Buddhism has been noticeably excluded.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'meditation, practice' to 'meditation, practice, drawing, hinduism, buddhism' - edited by xxovercastxx

OH, AND I FORGOT. THEY DO NOT PASS AROUND A COLLECTION PLATE BEFORE, AFTER, OR DURING SERVICE. They have a small box for those at the back of the room that they mention once after the session. They actually cater to poorer people. And, they build most of their churches and projects themselves. You won't find a mega church in their ranks--although all their craftsmanship is top of the line.


>> ^hpqp:
I think the Buddhism you like is the philosophy. As for the Jehovah's witnesses, ugh. From what I've gleaned off the interwebs (in only a few minutes, so I could be wrong), they seem to wait for you to grow old and senile, then suck you dry (If I were you I'd keep an eye on my mother). Moreover, people who work their whole lives for the "brotherhood" apparantly get no social security, often work voluntarily for no wages, and are left hanging when they get old.
About their publishing market: http://www.freeminds.org/organization/business/how-the-watchtower-was-financed-pre-1990.html
>> ^Lawdeedaw:
But I will upvote this on one condition hp. Religion is far different than organized religion and "other" religions. Buddhisim (My pref) is nowhere near a money pit. I doubt Hinduism is either. Amish? Jehovah's Witnesses? (My mother's prefs and damn close to a loving fellowship. They are pretty meek believe it or not.)
Change the title a bit to reflect that and I will hit that blue arrow faster than you can say "Rich on pastor."
Ps.
I don't believe anyone should have tax deductions...not since money can be "funneled" around.

Jehovah's Witnesses are rather nice. Growing up, when I was dragged along by my mother to 100 different sects, all but one repulsed me. And that was the Witnesses.

The problem for them is that they have no allies whatsoever. They preach true love (Even to their enemies) and staying away from government because it is all corrupt (They even prohibit voting.) So other Christians hate them and make fun of them (And spread lies on the internet about them.)

They don't do holidays or other "fun" stuff. So most common people disdain them.

They are very serious about their religion. Which means non-believers disdain them as cultish.

More things they do/don't believe.

They do believe that the woman is a guidance for her husband and that the husband is head of the house. He should respect, lead, treasure and provide for his wife. They do believe in loving everyone. They take back members as many times as that member shows effort to live a wholesome life. But they won't tolerate drugs, violence, etc... They do believe homosexuality is a sin (Which is about the only thing they are truly ignorant on.)

They don't believe God will burn you in hellfire, or that you are too far to save. They don't promote backstabbing, loose morals or lies (How uncool is that?) They don't yell and speak in tongues, jump around or poke dolls.

In many ways they are a very good religions group hpqp, from those I met. They saved my mother's life when she should have been dead years ago from suffering. They gave her hope. And the fact that they are mocked actually makes me mad. It seems the truer you are to "Christ" the less respected you become. Ironic.

And yes, they are mostly elderly folk. However, a large number are youthful, powerful builds that are carpenters, artisians, etc. And their younger women are very attractive too.

>> ^hpqp:
I think the Buddhism you like is the philosophy. As for the Jehovah's witnesses, ugh. From what I've gleaned off the interwebs (in only a few minutes, so I could be wrong), they seem to wait for you to grow old and senile, then suck you dry (If I were you I'd keep an eye on my mother). Moreover, people who work their whole lives for the "brotherhood" apparantly get no social security, often work voluntarily for no wages, and are left hanging when they get old.
About their publishing market: http://www.freeminds.org/organization/business/how-the-watchtower-was-financed-pre-1990.html
>> ^Lawdeedaw:
But I will upvote this on one condition hp. Religion is far different than organized religion and "other" religions. Buddhisim (My pref) is nowhere near a money pit. I doubt Hinduism is either. Amish? Jehovah's Witnesses? (My mother's prefs and damn close to a loving fellowship. They are pretty meek believe it or not.)
Change the title a bit to reflect that and I will hit that blue arrow faster than you can say "Rich on pastor."
Ps.
I don't believe anyone should have tax deductions...not since money can be "funneled" around.

