And why are you trying to transcend reality instead of just living in it? Where did you get that piece of wisdom? From the witch killers and the stone the non-virgins clan? It is the religious that are the greatest scapegoaters. Your existential dilemma of pain driving people away from truth is cockamamie ... it does just the opposite. That's why you won't hear me with the "If there was a god why is there suffering?" BS argument. And when I point that out as BS, I am immediately accused of being a theist. The whole epistemology of the thing is a joke. It starts with: "There is a supernatural, omniscient and perfectly moral god, but don't expect there to be validation of this, for any of the thousands of gods, because, like we started with, "He's" supernatural and therefore can never be confirmed but we just know "He's" there because we started with that when we needed some reason why there was lightning, or some stupid arsed thing. If you want to escape reality, all the gods serve that purpose.

Desire the good. Realize this unfulfilled desire in each present moment. When you become aware of how difficult it is to maintain this, then the task is to identify what is preventing you from holding the unfulfilled desire. Go back and forth between desiring the good and uncovering what is denying you from doing this. Existential experiences and everything else I talk about follows from here.

If you don’t do the above, then the status quo is all you have. If the status quo is all you want, then you deny your soul.

Only in the eyes of someone presuming god does anyone have to deny "Him" to solve any dilemma. You don't get to just make up starting points like that. Thousands of religions have tried it. Christianity is just one of them. I asked: Is Christianity one of the religions and if it is, what does that imply about it? Apologists sensed danger and said, "No, it isn't a religion." That's pretty hardcore denialism in the service of indoctrination, if you ask me.

A model of reality cannot be reality. Since truth is associated with reality, then the model of reality known as Christianity cannot be true. The Christianity that I reference is not a model of reality but rather that which deconstructs and transcends models of reality.

Probably short attention span.

Let me ask my previous question in this way, instead: why do you presume an existential crisis exists?

Yes I do

Because he's spouting sophistry imagining he's Plato. You rarely see just normal speak out of his mouth ... but he's in love with abstract sophistry pronouncements that fulfill and indulge his vision of himself as The Answer to the human plight. That's really the only thing I can figure. Either he is that -- The Answer -- or he's indulging a deluded self-image that he is ... and I dam sure know which of those is more likely.

Once you let go of the false paradigm of singular identities and acknowledge that we are all one universe coming to consciousness and rejoicing in the ability to recognise itself you will understand that sophistry is really the world marred by self-deception. But then is it not true that we are changed by dishonesty? Is the universe then not altered by our thoughts? What then, do we say if our sophistry becomes truth? It is we, who are not we but one, who's perception determines reality. Sophistry is merely another truism.

It is kind of fun.

Reminded me of a line (at 8:32) from Tim Minchin's song "Thank you God":

**** me, Sam, what are the odds
That in history's endless parade of gods
that the god you just happen to be taught to believe in
is the actual one, and he digs on healing?




(The song begins at 5:27)

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a repeating pattern. Anyone who frequents a forum like this has been through the entire cycle at least once (likely only once). However, awareness of the pattern is going to be mostly on the periphery of conscious awareness (or beyond in the unconscious) since the first cycle through this pattern is at a low level of conscious awareness.

Here is a simple way to describe the pattern:
1. Belief in the transcendent good / paradise
2. Realizing that the entity occupying the God position is failing / is not God.
3. Given that paradise and God are two sides of the same coin, and holding to #1, realizing that I need to make claim to the God position (division created between self and God -> thesis and antithesis + elevation of self)
4. Into the wilderness -> famine, adversity
5. Recognizing personal failure and reconciling with God (lowering of self + synthesis)

I would say that the vast majority of people, theists and non, are stuck after going through the cycle once. They are stuck because defense mechanisms have formed as a result of the first time though the cycle.

The theist will pay lip service to #1 but will use the truth of the synthesis in #5 in order to deny #2. When #2 is denied, then ultimately #1 is denied. Or they will point to the truth of personal failure in #5 to deny the responsibility of claiming the God position in #3.

The atheist will get to the truth of #2 but then will take that truth to negate #1 using the truth that God and paradise are related. Or they may even get to #4, but they will use #2 to prevent the final step to #5.

Everyone has truth on their side, but when those truths are used to block a higher truth, which is to complete the cycle, then from a higher perspective, truth is not actually on their side. What is the solution? More #1 is always the solution.

