Is anyone else an atheist with BC besides me?
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I would love it if people did good for its own sake, nothing more but unfortunately we rarely see that kindness from anyone these days, regardless of religion. Or perhaps I’ve witnessed far too much hypocrisy and selfishness on this planet.
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fiddleman philly!!! Whassup??!!
I love what you wrote and I love thinking about the line between physics and other worldly realms that can be tapped into. Some people use psychedelics to achieve this place, but as a wise teacher of mine explained: when we use substances to “see over the wall,” it is like riding a rocket 🚀 that shoots up at an increíble velocity, allowing us to glimpse over that wall just for a fleeting moment, and then the ride back down can result in a serious crash and burn that ultimately, is detrimental to our heart Qi. (This was one of my Chinese medicines teachers clearly).
I loved that analogy and as one who has experimented with psychedelics when I was much younger, and then experimented with hours of meditation later on in life, I really understand what he meant by that.
Every time I meditate, I remember why meditation is so phenomenal. I need to do it more often!!
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wouldn't laying laurels at the feet(a pat on the head) of nonbelievers for the good and kindness they do cause that person to feel affirmed in their actions and be an encouragement , subconsciously, to continue to engage in those behaviors? Wouldn't it preserve the purity of the act and the person's true intentions by not to recognizing the act so as not to fall into the Christian thinkin of acknowledgement by any being whether real or mythical?
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I agree with you on that, JoE777. Kindness for kindness' sake only. But the reality is that even though we're atheists, we're still only human 😉 And humans thrive on affirmation.
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ananda8.
Thank you for your comments and I"m glad you appreciate what I was trying to share. I did read that book a few years ago and forgot that it might be applicable. Guess I need to reread it. Another formative source for my current thought was the 1975 book, The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. I've not yet taken up meditation, but I get a real sense of connection and centering when I do Tai-Chi and Chi-Gong. I'd love to experience that transcendence sometime. However there have been rare times, mostly when listening to music while driving through mountainous country on a beautiful day, when I experience pure joy. I don't know where it comes from nor do I care. I view it as a gift from the universe that inspires and keeps me going. And I am grateful.
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Hey "phillygal" .
Glad to hear from you again and glad you liked my thoughts. I frequently use writing as a way to help me clarify them and it's validating that people may find them interesting. Never did the "Timothy Leary" thing, and never really enjoyed what grass did to my brain, so drug of choice was beer, which never got anywhere near clarifying my view of "reality". I like the analogy though. I can just picture it ! Did you take any formal training in meditation practice? Is it possible to truly experience its effects without a teacher? Don't really know much about it except peripherally. Tai-Chi and Chi-Gong help me focus, but I'm ready to explore a little more depth. Hope all's well on Rittenhouse Square (I think that's where you live?) and Billy Penn still has his hat.
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Fiddleman, Hope you don't mind me answering your question based on my experience, but yes, one can experience jhana without having a teacher for meditation. I never had a teacher. If I practiced more, I would most likely be able to repeat the experience. The key is concentration and it takes a focused mind. I want to make it clear that this is not a spiritual experience in the sense that it is out there. What happens is happening in the brain itself. Here is an article on meditation's affect on the brain. It's from the National Institute of Health/PubMed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944261/
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I think that satori feeling is basically a flash of the pre-verbal wellbeing such as a baby might feel when warm, held, and safe. No words, no reasons, just a sense of things being beautiful and good. And I think many people did not get enough of this as babies and so they struggle to be mentally quiet and struggle to have a set point of wellbeing.
My meditation teacher was seriously traumatized as a baby and for her, it was lifesaving to learn the skill of calming her mind. I have basically always had a calm mind but I credit my anthropologist mom who cared for me in a very primal and compassionate way when I was small.
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I have to catch up on my reading. I agree with the above statement that we are only human. When I do something kind such as sending my nephew's and niece's checks for their birthdays or holidays I appreciate an acknowledgement. Part of it I believe it's good manners and the other part is an affirmation that the gesture is appreciated. I don't always need it but there are times I do. We are complex creatures.
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Human organizations can show altruism as well. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/nyregion/city-prosecutor-using-millions-seized-from-banks-for-rape-kit-testing.html
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ananda-yea.
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I have not read much in philosophy or religion, but two I enjoyed were: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelh, and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
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BGRS -- great username!!
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I have read "Ishmael". I enjoy books which challenge my beliefs and encourages me to venture outside my comfort zone. I have not read Alchemist. There are so many books I want to read.
Love the BGRS username. I wish I was more creative.
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Ananda8
I absolutely do not mind your input and thanks for the reference. I'm pretty well convinced of the neurologal basis for what we experience, both through the inner perception of reality as well as outer. After all, all living things appear, biologically speaking, as coordinated conglomerations of unbelievably complex chemical reactions, packaged in structures that maintain their continuation (homeostasis) in the environment to which they have adapted.
When I was a devout R.C., I used to balk at the quotes like, "...there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II Scene 2) and "Man is the measure of all things...." (Protagarous, Refutations). I thought them pompous, hubristic and heretical. How dare mere humans to deny an external "God of Power" beyond human comprehension?
