The Debate of God.

[Heathen Hammer]

Fish, sir, fish; not facts. Facts is what we's got.

You cannot swing a fact.

 

[godnotgod]

Fish, sir, fish; not facts. Facts is what we's got.

You cannot swing a fact.

Then I am afraid I will have to wrench them from your cold, dead hand.

Speaking of fish, do you know what the most valuable thing in the world is?

 

[Heathen Hammer]

I'm sorry, but you appear to be the type to bring a crayon to a gun fight. I can't in good conscience engage in a duel with an unarmed person. And it's likely I'll outlive you, so attrition won't help you either.

 

[godnotgod]

I'm sorry, but you appear to be the type to bring a crayon to a gun fight. I can't in good conscience engage in a duel with an unarmed person. And it's likely I'll outlive you, so attrition won't help you either.

Soft water eventually wears away cold, hard stone.

Bang! Bang! You're turn to be dead! Ha ha ha

But before you die, can you tell me what the most valuable thing in the world is?

 

[godnotgod]

lol, riiiiiiight, we are all "asleep".

Have you not yet reached the plateau where you realize it's fruitless to propose your baseless claims to rational people? Lose your desires; especially the one to try convincing us you've got something we need to know for which there is zero evidence.

Exactly the words of the prisoners in Plato's Cave to the single brave soul who brought them the news of the Sun that would have freed them all from their enslavement.

Smug, intellectual bimbos full of whatever it is that keeps them that way.

God, schmod....

Science, schmience...

'tis Reason that condemns them both, but to which they tenaciously cling for dear life, as it drags them both to the bottom of the abyss.

Theists and atheists need one another, huddling together in that dark Cave, shouting loudly to lend comfort to one another.

 

[Heathen Hammer]

Exactly the words of the prisoners in Plato's Cave to the single brave soul who brought them the news of the Sun that would have freed them all from their enslavement.

Smug, intellectual bimbos full of whatever it is that keeps them that way.

God, schmod....

Science, schmience...

'tis Reason that condemns them both, but to which they tenaciously cling for dear life, as it drags them both to the bottom of the abyss.

Theists and atheists need one another, huddling together in that dark Cave, shouting loudly to lend comfort to one another.

Exactly the response one expects from someone without any valid claims
Ridicule anyone or anything which does.

 

[Heathen Hammer]

But before you die, can you tell me what the most valuable thing in the world is?

Most valuable to whom?

 

[cottage]

Please bring the 'experiencer' and the 'principle-creating entity' here now and show them to me.

That is the question for you to answer. Your claim is that something (‘True reality’) can be experienced. So please inform me who or what is doing the experiencing? You’ve claimed to have your own ‘direct experience’ (1093) but that surely can’t be correct if you don’t exist?
There is more on this at the foot of the page.

From which reference do you determine that something is an illusion or delusion?

Any statement that claims true knowledge from the realm of experience!

You are quite confused: true nature is to know that there is no personal self which is in possession of same. There is only 'true nature', as in 'I Am'.

(!) With respect that is self-contradictory nonsense! You must surely, surely realise it is utterly absurd to say 'true nature' (or anything else for that matter) knows, that is to say possesses knowledge, that there is no ego or Self?

The moment one is aware of mind, ego and personal identity have also come into being. The concept of a mind is associated with a self in possession of same. Where there is no thought of 'mind', there is also no personal "I" involved. The self-created aspect of these illusions occurs so quickly that we generally fail to notice their spontaneously coming into being. Only when one's consciousness is expanded can one see how this occurs, as it is occurring.

That is not so! You are conflating the concept of personal identity with mind. While thoughts and propositions cannot be denied without contradiction, there is no identifiable ‘I’, thus there is no necessary connection between the two notions (Descartes’ classic error). A thought has the stand-alone properties of subject and predicate; no experience or any experiencing thing is required. And now compare the logically distinct mind with ‘enlightenment’. The term ‘enlightenment’ in every case refers to the gaining of insight or the attainment of knowledge, or the transcendence of the factual world, which logically requires a knowledge-seeking thing. To use your words: “Only when one’s consciousness is expanded can one see how this occurs as it is occurring.”

 

[cottage]

YOU are making that leap, not I. The Absolute has nothing to do with the concept of God.



There is only seeing, without a facility or agent of seeing. There is no 'you' that sees, and no 'mind' that you see with. As I have shown a few posts back, mind and self are self-created principles. They are illusions.



I already explained about true reality, and how the distorting factors of the discursive mind and the self need to be out of the way before it is seen.

pondfrog-leapsplash

neither mind, nor not-mind
neither thought, nor not-thought
neither thinker, nor no-thinker
neither self, nor not-self
neither belief, nor not-belief
neither doctrine, nor no-doctrine
neither fact, nor no-fact
neither knowledge, nor no-knowledge
neither you, nor not-you
neither I, nor not-I

ONLY pondfrog-leapsplash

There. Your question is now answered.

