M: You can't prove to me that how you react to Rob's irrational faith isn't a bias against irrationality you picked up as a result of being brainwashed yourself and the emotional residue of having had that experience, say maybe a self contempt that you could have ever been so gullible.
CK: That's true, I can't prove it. But that's only true if we take it to a nihilistic level where we can't prove anything that is related to the mind or to positions.
M: But how is that different than what you are asking him to do, to prove that something he knows is real that is related to the mind or to positions. Why do you get to plea nihilism and not he? For each of you, the foundation of your thinking is fundamental, reason admits no bias, god exists.
CK: But again here, Rob made the positive assertion, that my views on religion are a specific result of experiences in my childhood. He's provided no evidence to support this whatsoever.
M: And he can't anymore than you can disprove that God exists. It could be that my doubt in God just got shifted over to my Atheism, but I seem to have a need to pass the nihilism test. All that happens to me when I think on these things is the ending of thought in peace. I stop swimming for the island because it was the ocean that was my real goal.
CK: Worse, even his premises are false. I don't "hate God" or whatever; that's just a defense mechanism so he doesn't have to address the issues.
M: He is describing what he a defense mechanism he thinks you have just as you are describing now one that he thinks you have. As a nihilist, I can't prove the difference, but I have no need of certainty.
==============
M: Both you and he believe you are right, he about his god and you about your lack of bias, the purity of your reason.
CK: The difference is that I have laid out entirely rational bases for my views, and he has not. As I said before, even if his false claims were true, they have no impact on the validity or invalidity of my reasoning. Even if I go to bed every night screaming "I HATE GOD!" a hundred times, that doesn't change the fact that there is no real evidence for the existence of deities, nor the fact that the New Testament was written by a bunch of people who never knew Jesus, and whose stories are mutually contradictory.
M: I charged you with belief in the purity of reason and you affirm the purity of your reason, hehe. I have no problem with your reasoning, you reason soundly, in my opinion. I have a problem with the value of reason when it comes to knowing God. In my opinion, my own reasoning led me to the conclusion that reasoning was empty of love and could know nothing, that it was a prison I built for myself. I reached the end of reason and found a strawberry growing on a cliff. I hope you know that story. It was a nice story like the one about Jesus that just happened to save my life. I believe the fictional Christ has done the same for others. I killed my reason with reason, but others do it with faith. Sadly, some forget that reason is great in some spheres.
=========
M: "People say they will believe it when they see it, but I say people see only what they believe." So I believe Rob sees God because he believes and you don't because you don't believe and that's it, end of story.
CK: That's nonsense. I could use the same "reasoning" to "prove" that anything nonexistent actually does exist.
M: And you are, just as Rob is. He believes in God so he sees Him. You don't believe in a God that doesn't exist and you see he doesn't exist. So all this seeing of a God that doesn't exist and not seeing that same God is the result of an inability to see who God really is, a state of consciousness into which one can awaken and out of which God's love flows.
The way of the Christian is the way of devotion, the way of the heart, where the intention is to love God with all of your heart. People fall in love with the Bible or this or that Christian sect, they worship the bridge, the words, the text, but forget to remove the beam in their eye which keeps them from loving. But the way of the Christian is a valid way to God for those who cease to exist in their love for Him. That is why even though I can't worship, I respect and admire all who do. God is a mirror and all the love you give Him you get back.
=================
M: I like to think that faith is a means of believing what reason says makes no sense. Faith is a feeling that can't be affected by reason.
CK: And as I've said, I am fine with that! Because it is honest. Where I get going is when people pretend that their religious beliefs are based on reason, when it is quite obvious that they are not.
M: I know. But it is the 'get going' part that I have a problem with. My job is to ask myself what it means to be bothered by the irrationality of others, is it irrational itself. irrational people are dangerous, in my opinion, when they apply faith where reason should function instead. Rob, for example, makes a joke of religion by thinking he can explain it with reason and becomes a poster boy for why one should avoid it by evidencing dysfunctional thinking.
I used to argue religion, like a fool, with an old man who was the care taker, janitor and gardener of a Catholic church and school and I would see him, on occasion squirting the kids with a garden hose as they would come in. I could see god flowing from his penetrating black eyes and his laughter. He told me his real job was to keep the Priests awake. It's so rare these days to meet somebody who is alive. But any way:
=========
M: Rob thinks that faith is rational and can be explained as a reasonable thing, and we see that this leads to absurdity.
