Shut up? Who am I kidding?? :smile:

Put another simpler way....

If we abandon interpretations of experience, all that's left is experience, and that's what we're really looking for.

I found what you wrote to have great value. Is this original thought of your own?

After 67 years of such investigations I'm no longer able to separate my own ideas from all the influences I've been exposed to, so I can't really answer your question. The choice of particular words is mine I guess, but the ideas are thousands of years old. I'd say my contribution is the imperfect attempt to translate some of these ancient ideas in to language which is more accessible to modern audiences, particularly those who have an allergy to religion. Anyway, thanks for reading.

If I didn’t know better I’d say you’re a modern day prophet. At least what you said was inspired. You show great understanding, what people pray for the Holy Spirit to give them understanding hope to get. Very cool.

Well, I may have neglected to mention this, but my real name is His Flatulence Sri Baba Bozo, and I am the founder of Bozoism, the next great world religion, the first to be fully grounded in glorious ignorance.

However I would appreciate you not sharing this personal information because the next step after declaring me a prophet is to start gathering together the hammer and the nails. :smile:

Haha. No, but in all seriousness, if you wrote what you just did 2,000 years ago, it would either make it into scripture or you would be crucified as a heretic or both. So, I won’t tell anyone lest you become a martyr! :)

Well, having been banned from almost every theist / atheist / philosophy forum I've ever joined, I'm guessing being crucified as a heretic would be the most likely outcome. So thanks for keeping my secret! :smile:

One can imagine all kinds of things, that does not however raise those ideas to level of supported propositions that are required to be accepted as truth to support a conclusion. — Rank Amateur

This isn't a proof issue or an argument that needs rigorous treatment. Skeptical theism, if I got it right, states that it is ''possible'' that we can't understand God and this is a defense, I believe, against ALL atheistic arguments we can think of.

As you already know all atheistic arguments are logical constructions but, I think, skeptical atheists are eager to point out that this logic is, at its heart, human. Why should God be limited by human logic?

This is, of course, just one ''possible'' scenario and the reasoning here is, interestingly, ''scientific'', at least on the matter of reviewing all possible hypotheses that can explain the state of affairs. However, it's an untestable hypothesis as it puts God beyond our reach from the get go. Skeptical theism doesn't need to be proven as it is beyond reason.

Skeptical theists have no need to answer such a question. Quite the contrary, their entire point is we have no supportable argument to say we could or would understand such a thing as the actions of a god. — Rank Amateur

Well, if a chimp can solve a puzzle then it's a given that a human could solve it too, right?

If humans can imagine ''perfect'' heaven then why didn't or couldn't God, omni-powered and all, create heaven right away. Why?

Thought operates by a process of division. — Jake

How is this assertion, on which your theory is based, any less subject to the problem of never being able to provide a determinate proof than the assertion "God exists"? Do you know what kind of thing 'thought' is? How do you propose proving that it operates by process of division? Sure, you could expound some theory about what 'thoughts' are, I could forward an alternative theory, we could debate the issue of the validity of each theory ad infinitum. How's this any different now to the god debate, we can no more say what 'thoughts' really are than we can say what 'god' really is.

the fact that no thought content ever invented has brought us to the experience of unity which we seek. As evidence we can observe how every ideology ever invented has inevitably fallen victim to internal division and conflict. — Jake

And you've examined "every ideology ever invented" to arrive at this conclusion have you? You do realise that every attempt ever tried to create a unifying theory of physical forces has failed too. Should we be talking to the physicists too and telling them that their failure to find a unifying theory is conclusive proof that the search is pointless?

get out in to nature somewhere, and learn how to lower the volume of thought. And then you will see for yourselves. Once that which is obscuring the experience of unity is removed, the Garden of Eden which has always been there reappears in our human experience. — Jake

You do realise how much this sounds like just about every religion ever invented don't you?

1. Carry out some set of behaviour (go out in nature, pray five times a day, fast for 40 days...)
2. Learn some special technique which sets this behaviour apart from 'normal' life (the inevitable self-immunising bit - "I tried what you said and it didn't work", "ah... That's because you didn't do it quite right, the 'right' way is written in my book..."
3.once all the things I've told you to stop thinking and doing are gone, you'll achieve the divine revelation you've been seeking.

It's a pretty tired pattern by now, did you miss the sixties?


Religious thought encompasses a huge range of human psychology from a need to tell stories to explain the world, through to ways of dealing with guilt and justice, and right down to simple social group dynamics. Pick up any book about the psychology of religion, even just Google it, you'll find it is considerably more complicated than you paint it.

Luckily there is a simple solution to all of your concerns. You can simply ignore everything I've said and instead share your own analysis of fundamental human problems. This is fully allowed within the tenants of Bozoism. :smile:

In short the skeptical theist claim is that we do not have any reason based ability to say anything at all about the nature of such a thing as God, if there is such a thing. — Rank Amateur

Agreeing with this again, and trying to steer back towards the topic.

It seems this limitation you point us to can be overcome by anyone willing to embrace faith, whether of a theist or atheist flavor. This seems logical and reasonable to me. If a person requires an answer and answers are not available by any method other than faith, one does what one needs to do, as we all do.

And I also like your proposal as it seems to pull the rug out from under the repetitive patterns of the God debate. If theists and atheists are both using faith, which I agree they are, then there's really little to debate. As you suggest, each person of faith believes what they personally need to believe, and mutual respect of these choices seems wise. Mutual respect does not require us to agree with any political proposals which may arise out of beliefs other than our own.

So far so good, but...

