In general, idealism may be about a realm beyond the physical. — Jack Cummins

I think "in general, idealism" asserts that "the physical" is only an idea and not real (i.e. mind-independent). Maybe you mean platonism or cartesian dualism? :chin:

???

You would have a point if natalism and antinatalism were symmetrical- but they’re not. — schopenhauer1

They are not because "natalism" is not an ideology or doctrine or dogma –"unlike antinatalism. Natality is a biological function that animals can prevent or terminate. Having been born does not in any way entail procreating. Thus, "antinatalism". (i.e. natality : antinatalism :: mortality : denialism¹)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism [1]

Plato and Kant basically say that "all is maya" too by arguing "appearances are not reals" and "phenomena and not things-in-themselves", respectively, so I think in this context the specific dichotomy you draw, Jack, between Western and Eastern metaphysics is exaggerated. Also, the doctrine of "maya" is self-refuting insofar as it is "maya" as well like (existential? ontological? moral?) nihilism.

RFK is just another gaping hole in DJT's 'stay-out-of-jail' boat imo. :smirk:

Here's the crux:

Testimonial evidence only explains a subjective interpretation of a situation. And people's subjective interpretation of things is no indication of its truth as an objective reality, only the truth in that is what people feel. There are plenty of people who feel there is a God, but is that objectively true? No. — Philosophim

:100: :up:

@Jack Cummins

And, besides, what existential-pragmatic-ethical difference does it make, Jack, if metaphysically (according to some ancient tradition) "all is maya" — 180 Proof

Really? — Baden

Just a speculation, more hope than worry.

24August24

Orangeutan-see, Orangeutan-do: batshit RFK, Jr replaces fake-redneck JD Vance as VP canditate in MAGA-GOP bait-n-switch (instigated by Kelly Ann Conway) in the days or weeks to come. Will this trumpster fire blow up into a flaming hellscape by Kamala's September 10th debate beatdown? TBD.

Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:

:lol:

:rofl: Oh Dunning-Kruger ...

So we agree: in sum, your "panENdeistic G*d" is an empty name (cipher) for mysterium tremendum (i.e. "Enformer"-of-the-gaps) that does not testably explain anything. :smirk:

We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why".

This is because (A) "why" (i.e. goal, purpose) only pertains to intentional agency – an unwarranted, anthropomorphic assumption – and therefore does not pertain to "Nature" itself (re: teleological / transcendental illusion (i.e. a metacognitive bias aka "pure reason")); and (B) the only answer to the foundational/ultimate "why of Nature" that does not beg the question (i.e. infinitely regress) is There Is No Why of Nature. :fire:

Well, Spinozists like me don't "believe in Spinoza's God" or that "everything is God" either because (A) only natura naturans (e.g. laws of nature) are real and (B) everything else, or natura naturata, is not real (i.e. merely exists transiently ... like breath on a mirror or footprints in beach sand at low tide or the shapes of clouds). The characters (& plot devices) in the Bible/Quran also are not divine – do not "reveal God"; they are just superstitious fictions (according to Spinoza).

"Real courage", as you say, would be to quit your "maliciously useless" life asap instead of cowardly whining on and on that you (we) "should never have been born". A coward's "coping mechanism" is living by the resentful hypocrisy of this kind of defeatist pessimism. Like daoists & epicureans, pyrrhonians & spinozists, pragmatists & absurdists..., otoh, my coping mechanism for 'radical indifference' begins and ends with defiance – memento mori :death:, memento vivere :flower:.

So, for all us dead men & women walking, to each his or her own: your cowardice (i.e. futility of preaching "nonexistence") OR our courage (i.e. agency despite existence), your defeatist pessimism (re: ideality) OR our defiant pessimism (re: reality): no doubt for many, maybe most, an involuntary – unreasonable – decision. :fire:

I don't see the relevance to the OP or to my reply to it. I didn't exoress a "belief" so much as a conceptual description / interpretation of [/i]your[/i] "what I believe about myself" in the context of the post from which its quoted.

???

God is already there is Scripture. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, like the plot device of "Manwë" in The Silmarillion (or "Sauron" in LotR). :smirk:

The idealist's existence cannot be dependent on her idealism. — Fooloso4

True, but @Sam26 (the Jedi) might be a solipsist ..