I think the Buddhism you like is the philosophy. As for the Jehovah's witnesses, ugh. From what I've gleaned off the interwebs (in only a few minutes, so I could be wrong), they seem to wait for you to grow old and senile, then suck you dry (If I were you I'd keep an eye on my mother). Moreover, people who work their whole lives for the "brotherhood" apparantly get no social security, often work voluntarily for no wages, and are left hanging when they get old.

About their publishing market: http://www.freeminds.org/organization/business/how-the-watchtower-was-financed-pre-1990.html

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

But I will upvote this on one condition hp. Religion is far different than organized religion and "other" religions. Buddhisim (My pref) is nowhere near a money pit. I doubt Hinduism is either. Amish? Jehovah's Witnesses? (My mother's prefs and damn close to a loving fellowship. They are pretty meek believe it or not.)
Change the title a bit to reflect that and I will hit that blue arrow faster than you can say "Rich on pastor."
Ps.
I don't believe anyone should have tax deductions...not since money can be "funneled" around.

@bareboards2

The Jeebs character definitely made some interesting points about love, compassion and charity (it is suggested he got some of these from Buddhism), and ideas of social reform that could almost qualify him as proto-socialist. But the view of all-good all-loving Jeebs that moderate Christians are raised with today is a relatively recent phenomenon, with its roots in the deistic revisions of the Bible and Christian doctrine that began with the Enlightenment.

Having been raised in an evangelical cult, I know the Bible quite well, and can assure you that Jeebs is not all good. For one, the invention of eternal torture and hell is his invention (cf self-quote below); some of his parables are terribly authoritarian (e.g. Lk 19:11-27); he is divisive ("you're either with me or against me","I come not to bring peace but a sword", etc...) and even his treatment of women comes off as condescending at times, albeit much better than the patriarchal misogyny of the OT and St Paul (one example: he doesn't allow Mary to touch him after resurrecting, but allows Thomas (Jn 20:17-27).

I understand the urge to see Jeebs in a purely positive light though, heck, even my favourite poet (Percy Shelley), an avowed atheist and antitheist, tried to project Jesus in his (Shelley's) own image, i.e. as a humanist social reformer.

>> ^hpqp:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/GeeSussFreeK" title="member since August 1st, 2008" class="profilelink">GeeSussFreeK and @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/smooman" title="member since October 28th, 2008" class="profilelink">smooman (quoting doesn't work)
Eternal damnation and hellfire are inventions of the character of Jesus (some of the more explicit examples: Mt. 10:28, Mt. 25:41, Mt. 25:46, Mk 9:47-48, Lk 10:15, Lk. 12:5, etc., not counting all the parables where "bad fruit/branches" are cast into "unquenchable fire").
One main point of departure between Christianity and Judaism is hell.
Some good online tools for Bible "study":
http://www.biblegateway.com/
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm

>> ^MrFisk:

I thought Buddhism was the religion peace.
Oh, and religion doesn't cause violence, it's only used by people who want to do violence.
http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201101/2274226241.html


Very compelling and comprehensive article, pity the opening comparison is so disingenuous. (Speaking of which, I disagree that it's "only those who want to commit violence" that do so. How do you fit the application of sharia law, for example, - and its support from the population - into that narrow point of view?)

Some commentary on one of the conclusive passages (and I quote):

"If religion plays a significant causal role in anything, it is maximizing and maintaining in-group cooperation and identity. But so do sports, political parties, gangs, music, universities, etc. Religion does provide two things beyond what these nontheistic groups can. First, religion can unify much bigger and more varied groups of people than sports teams and the like. Second, religion offers a vaguely defined supernatural agent whose presence is unverifiable and thus unchallengable. While this may increase the likelihood that someone will engage in costly behaviors, these costs are demonstrations of commitment and thus provide reliable indicators that one won't betray the group. Beyond supernatural claims, there is not anything about religion that is not found elsewhere."

