply on my good feeling about it; which is fine. But intellectual honesty demands acknowledgement that it remains a question of faith, not of knowledge. — Janus

No, it's 100% a question of experiential knowledge. If you do the experiment and it works, then it works. If it does not, then it does not. Blind faith has nothing to do with it.

Programmer is roughly what we call God. The Supreme Controller.

Unfortunately, the Hindu religion has dumbed-down (anthropomorphized) that abstraction into a mere god among gods — Gnomon

I don't see what you mean. I don't think any of it has been dumbed down at all.

When it comes ot everyday matters you can often find out what is the case for yourself but it's not always possible. It's not even possible to know whether there really are true gurus (enlightened beings) at all. — Janus

That's just something you claim. Why is your opinion the one I should take?

Anyone who believes themselves to be enlightened and able to pass on their knowledge to others could well be deceiving themselves. But if going down such a path makes you happy, then why not, eh? — Janus

You can say that about anyone or anything. But if you're a reasonable person, then you keep an open mind and you try to find the truth as best you can, rather than just saying "I can't know anything, it's all an illusion, everything is just a deception in my head." That's laziness.

How it is that the higher minds of higher human beings will likely come about in the future if there is already a Highest Mind at the beginning? — PoeticUniverse

This question is already dealt with in Upanishadic philosophy. Our minds, our true selves, Atman is Brahman. That is, our True Self is Divine. Tat Tvam Asi.

However, many misunderstand this to mean that we are god, or we are gods. This is not accurate.

We are Brahman, but we are not Parabrahman. We are Atman, but we are not Paratman. There's a Supreme Mind underlying our minds.

The same way you accept anything as truth. You a) rely on the experts, the authorities who know this field and b) do the experiment yourself.

Is there any other way you have of finding out the truth?

The Vedic Scriptures give us many many credentials a true guru (Satguru) must have.

But one obvious way to tell, one way that disqualifies 99% of fake gurus right out the gate, is if they're selling a "new" meditation method, or if they're founders of a "new" movement.

We have the original sampradayas, the original meditation method in Shree Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. So anyone selling you any "new" method or a movement, is a fraud. That disqualifies the majority of them right out the gate.

There are plenty other credentials one could use, but that one alone is sufficient in the vast majority of cases. It deals with Sadguru, Maharishi, most of these New Age frauds by itself.

I think you are using my comment to engage in a little patronizing ad hominem. Noam Chomsky - a highly complex theorist - made this exact same point about some French thinkers. Not a naïve realist or simple man by any means. — Tom Storm

Chomsky is a charlatan and a fraud. He got famous for an unfalsifiable pseudo-theory about language that's been challenged by multiple linguists, and it's not even clear what the actual theory is except that language is somehow innate. His political views might be interesting, but they belong to a bygone era.

An anarchist is a realist? Explain how that works.

There are many marvelous scientists who do a great job, and often manage to share the results of their work with much passion, because they care, but also the necessary humility, because they care. And one can learn a lot from them. Gould for instance. — Olivier5

Well, again, the science popularizers are the extreme minority of real actual scientists.

Then you have the type that goes around telling non-scientists that they know nothing worthwhile because they never entered a science lab, and if they did they couldn't use the instruments... It's only the latter type that I call "glorified lab technicians". They tend to be quite jealous of their exclusive access to truth, and from them, the common man can learn very little. — Olivier5

I'm more concerned about their acolytes, who are totally untrained or unaware of science or scientific method but still fly the flag of scientism uncritically.

Nature consists in event-patterns (regularities) that are explainable – even if only in principle – in terms of different event-patterns (regularities) e.g. algorithmic modeling (how an event-pattern (regularity) comes about, continues, and/or ceases). Furthermore, nature is self-encompassing (i.e. finite) and causally closed (i.e. unbounded), therefore structured by regularities, which includes self-referring structures complex enough to produce knowledge (i.e. explanations) of nature using different aspects of nature in order to produce further applied knowledge (i.e. explanations of the potentialities) of 'self-referring structures complex enough to produce knowledge' (e.g. themselves). — 180 Proof

Right, so nature is a series of regularities. But if that's all, then there's no true distinction between supernature and nature.

Because something being regular doesn't in any way mean it is absolute. Unless, you're arguing for laws of nature which are themselves absolute. If you are, then I ask, where are these laws?

Supernature (in contrast to nature) is a notion consistent with 'unexplainable – even in principle – random (patternless) events, or ruptures, in nature from "outside" or "beyond" nature'. In other words, make-believe. If there are grounds to believe that there is supernature, that it is more than a mere appeal to ignorance woo-of-the gaps for framing (religious) just-so stories. — 180 Proof

Well, again, if you haven't defined nature, which you haven't, you've just claimed that nature is regularities, rather than something prescriptive, it's descriptive. If it's descriptive, then "supernatural" is simply something not yet explained by the so-called natural.

such evidence is the best kept secret in all of human history

Not quite. Since everyone in human history up until Abrahamism had access to religious systems which initiated one into the mystical union with the Absolute. It's not due to the lack of evidence or experience, the evidence is there, the experience is there. Modern man is simply alienated and unaware of it.

There may be more to nature than nature, of course, but there aren't any strong, sufficient, reasons to think so — 180 Proof

According to your descriptive, tentative, limited pragmatic so-called "natural" explanation. There still isn't any reason why that ought to be the case, or is the case. That's just frankly, an assertion.

Well, for starters, believing platonic objects exist is not naturalism.

More than that, there is definition of what naturalism is. I've always been looking for one, there is not one.

I don't ignore or dislike Quine, anymore than I ignore or dislike any other philosopher. Quine is just inconsistent with his own belief system.