My current thinking is that they express a deeper "truth", i.e. since everyone thinks differently, everyone's reality is different. I still think that an unknowable power exists (e.g. dark matter and dark energy). After all we perceive it through our senses, which are, by definition, limited. But that power is not separate from us, but flows through all the universe, us included. Quieting the mind blocks the filter of "thought" and allows us to perceive something described over the millennia as transcendent. Perhaps it is exactly like the state Santabarbarian describes above as that of a baby's bliss. Perhaps we're all looking for a glimpse of what we were, before "We" were "we" and what "we" may ultimately become.
Now, re the other raging topic, the underlying basis for altruism, my 2 cents worth, and for what that's worth in today's market, is "Always welcome. Never expected."
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I just ran across this. It sums up some of the comments on this thread.
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This is my siggy on one of my email acts. A sister here was using it.
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spookiesmom-That's funny.
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funny?
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Spookiesmom-I found it amusing. Because I don't believe in heaven or hell. My belief is if you don't believe in heaven then how can one believe in hell? On my phone under the quote from the Lakota Nation there was a blank page. Did I miss something? I confess I've already been celebrating pre Saint Patrick's Day with friends who are helping me do prep work for a party tomorrow.
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Lots of movement in religions. Many are leaving formal religious groups. http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/chapter-2-religious-switching-and-intermarriage/#net-gains-and-losses-by-religious-tradition-unaffiliated-make-big-gains-catholics-suffer-major-losses
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Ananda...the Pew study from 2015 has some interesting data, at least interesting to me. Evangelicals have increased and I'm thinking it is in relation to their opposition to gay rights and women's rights. Millennials are now well over 30% unaffiliated. I just discovered that one young (15yr old) that I know was told by parents that until you turn 18 you are Catholic, then you can decide.
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Someone asked on Quora, how someone could not believe in god when billions of people do. This was the answer.
“Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And who of Huitzilopochtli? In one year - and it is no more than five hundred years ago - 50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried out with the sun.
When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human blood. But today Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of Richmond P. Hobson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey.
Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother Tezcatlipoca. Tezcatlipoca was almost as powerful; he consumed 25,000 virgins a year.
Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a couronne des perles. But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quetzalcoatl is? Or Xiuhtecuhtli? Or Centeotl, that sweet one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Of Mictlan? Or Xipe? Or all the host of Tzitzimitl? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of Hell do they await their resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, whom Caesar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Of that of Tarves, the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or that of Mullo, the celestial jackass? There was a time when the Irish revered all these gods, but today even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them.But they have company in oblivion: the Hell of dead gods is as crowded
as the Presbyterian Hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and
Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsullata, and Deva, and
Bellisima, and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in their day, worshipped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to bind and loose - all gods of the first class. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them - temples with stones as large as hay-wagons.The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests,
What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley? What has become of:
bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake.
Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels; villages were burned, women and children butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and today there is none so poor to do them reverence.
Resheph
Anath
Ashtoreth
El
Nergal
Nebo
Ninib
Melek
Ahijah
Isis
Ptah
Anubis
Baal
Astarte
Hadad
Addu
Shalem
Dagon?All there were gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, five or six thousand years ago, with Yahweh Himself; the worst of them stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and with them the following:
Bilé
Ler
Arianrhod
Morrigu
Govannon
Gunfled
Sokk-mimi
Nemetona
Dagda
Robigus
Pluto
Ops
Meditrina
VestaYou may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: You will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignity-gods of civilized peoples-worshiped and believed in by millions. All were omnipotent, omniscient and immortal.
And all are dead.”
― H.L. Mencken,0 -
Hello. I wanted to share my experience today with my new PCP. He is an orthodox Jew, extremely intelligent and a jokester. During his assessment he asked me what my religious beliefs are and I informed him none. He stopped what he was doing, looked at me and quietly said "dealing with cancer must be especially hard for you if you don't believe in a higher power". I smiled and informed him I did believe. I believe in science and medicine and surrounding myself with nature. He smiled at me and we moved on. Other than that particular issue, I found him to be extremely knowledgeable about breast cancer and treatments involved.
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jo6359 Thanks for sharing that anecdote. Nicely put, your explanation of your beliefs.
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Jo...in all my years of living I have never had a provider ask me about religious/higher power beliefs. I do like your answer, not confrontational, but very explanatory.
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This is the second time in 8 months. Prior to that I've never been asked about religion by a healthcare provider other then the standard question "do you have a religious preference "or what is your religion?" Every time I registered for new procedure I was asked about religious preferences. This included surgery , chemo and radiation . It was only during radiation registration when a person took offense at my answer. When she asked about my religious preference and I stated " none" she could not hold back her anger. She let me know in no uncertain terms she believed my cancer could be related to my lack of faith. I informed her she should be very careful in forcing her beliefs and passing judgement onto patients. I also told her they were plenty of people who have very strong religious beliefs and still end up with cancer. Cancer does not discriminate. I also informed her if she didn't complete my registration I was going to report her to a supervisor. I worked at a Catholic Hospital for 10 years and never had any issues with religion.
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I am shocked. I may be challenged, but I cannot imagine anyone in Canada being asked by a health care provider about their spiritual/religious beliefs. In fact, there are laws against that. Your response was perfect, but so unnecessary. If asked in Canada, it would only be about providing appropriate supports. I am so impressed about your ability to think so quickly on your feet. I would have been speechless
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👍👍
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jo6359 your reply was so spot-on, and as TB90 noticed, oh my, to think on your feet like that!!!
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