CK: I don't know whom you mean by "we" here, but it's rather obvious that it does not include Rob himself.
M: Obviously, but his personal thinking that what he calls reason isn't, changes nothing regarding his base supposition that God exists. He just lacks the kind of faith that dispenses with reason in that field of endeavor.
==========
M: The answer is obvious. In the stories of Christ in the Bible you can feel pure love. In the stories of Zeus you can feel P & N.
CK: I don't know if that's true or not. But even if it is, that just makes it a good story.
M: As I said, a good story saved my life. As I have said, God is a transformation of vision, the end of thought, fear, doubt, and sin. It is the awakening of man to his true nature. But love is a word. The experience of love ends all words.
I believe there is a science of religion that is inward that is based on experiment and validation, the science of states and that there are schools that teach it, that what we call religion are schools that have ceased to function, that were created for a time and a place, that carry on mechanically with little inner vision, but which still bring many to the light. The Christian religion is full of deep psychological insights that can register with folk who are insightful. Whether the time for religions as we know them to exit the scene is a question I often grapple with. But I don't presume to know the answer.
I rejected my Christian upbringing, what little of it I had, and that left me existentially empty. Zen was what helped me to resolve that. No God in that. Only an experience that some folk had when hit on the head with a cane. Then there is psychoanalysis that speaks of the unconscious and motivations that lie there, and Sufism that speaks of the commanding self, the dominant concealed prejudice that creates our mental prison. All of these techniques point in the same direction, that knowledge is unlearning, that the job is the escape from unconscious prejudice, the assumption that we know something and that it is truth. All of this illusory belief is created by the ego, a defense mechanism we developed to survive our childhood where God was destroyed and replaced by a machine. This can only be known by remembering, but there are many bridges that have been created to transcend the past, to step over what happened in childhood and go straight to realization. And it happens by grace all the time.
My mind tells me there is nothing, but my heart tells me there is love. And my body prefers bananas over apples for some reason. Oh my Beloved, said Mulla Nasrudin, everywhere I look it appears to be Thou. I think the apple of reason and knowledge is what you pay to enter the Garden, your original sin, the assumption that words and ideas and their emotional associations are real things. One can fill the tea cup of love only when it is empty.
CK: That's true, I can't prove it. But that's only true if we take it to a nihilistic level where we can't prove anything that is related to the mind or to positions.
M: But how is that different than what you are asking him to do, to prove that something he knows is real that is related to the mind or to positions. Why do you get to plea nihilism and not he? For each of you, the foundation of your thinking is fundamental, reason admits no bias, god exists.
CK: But again here, Rob made the positive assertion, that my views on religion are a specific result of experiences in my childhood. He's provided no evidence to support this whatsoever.
M: And he can't anymore than you can disprove that God exists. It could be that my doubt in God just got shifted over to my Atheism, but I seem to have a need to pass the nihilism test. All that happens to me when I think on these things is the ending of thought in peace. I stop swimming for the island because it was the ocean that was my real goal.
CK: Worse, even his premises are false. I don't "hate God" or whatever; that's just a defense mechanism so he doesn't have to address the issues.
M: He is describing what he a defense mechanism he thinks you have just as you are describing now one that he thinks you have. As a nihilist, I can't prove the difference, but I have no need of certainty.
==============
M: Both you and he believe you are right, he about his god and you about your lack of bias, the purity of your reason.
CK: The difference is that I have laid out entirely rational bases for my views, and he has not. As I said before, even if his false claims were true, they have no impact on the validity or invalidity of my reasoning. Even if I go to bed every night screaming "I HATE GOD!" a hundred times, that doesn't change the fact that there is no real evidence for the existence of deities, nor the fact that the New Testament was written by a bunch of people who never knew Jesus, and whose stories are mutually contradictory.
M: I charged you with belief in the purity of reason and you affirm the purity of your reason, hehe. I have no problem with your reasoning, you reason soundly, in my opinion. I have a problem with the value of reason when it comes to knowing God. In my opinion, my own reasoning led me to the conclusion that reasoning was empty of love and could know nothing, that it was a prison I built for myself. I reached the end of reason and found a strawberry growing on a cliff. I hope you know that story. It was a nice story like the one about Jesus that just happened to save my life. I believe the fictional Christ has done the same for others. I killed my reason with reason, but others do it with faith. Sadly, some forget that reason is great in some spheres.