It is not my job to enlighten you. Roll your own.

Your argument is to say something is seen, and yet by your own argument it can only be seen by reference to the corporeal form. A piece that you posted way back speaks of consciousness being ‘localized or centered in various organs of the body’, and it explains how a sense of freedom [is] ‘experienced throughout the body and mind.’ ‘Within the mind is the hara’ we are told, and ‘it is thinking which sees things steadily and whole.’ And it explains that thinking can be freed of mediation ‘by the discursive intellect.’ But all this supposes that there are bodies and minds, which is inconsistent with everything you’ve been saying. The horns of the dilemma, upon which you are caught, means you cannot say ‘There is no experience’, since it is a particular experience you want to claim as ‘the truth’.

I’ve no reason whatsoever to doubt that meditation can be pleasant and beneficial; however, ‘enlightenment’ means ‘gaining insight and/or knowledge’, and as the act is supposed to derive or compound knowledge from experience, then on that account it is demonstrably unsound, as experience can never be the equal of certain truth. The difficulty is that your supposed ‘true reality’ cannot be argued without factual existence, and as the latter is contingent, and may therefore be rejected, it follows that the former is impossible. So whatever you are left with is mind dependent. Even the piece I’ve borrowed from unintentionally concurs with that conclusion! And if you want to prescribe the un-thinking of thinking it is still inescapably necessary to acknowledge the thinking mind, for there are thoughts that are necessarily true, while unthinking can only reduce to experience, which, in sharing its contingency with the corporeal form, remains very firmly and self-evidently in the world of facts, which can be denied without contradiction. There is no ‘True reality’ prior to our conceiving of such a state; though there may be sensations from which ideas are formed afterwards in the mind that want to understand the phenomenon in terms of a mystical experience.

 

[cottage]

Prophet is not saying to 'have thoughts about a thing"; he is saying, and I refer you to his original statement, "only when you can SEE, as in 'SEE', get it? He is referring to SEEING what the thought implies, rather than THINKING about it. SEEING is not the same as THINKING. He is saying that when you simply see what you THINK about yourself, what becomes apparent are your ulterior motives.

Prophet said: “Only when you can see a thought without attachment are your motives revealed.” I’ve explained that a thought without attachment is an impossible notion and cannot be seen as anything, and if there is no ‘I’ then there is no self to introspect or ‘see’, nor any ‘motives’ to be appraised. So there is a contradiction and hence an evident absurdity if the concept of self is quite properly denied as being without any logical necessity but then in the next breath it is called upon to underpin the truth of the mystical claim! The entire argument is a muddle.

 

[godnotgod]

That is the question for you to answer. Your claim is that something (‘True reality’) can be experienced. So please inform me who or what is doing the experiencing? You’ve claimed to have your own ‘direct experience’ (1093) but that surely can’t be correct if you don’t exist?
There is more on this at the foot of the page.

No, it is for YOU to answer, as I never claimed an experiencer of the experience, nor a principle-creating entity: YOU did. Now put up. There is no experiencer of the experience: there is only the experience itself which is YOU.

Any statement that claims true knowledge from the realm of experience!

Just because a statement claims true knowledge does not make it so. What is your reference for determining that something is illusory? Come on, now. Stop beating round the bush.

(!) With respect that is self-contradictory nonsense! You must surely, surely realise it is utterly absurd to say 'true nature' (or anything else for that matter) knows, that is to say possesses knowledge, that there is no ego or Self?

Of course it knows that! That is why it is true nature!

The term ‘enlightenment’ in every case refers to the gaining of insight or the attainment of knowledge, or the transcendence of the factual world, which logically requires a knowledge-seeking thing. To use your words: “Only when one’s consciousness is expanded can one see how this occurs as it is occurring.”

Again, I am using convention. There is no "I" which sees this; there is only seeing itself.

Enlightenment is not the gaining or attainment of anything, but the REALIZATION of the already-enlightened state. There is no 'knowledge-seeking thing' in enlightenment. All of that is only illusion. It vanishes as a dream vanishes upon awakening.

 

[cottage]

The totally spontaneous experience of

pondfrogleapsplash

...which occurs BEFORE any facts about the experience have been extracted from it.

There. Your question is now answered.

That is yet another disappointing non-answer, as I rather expected. You offer nothing in respect of what is true of the world but present a circular statement that merely confirms its contingency! I look carefully at your posts to see if I can glean even a vestige of truth from them, but all they consist of is a series of unsupported assertions, frequently in contradiction with each other, and with a firm foundation in the very thing you hope to deny: factuality.