There are a few key elements that the author of this article glosses over:

1) unlike sports, gangs, political parties etc., religious belief is instilled into a person practically from birth, acting on a person's belief and behavioural systems long before they are mature enough to make calculated (not to say rational... what's rational about rugby? ) decisions of adherence. As Dawkins points out, religion makes use of a child's primal trust in its parents, transferring that trust onto an unquestionable power.

2) most religious beliefs present a parallel of parental authority, with its motivational corollaries (punishment-reward), but the figure(s) of authority are absolute, unchallengeable because of their supernatural nature. Add to that the fact that the "punishment-reward" usually concerns an eternity of either bliss or torture, and you get a motivator/rationaliser for unethical acts that is effective even when there are practically no other motivations.

Why did these people do what they did? Why did middle-class, educated individuals fly planes into the twin towers? What did they have to gain? If such acts are simply "reliable indicators that one won't betray the group" (how does a dead person do that already?) than maybe that right there is an indicator of religion's particular virulence.

I thought Buddhism was the religion peace.

Oh, and religion doesn't cause violence, it's only used by people who want to do violence.

http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201101/2274226241.html

Buddhism is just glorified atheism with a supernatural twist. Don't worry, the one world religion is coming..soon you'll be able to feel superior to Christians theologically as well as intellectually

>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^shinyblurry:
"God is just in those things we don't understand" You mean like everything? lol..the hubris of this man. Atheism just seems to fill someone with arrogance..when I was agnostic, I at least recognized that humanity in general didn't know enough about existence to say either way..an atheist just seems to replace God with himself..this putrid religion of humanism is the ultimate ego trip. Well, pride is always greatest before the fall..

For a "Christian" you certainly sound rather Old Testament. Maybe you should try Buddhism; it might help with your anger issues.

>> ^shinyblurry:

"God is just in those things we don't understand" You mean like everything? lol..the hubris of this man. Atheism just seems to fill someone with arrogance..when I was agnostic, I at least recognized that humanity in general didn't know enough about existence to say either way..an atheist just seems to replace God with himself..this putrid religion of humanism is the ultimate ego trip. Well, pride is always greatest before the fall..


For a "Christian" you certainly sound rather Old Testament. Maybe you should try Buddhism; it might help with your anger issues.

So the leader of Gelug Tibetan Buddhism doesn't understand a joke where the punchline relies on a western misconception about the Zen school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. How could the reporter have foreseen that?

I think you're looking for the word "empathy" when writing REspect.

>>> That's correct. REspect is the treatment resulting from empathy.

1) Strawman attack. Nothing in the letter suggests what you're accusing it of.

>>> The Bozo in question wrote, "I have nothing but contempt for you (the religious)." Therefore I would not expect REspect or empathy from such an individual. He's set himself up as an enemy, needlessly, I might add. Look at all the angry responses here. Probably what he was after.

2) Atheists are smarter than religious people within the domains mentioned.

>>> What "domains" are we considering? Science? Famous Scientists Who Believed in God There are plenty of dumb atheists as well as dumb religious people. There are also atheists who have not a whit of curiosity about the universe.

3)You have two points here that have nothing to do one with the other.

They're close cousins.

First: most religions (including the worst of the lot, i.e. the Abrahamic monotheisms) do exclude all other religions.

Bozo said "you realize all the OTHER religions are wrong" in blanket condemnation.

The farther one moves from this exclusivity, the closer one gets to a religion being a philosophy (e.g. Buddhism, Jainism), or woo (e.g. New Age).

You forget Hinduism, a dynamic, evolving faith older then Christianity, with billions of gods. It accepts other paths as legit. But even as Hinduism is weighted down with a caste system, Christianity has broken barriers around the world across all nations and races and even within itself.

