>Are you implying reincarnation spawned out of nowhere?
No, eincanation always existed, what is difficult for you is to understand eternity, something that has always been there, and will always be here, never created, never repeating, but that's just because that concept wasn't taught to you as a kid.
Several buckets of paint lay on the edge of a building roof. The wind knocks them over and the paint spills onto a large canvas tarp below leaving an interesting swirling pattern of colors. After the paint dries, someone cuts a square of particularly interesting paint pattern out of the tarp, frames it, and hangs it up in an art gallery for sale. Someone buys it and over the decades to come it changes hands many times until its origin story is lost and unknown. One day, a man visits his friend and sees this painting hanging on his wall. The man asks, "This painting is marvelous, who painted it?" His friend pauses in thought for a moment, "You know, I'm not sure anyone did." The man scoffs, "What do you mean? How can a painting not have a painter?"
You just proved my point. Who created the paint or caused the wind mechanism?
2 years ago
Anonymous
The actual point is that beautiful things can occur by chance without the involvement of intelligence or intention.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You didn't answer the question. Also, it doesn't matter if things were intentional or not. The very fact that something existed in the first place is sufficient evidence of there being a God.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>it doesn't matter if things were intentional or not
It does. If your definition of "God" is some unintentional, unthinking natural process then that's no different from calling gravity or the process of evolution "God," which devalues the term to a degree that it's not worth using due to all the connotations its loaded with that you're ignoring.
2 years ago
Anonymous
If materialists believe the universe came from a tiny point that exploded, then what exactly is the problem with considering a first cause as your God? The definition is subjective for everyone and doesn't necessarily discredit anything.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>what exactly is the problem with considering a first cause as your God?
First of all, words have definitions (pic related). Secondly, words have connotations. Both influence not only how we use words but how people we speak to understand those words. Language is nothing without shared understanding. God or gods are generally understood to be intelligent agents capable of enacting some kind of intent or will, usually in a very powerful, supernatural way. Calling the cosmic singularity God dumps a heavy load of religious/spiritual/supernatural baggage on what you're talking about and to most people would imply you think the cosmic singularity is some kind of independently thinking, acting being rather than just a tightly compressed ball of energy.
There is certainly an abundance of evidence for reincarnation, but you should be very suspicious of who or what is planting that evidence, and why it is there.
God's existence is the second most obvious truth about reality that everyone knows; only surpassed by the knowledge of one's own consciousness.
Atheism is not mutually exclusive with non-local consciousness.
You deny God, yet you live in a world where some consciousnesses are inherently more holy than others.
And yes both these statements are somewhat contradictory, I'm merely illustrating the point that hardly anything is known about this matter, to the very vast majority at least.
>You deny God, yet you live in a world where some consciousnesses are inherently more holy than others.
All consciousnesses are equally holy and most problems in the world are caused by the people that think their own consciousnesses are holier than others'.
>All consciousnesses are equally holy and most problems in the world are caused by the people that think their own consciousnesses are holier than others'.
Categorically false, nothing in this universe is equal. The second statement is also false; most problems arise from a lack of holiness.
You'll understand when you grow up a bit.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>You'll understand when you grow up a bit.
You've been brainwashed to think you're on some sort of spiritual evolution where you are superior to beings not as advanced as you, and inferior to ones with more enlightenment.
But the truth is you are already perfect and got into the illusion of being limited for entertainment purposes. We all are equally powerful, but forgot it on purpose for the purpose of this game called life, but growth is an illusion and you can't learn anything new, just remember what you made yourself forget.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Wrong, you've been brainwashed to think everyone is equal. I never mentioned or implied the word "superiority" in any of my posts, and that type of conjecture on your behalf is why I presume you're quite young.
Everyone is perfect in their own way, but not everyone is the same. You're not as selfless as Mother Teresa, you're not as selfless as Christ, you're not as courageous as the early Christians, etc.
That being said, you have a good message so keep that up at least.
>Good job hijacking a thread with good potential.
No, the OP didn't know atheists can believe in reincarnation (I'm one of them, OP just assumed reincarnation required a god, like an ass.)