 

[godnotgod]

Prophet said: “Only when you can see a thought without attachment are your motives revealed.” I’ve explained that a thought without attachment is an impossible notion and cannot be seen as anything, and if there is no ‘I’ then there is no self to introspect or ‘see’, nor any ‘motives’ to be appraised. So there is a contradiction and hence an evident absurdity if the concept of self is quite properly denied as being without any logical necessity but then in the next breath it is called upon to underpin the truth of the mystical claim! The entire argument is a muddle.

The attachment has to do with Identification. "I" think; "I" act; "I" want, etc. From a higher level of conscious awareness, one only sees what this is about without an agent of seeing, as on the lower level. Therefore, there is no attachment to the thought from the higher level, because there is no self to identify with the thought. This higher state is appropriately termed 'Self-Transcendence'.

 

[godnotgod]

That is yet another disappointing non-answer, as I rather expected. You offer nothing in respect of what is true of the world but present a circular statement that merely confirms its contingency! I look carefully at your posts to see if I can glean even a vestige of truth from them, but all they consist of is a series of unsupported assertions, frequently in contradiction with each other, and with a firm foundation in the very thing you hope to deny: factuality.

Stop denying reality. Are you saying that 'pondfrogleapsplash' is not true of the world? It comes first and facts about it secondly. Therefore, it is closer to the source than fact. In fact, it IS the source!

I do not deny factuality; I merely recognize it as a product of thought, and not of reality itself. There is no factuality present in reality. Factuality is developed by a systematic process of the rational mind. Reality is living; facts are dead. You are confusing the one for the other, as many people mistakenly do.

 

[godnotgod]

Exactly the response one expects from someone without any valid claims
Ridicule anyone or anything which does.

Shhhhh! I hear loud shouting coming from yonder cave. It's all rather humorous, actually, as they're all now shouting at each other! Something about 'our cave wall shadows are better than yours!', or something to that effect.

Troubled voyage in calm weather.

 

[godnotgod]

Your argument is to say something is seen, and yet by your own argument it can only be seen by reference to the corporeal form. A piece that you posted way back speaks of consciousness being ‘localized or centered in various organs of the body’, and it explains how a sense of freedom [is] ‘experienced throughout the body and mind.’ ‘Within the mind is the hara’ we are told, and ‘it is thinking which sees things steadily and whole.’ And it explains that thinking can be freed of mediation ‘by the discursive intellect.’ But all this supposes that there are bodies and minds, which is inconsistent with everything you’ve been saying. The horns of the dilemma, upon which you are caught, means you cannot say ‘There is no experience’, since it is a particular experience you want to claim as ‘the truth’.

I’ve no reason whatsoever to doubt that meditation can be pleasant and beneficial; however, ‘enlightenment’ means ‘gaining insight and/or knowledge’, and as the act is supposed to derive or compound knowledge from experience, then on that account it is demonstrably unsound, as experience can never be the equal of certain truth. The difficulty is that your supposed ‘true reality’ cannot be argued without factual existence, and as the latter is contingent, and may therefore be rejected, it follows that the former is impossible. So whatever you are left with is mind dependent. Even the piece I’ve borrowed from unintentionally concurs with that conclusion! And if you want to prescribe the un-thinking of thinking it is still inescapably necessary to acknowledge the thinking mind, for there are thoughts that are necessarily true, while unthinking can only reduce to experience, which, in sharing its contingency with the corporeal form, remains very firmly and self-evidently in the world of facts, which can be denied without contradiction. There is no ‘True reality’ prior to our conceiving of such a state; though there may be sensations from which ideas are formed afterwards in the mind that want to understand the phenomenon in terms of a mystical experience.

You are confusing mind with consciousness.

 

[Heathen Hammer]

Stop denying reality.

lol, irony

 

[godnotgod]

lol, irony

Appearances are not reality. Quantum Physics shows us that.

 

[Heathen Hammer]

Oh, Im sorry but you cannot claim theories to support your statements after having already denied such things have truth in them. lol

Back to your cave.

 

[cottage]

The attachment has to do with Identification. "I" think; "I" act; "I" want, etc. From a higher level of conscious awareness, one only sees what this is about without an agent of seeing, as on the lower level. Therefore, there is no attachment to the thought from the higher level, because there is no self to identify with the thought. This higher state is appropriately termed 'Self-Transcendence'.

The above presupposes an ‘I’ and motives, when you’ve stated several times there are no such things (which is logically correct). If there is no self then there is nothing to which a thought can be attached, but you confirm existence of a self by proposing a higher state of ‘Self-Transcendence.’ It is pure nonsense of course to speak of transcending a non-existent self. Blimey, this is getting worse by the minute! <cottage shakes head>