Second: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” ~ Steven Weinberg

Weinberg needs to read up on communism, a much more potent enemy of human dignity and worth. Communist countries are run by a--holes who believe they are the only true gods. Religion can be abusive, insulting and dehumanizing in the wrong hands, just like politics and language. However, there is no atheist tradition declaring 'All life has value.' Einstein once said 'Either everything is a miracle or nothing is.' The lack of sanctity endemic to atheism places it on the side of nothing being miraculous. It doesn't mean atheists are bad people, it means they have no reference outside of their own feelings, which leads us to...

4) Care to explain how atheism is delusional?

I said the atheist is delusional, not atheism, and I'm not referring to what atheists think of deities at all.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it? This means you and I can rationalize anything at any time. We lie to ourselves ALL THE TIME to preserve our own egos and pride, with a subconscious dominantly seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. A single human is not even a unified consciousness but a collection of competing desires and savage impulses. It's a miracle in itself that anyone ever stops to look outside of themselves.

The atheist has as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as anyone else, but I'm still siding with Ben Franklin: If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it?

@quantumushroom

I think you're looking for the word "empathy" when writing REspect.

1) Strawman attack. Nothing in the letter suggests what you're accusing it of.

2) No, replace "religion" with "white supremacy" (or any other form of stupid ideology) and the conclusions remain the same, without the speaker being an idiot. Atheists are smarter than religious people within the domains mentioned.

3)You have two points here that have nothing to do one with the other. First: most religions (including the worst of the lot, i.e. the Abrahamic monotheisms) do exclude all other religions. The farther one moves from this exclusivity, the closer one gets to a religion being a philosophy (e.g. Buddhism, Jainism), or woo (e.g. New Age).
Second: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” ~ Steven Weinberg

4) Care to explain how atheism is delusional?

I do believe that, in fact, I felt pretty much the same way when I was agnostic. I didn't believe He was God, but His words spoke to my heart about how human beings should treat eachother. I never had a problem with Christ..to me, He was certainly of the very best that humanity had produced, before or since..and I have yet to read an account of anyone who comes close.

To me what Christ taught leads to perfection of the human character. He teaches more self-denial than even buddhism, total humility of person, equal treatment for every human, and love for your fellow man, without any exception. He taught us to forgive one another, to harbor no grudges, to work things out and come to an angreement.

If people followed what Christ taught we would have no wars, there would be no violence..there would be no poor, no starvation, no inequality. There would be no hatred, no lies, no injustice. The Earth would be at peace. That's gotta be worth something. I wouldn't understand someone who could look at that and take nothing from it.

I believe all His ways lead to life. Abudent life..and I have seen the results. Christ was a humanist too though, because He came not for His own sake but for all people. He died, whether you believe He was divine or not, for us. That was His mission as He saw it and that's what He did. The only real question is whether He is risen, or not. If He didn't rise, then I am a fool. If He did, it proves everything He said. I think that's really the only practical way His claims could be evaluated, if His resurrection is a historical event.


>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Sadly, he's right. I was fairly astonished that so many Christians didn't see anything wrong with celebrating someones death, Bin Laden or not.
I think you'll find a great many atheists who do subscribe to the sort of philosophy Jesus preached. Just because we don't think he was divine doesn't mean we think he was wrong. He had some good ideas; revolutionary ideas for his time; and his origins don't change that.

As you may have notice, this message is very long. Please take a while and read it a few times, in chunks, before you respond. I ask a lot of questions here so I’d like it you pretended as if you were asking the questions to yourself.

I should have qualified my statement about religions. I meant to clarify that in the Persian and Pre-Rome regions of the world, which were primarily Pagan, a huge majority of the religions didn’t have religious structures that were based around fear, for the most part. Yes, I admit that there was the concept of retribution from the gods but it wasn’t anything to the degree of everlasting punishment. I currently don’t know anything about the religions of the very early Americas (Mayans, etc). It wasn’t until the god concepts became more personalized and more humans that it became more about fear. There is a natural progression in the ideological development in religions that goes from being nothing about humans to being all about humans. Eternal suffering or anything resembling a “hell” is relatively new and came about around the time of monotheistic religions.

Let me ask you a question. Why do you trust your personal revelation?

I ask this because I used to be very “spiritual” and I’ve even had out-of-body experiences, experiences that I can only call past life regressions. I grew up in a practicing Christian family and I have memories of experience that I can only call “personal revelation”. I’ve come to a lot of reasons why I shouldn’t trust those personal revelations; I want to know if you’ve come to understand how the human brain is very easily tricked into irrational behaviors and beliefs (not just religious)

You say that this has been an ongoing revelation since you were 14. If you had not had this history of personal revelation at all and it came to you suddenly today, would you find it believable? I imagine that you’re beliefs have been challenged many times. Are you certain that the strengthening effect of the challenges aren’t just from the boomerang effect, caused by a need to justify something that you feel committed to?

Here is another great question. How much of your belief system is tied to your identity; how much do you identify with it, personally or socially? Meaning, if you came to disbelieve what you now believe, would you know who you are or would you have a sort of identity crisis? If you stopped believing as you do now, do you feel that you would you lose a part of who you are?

You ask a good question in “Maybe it is you who is delusion and I see things as they actually are.” Yes, perhaps I am and perhaps you are and perhaps we both are. So how can we know, how would we find out, what kinds of tests and experiments could we do to illuminate the answer. It isn’t good enough to simply say that we both might be delusional; therefore our views are equally valid. Either one of us is correct and the other is not, or we are both incorrect.
You know, I used to have a dualistic view on the nature of humans. I used to believe in the soul or the spirit as something separate from the body. I used to resonate heavily with the lyrics of Tool and the ideas behind the art of Alex Grey.

I guess my biggest question would stem from this statement that you made
“My faith is that i have a spirit, a soul, a divine spark that is connected to the ALL, the ONE, also known as "the source".”
What makes you think that there is an “ALL”, a “ONE” or “the source” and how do you know that you’re not just fooling yourself? What would it mean if you discovered that it’s probably not true, and that the real explanation for the subjective experiences that you’ve had are far more elegant and interesting than the ideas of spirituality that you currently hold?

To be blunt, I don’t think that you’re thinking this whole notion of an ego through far enough. It sounds like you’re just accepting the ideas as being true without going through the motions of analyzing what the concept implies. The notion of an ego implies several things; one of which is that we as humans are special to the degree that we have egos when, either, other animals don’t, or, other animals are better than us in controlling it. The questions then become, do other animals have egos? If so, how does the ego operate in them? Do other life forms, such as plants or bacteria, also have egos, or does the ego require a certain degree of cognitive function? If the ego does require certain cognitive functions to be noticeable, and since we are extremely closely related to other apes such as chimpanzees, do they also exhibit features of having egos? If they don’t and having an ego is strictly a human feature, what happened during the development of the brain that allowed for the access to what we might call the ego and at this point, do we really believe that the “ego” is actually something that exists outside of the brain? If it doesn’t exist outside of the brain than how can we separate who you perceive as yourself and what you perceive as the “ego”? Are all “ego’s” the same or is it brain dependent with variations depending on brain structure and chemistry? Can you see why I would say that the notion of the ego as something outside of or separate from oneself is inherently egotistical.

The way that you talk about the ego makes it seem mystical and somehow separate from “self”. To me, that sounds like someone trying to escape responsibility. Why not just cut out the middle man and admit that you, not your ego, has the tendency to be possessive, needy, insecure, wishes for self-aggrandizement, etc. The notion that “negative” qualities are part and partial of some sort of external thing that is separate from “you” just seems childish to me, not to mention, completely unsupported by research.