Existence swings on the hinge of consciousness. It requires no justification. It just is. It’s the presuppositional axiom of existence. — Sam26

Existence itself is absolutely presupposed, and therefore requires no justification; also, it's self-contradictory to assume that 'IS possibly is not'. Existence "just is" the hinge on which all existing swings. Your inversion, Sam, assumes an unwarranted 'dualism' that is both incoherent and unparsimonious. Spinozism had refuted 'Cartesian duality' over three centuries ago.and Berkeley's 'subjective idealism' is clearly question-begging (see Kant's critique).

I do believe we are individuals that are part of the core mind, i.e., we are individuals that are connected with the core ... The core consciousness is constantly creating experiences for the innumerable conscious beings that are associated with the core mind ... the essence of who we are cannot be harmed ....

This :sparkle: "core mind, core consciousness" :sparkle: reminds me very much of the sage woo--woo of an ancient Jedi Master:

For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.  You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. 

*

Deceive you, eyes can. In the Force, very different each of you is.

*

Death is a natural part of life, rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force.

*

Twilight is upon me, and soon night must fall. that is the way of things. The way of the Force. — Sayings of Yoda

In sum: "NDEs" = temporary FORCE GHOSTS. :sweat:

I agree: not "malignantly indifferent", just reasonably indifferent to MALIGNANT USELESSNESS – courage – like e.g. (non-academic) epicureans, stoics, spinozists & absurdists. :fire:

Absurdism is a response, similar to existentialism, but it doesn't see the problem for what it is. — schopenhauer1

Apparently, as your 'dogmatic ontophobic idealism' shows, you do not grok absurdism as expressed by (e.g.) PW Zapffe, A. Camus, C. Rosset ... Instead, schop, you fetishize the lyrical "antinatal" musings of a minor horror novelist and latter-day disciple of a haute bourgeois, misanthropic, dyspeptic pessimist (who also happens to be a great neo-kantian philosopher).

Suppose you somehow became convinced that Christianity is false. — Art48

Raised & educated by strict Roman Catholics, I'd reach this conclusion by senior year in my Jesuit high school (though my apostasy had begun two years earlier).

Suppose you came to believe that Jesus was just a man. How would you proceed?

In the late 1970s I'd critically compared his purported teachings to that of others like Socrates, Epicurus, Buddha, Laozi, Kongzi ... who were also "just men" and had found Yeshua ben Yosef far less compelling.

What would you do?

I'd become a freethinker and naturalist / anti-supernaturalist; then had for years studied comparative religion and religious histories on my own; all the while growing more secular, even irreligious, from apostate to weak athiest to strong atheist by the mid 1990s to antitheist (with strong speculative affinities for pandeism) about two decades ago.

Make a choice and explain why.
1. This is ridiculous. Christianity IS true and that’s all there is to it. I’m not doing this silly thought experiment. Count me out. (No further explanation needed.)
2. I would become an atheist.
3. I would search for a God that isn’t false.
4. None of the above. I would do something else.

Well, as sketched above, my path had been from 4 through 3 to 2. :halo:

I wouldn't know, mister sad sack, because I'm not very sociable anymore and yet, absurdist bluesman that I am, for decades I've been growing more cheerful with age. Memento mori et memento vivere. :death: :flower:

That's the basis of my "Communities for Catharsis" and "fellow-sufferers of compassion" notion. — schopenhauer1

And yet consistent with your (Ligotti's) defeatist premises that's still a MALIGNANTLY USELESS "notion", no? :smirk:

... if one is feeling isolated, lonely, and the only one suffering, it may be best to communicate this in a communal way with others feeling the same way. — "schopenhauer1

Yeah, of course, because (like in cults, asylums, prisons, marriages) misery does love company. :mask:

Of course, as previously noted, this presupposes a considerable reduction in population. That's not something I advocate - that's something I predict. — Vera Mont

:up: :up:

"Utopia?"

a post-scarcity, philanthropic AGI-managed (automated), sprawl-free municipality (arcology) — 180 Proof

Likewise, we don't know what G*D is, — Gnomon

On the contrary, g/G is an empty name that

only what it does:

pacifies the superstitious. :pray:

a hypothetical explanation for the existence of [ ... ]

If this "hypothetical explanation" is testable, then cite such a test or what one might be in principle; however, if it is not testable, then there is not any reason to consider g/G an "explanation" for anything at all.

