The Tao, or the Way, is the way of nature that is in balance. What works, in other words. To be out of balance leads to error. It leads to problems. It leads to unhappiness and suffering, of ourselves and those around us. In fact, if you look at all the world's Wisdom traditions, that is what they are about, using their own systems of language and metaphors and symbols and practices to try to get us back into harmony with this Way. Same thing in Buddhism. Same thing in Christianity.
Eastern philosophies are vastly better at teaching self-awareness than the Abrahamics. There are good and bad in every tradition, but some traditions have a troubled history. It is apparent that wisdom tends to be universal when it favors more cooperative aims rather than personal/selfish aims. Look at what putin is doing, and Trump, and other selfish leaders. Their supporters have motivations that can't be called wisdom. So what went wrong with those folks? If we look at trends it is those who can't reason well, and are eager to believe in some sort of truth that lacks evidence. Brains are not uniform, and it is a crap shoot what anyone ends up with. Born with Down's Syndrome? You may never be aware of it.
So the KKK. Do their beliefs and practices lead to Peace in themselves and with the world? Does it bring forth life and love, or death and suffering, anger and malice, and so forth. "By their fruits you shall know them". By the lack of balance, by their imbalance, by their suffering, you can discern the truth of what they say from the error of it.
Racism and greed are easy beliefs. It takes more sophisticated thinking to be on the side of equality. It also requires emotional intelligence.
So do I rely upon my deeper experiences of this Balance, or the Tao, or God, or Nirvana, as a way to judge the truth and veracity of truth claims of others? You bet I do. Logic and reason can make some mighty fine arguments to justify a pile of poo as good meal for one's dinner.
I suggest Balance, Tao, Nirvana, etc. are all dependent on reasoning. On analytics. How else can you put experience into use? How else can you predict? Shooting from the hip is sloppy.
What's wrong with have some subjective method, as I desribed above. If one is deeply skilled and experienced at something, why do they need an external authority to tell them that when they see someone doing something they know from experience leads to imbalance that they actually know what they are seeing?
Why need a God at all if you are rational, moral, and decent? I suggest most atheists are experienced at life without a need to believe ina God as an external authority.
I wasn't rejecting the fact of what they did. I was rejecting their justification for it as valid or authentic. It is invalid and inauthentic logic arguments to justify bad beliefs and bad actions.
But that is what the 9-11 hijackers said. And don't forget they died, so had to have been very confident. Authentic is a matter of opinion where it comes to non-factual beliefs. We both have moral objections, but my point is how unreliable faith can be for making decisions. Which God is authentic, and which ones aren't, and how can anyone know except it just being a matter of belief? Eye of the beholder. When you mention your version of God it is no different than any other version by any other believer, even those who die in service to it. None are based in fact, there is no test in reality.
I've said countless times in countless posts that I hold my beliefs as provisional. I find them useful, until I need to grow, modify, or abandon them. My beliefs are not the substance of my experience. They are merely ways to try to explain or talk about it.
So do you consider God a provisional idea? If so, you need an alternative any time you rely on your belief in God, just in case you are wrong. Or just take your chances.
To me the true foundation is personal experience. I hear so much religious arguments citing the Bible as the source of all truth, yet I do not hear any actual personal experience or insights at all. Beliefs are the substance of their faith. And the same thing holds true for those who turn to Science and logic arguments as the foundation for their faith, the source of all truth to them.
But believers do have experiences, albeit mimicked and invented. What experiences offer truth as a concept? We all set the stage for what we experience. If someone wants to find truth, use facts, data, and a reliable methodology. Reason offers tests in reality, and that is a good experience.
What does experience really show? If all one has is logic arguments, or bible verses, and no experience, they don't have any real substantive claims at all. They just have beliefs or well crafted arguments. But as the slogan goes "Where's the beef?"
Garbage in, garbage out. So if you want truth at the end of your experience, use a reliable method. Faith isn't reliable.
I don't not refer to "a God" as if it exists. I'll keep repeating this until it becomes heard. I do not view God as an object, a being, an entity, a creation, or a thing. God is Ultimate Reality, and is not separate from ourselves. I cannot speak of God and consider it as I might a cat or a dog. "A God" is never language I would ever use, nor have used in any discussion.
What makes what exists "ultimate"? Isn't reality sufficient? And wouldn't "ultimate reality" be a collective object? Of course we just call it matter.
Now, to answer your question, "what evidence do you have except feelings and what you learned from other religious people that any gods exist?" I came to realize the reality of the Infinite Absolute through a direct experience, not through "feelings", and certainly not through anything I learned from other religious people. I only joined a religion after having a spontaneous Satori experience when I was 18m seeking to try to understand and grow in myself what I had been exposed to in that abrupt pulling back of the veil of reality experience. I was not religious nor raised in a religious family. It was not in that context I had that experience.
Infinite Absolute? What is that? I'm always wary of these exaggerated references, as it seems to overcompensate for a lack of evidence. And 18 is pretty young and impressionable.
So that experience is absolute evidence to me of the reality of that. It was not conceptual, nor an intuition or a feeling of goosebumps or silly warm fuzzies. It was a massive and total shift in consciousness itself.
It's subjective. It's notable that atheists don't miraculously have such experiences. Is it possible you created the experience?
Is that evidence to others? Not on its own, of course. But one could argue if one looks objectively at the data we have from modern researcher who study these higher states of consciousness reported the world over, and compare the descriptions of those experiences, then you can see a pattern to them. But I would never argue as you claimed, that this is evidence of "a God", per se. But it is evidence of a culturally independent realization of an Ultimate Reality, and all the rest in our mythologies are pointers to That, by whatever name you wish to call it.
There have been many studies on brain states, and even alternate states of consciousness. The brain does a lot of funky things, and it is not a reliable sensing aparatus when under straess, drugs, or some other types of influence. My big experience was on the bike one hot August afternoon some 30 years ago on Old K-10 highway between Eudora and Desoto Kansas. I was so bonked out, severe glucose deprevation, that was hallucinating. I had some pretty weird thoughts and visions. This was much like a sweat lodge experience, by accident. I have no memory of making it home, which was about another 30 miles. But that opened the door to me looking more into thinking and having a more deliberate meaning in life.
No. As I said, it's not an idea. That said, I called it "God" because of what others named it. I did adopt that word because to me it can be used to desribe the ultimate, infintie, and timeless nature of it. But I certainly can use Buddhist language as well as Emptiness, or Nirvana. Or Taoist language of the Tao. Or, other words I personally like are the Infinite. The Source. The Ground of Being. Spirit. Void. Wellspring of Life, Being itself, Love, Light, and Life, and so on and so forth.
Words mean something, and to be comprehensible to others we need to use recognized definitions. I see many believers use words to in essence build a God from the collective of wrods, as if that proves something. It tells me that they are trying to force God into existence with words. It's not good enough.
Point being that God is a word that for me describes it, yet I can use other words as well, none of which capture the reality of it. "The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao". That is truth.
Language tricks can mean something, like koans. But we see a lot of fraud.
No that is not faith in the context I directly explained as a religious faith which is directed to matters of ultimate concern. Faith that your car will start, or faith in that moron Trump, has nothing to do with what I was clearly explaining.
This is vague. "Ultimate concern"? That sounds exaggerated. I don't see any factual and coherent explanation of religious faith.
