I’m not sure I’m understanding all of your comments either.
I’m someone who has met lots of atheists and lots of non-atheists. I’m like this. I talk to people.
What I would call “people with distorted religious believes” are usually very smart people. They have the ability of convincing people in a way that is (at first) based on some religious principles that are actually correct in our highly capitalistic / materialist societies.
My proposal is that, these core ideas that are present within all main spiritual traditions in this world are actually correct. If we learn to discern some of these core ideas and “grant to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” then we get to a completely new level of discussion with these corrupted minds that I am talking about.
So you may maintain your usual rhetoric as atheists. I’m not jeopardizing any of these main arguments here. In fact I would be willing to have discussions on these issues (one by one) in the coming days or months.
But I, as a believer in spiritual truths will sort of keep reminding everyone that in terms of having a spiritual approach in the more universal sense of the word, some approaches that we are observing not only in the Middle-East but in many places of the world are simply not working.
On a personal level: I get a little sad every time I hear about Lebanon these days. When I was a kid Beirut was described as “the Paris of the Middle-East”. It’s really weird when you hear that places you have visited as a teenager are gradually turning into rubble within a few days or so
I’m someone who has met lots of atheists and lots of non-atheists. I’m like this. I talk to people.
What I would call “people with distorted religious believes” are usually very smart people. They have the ability of convincing people in a way that is (at first) based on some religious principles that are actually correct in our highly capitalistic / materialist societies.
My proposal is that, these core ideas that are present within all main spiritual traditions in this world are actually correct. If we learn to discern some of these core ideas and “grant to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” then we get to a completely new level of discussion with these corrupted minds that I am talking about.
So you may maintain your usual rhetoric as atheists. I’m not jeopardizing any of these main arguments here. In fact I would be willing to have discussions on these issues (one by one) in the coming days or months.
But I, as a believer in spiritual truths will sort of keep reminding everyone that in terms of having a spiritual approach in the more universal sense of the word, some approaches that we are observing not only in the Middle-East but in many places of the world are simply not working.
On a personal level: I get a little sad every time I hear about Lebanon these days. When I was a kid Beirut was described as “the Paris of the Middle-East”. It’s really weird when you hear that places you have visited as a teenager are gradually turning into rubble within a few days or so
![[Image: 7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/51/bc/7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg)