For myself, I suppose that I recoil at the idea of an “ALL”, or “ONE”, or “the source” because it doesn’t really answer any questions. If someone were presenting these ideas to me for the first time, I would immediately start asking questions like “What is it made out of, what kind(s) of particles?” “How does it perpetuate?” “What is the physics of this thing?” “By what mechanism does it connect to everything?” “How does a source not also have its own source?” “What tests and experiments can we do to learn more about this thing?” “What objective information do we have about it?” “Does this thing operate differently between animate and inanimate objects?” “If spirit or soul is inherent in the system, do animals and plants also have a spirit or soul?” “What exactly constitutes as a spirit or soul, what can it be defined by?” “Did “the source” have a beginning or a history?”

I think you understand my point. My problem with subjectively believing something is true is that it’s more susceptible to not going far enough in scrutiny. It is much easier to subjectively believe something that feels good or feels right and not go any further than that. Very few subjective beliefs translate into objective or rational understandings of nature; it’s very easy to get it wrong. Subjective beliefs are as prone to fallibility as humans are to irrational thinking.


In reply to this comment by enoch:
hmmmm..
i disagree with your statement that only the monotheistic religion control by fear.
buddhism (yes..buddhism) shinto,mayan,toltec,arminianism,zoroastriasm..the list is legion and they ALL have punishment/reward doctrine.each at varying degrees but its in there.

i do enjoy hearing an atheists perspective on how my faith translates.
very..analytical of you my friend.
suffice to say my faith is born from personal revelation and has been an ongoing revelation since i was 14.
nothing i have encountered or experienced has taken away from this revelation,in fact it has strengthened it.
could i be delusional?
i guess its possible.
or maybe it is you who are delusional and i see things as they actually are.
not trying to be an ass,just pointing out the subjective nature of this particular polemic.

i guess..in its most simplest of terms.
my faith is that i have a spirit,a soul,a divine spark that is connected to the ALL,the ONE,also known as "the source".
freud believed that the ego WAS who you were.i could not disagree with that more.
the ego is who you THINK you are.predicated and perpetrated by those who are close to you.
we cant help that.it is very human.
so around 12 yrs old we start to have a sense of self.this self understands the world and how he/she interacts with it by rules set by his/her parents.
as we grow older so does the circle of influence i.e:friends,lovers,teachers etc etc.
think about this for a second because i am expressing a very huge idea in a very short amount of time and glossing over all the implications of said idea.

my philosophy..or my faith if you will,views the ego as my "false" self.
the ego wishes only to validate itself (thats why mass marketing is very VERY effective).
the ego wishes to perpetuate its own existence by way of constant feed-back.
the ego gets jealous and possesive.
the ego gets insecure and needy.
the ego has demands...and desires...which seek only for self aggrandizement.
now societal roles consisting of compassion and empathy will,and can,curb the destructive nature of the ego (think your teenage years and just how self centered you were to give you an idea of ego gone wild)

through my faith and discipline i am quite aware of my ego and have suppressed it to the point where it no longer manipulates my thinking nor my emotions.
so i have no urge nor a desire to be perceived as "correct" because to me that is irrelevant.
(though i do prefer to be "corrected" if i misstate something).
i do not experience jealousy,nor envy.
but i do experience pride.
i do not allow anothers limited perception of me based on their own subjective reasoning influence how i feel about who i am.
i am open and honest because my faith is that we are all connected with the divine and to lie,steal or cheat you is to be doing to myself also.
i do not judge anothers faith or lack of it because that is THEIR path and the only time i ever feel the need to intercede is when it flows into my domain and affects me in some way.

even as i write these words,which to me seem pretty articulate and clear,i know that you will understand them based solely on..well..your understanding.
i do not say that as a slight but rather a statement.
trying to convey complex thought patterns by way of text can be so..limiting.

everything i do or say i do so with spirit in mind.
sometimes i fail..sometimes i succeed.
i am human.
with a spirit! ziiiiing!
anyways..
i really do enjoy our conversations.
you are a pleasure my friend.
namaste.
(look that word up btw..its a great word)