>energy is neither created nor destroyed >but it comes from a source that permeates everything >body is an instrument that uses sensors like retinas and eardrums to accurately convey data that the mind interprets >we create tools over time that allow us to experience things outside of our instrument, like uv and infrared light, sub and supersonic sound etc
Remind me how source energy isn’t god, and how all that exist aren’t recycled. Because from this POV it’s easy to see that we exist in a range of frequencies on a spectrum that is detectable through our bodies. And we are not our bodies, but we have a body. Our mind observes it. What observes the mind?
>Because from this POV it’s easy to see that we exist in a range of frequencies on a spectrum that is detectable through our bodies.
You have it the other way around, we are projecting reality from the inside out, what is outside of our perception is in a superimposed state of all possibilities and we make them collapse into one of them when we observe them. Scientists projected the atoms and the photons and all that explanation about how our sensory inputs are translated by the brain, but they could have projected something else, and reality would work the same.
>Remind me how source energy isn’t god
Because when "god" becomes something so generalized and impersonal the word doesn't carry the same weight or meaning. Does the source energy have will? Is it sentient? Do you actively worship it? You could call the sun "god" and it would still be the sun and would still exist. Julius Caesar was declared a god and he existed. But that ignores the connotations of what people are actually saying when they say they "believe in God."
We only have one soul and we are constantly growing.
The meaning of life is to exercise your free-will while you're on Earth. That shows that you have learned the lessons that God has sent you.
You were a seed-soul sent to Earth to grow into an "adult" soul.
Re-incarnation defeats the purpose of learning if you constantly have to start over. Plus, your mind can't be reset.
Also, meditation is just a way to empty your body of your soul and to allow demons in. Never meditate or smoke weed or do any drugs.
>Re-incarnation defeats the purpose of learning if you constantly have to start over.
We have start over with a clean slate in order to go through our lessons without all the baggage from other lives. You have them embedded into your soul though, it's why some children are prodigies. We also eventually recover our memories.
Confirmation bias. Ian grew up in a Theosophistic household that believed in reincarnation. His funding came from a businessman who wanted evidence of an afterlife after his wife died. Ian also did not record his sessions, was reported to ask leading questions, had credulous translators, and had a majority of his cases contaminated by the families interacting with each other. A lawyer who was working with him noted these issues, see the wikipedia article on criticisms of him: >Champe Ransom, whom Stevenson hired as an assistant in the 1970s, wrote an unpublished report about Stevenson's work, which Edwards cites in his Immortality (1992) and Reincarnation (1996). According to Ransom, Edwards wrote, Stevenson asked the children leading questions, filled in gaps in the narrative, did not spend enough time interviewing them, and left too long a period between the claimed recall and the interview; it was often years after the first mention of a recall that Stevenson learned about it. In only eleven of the 1,111 cases Ransom looked at had there been no contact between the families of the deceased and of the child before the interview; in addition, according to Ransom, seven of those eleven cases were seriously flawed. He also wrote that there were problems with the way Stevenson presented the cases, in that he would report his witnesses' conclusions, rather than the data upon which the conclusions rested. Weaknesses in cases would be reported in a separate part of his books, rather than during the discussion of the cases themselves. Ransom concluded that it all amounted to anecdotal evidence of the weakest kind.[46]
Jesus taught reincarnation until the catholics wanted to indocrinate people into believing they only had one life and were going to hell, so they removed most, if not all the texts.
I'll do it now: Reincarnation does not imply god exist. We live in a world where reincarnation is real, but not god.
That was easy.
Are you implying reincarnation spawned out of nowhere? How can a painting not have a painter?
>Are you implying reincarnation spawned out of nowhere?
No, eincanation always existed, what is difficult for you is to understand eternity, something that has always been there, and will always be here, never created, never repeating, but that's just because that concept wasn't taught to you as a kid.
Agreed.
The manifestations within the cycle of samsara are not eternal.
Samsara - the cycle itself - is eternal.
God is literally the epitome of eternity.
