A Question From Atheists

[The Grand Nudger]

I find your use of language very attractive despite being sometimes kinda humiliating! I know some English but I don't really see it in myself transcending my boring tone. That's kinda sad!

Thanks. I'm always smiling, if it helps.  

BTW, I don't really believe in Yogic meditation, they are just a set of very concrete techniques, nothing more. They are widely used in western societies for mental illnesses like anxiety, depression etc.

Sure, so long as someone is getting -actual- treatment....then maybe sitting cross legged for a few hours a day is a good idea.  That;s a few hours they won;t spend killing themselves, at least (one hopes - though somehow somebody somewhere is going to manage it).  Beyond that, meh.  The data on the efficacy of meditation is sparse, spotty, and open to vast interpretation.  No physician or psychiatrist in their right mind would see a patient suffering in the grips of a serious physical or metal illness....and proscribe that they sit still and quiet for a few hours.

Cancer?  Meditate on it.
Schizophrenia?  Meditate on it.
Depression with self harm? Meditate on it.

-said no competent healer ever.

the thing that some of them can have unusual effects on human consciousness after prolonged practice is not also something woo. It's actually scientifically validated that there are unusual transitions in the brain waves of a practitioner. My personal experiences verify these unusual effects also. 

I think that you're greatly overselling the scientific validation, and that you have an experience you expect to have - as was described by a belief-set which you clearly have some affinity for...is hardly an improvement to the credibility of that validation.

I don't really consider myself believing in in any kinda of woo, the divinity, etc of universe thing is also not something woo for me. That's just a subjective perception and I'm aware of it. Maybe you have identified a place or a person as having "divine" qualities at some point in your life. ha? I mean all emotions are just our mind's constructs aren't they? Is a rational person obliged to ignore all this perceptions just because they are mere products of the mind? I don't think so. Being able to discriminate facts and emotions is sufficient. I think if god is real and you see him and recognize "divinity" in him, it's nothing but you mere emotion about god. There is no "actual" divinity in that supposed god.

Yes, yes, I know, everyone knew, at the outset...that you don't consider yourself to be a person who believes in woo.  Just as surely, even as you said it, it was becoming increasingly clear that you do.  My magic is not magic.  My woo is not woo.  

I could sympathise with a poetic or figurative use of the divinity of nature, of the universe.  That;s clearly not what we're discussing.  That is not the divine nature of a existent god, which is not meant or taken to be figurative, or metaphoric, but literal. It;s not about how you -feel-...it;s about what that god, or in this case that universe -is-. I look at the universe and I do not see the divinity that would be required to include it in the set of "gods".  I'm not interested in the flippant use of the term divine, or god that would be required to make this work..chiefly because they will say absolutely -nothing- for having done so.  

I still won't believe in what you call a god, even if it's the universe, because I do not think that the universe is divine. You see something there which I do not. It's not -just- the universe, after all. It's a divine universe. I neither see nor believe in -that- universe.

By referring to your feelings, you have reduced the proposition "The universe is god" to the linguistic equivalent of "I feel awed by the universe". It's not about a god at all. It's about you (though..this is pretty common to god belief, granted).

 

I genuinely assume there is not any kind of "woo" that differentiates my belief and yours.

My belief of what?  In what?  I don't believe that I do not see the divinity you ascribe to the universe.  I know that I don't see it.  This, is woo.  

[*]
I didn't really meant that. I was referring to prolonged practices which involve constant inspection of the self, in a way that the inspection becomes a second nature for you. not just doing it once. I admit the way I put it did not imply any prolonged practice though.

[*]

Okay, and the other part, wherein you said that pantheism would begin to make sense?  That didn't happen either.  When you said that, if I understood about the I, the I would disappear?  That didn't happen either.   Why do you think that is?  

Don't tell me, you didn't really mean that either.  Or perhaps I didn't sit...cross legged, quietly...for quite long enough, or the right way™?