Go to The Reverend Kooka Speaks About Religious Bulls#!t
- Add a comment
- Go to JUST GIVE ME SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN
Re: AardigeAfrikaner, I think I agree with your basic idea
Thanks for the lengthy reply on my comments. If you have ever tried to stop thoughts from arising in your awareness you would realize that nobody can make your thinking stop and then fill it with their own ideas. It seems as if you think I'm talking about stopping to think about life as an exercise in reasoning and contemplation. That is not what I'm trying to tell you. I'm talking about no thoughts arising in your awareness. In other words, you can remain aware (be fully conscious) without any discursive thinking going on. In the presence of bare awareness (awareness void of discursive content or any other "word" thoughts) there is the possibility of seeing exactly what is right in front of your face without it having to go through the stages of identification and value judgements that arise the moment you try to own and interpret the raw contents of awareness. Whether you run away from it or not, truths such as that no thing lasts forever need not be depressing at all. To the contrary, once you grasp that intuitively instead of simply intellectually, it sets you free to a great many more possibilities than you seem to think I am aware of. Simply being open to anything that may happen does not make you prepared for many of the highly probable scenarios. Your statement; " You have no idea of what you think the afterlife is like" doesn't make sense from a pure reason and logic perspective or any other perspective I know of. How can I have no idea of what I think when I am the one aware of these thoughts in my mind? I think it will be more accurate to say that you have no idea of what I think. Either way, I have enjoyed this discussion. I don't really care who is more prepared for death between the two of us. I have been trying to show you that there is more to life than can be reasoned about and I was hoping you can move beyond dualistic notions and the activities of discursive thinking. Too bad.
posted by
AardigeAfrikaner
on July 8, 2008 at 3:06 AM
| link to this | reply
AardigeAfrikaner, I think I agree with your basic idea
Your comment was little long and hard to follow at points, but I think the basic idea you are getting at is one that I have very often talked about. I know I did not actively decide to be an atheist. It was not a choice for me, it was just what made the most sense and felt right. It did not happen because I was actually thinking about if there was a God or not, but because when the ideas of God were talked about around me, I started to realize they made no sense. At no point did I say 'There is now God, now I need to figure out why'.
However there is still a danger is what you are suggesting and you are wrong about brainwashing. brainwashing is fully about gettign people to stop thinking. They get you to stop thinking and then start to tell you what to think in place of your thoughts. if you are already thinking for yourself, really thinking for yourself, then you are most likely not going to be able to be brainwashed. You should never stop thinking at all, but you should allow your mind to not be focused on only one possibility.
In truth I think what make more sense to say here is to stop thinking in a predetermined pattern. If you go into a subject, already thinking that one solution has to be the only solution, then you are limiting your freedom which is one of the most fundamental limiting aspects of religious ideas as far as I am concerned. When you allow your mind to be more open and instead of pushing for a predetermined solution, are instead ready for any possibilities, then you have more freedom.
My faith in my family and friends is in something tangible, that I can have direct and undeniable evidence of their influence on me. I am not so pessimistic to dwell on the truth that nothing lasts forever, since that only takes you down a very depressing road. I am positive that I will always have friends and family in my life, since it is very rare for someone to not have fried and family, unless they push others away. Even if those people change, there will still be someone important in my life always, until I die, as long as I put effort into keeping people in my life. I it is choice I have and it is an effort that has proven to be worth giving. I have pure faith in this since I see evidence that this is what will happen all around me. It is not about taking only one possibility into consideration. It is all about looking at the evidence that is right in front of my face and putting my faith there.
As for you last line there, I don't believe you. You have one idea of what you think the afterlife is like. I would bet you are not as ready as you think you are. If there is some form of afterlife that is not what you were expecting, then in some ways you may be less prepared than I am. My beliefs leave it open when it comes to that stage, and be ready to just deal with whatever may come.