What about the person who finds themselves unable or unwilling to use faith as a solution? On a philosophy forum at least, this seems a relevant issue.

If a person declines faith it seems they have little choice other than to face the absurdity (want an answer, but can't have one) you referred to earlier and try to figure out how to make the best use of that situation. I'm not knowledgeable about the philosophers you referenced (regarding absurdity) but it seems to me the situation is absurd only if one refuses to deal with it.

You do realise how much this sounds like just about every religion ever invented don't you? — Isaac

Please list for us all the religions which explicitly reject all dogma and doctrines, including anything they themselves may say. Thank you.

You appear to be so very eager to play the glorious role of The Great Debunker that it's distracting you from reading carefully. As example, note this...

The God debate generates various answers which are then debated. I'm attempting to escape that failed pattern by pointing out that ANY answer that can be offered will just be a symbol, and a mere symbol is not really what we are seeking. The proof of this is that we keep looking, searching, reaching for something, we're still hungry, no matter how many religions and philosophies we invent. — Jake

This applies to my ideas as much as anybody else's. And so I wrote...

So, this is of course way too wordy, evidence of my own poor writing skills. A better suggestion could be for readers to simply ignore all the theory above, get out in to nature somewhere, and learn how to lower the volume of thought. And then you will see for yourselves. — Jake

Point being, unlike the vast majority of religions, there's no need for anybody to believe anything I said. Readers can instead run the experiment suggested and come to their own conclusions. Or not, that's fine too.

'm not knowledgeable about the philosophers you referenced (regarding absurdity) but it seems to me the situation is absurd only if one refuses to deal with it. — Jake

Jake - attached the myth of Sisyphus for you. Worth the read.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf

Thanks Rank, giving it a go. A disclaimer, I claim no knowledge of Camus and related writers, and am just diving in to a response to what I see on the page Rank has linked us to.

Here's a quote from the beginning of the article to add to our conversation...

The human condition is characterized by the probability of suffering and the certainty of death—a fate which human reason cannot accept as reasonable. In the face of this absurdity, the universal reason of the Enlightenment has nothing to say.

1) Yes, obviously, to the probability of suffering and the certainty of death.

2) No to "a fate which human reason cannot accept as reasonable."

3) I can't comment on what Enlightenment writers may have said or not said regarding "the absurdity" but I have plenty to say about it, way too much. :smile:

In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus elucidates this concept of the absurd. The absurd comes with the realization that the world is not rational:

Or maybe the realization that such writers were not as rational as they imagined themselves to be?

“At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."

My thesis is that the silence is not unreasonable, but rather an ever open (if unfamiliar) door waiting patiently to serve our longing for happiness. Though "happiness" is perhaps not the most precise word one could use.

If one sees that it is the medium of thought itself which is what obstructs the experience of unity that we seek, then silence becomes not unreasonable, but a welcoming oasis from division and conflict. Not a permanent solution (because we still need thought to survive) but just an oasis along the path of our journey.

Perhaps it helps to focus a bit on what authorities we are referencing to build our perspectives? As example, the theist may reference a holy book, while the atheist may reference philosophers and/or scientists.

I would argue that in both cases these are second hand sources of information. That doesn't automatically make them worthless, but perhaps reason would suggest that instead of focusing so much on what people say about reality, we turn our attention to the primary source, reality itself.

This can be done from either the theist or atheist perspective. As example, for the theist reality can be seen as "the book that God wrote" whereas holy books are merely "the books that men wrote". The process of shifting focus to the primary source, reality itself, should be even easier for the atheist. In either case, theist or atheist, it seems reasonable to suggest that we might consider aligning our psychology with the nature of reality, to the degree that is possible.

It appears that reality is overwhelmingly nothing, from the smallest to largest scales. Or perhaps relative nothing for the physics sticklers. Things, objects, existence form the tiniest fraction of reality, as best we currently can tell. More to the point, things depend entirely upon the nothing for their existence, for it is the nothing which defines the something. You know, it is the empty space around the Earth which defines the Earth as a "thing".

For the theist, we can see that this nothing pervades every something down to the very smallest of scales, much as God is claimed to do. In fact, it appears that science is having increasing difficulty finding the boundary between nothing and something, so it might not be unreasonable to state that every something is basically made of nothing.

Ok, you get the point, nothing is a really big deal.

If we were to use nature, reality itself, as our "holy book", our chosen authority, a guide whom we turn to for advice regarding how we can best live....

.... this would seem to suggest that the thought objects in our minds should be surrounded by, and infused with, a great deal of nothing, of silence.

Seen this way, philosophy can be seen as useful, but concerning itself with a very small fraction of reality. It would seem reasonable to suggest that even more effort might be invested in to the study of nothing, of silence, given that it forms the overwhelming majority of reality, our chosen authority for the purposes of this post.

So much noise about silence!! Yes, it's silly, contradictory, agreed. I don't claim otherwise, and am just attempting to honestly share my own somewhat absurd human condition.

There's a kind of logic to the madness though. It's typically the loudest humans who discover the need to study silence.

THOUGHT CONTENT: If we begin from the assumption that fundamental human problems arise from incorrect thought content, from bad ideas, then philosophy is a logical place to turn in the search for solutions.

THOUGHT ITSELF: If on the other hand we begin from the assumption that fundamental human problems arise from the nature of thought itself, from how it operates, then silence is a logical place to turn in the search for solutions.

What I see is that we typically assume without questioning that human problems arise from bad thought content, and so we dive immediately in to the logic dancing that folks such as ourselves love so much. And by accepting such an important premise without questioning reveal ourselves to not being so logical after all?