What distinguishes a 'coping mechanism' is that it is not a cure. Like I said, in N_R's case I see Christianity as taking him off the path disguised as giving him what he's looking for, even though he has found it beneficial in the short term. Christians may think Christianity is giving them what they are looking for but it's not, based on my view that we are all looking for the same thing and there is only one path which is not found in any current religion. You know, what Jesus talked about.

What is the "disease" (or whatever you want to call it) that needs curing? Specifically, you said:

When life is "too hard" and someone gets through it, what do you think is needing to be "cured"?

What is "the same thing" that everyone is looking for?

My problem with understanding you at this point is that you're clearly using a lot of loaded language, and I don't think that the meaning that is loaded into your language is consistent with the ideas you're conveying.

I'm surprised you are asking me that when I've seen you talk so much about Total Depravity.

What I believe about things has no bearing on what you believe about things. You're constructing statements "based on [your] view" and I'm asking you to flesh it out.

Oh yeah that's fine. A lot of times I assume people remember stuff I've already posted. My belief is that 'enlightenment' or 'heaven' is accessible to us in this lifetime, not after we die. All this spiritual development stuff is not something I talk about for fun but is something I have pursued seriously for a long time.

There are many Christians who believe that religion is supposed to be transformative in this life as well and who pursue it seriously. So I'm not sure this distinguishes your view from theirs or necessarily even from N_R

There is a specific process that you have to undergo to go through this transformation. If the mind is a body of water, you have to swim to the very bottom to find the treasure. It's not just a side effect of leading a religious life or anything like that.

I'm sure that the specifics of the process you have in mind may differ from any specific Christian methodology, but you would be wrong to assume that in the Christian tradition a spiritual life is only a matter of ethics, or the keeping of rituals and sacraments, or assent to a particular doctrine. That is the main point I wanted to make.

Within the broad scope of Christian tradition there are very much contemplative and introspective approaches to a spiritual life, especially within various monastic traditions. The language I've seen you use in reference to your personal journey has not seemed that dissimilar to the language these Christians use, although I'm not sure I've seen you post very specifically about it. But if you speak about interiority and self-knowledge then those topics are not unknown in Christianity.

I agree with this, I think it was my original point.

But this is not what I had in mind. I'm not suggesting we widen the definition of rationality to violate the principle of non-contradiction. I'm not suggesting that there is a P and ~P where each are true and may be rationally held to be true together, I think that would destroy the definition of rationality.

It's more that there are parts of reality which are not reducible to the kinds of univocal concepts which would make such a rational calculus possible. I'm not suggesting we abandon the rational intellect or ignore rational evidence. I'm suggesting that the limitations thereof are such that the claim that "believers are irrational" can miss the point, even though sometimes believers are in fact irrational.

Also I agree with this, just to be clear.

I'm just acknowledging that I read your response. Well named has picked up the conversation in precisely the direction I was heading, so I don't have anything to add other than to point out that my questions remains unanswered:

The point of my analogy was that the knowledge of God in the experience is the same as the knowledge of pain. It doesn't matter if you have not experienced pain, as soon as you touch the stove you understand pain, just like when God speaks to you, you understand it is God.

This is accurate.

Maybe, it's just from what I've read of the New Testament it has been pretty much compromised IMO. I have no interest in the OT. The Gospel of Thomas paints the most accurate picture of who I believe Jesus was and his real teaching. Regardless, I don't think I could've made much sense of any of it if I hadn't had certain experiences and become aware of certain things. I guess if you use Christianity as a supplement to your practice I could see it working as long as you don't stop seeking.

Btw, I have posted about some of the process already but there was no interest so I stopped. I don't think it would be productive for me to talk about it anyway. The message I've tried to get across is that even though the pursuit is very difficult, it is worth doing.

Aaron my answer to your question is salvation from suffering. Isn't that what is behind all religious and spiritual practice? The problem of evil and Total Depravity.

No. Buddhism is explicitly about salvation from suffering.

The problem of evil is a logical one, and does not in any way relieve someone from suffering.

The concept of total depravity is a theological concept which points to a type of problem, but that problem is not really suffering per se. The problem of sin is not that man suffers (though suffering is a consequence of sin), the problem of sin is about the gap between man's nature and God's nature.

This transformation does all of that. It heals the mind and silences the ego. It is a cure for all mental and chronic illness. I assume it brings a quality of life and level of awareness that we didn't know was possible. It's when "two become one".

The problem of sin is not permanent but the product of a survival mechanism that has been continuously added to and been passed down from generation to generation. Ego arises from this mechanism.

"This" is an unreferenced pronoun.