:smirk:

:up:

IMO 'energy' is a property rather than a 'physical substance'. A rock is not 'made by' mass-energy but has mass-energy. Unfortunately, I think that even physicists themselves sometimes indulge in some confusion about this.
We can't say that 'fundamental physical reality' is 'energy' because 'energy' is a property. — boundless

:100: :fire:

:cool:

:up:

Again, non sequitur. There's been no discussion of "the philosophy of physics" here. Go troll someone else, sir.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I did not refer to either "materialism" or "daoism" in my last post reply to Gnomon..

Yes, and Spinozism is not a "shit-philosophy", so what's your point?

The Universal Field Theory :
The U F T is not a physics theory in a classical sense. It is rather a philosophical theory explaining Why and How physical phenomena appear.
https://theuniversalfieldtheory.com/ — Gnomon

:clap: :lol:

The section (in the full article) on how to test this "theory" is nothing but vacuous bs. Like "The Force" in the Star Wars movies, "UFT" is just more pseudo-science (woo-woo) stuffed inside a shit-"philosophy" sandwich. :sparkle:

To compare the testimonial evidence of abductions to the testimonial evidence of NDEs is a complete misunderstanding of good testimonial evidence. — Sam26

Explain why you think "testimonial evidence of alien abductions" is not "good testimonial evidence". :smirk:

So what I believe about myself does indeed create my world. — Noble Dust

That belief ... merely is your ego – masking oneself (i.e. being-in-the-world) – an 'illusory separation' from the world (i.e. disembodiment fantasy). A psycho-sociological fiction.

What is a belief, and what is an attitude? — Noble Dust

Okay, short attention span-friendly: a belief is a fiction (until corroborated by evidence) and an attitude is a strong feeling about a belief or an experience.

To give an analogy, I believe that if the 'ocean' is 'natura naturata', a wave is a 'mode'.Regarding 'natura naturans', maybe water itself. But I'm not sure how much the analogy makes sense. — boundless

For me it doesn't make sense ...

What do you think about these analogies? — boundless

Well, imo they don't work. In each case "ocean" "house" "statue" are manifest, finite modes (natura naturata) and yet you claim that the corresponding infinite modes of "water" "wood" "marble", respectively, are not manifest which clearly doesn't fly. Analogously it's the 'laws of nature' – causing and constraining modes such as "water [ocean [waves]]" "wood [house [rooms ...]]" & "marble [statue [male-figure]]" to manifest – which themselves are not manifest and which reason attributes to (i.e. conceptualizes as) natura naturans. All analogies are limited in application, of course, much more so when used to 'illuminate' a metaphysics as subtle as Spinozism.

Lately I prefer "the sun, its rays of light & their heat" (rather than "the ocean & its waves") as an analogy because "the sun" is so remote and not visibly manifest at night even though its effects of "light & heat" are always manifest on Earth (e.g. gravity-well, climate, weather, seasons, photosynthesis); and also, that staring directly at the sun with naked eyes is blinding more or less like fully comprehending 'eternal & infinite substance' with temporal, finite reason is impossible. So for me, in this limited (physical) sense, analogously "the sun" is naturing and Earth, etc are natured ... even though our local star is, according to Spinoza, just another mode (of the attributes of substance (i.e. 'laws of nature')). :fire:

What do you think?

My name was taken in vain first (see the quote). Also, Wayfarer and I have been jousting for about fifteen years so ...

:up:

There is what amounts to a phobia (↪180 Proof ) around admitting anything which suggests the supernatural, — Wayfarer

:sweat:

Not "phobia" so much as principled disregard for woo-woo-of-the-gaps nonsense which you've always fetishized, sir. To invoke "the supernatural" as idealists (antirealists) / subjectivists / mysterians / new agers like you, Wayfarer, often do amounts to nothing but an appeal to ignorance (i.e. this aspect of some X is (currently) unknown / (apparently) unknowable, therefore that aspect is/must be "supernatural" or "explained by mystery"). :sparkle: