(Strong) Atheism's Burden of Proof

[Typist]

What were the "needs" of these first human beings outside of shelter and sustainence?

As thought developed in human beings, it's inherently divisive nature divided us psychologically from nature. Whereas for endless eons we had in previous forms been psychically one with nature, now we were alone, or rather perceived ourselves to be.

When you are driving down the road with your dog and he has his head out the window facing in to the oncoming wind, he is fully there, completely engaged, undivided from that moment. That's why we love animals so.

The same can not be said for you the driver. You are lost in thought, your attention so distracted from reality by the symbolic realm between your ears that if you're not careful you'll lose focus and run off the road, which happens all the time.

Your dog is one with reality, but you are alone inside your head. You experience reality as being divided between "me" and "everything else".

And so as thought developed in humans, we began looking for the unity with reality which had been lost.

In some cases this took the form of religion, and the concept of "getting back to God" was born, that is, recreating the intimate psychic bond with reality.

Sadly for religions, this was most often attempted via thought, the very thing causing the apparent division in the first place. The harder they tried to reunite with reality through thought, the behinder they got.

And so some religious people got very frustrated, like the man who can find no one to have sex with. And then they started doing a lot of stupid stuff, as horny men typically do.

You are rebelling against the stupid stuff, which is entirely understandable. But because your rebellion is blind and driven not by reason but emotion, you aren't seeing that throwing away the stupid stuff of religion does not address the fundamental need that gave rise to religion. And so those needs remain unmet.

And so, as atheists, you are now repeating all the ancient mistakes of religion, as you seek to conquer the world with thought, just as they did.

And you will succeed in conquering the world, in ruling it, just as they did. But by doing so via thought, you will no longer be able to be one with the world, as your dog can. You will no longer be able to taste it. You will be apart from reality psychologically.

And so in your pained existential frustration you will destroy the kingdom you rule over. You will extinguish species at an epic rate until the web of life collapses. You will heat the atmosphere until it races past a tipping point and causes your civilization to collapse. You will build nuclear weapons and other horrors day after day until one day you use them upon each other.

And then evolution will sweep us aside, roll up it's sleeves, and try again.

 

[suncowiam]

As thought developed in human beings, it's inherently divisive nature divided us psychologically from nature. Whereas for endless eons we had in previous forms been psychically one with nature, now we were alone, or rather perceived ourselves to be.

When you are driving down the road with your dog and he has his head out the window facing in to the oncoming wind, he is fully there, completely engaged, undivided from that moment. That's why we love animals so.

The same can not be said for you the driver. You are lost in thought, your attention so distracted from reality by the symbolic realm between your ears that if you're not careful you'll lose focus and run off the road, which happens all the time.

Your dog is one with reality, but you are alone inside your head. You experience reality as being divided between "me" and "everything else".

And so as thought developed in humans, we began looking for the unity with reality which had been lost.

In some cases this took the form of religion, and the concept of "getting back to God" was born, that is, recreating the intimate psychic bond with reality.

Sadly for religions, this was most often attempted via thought, the very thing causing the apparent division in the first place. The harder they tried to reunite with reality through thought, the behinder they got.

And so some religious people got very frustrated, like the man who can find no one to have sex with. And then they started doing a lot of stupid stuff, as horny men typically do.

You are rebelling against the stupid stuff, which is entirely understandable. But because your rebellion is blind and driven not by reason but emotion, you aren't seeing that throwing away the stupid stuff of religion does not address the fundamental need that gave rise to religion. And so those needs remain unmet.

And so, as atheists, you are now repeating all the ancient mistakes of religion, as you seek to conquer the world with thought, just as they did.

And you will succeed in conquering the world, in ruling it, just as they did. But by doing so via thought, you will no longer be able to be one with the world, as your dog can. You will no longer be able to taste it. You will be apart from reality psychologically.

And so in your pained existential frustration you will destroy the kingdom you rule over. You will extinguish species at an epic rate until the web of life collapses. You will heat the atmosphere until it races past a tipping point and causes your civilization to collapse. You will build nuclear weapons and other horrors day after day until one day you use them upon each other.

And then evolution will sweep us aside, roll up it's sleeves, and try again.

I will politely pull out of this conversation and respect your response but still disagree with them. =)

Have a good one...

 

[Vishvavajra]

I find your writing on Buddhist ethics to be so refreshingly clear, and free of unnecessary hand waving pseudo-intellectualisms and other such sins.

I'm coming from the Chan tradition, which doesn't have much patience for that sort of thing. Everything is expected to have a practical application.

Everybody wants favorable outcomes. So how do we get them?

Causality is complex, so it would be disingenuous to claim that if you do X, you will always get Y as a result. However, we can posit that behaving in mindful and non-self-centered ways is generally beneficial and that cultivating good mental habits will lead a person down more constructive avenues. Likewise, self-grasping and callous behaviors and attitudes throw up barriers between people, alienating them from each other, and making them more likely to harm one another, whether through intention or negligence. That's a very general overview; one can zoom in closer and identify specific problem behaviors and their better alternatives.

Can Buddhist ethics be further edited in to an even smaller package, without throwing away too much?

It depends. The 5 basic precepts can be followed by anyone without needing to understand any philosophy. They are, in a nutshell, that you should refrain from killing, stealing, lying, harmful sexual conduct, and intoxication. The first four are considered to be things that reinforce negative habits by their very nature, whereas the fifth one is something that makes people more likely to do the first four. That's not a comprehensive ethical system, but it's a starting point. Also, they're not commandments: it's considered better to take the precepts and then break them than it is not to take them at all, as then at least when you do those things, you'll think about what you're doing and have a sense that it's probably not good. If you're mindful of what you do and the probably consequences, the idea is that over time your desire to do negative things will diminish. And the more you engage in positive behaviors, the more peaceful your life will be.

Are you familiar with this study, sometimes referred to as "the world's happiest man"?

Yes, I know about him. It raises the question of how much meditation practice is really necessary to get the full benefit of Buddhist ethics. I think the ethical system works well enough on its own, but by itself it only does so much. It fosters generally positive life conditions and minimizes negative ones, but ethics alone won't bring radical personal transformation or enlightenment or boundless bliss. You have to have a meditation practice to take it to the next step. Morality is considered an essential prerequisite to meditation, however.

Is the deep understanding of things the insight that separation is an illusion?

My sense is that such an illusion arises out of the inherently divisive nature of the information medium we're made of, thought. I've struggled to express this, without much luck. ...

What if the problem arises not within the content of thought, not from this or that bad idea, but from the nature of thought? If true, philosophy itself comes in to question, as all philosophies are made of thought.

What if the medium of thought, by it's very nature, introduces a division based distortion in to everything made of thought?

We are made of thought, and so we experience reality as being divided between "me" and "everything else".

We are made of thought, and so we experience "I" am "thinking", a division, two things, when really there are not two things but just one, thinking.

Is this experience of a thought generated division illusion the source of all conflict, and thus what drives the need for morality?

And how would creating a moral system out of thought solve the problem which is generated by thought? Might this be like trying to cure alcoholism with a case of scotch?

Here you've cut to the heart of the matter, and it's a problem that Buddhist thought addresses. It agrees that thought is the problem. Where it differs is in denying that we are made of thought. What is made of thought is a sense of self that is ultimately a simulation, superficial. What we really are defies discursive thinking and is more fundamental. It precedes the dualistic categories of linguistic reasoning. It can only be pointed to indirectly, in a provisional sense, using words and language, although the Chan tradition believes it can be experienced directly via meditation.

Our true nature is perfect and undefiled, but we obscure it with assumptions and habits and lots of thinking. Thinking is not bad in itself, and we need it to function, but it can also delude us and make us unhappy if we identify with our thoughts and let them control us. Meditation teaches us how to let go of thoughts and not be hopelessly enslaved to unconscious impulses. This insight also allows us to experience directly the degree to which our common assumptions about the world don't hold up. The dichotomy between self and other, for example, is at best only a conventionally real concept. There's also the idea that once you learn to let go of our habitual self-referentiality in all things, only then is true love possible.

Buddhist ethics developed from insights gained through meditation and extrapolated from there. A strong meditation practice is probably necessary in order to develop saintly qualities of universal love etc. But the average person can benefit from the basic ideas and precepts as they are. They just have to be willing to accept that all things arise due to causes and conditions, that actions have consequences, and that our own minds are not exempt from those phenomena.

 

[chlotilde]

And then evolution will sweep us aside, roll up it's sleeves, and try again.

I like how you said that.
A friend and I say, there are only two types of people. The foodists and the goddists. What separates them is their view on reality.

 

[Typist]

Ethics fosters generally positive life conditions and minimizes negative ones, but ethics alone won't bring radical personal transformation or enlightenment or boundless bliss. You have to have a meditation practice to take it to the next step. Morality is considered an essential prerequisite to meditation, however.

I'm curious the degree to which Buddhism generally, or perhaps your preferred tradition more specifically, supports a quest which travels beyond positive life conditions towards radical transformation.

I'm not sure I have enough experience with either to credibly comment, but will admit to being somewhat skeptical of the radical transformation quest.

I am happy to agree radical transformation may be possible for rare individuals such as the "happiest man in the world" but wonder what useful relationship there is between such end of bell curve folks and the masses of average people.

More specifically, I'm wary of glorious future trips, as they seem to suck in and hijack a lot of troubled people who might be better served by more practical down to earth pursuits, such as the ethics you are pointing to.

Just one of my pet rants, seeking your insights and clarifications.

Here you've cut to the heart of the matter, and it's a problem that Buddhist thought addresses. It agrees that thought is the problem. Where it differs is in denying that we are made of thought.

I have no complaint here, and when I propose we are made of thought I mean "me" as well.

What we really are defies discursive thinking and is more fundamental. It precedes the dualistic categories of linguistic reasoning. It can only be pointed to indirectly, in a provisional sense, using words and language, although the Chan tradition believes it can be experienced directly via meditation.

Experienced directly, we might explore that.

In my own crude way, I'm attempting to aim in that direction in my typoholic assaults upon the perceived importance of the theist/atheist debate. If the church of that debate can be burned to the ground then those sincere about the inquiry would seem to be liberated from a huge pointless distraction.

Of course, uh oh, such arsonic efforts have become my own personal huge pointless distraction. But, at least I harvest some amusement from the absurdity of being a honking Fundamentalist Agnostic.

Anyway, experience directly. Experience, experience, experience. I'm for anything that promotes experience at the expense of theory. Talk to us about that perhaps?

Thinking is not bad in itself, and we need it to function, but it can also delude us and make us unhappy if we identify with our thoughts and let them control us.

Obviously thought is necessary and even sometimes wonderful, but my sense is that all thought, any thought, comes with a price tag.

As I see it, thought is an inherently divisive information medium that introduces division in to anything it touches. As example, if we jump in to some water, any water anywhere, we are going to get wet.

It's upon this belief that my focus has shifted over the years from challenging this or that philosophy to challenging philosophy itself, as example, the entire theist vs. atheist debate.

The embarrassing irony is that this has become my philosophy. I have a sense of humor about it most of the time, but my personal situation is that I no longer have a lot of respect for the process my particular mind seems to have been born to engage in.

Yep, a philosophy about the evils of philosophy, detailing the pointlessness of words and concepts in a never ending tornado of them. Makes no sense at all, but then I'm human, so why would it?

Meditation teaches us how to let go of thoughts and not be hopelessly enslaved to unconscious impulses.

How very appropriate that this should be your next sentence.

To continue my personal tell all blog, my "practice" so to speak is the north Florida woods, where I can be found all day every day as the weather permits. It is literally the Garden Of Eden to me, a source of much peace, but I've likely become too dependent on something outside myself. When it rains, here I am, sucked back in to this idiot box noise machine.

Buddhist ethics developed from insights gained through meditation and extrapolated from there.

Yes, that's what I respect. If we have to have religion, it should be very firmly grounded in mysticism, experience. To the degree I understand it, the corruption which afflicts so much of religion is a direct result of the weakening of those connections to experience.

But the average person can benefit from the basic ideas and precepts as they are. They just have to be willing to accept that all things arise due to causes and conditions, that actions have consequences, and that our own minds are not exempt from those phenomena.

A wonderfully concise summary, thank you.

I'm going to be scaling back my participation here for a bit. Not lack of interest for sure, but rather an excess of interest.

If you'll forgive me for saying this again, I'm really enjoying your posts, the combination of your insight and skillful expression is a delight to these eyes.