If it's a magical tale appealing to magical thinking ("just never mind the way reality works the rest of the time") about origins and creators and morality, it's one of the religions. Belief in such things relies cunningly on tribalism, indoctrination, peer pressure, etc. It's a good formula to gain adherents. This must be conceded about religion and somehow, just somehow, it works for all of them. It has nothing to do with whether it's true, and in fact, given the human propensity for preferring falsehood and fanciful BS, the more popular the religion is the more dubious its veracity. Amen.

How is number one not escapism?? "I imagine, wish for, hope for, it sure would be nice if ... life was a panacea and a paradise." Pure escapism the whole thing is based on. There is no reason to believe that there is such a place, but you can sure wish for it or even make it up. Wish fulfillment, escapism, objecting to reality ... the elixir of religion.

You are talking about pain avoidance. #1 will lead you into danger and pain. Escapism associated with pain avoidance is not truth. Escapism associated with transcendence and aimed at the good is truth.

Well there are different kinds of transcendence, but escapism is escapism and does not lead to truth. It runs from truth. The transcendent impulse is not escapist or irrational necessarily, but as practiced in religion, and by the doctrines, almost always is. Religion is so often a fairy tale.

Not longing to escape our lives but to really experience it is the agenda of a rational spirituality. Thus the escapism and paradise-pining of religion is anti-spiritual. Buddhism is a direct exception to this. You know, where you're not being threatened with being smited by a god, or being tortured by him, or waiting for streets of gold ... but going directly toward experiencing fully and deeply your existence on this earth. Religion provides the Great Fairy Tale, Spirituality is a trip into the full nature of being human.

You had a oneness experience, but it is gone now. A vision that you refuse to let die. Once you pluck your eye out and learn to believe without seeing, then you will be called again.

You've got to be a 20-something punk. If you weren't you would realize, even if you have 80 divinity degrees, that to talk like this constantly is anything but wise, even if it were true, which it rarely seems to be to me. The only thing it accomplishes is inflating your ego. You have no read on me or on the role that religion vs. spirituality plays in human life. So lost in sophistry and abstraction and in being The Answer Man are thee the real world just doesn't get addressed.

The Son of Man separates the chaff from the wheat and throws it into the fire. You are enslaved to the chaff and don’t realize it. What kind of worker aligns himself with the chaff and refuses to do his work for fear of the fire? What kind of worker allows the entire harvest to over ripen because of this weakness?

The good worker believes in the Son of Man because he believes in the place from which he has come from. When the harvest is ripe, the good worker doesn’t hesitate to bring out the sickle and go to work.

Maybe u a troll. Any case, you are simply practicing a religion, nothing more. I used to believe there were sincere and insincere Christians. I don't any more. I've seen enough from the Trump followers, from Huckabee, from Graham, from local preachers, to realize it is just complete insincerity trying to get over on people, mostly themselves. The hell with American principles, the hell with honesty, the hell with decency, the hell with voting rights ... WE ARE THE GOOD SHEEP WITH A PHONY PATRIOTISM WHO MAKE THINGS TRUE BY SIMPLY BELIEVING THEM. THIS MAKES US HIGHLY MORAL. THE ELECTION IS A FRAUD BECAUSE WE WISH TO BELIEVE IT. Like I've said before, it's morality turned on its ear.

Tim is a legit genius.

The impulse to feel gratitude and appreciation is a noble one. Projecting this, along with our anxieties, onto an actual being by personifying it into an imaginary god is a little too fictional. There's a reason fairy tales so often read like religious stories.

"From goo to zoo to woo" ... as in: I believe in magic, I believe that my religion need not pass reality testing that everything else must pass, I believe in superstitious poppycock, I believe understanding the spiritual nature of man is exempt from normal reality or reason because they believed this thousands of years ago and I'm obedient to such things as a sign of my faith and thus my ransomed righteousness, I believe mass killing even of children is an a-okay part of what is holy and loving ...

The goo to zoo part is a lot more defensible than the zoo to woo part. One trusts science; the other runs from it.

Do you believe in God? Written on a bullet yet. Say yes and pull the trigger.

And I will pull the trigger

Did the ancient and ignorant peoples of Samaria, Judea, Galilee really solve the great mysteries of origins of the universe ... or did they just have a bad bluff that they did? One must step outside of the Bible and doctrine to answer this or they are simply demonstrating indoctrination, which is slightly obvious to all but those lost in indoctrination.

Have you seen the movie Inception?