=========
M: "People say they will believe it when they see it, but I say people see only what they believe." So I believe Rob sees God because he believes and you don't because you don't believe and that's it, end of story.
CK: That's nonsense. I could use the same "reasoning" to "prove" that anything nonexistent actually does exist.
M: And you are, just as Rob is. He believes in God so he sees Him. You don't believe in a God that doesn't exist and you see he doesn't exist. So all this seeing of a God that doesn't exist and not seeing that same God is the result of an inability to see who God really is, a state of consciousness into which one can awaken and out of which God's love flows.
The way of the Christian is the way of devotion, the way of the heart, where the intention is to love God with all of your heart. People fall in love with the Bible or this or that Christian sect, they worship the bridge, the words, the text, but forget to remove the beam in their eye which keeps them from loving. But the way of the Christian is a valid way to God for those who cease to exist in their love for Him. That is why even though I can't worship, I respect and admire all who do. God is a mirror and all the love you give Him you get back.
=================
M: I like to think that faith is a means of believing what reason says makes no sense. Faith is a feeling that can't be affected by reason.
CK: And as I've said, I am fine with that! Because it is honest. Where I get going is when people pretend that their religious beliefs are based on reason, when it is quite obvious that they are not.
M: I know. But it is the 'get going' part that I have a problem with. My job is to ask myself what it means to be bothered by the irrationality of others, is it irrational itself. irrational people are dangerous, in my opinion, when they apply faith where reason should function instead. Rob, for example, makes a joke of religion by thinking he can explain it with reason and becomes a poster boy for why one should avoid it by evidencing dysfunctional thinking.
I used to argue religion, like a fool, with an old man who was the care taker, janitor and gardener of a Catholic church and school and I would see him, on occasion squirting the kids with a garden hose as they would come in. I could see god flowing from his penetrating black eyes and his laughter. He told me his real job was to keep the Priests awake. It's so rare these days to meet somebody who is alive. But any way:
=========
M: Rob thinks that faith is rational and can be explained as a reasonable thing, and we see that this leads to absurdity.
CK: I don't know whom you mean by "we" here, but it's rather obvious that it does not include Rob himself.
M: Obviously, but his personal thinking that what he calls reason isn't, changes nothing regarding his base supposition that God exists. He just lacks the kind of faith that dispenses with reason in that field of endeavor.
==========
M: The answer is obvious. In the stories of Christ in the Bible you can feel pure love. In the stories of Zeus you can feel P & N.
CK: I don't know if that's true or not. But even if it is, that just makes it a good story.
M: As I said, a good story saved my life. As I have said, God is a transformation of vision, the end of thought, fear, doubt, and sin. It is the awakening of man to his true nature. But love is a word. The experience of love ends all words.
I believe there is a science of religion that is inward that is based on experiment and validation, the science of states and that there are schools that teach it, that what we call religion are schools that have ceased to function, that were created for a time and a place, that carry on mechanically with little inner vision, but which still bring many to the light. The Christian religion is full of deep psychological insights that can register with folk who are insightful. Whether the time for religions as we know them to exit the scene is a question I often grapple with. But I don't presume to know the answer.
I rejected my Christian upbringing, what little of it I had, and that left me existentially empty. Zen was what helped me to resolve that. No God in that. Only an experience that some folk had when hit on the head with a cane. Then there is psychoanalysis that speaks of the unconscious and motivations that lie there, and Sufism that speaks of the commanding self, the dominant concealed prejudice that creates our mental prison. All of these techniques point in the same direction, that knowledge is unlearning, that the job is the escape from unconscious prejudice, the assumption that we know something and that it is truth. All of this illusory belief is created by the ego, a defense mechanism we developed to survive our childhood where God was destroyed and replaced by a machine. This can only be known by remembering, but there are many bridges that have been created to transcend the past, to step over what happened in childhood and go straight to realization. And it happens by grace all the time.
My mind tells me there is nothing, but my heart tells me there is love. And my body prefers bananas over apples for some reason. Oh my Beloved, said Mulla Nasrudin, everywhere I look it appears to be Thou. I think the apple of reason and knowledge is what you pay to enter the Garden, your original sin, the assumption that words and ideas and their emotional associations are real things. One can fill the tea cup of love only when it is empty.