He himself was a platonist, via his Indispensability Thesis. Yet, he's a "naturalist" also. He's just being inconsistent.

Not in every particular, but in general yes.

Not to the ancients it wasn't. Ethics was about the way the world was and conforming ourselves to that eternal order.

Would naturalism be close to that? The definition of naturalism is something like: the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations don't matter. At least naturalism uses extensively empiricism in the way of using the scientific method and using empirical study. — ssu

Not at all. Naturalism is a caricature, a non-position. Empiricism and Rationalism are actual philosophical schools, naturalism is just a word atheists use when they want to sound sophisticated, when there's no content or meaning behind the term whatsoever.

I am a new member on this forum, I have started reading Ernest Becker's Denial of death, is there a combined theory that unites rationalism and empiricism? — EnsambleMark

Kantianism.

Not quite. Ethics was about what was good and wrong within the natural order of the universe. Aristotle termed it "the Golden Mean" it wasn't divine command theory, but ethics is based on natural law.

Some dictionary sites give "imaginary" as a synonym for "mystical". — Gnomon

Well, that's hugely mistaken.

But my primary concern for mystical worldviews is the synonym "occult". Labeling some aspects of the world as "occult", or "taboo" is a traditional tactic of religious leaders to "pull the wool" over the eyes of their followers. — Gnomon

That's also hugely mistaken. The word mystical originally comes from the Greek word for mystery (mysterion) and heavily related to the Greek word for "initiate" (mystikos). It has no connotation of something imaginary. If you mean occult in the sense of "hidden" which is what the Latin word means, I suppose thats valid. But not in the sense of occult philosophy or occult spirituality, in that New Age, demonic, Luciferian sense.

Hence, you must take on faith that your guru or mystical guide has a direct line to God or to the Akashic Field. — Gnomon

Well, you cannot remove your ego by yourself, that's why a guru is there. To help guide you out of your own egoic delusion. The word guru in Sanskrit is synonymous with the word educator. Educare meaning, "to draw out" Gu-ru meaning, "to draw one out of darkness into light" in Sanskrit.

I don't trust anyone who claims to know something that is not accessible to mundane observation and reasoning (e.g .the scientific method). — Gnomon

So do you trust things like the multiverse, or quantum mechanics which is not accessible to mundane observation? I do.

But, I also don't take the word of scientific priests for "truths" that are so far over my head that I have to take them on Faith. "Naive empiricism" is also a form of child-like Faith in the preternatural objectivity of scientists . — Gnomon

Alright, so you don't hold to Scientism, or to brute empiricism, what exactly do you hold to? Pyrrhonian Skepticism?

A comical example of New Age faith in mystical abilities is the comical phenomenon of "Yogic Flying". Maharishi assured his Transcendental Meditators that his techniques could give them magical powers, such as the ability to fly. So, they took his folk tale literally, and sincerely tried to prove their faith by "flying" while in the cross-legged position. — Gnomon

Yeah, Maharishi is one of many many many of the fake gurus "flying" around during Kali yug.

FWIW, I like some elements of Eastern philosophy, but most Eastern and New Age religions are just as manipulative of naive minds as Western religions. :cool: — Gnomon

Good. Well, our philosophy is indistinguishable from the religion. Since the Sages of the Vedic Scriptures claim they received this from God-realized Sages. New Age religion is not Vedic. It's based on Neo-Vedanta, which isn't Vedanta at all.

I don't deny there's a lot of fraudgurus going around, but that doesn't mean that all gurus are false, in the same way that just because there are many false positions doesn't mean there are no true positions. If we compare these fraudgurus' views and teachings to what the Vedic Scriptures define as a true guru, and we see if they have the proper credentials and qualifications to be a true guru (Satguru) then majority of these fraudgurus (such as Sadguru) fall infinitely short. Even they'll admit, openly and publicly, that they are fraudgurus.

Naive Empiricism refers to the belief that scientist should try to be as objective and neutral as possible when studying something. Scientists should approach a problem with no preconceived expectations or assumptions which have not been previously studied and justified using the scientific method. — Gnomon

No, naive empiricism is the view that nothing can be known apart from what our immediate sense-perception picks up. Also, that our sense perception picks up true knowledge.

Life without love has a seriousness to it. It is a heavy weight one has to carry, or like a hypnotic sleep. For one who loves knows many things that the one without does not. — Thinking

Not a single person on planet Earth knows "love" the way you describe it. Many Sages know love in it's true sense. Sat Chit Ananda. But not in this false sense. It's basically a fraud created by capitalist marketing. There's no content to it. Emptiness.

Love is the deception of nature to force us to reproduce. — Miguel Hernández

Love is a Platonic Form that exists in the spectral realm, however, in it's imperfect form it takes the form of self-satisfaction, egotism and narcissism while here on the material plane.

Love and it’s forms are overrated marketing to be honest... — javi2541997

Exactly.

From my perspective, material existence is antithetical to love. Marriage is only an institution created to procreate. Since people love to talk about love, but nobody has a clue what it is or what it means, the institution of marriage has dissolved into nothingness.

There's no love in this world. You can only love yourself. If you want love, you need to start spiritual practice. Because you're not going to find it on this planet. You'll find a lot of crap with the label of "love" though, but it's cheaper than the crap you buy at Walmart. At least you'll get something out of that purchase, not so with "love"

Most scientists don't try and think too hard, in my experience. Glorified lab technicians. A lot of them have no clue why they do what they do. They just go along with the motion and get the paycheck. — Olivier5

Absolutely. Scientists don't know anything at all about the world outside of the very narrow field they've specialized in. Which is fine by me, it's just not fine to those who need science to be an infallible oracle of Delphi. They cannot accept that.