"It" is also an unreferenced pronoun.

Interesting assumption.

That doesn't mean anything to me in this context.

Okay. Thank you for sharing your conception of sin. You will hopefully admit that this conception of sin is different than the one that is classically used with regards to total depravity and the problem of evil.

Yes, fine Aaron. I know I'm being vague and unclear. You keep wanting to point that out, but that doesn't mean I can't get my point across which was to say that religion sidetracks people and that truth is found within.

I think that two rational beliefs can be contradictory. I think it would be irrational to for one person to accept both of them at once, but it might be within the grounds of rationality for different people to accept them.

To add to this, I'd like to note that even if I were rationalizing this, or simply imposing my pre-existing idea of God into this experience, (as most people here believe) that it is still beyond my ability to discern and correct this. The drive is too strong and convincing for me to believe it is anything else but God, which is why I analogize it to pain, because everyone recognizes that pain cannot be ignored and dismissed.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that it is God, but even in the case where I am wrong, it is irrelevant to how I live my life, no different than solipsism does not cause someone to ignore their perceived reality.

Whatever the type of pain you're feeling, it's not an external entity acting on you, so I just don't think 'how do you know you feel pain' and 'how do you know jesus is active in your life' are comparable in the way you want them to be NR. It's a false analogy, the two things are not similar. Furthermore, pain only exists in our minds and sometimes our minds trick us into feeling pain for no apparent reason, so all that comparing a belief in god to pain achieves for me is to make me want to ask you if it's possible that your 'feeling' is just your mind is playing tricks on you.

So, how do you know that what you feel is god, an external effect, and not some type of self delusion? And not just any god, but (coincidentally) the exact one described in the Christian version of events? There are other, quite plausible explanations for why you believe in the Christian god, other than that he actually exists. It's not as if you grew up in isolation with no possible way to know the biblical stories and then had knowledge of exactly what the bible contains is it, that would be tricky to explain

You don't seem to have a reason for believing what you do beyond this inexplicable feeling, and if that is all you have to justify your belief then I really struggle to understand how you can be convinced by that to the level of certainty that you seem to hold. If you asked me to explain why I believed something, I could, no matter good or bad my reasons were, I could offer some or at least one. If I couldn't explain why I believed something to someone, I would start to wonder myself why I believed it and I would never rely on something equivalent to 'I know it in my heart of hearts'.

This can't be true.

Why do you think this?

If I live my life according to some beliefs how is the truth value of the belief important?

No, you do not understand pain the first time you touch a stove. You experience a certain set of sensations, which you learn, over time, to label pain. Similarly, when you experience what you call god, you are just experiencing a blank set of sensations, which you have learned to label god. And what I am asking ( again) is why that particular set of sensations ( which probably differ each time anyway) is getting labelled god? What is it about those sensations that require that label? Without thoughts about those sensations, they would not get labelled god.

What I am suggesting is that there is automatic, subtle and most likely unnoticed interpretation of the basic experience.

In both cases, there is knowledge of the sensations that make up the experience, yes ( where by knowledge I mean an awareness of the sensations), but in neither case do the sensations arrive with a little sign saying "pain" or "god". That gets done after the fact, in thought. So when growing up, we learn to label a certain set of sensations "pain", and put it in the "bad" category of sensations. How did you learn to put the other set of sensations in the "god" category?

Perhaps in a black an white world it's not 'important' in the strictest sense of the consequences, the results would be the same, but that's not how I interpreted 'irrelevant to how I live my life', I'm not being that pedantic and I really hope you're not either. I doubt that NR, or anyone else in this conversation, has complete and unthinking conviction and certainty in the truth of their beliefs and assuming even the slightest level of self awareness and reflection then the right or wrongness of a belief system surely can't be irrelevant to how one lives a life?

If NR meant that his beliefs could be wrong and as long as he remains completely unaware of that or has no reason to doubt them, that it wouldn't change anything about how he lives, then I wouldn't dispute that, but is that the actual situation? I struggle to believe that it is. NR agrees that the bible is clear on homosexuality being a sin, but how far would he take that before he'd question his own conviction to it? Presumably, Westboro types, or the US workers currently refusing to server homosexuals have that level of conviction and certainty and are able to live in a manner that is unapologetically in accordance with that, but despite agreeing that homosexuality is a sin, could NR? At what point does a perfectly reasonable level of doubt in your own values inhibit the manner in which they influence how you live your life?

I'm not being pedantic, at least not intentionally, but my understanding of N_R is that he believes this experience is God but it not being would be irrelevant to how he lives his life.

I'm not sure I believe him but I think it can be true.