Wondering what the similarities and differences between the Abrahamic religions and their view on angels is.
What do Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each teach about angels?
Is it your belief that angels have free will, or that they must obey god without question?
Why is it in Christianity...
If God is so transcendent, how do people speak of it at all? Why speak of it? Why lay out any attributes for people to have faith in? Either God is within human ability to understand and talk about or is not. If God is within that ability, the attributes can be tested and found wrong by science.
Our ability to validate the attributes of things was extremely limited prior to the methods science has since developed. Philosophers often made good strides toward doing so, but philosophy as concerns rhetoric has one serious limitation: arguments cannot validate beyond coming up against an...
DanielR being thrown back into Samsara would be hell, but I don't believe the Buddha thought one actually is thrown back into Samsara. His teachings were to help one escape from all such bad views. He called his death 'final nirvana'. The deeper teachings of Buddhism indicate all is void, and...
When considered, I can't personally see why a person would want to exist forever. Forever is a long time. Epicureans saw death as good, even if an unpleasant notion, because- in death suffering can end, while good is attainable in life. Its not somewhere far off like in a heaven.
I was sorry to hear it. Nancy Reagan did a lot of good things for people and social justice in her latter years, as she and Ron Jr. slowly distanced themselves from the ever shifting further right conservative movement. She was a good lady.
It actually is debatable in modern circles rather the Bible condemns homosexuality, or if it condemns something related to idolatrous practices. I've seen Christian scholars that do not think the Bible condemns homosexuality. They point to various things, such as the ancient Hebrews having no...
I would like your help with this please, dharmic seekers. It occurs to me, that if non-conceptual Brahman is the goal in striving for samadhi- wouldn't disbelief in Brahman and Brahman without conception be virtually the same?
In disbelieving in Brahman there would be no images, ideas, or...
If that teacher is capable sure, but politics has created a learning situation in several states where teachers are not capable. A large majority of American teachers do not accept or understand evolution, yet they're expected to teach it.
As an atheist I sometimes like to draw more particular attention to this statement: 'science cannot say anything about the existence of god'.
The theist may like to point to this statement and feel that their worldview has been 'let off' in a sense. I look at it a different way. Science is what...
Just to add. Albert Camus called on us to consider the myth of Sisyphus. He invites the observer to think for a moment that Sisyphus is happy. In pushing the rock up the hill, Sisyphus has a meaning for his otherwise pointless existence.
For me I've learned to live life for its own sake. Just like one can enjoy an alcoholic beverage for its own sake, because it is pleasant. Given the way I view the world, there is no other reason to live. I wonder about how beneficial beliefs in afterlives really are. They seem to generate a lot...
Certainly. Its politicians that pass the laws allowing teachers who are not qualified to teach certain subjects. IE: evolution in the science classroom. There are also states where the education budget gets repeatedly slashed like Louisiana, and in Utah they want to make school attendance...
Well Sees I kind of understand the divide between western thought and traditional Islamic. The divide in my mind was wider until I studied secular countries like Turkey, and how the Muslims there are. Turkey is very majority Muslim, but one of the sects there is very mystical and generally tolerant.
I hold with Epicurus that the point of living, if there is one, is to be happy and enjoy life. Just to live, because that's all there would be left for one to do once they've seen where they really stand- as it were. This is likely fairly un-Buddhist, and is Epicurean.
I think mindfulness is about getting absorbed enough to gain this insight, but the mindfulness is a kind of deconstruction. I do not say that the sense of being has objectivity, so much as the things that impress on it. I don't say, for example, that a stove burner being hot is an illusion when...
These are fair questions, and I don't think Buddhism underestimates them, but tries to underplay the implications by claiming the nature of the self is ultimately paradoxical. You'll remember that Buddhism does hold to Anatta, and reject the notion of the Atman. At the time, it seemed like...
Uganda is a theocracy now because of Christian missionaries. The Catholic Church helped instigate the Riwandan genocide. Things like that. Doesn't suggest anything other than anti-secular. You're aware of Uganda's witch hunts, anti-gay laws, and blasphemy laws. Yes? If you want a modern country...