You made a claim and didn't provide examples to backup your claim. It really makes me wonder how much of Scripture you have read.

There is no reconciliation.

There is no such thing as separation. Only the mind makes it so.

There is no such thing as separation, but there is consequences to actions--to include the infliction of pain and suffering onto another conscious being.

I’ve read enough to comprehend that it’s a bunch of fabricated bullshit, anyone with grade level reasoning should be able to see it

The Bible is full of contradictions

https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/biblical-contradictions/


“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It is a great teaching that people should absolutely follow, but it directly contradicts most of the lessons in the Bible. It is used to pretend that the Bible is a book about a loving God and a moral guide when it is the opposite.

It should have been written as “Thou shalt love thy neighbour except when they are:”

homosexual - Bible says to kill them.
non-believers - Bible says to kill them.
blasphemers - Bible says to kill them.
women who have been raped - Bible says to kill them.
disobedient children - Bible says to kill them.
unwed women without their hymen - Bible says to kill them.
adulterers - Bible says to kill them.
witches (aka unwed women over a certain age) - Bible says to kill them.
fortune-tellers - Bible says to kill them.
anyone who works on the Sabbath - Bible says to kill them.”

This post was edited by crosspawz on May 28 2024 05:00am

I never said that and I don't think that.



I don't recall attempting to bully you, but okay. Yes, I've taken a stance of disagreement against some of the things you have said.




I agree, god isn't responsible for the destruction of what you call the web of life.

I think that god is a dreamt up fantasy, but that doesn't mean that I think god is responsible for anything. Man is responsible for dreaming up god, if anything.

What are these consequences if they are truly only experienced in the mind and the mind is an illusion?

This is the dilemma of advaita/non-advaita dualism/non-dualism where you think because you were given a "name" / "body" at birth that you MUST ACT. No where does it say you must "do something". It is society that tells you, "Go out and do good in the world!" What does that immediately imply through mutual interdependence? "You will also go and do BAD in the world".

A being that knows God knows that GOD ALONE ACTS(You are God!) and all beings/things living/non-living are merely instruments of the "Atman" or "Brahman" in Hinduism.

While Atman is the individual Self, Brahman is the Ultimate Reality, the Supreme Being of God. Brahman is the divine essence of the universe, while Atman is the essence that lives in all matter such as humans, animals, and nature.

This is the same as the alchemical concept, "As above so below nothing is new under the sun"

Ancient Egyptians called it the "ka" and "Ba" aka "little god" and "big god".

When the Egyptians/Hindus/Buddhist talked about reincarnation NONE of them talked about what "Westerns assume"..."Oh when you die you come back as a butterfly" or some silly shit like that.

NO! When you die your "ego/body" "ka" "individual self" ceases to exist but the CONSCIOUNESS that you experiences your entire life goes ON and ON and ON through ALL THINGS because like I said you are not separate from creation itself. There is an "end" to life in the body but the universe/existence itself cannot be destroyed and I know we've argued about this in the past but consciousness existed in SOME FORM in the BEGGINING(big bang or biblical genesis).



Yes precisely. God is a dreamt up fantasy(an image you build in your mind that's not real). Some are given an image(Christ/Yahweh/Allah/Ramakrishna/10 million other gods/avatars/teachers) most today don't have an image because they think it's silly and trivial and they are right.

This is also why "God" is useful and to BILLIONS give them purpose/reason/meaning in life. After studying Eastern philosophy/culture/religion for 10 years and having been raised in a Western Abrahmic faith(Catholic) up until that point you see the stark difference in the two. Right from the get-go of any Eastern philosophy they say, "You are God" and if you don't get it here are the scriptures/yoga/methods to come to know that(pick one/pick any/pick many). Right from the get-go in any Western philosophy they say, "You are not God and could never be God" and here are the reasons/stories why that is true.

&&& so Swami Vivekananda who brought the EAST to the WEST and saw this realized that the only way forward was to bridge the two. Use SCIENCE/LOGIC(he was an Atheist in his early life) cut out all the fantastical bullshit and get people who were born in the East and know they are God to DO MORE because when your told from the get-go you are God there is seemingly no purpose/meaning/reason to DO ANYTHING. To even ACT at all to some Buddhist in the East means you are a total idiot because as soon as you know you are existence itself you should be in total bliss. No further action required. Swami Vivekananda saw though how the Abrahamic faiths created meaning/purpose/reason through scripture and more so then anything STRUCTURE.

The philosophy of Vedanta encompasses all religions/sciences and lays out the millions of paths that lead to "realization". This realization is different for all beings but all beings come to it eventually. Knowing God doesn't mean you have "magical powers" it means you finally know yourself. Only when you truly know yourself do you know God.

This is why it's funny to me because of "mutual interdependence" as soon as an atheist says, "There is no God" it is simultaneously suggesting "There can be a God". Vice versa. "There is a God" simultaneously implies "There is no God".

You have to ask/answer all these philosophical questions yourself. No one can do it for you. To quote Vivekananda, "You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, None can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul."

This post was edited by SwamiVivekananda on May 28 2024 10:53am

There are consequences to violence against other conscious beings. Is this not a major tenant of most spiritual practices? I'm nascent in my exploration, but specific to Buddhism, is this not where Karma and Naraka come into play?

This post was edited by Handcuffs on May 28 2024 11:45am

Like I said are those “consequences” REAL or are they merely perceived. If you don’t believe in life after death how do YOU end up “paying for it” here and now? It is not through “karma”. Karma in Sanskrit simply translates as “work”. It is often misinterpreted by Westerners as, “I did something I perceive to be bad so now I’m going to do good things to balance my karma”. This is where language itself becomes a barrier because English is such a shitty watered down language that you are literally FORCED to go look into the origins of language/symbols themselves. You can’t deduce or come to a conclusion any other way. The word/phrase you are talking about is “samcocha”. Samcocha is the “mental pull or tightening of the mind as a result of ego”. To quote Morpheus from the Matrix, “a splinter in your mind”. You feel it when you go to work everyday, when you pay your taxes, etc.” It feels very PHYSICAL but it all takes place in the “mind”. Buddha would often say that is the “suffering”. When you SEE/FEEL others “struggling in their own mind” and you having realized “Self/God/Existence” know what they are experiencing they created themselves and only they can get through it. When Buddha talked about “suffering” it had far more to do with the mental aspect of it because it was COMMON SENSE and agreed upon after farming/agriculture took off that mankind no longer had a reason to commit violence upon anything(living and non). It’s easily confused because in the West people just assume it all has to do with the physical violence that a human can commit against another living thing.

Atheists who say "there is no god" are as annoying and arrogant as the theists who say there is a god.

No one can prove a god does or doesn't exist. On both sides the only reasonable and rational perspective is that there might be or might not be, not that there is or there isn't.

This is the Gettier problem of rationalized true belief. If one believes there is a god, and there turns out to be a god, does that mean that one is justified in believing just because it turns out to be true? I'm not sure, but at best you are guessing that god is real, because you can't know if there is a god, all you can know is that men wrote books where they claimed there is a god.

This post was edited by x_h on May 28 2024 01:33pm

We treat them as real. IE: Child and animal abuse.