posted by
kooka_lives
on July 7, 2008 at 1:40 PM
| link to this | reply
Re: AardigeAfrikaner, Wow, I am really going to have to disagree with you
Concerning my "dark" comment. I did not intend to offend you. I just don't personally place ultimate value in transitory phenomena. However much we care about and love our friends and family, they are never guaranteed to be with us always. So if your primary joy and meaning in life is dependant on something that is not permanent you will loose it eventually, even if only at death. I presume you believe that all awareness just blanks out on physical death? That is only one of many possibilities and if you find it a comforting thought or choose to believe that on the grounds of your own reasoning, good luck. I do not agree with a view that takes only one possibility into consideration and therefore I find it important to train the stream of consciousness to be ready for anything. If the death of this body is not the end of awareness, I'll be ready for it, will you be?
posted by
AardigeAfrikaner
on July 7, 2008 at 3:42 AM
| link to this | reply
Re: AardigeAfrikaner, Wow, I am really going to have to disagree with you
Thinking stupidly is not the same as not thinking. It is exactly because of too much thinking along rigid, well burned, pathways that many people come to idiotic conclusions and it is by entertaining other peoples ideas that they can control you and take your freedom away from you. Nobody who attempts to brainwash someone asks you to stop thinking and then also refrains from saying anything themselves. They keep on feeding you with their preferred set of thoughtpatterns until you internalize them and become convinced that those thoughtpatterns are your own. That is the whole idea behind propaganda and endless sermons on the same slanted ideas. I'm not saying a person should stop thinking at all forever. That would be like going into a coma and would be of little use to anybody. What I was trying to get at is the fact that you cannot decide what you think. I know this sounds totally stupid if you have never watched your own thinking dispationately. Even when you "make a decision, the decision comes about without you having decided beforehand what to decide. I can carry on writing millions of words on this subject, but none of it will get you any closer to seeing what I'm trying to get at here. Watch your own thinking for long enough without getting caught up in the subject matter and you'll see for yourself what I mean.
posted by
AardigeAfrikaner
on July 7, 2008 at 3:29 AM
| link to this | reply
AardigeAfrikaner, Wow, I am really going to have to disagree with you
How do you gain freedom by not thinking? That really seems far fetched. In fact if anything by not thinking you allow yourself to be controlled and allow others to take your freedom from you. There are many people in this would who are able to not think, and the sad part is they all seem to vote conservative and as we have seen over the last two presidential elections, there is a large amount of these people out there who don't think and so are willing to give up their freedoms. If you make choices without thinking about them that does not make you free. By thinking and being able to look at all options openly, you create more freedom for yourself. There is a huge difference between not think and having control over you emotions. If anything, thinking helps one to control their emotions. Seriously, the less intelligent you are the more likely you are to let your emotions control you. I've seen such too many times to think otherwise.
As for our comment about my friends and family, that seems a little dark. Most people I know have always had some friends and family around. I see to reason to ever believe I won't have people like that in my life until I die. My 'comfort zone' has been disturbed many times, but I am always able to adjust and get my life back on track, very often thanks to my friends and family.
posted by
kooka_lives
on July 4, 2008 at 9:51 AM
| link to this | reply
Your view on how your greed is best fed by being good and fair etc is unfortunately not shared by all greedy people. Some of the richest people I personally know are also greedy and they put on a mask of friendliness and goodness that fools many people into helping them with whatever task they have set themselves to further their own gain, but once you see past the mask, they are shallow and have no true friends. Count yourself lucky for the position you find yourself in.
You say you want to be free to have true control over your choices. If you can stop thinking by an act of will for more than a moment, say 2 minutes, and not even the thought "I've stopped thinking" enters your awareness, and you can then start thinking by an act of will and choose specific thoughts to think, I'd say you are free and have true control over you choices. If you can't do this, you are not free at all and you only deceive yourself about your control over your choices. This is the normal human condition, machines following a program beyond their own control and not of their own making. In the same manner, the emotions that arise in you right now are most probably not there by choice and they most certainly contribute to the nature and content of the thoughts that cross your mind right now. This is perhaps the only thing that distinguishes most humans from machines (except the obvious lack of awareness in machines) - driven by emotions and not merely by the laws of physics. From my point of view, this is what religion is about in the context of freedom - mastering the emotions instead of being their slave. I have to wonder how you would cope with reality if your friends and family are no longer there and you can no longer stare out at the vastness and beauty of space. I hope for your sake that you remain in the comfort zone you seem to be in, but I fear that like all else, it will not last.
posted by
AardigeAfrikaner
on July 4, 2008 at 4:54 AM
| link to this | reply