Several buckets of paint lay on the edge of a building roof. The wind knocks them over and the paint spills onto a large canvas tarp below leaving an interesting swirling pattern of colors. After the paint dries, someone cuts a square of particularly interesting paint pattern out of the tarp, frames it, and hangs it up in an art gallery for sale. Someone buys it and over the decades to come it changes hands many times until its origin story is lost and unknown. One day, a man visits his friend and sees this painting hanging on his wall. The man asks, "This painting is marvelous, who painted it?" His friend pauses in thought for a moment, "You know, I'm not sure anyone did." The man scoffs, "What do you mean? How can a painting not have a painter?"
You just proved my point. Who created the paint or caused the wind mechanism?
The actual point is that beautiful things can occur by chance without the involvement of intelligence or intention.
You didn't answer the question. Also, it doesn't matter if things were intentional or not. The very fact that something existed in the first place is sufficient evidence of there being a God.
>it doesn't matter if things were intentional or not
It does. If your definition of "God" is some unintentional, unthinking natural process then that's no different from calling gravity or the process of evolution "God," which devalues the term to a degree that it's not worth using due to all the connotations its loaded with that you're ignoring.
If materialists believe the universe came from a tiny point that exploded, then what exactly is the problem with considering a first cause as your God? The definition is subjective for everyone and doesn't necessarily discredit anything.
>what exactly is the problem with considering a first cause as your God?
First of all, words have definitions (pic related). Secondly, words have connotations. Both influence not only how we use words but how people we speak to understand those words. Language is nothing without shared understanding. God or gods are generally understood to be intelligent agents capable of enacting some kind of intent or will, usually in a very powerful, supernatural way. Calling the cosmic singularity God dumps a heavy load of religious/spiritual/supernatural baggage on what you're talking about and to most people would imply you think the cosmic singularity is some kind of independently thinking, acting being rather than just a tightly compressed ball of energy.
There is certainly an abundance of evidence for reincarnation, but you should be very suspicious of who or what is planting that evidence, and why it is there.
God's existence is the second most obvious truth about reality that everyone knows; only surpassed by the knowledge of one's own consciousness.
Atheism is not mutually exclusive with non-local consciousness.
You deny God, yet you live in a world where some consciousnesses are inherently more holy than others.
And yes both these statements are somewhat contradictory, I'm merely illustrating the point that hardly anything is known about this matter, to the very vast majority at least.
>You deny God, yet you live in a world where some consciousnesses are inherently more holy than others.
All consciousnesses are equally holy and most problems in the world are caused by the people that think their own consciousnesses are holier than others'.
>All consciousnesses are equally holy and most problems in the world are caused by the people that think their own consciousnesses are holier than others'.
Categorically false, nothing in this universe is equal. The second statement is also false; most problems arise from a lack of holiness.
You'll understand when you grow up a bit.
>You'll understand when you grow up a bit.
You've been brainwashed to think you're on some sort of spiritual evolution where you are superior to beings not as advanced as you, and inferior to ones with more enlightenment.
But the truth is you are already perfect and got into the illusion of being limited for entertainment purposes. We all are equally powerful, but forgot it on purpose for the purpose of this game called life, but growth is an illusion and you can't learn anything new, just remember what you made yourself forget.
Wrong, you've been brainwashed to think everyone is equal. I never mentioned or implied the word "superiority" in any of my posts, and that type of conjecture on your behalf is why I presume you're quite young.
Everyone is perfect in their own way, but not everyone is the same. You're not as selfless as Mother Teresa, you're not as selfless as Christ, you're not as courageous as the early Christians, etc.
That being said, you have a good message so keep that up at least.
absolutely naive. you have been lied to.
Evil knows what it is, and is intentionally so
midwit
Good job hijacking a thread with good potential.
btw, I'd love the tl;dr on this.
>Good job hijacking a thread with good potential.
No, the OP didn't know atheists can believe in reincarnation (I'm one of them, OP just assumed reincarnation required a god, like an ass.)
Buddhism is an atheist religion that believes in reincarnation.
No.
Who is the God of Buddhism, then?
There are gods like harmapalas.
Dharmapalas
No.
>energy is neither created nor destroyed
>but it comes from a source that permeates everything
>body is an instrument that uses sensors like retinas and eardrums to accurately convey data that the mind interprets
>we create tools over time that allow us to experience things outside of our instrument, like uv and infrared light, sub and supersonic sound etc
Remind me how source energy isn’t god, and how all that exist aren’t recycled. Because from this POV it’s easy to see that we exist in a range of frequencies on a spectrum that is detectable through our bodies. And we are not our bodies, but we have a body. Our mind observes it. What observes the mind?
>Because from this POV it’s easy to see that we exist in a range of frequencies on a spectrum that is detectable through our bodies.
You have it the other way around, we are projecting reality from the inside out, what is outside of our perception is in a superimposed state of all possibilities and we make them collapse into one of them when we observe them. Scientists projected the atoms and the photons and all that explanation about how our sensory inputs are translated by the brain, but they could have projected something else, and reality would work the same.
>Remind me how source energy isn’t god
Because when "god" becomes something so generalized and impersonal the word doesn't carry the same weight or meaning. Does the source energy have will? Is it sentient? Do you actively worship it? You could call the sun "god" and it would still be the sun and would still exist. Julius Caesar was declared a god and he existed. But that ignores the connotations of what people are actually saying when they say they "believe in God."
t. Western Buddhist
Ok, how does reincarnation work?
Up yours, woke moralist!
doesn't the burden of proof lie on those making the positive assertion?
I think what's really happening with reincarnation is "genetic memories". Memories stored in DNA and resurfacing in later generations.
We only have one soul and we are constantly growing.
The meaning of life is to exercise your free-will while you're on Earth. That shows that you have learned the lessons that God has sent you.
You were a seed-soul sent to Earth to grow into an "adult" soul.
Re-incarnation defeats the purpose of learning if you constantly have to start over. Plus, your mind can't be reset.
Also, meditation is just a way to empty your body of your soul and to allow demons in. Never meditate or smoke weed or do any drugs.
>Re-incarnation defeats the purpose of learning if you constantly have to start over.
We have start over with a clean slate in order to go through our lessons without all the baggage from other lives. You have them embedded into your soul though, it's why some children are prodigies. We also eventually recover our memories.
>Also, meditation is just a way to empty your body of your soul and to allow demons in.
Is sleeping is demonic now too?
>believe in x construct
>judge everybody who doesn't believe in x construct based off x construct's measures
This reads like a Oyish thread.
Confirmation bias. Ian grew up in a Theosophistic household that believed in reincarnation. His funding came from a businessman who wanted evidence of an afterlife after his wife died. Ian also did not record his sessions, was reported to ask leading questions, had credulous translators, and had a majority of his cases contaminated by the families interacting with each other. A lawyer who was working with him noted these issues, see the wikipedia article on criticisms of him:
>Champe Ransom, whom Stevenson hired as an assistant in the 1970s, wrote an unpublished report about Stevenson's work, which Edwards cites in his Immortality (1992) and Reincarnation (1996). According to Ransom, Edwards wrote, Stevenson asked the children leading questions, filled in gaps in the narrative, did not spend enough time interviewing them, and left too long a period between the claimed recall and the interview; it was often years after the first mention of a recall that Stevenson learned about it. In only eleven of the 1,111 cases Ransom looked at had there been no contact between the families of the deceased and of the child before the interview; in addition, according to Ransom, seven of those eleven cases were seriously flawed. He also wrote that there were problems with the way Stevenson presented the cases, in that he would report his witnesses' conclusions, rather than the data upon which the conclusions rested. Weaknesses in cases would be reported in a separate part of his books, rather than during the discussion of the cases themselves. Ransom concluded that it all amounted to anecdotal evidence of the weakest kind.[46]
>Reincarnation
>Anything to do with belief in gods
Glad someone made the containment thread. Please do not have other tabs open. After reply limit start a new one.
Your real problem is getting Right (orthodox, Fundamentalist, and Evangelical) Christians to believe in it!!
Jesus taught reincarnation until the catholics wanted to indocrinate people into believing they only had one life and were going to hell, so they removed most, if not all the texts.
Where can I read texts of Jesus teaching reincarnation?