RE: Atheism -"No God, "religion has no validity"
February 17, 2015 at 1:49 pm
(This post was last modified: February 17, 2015 at 1:56 pm by emilynghiem.)
(February 16, 2015 at 1:42 am)robvalue Wrote: Sure yes, that's a good point, we don't know if time really "works" how it appears to.
But the idea of a cause seems to be necessarily bound to the idea of a "before" state, which relies on linear time. I suppose once you abandon that model, causes fail to be a coherent concept in a more complex model.
Hi Rob why can't things be co-causal?
Like if Thomas Jefferson and Founding Fathers meditated and prayed over what Americans would need to have documented in the Declaration and the Constitution/Bill of Rights, to establish a working democratic system of due process that can reform govt over time, so that we the future generations "influenced" what they did in the past and what words they wrote "inspired" by what we need in the future; and likewise what we do in the future is inspired and based on what these ancestors did or said or wrote in the past.
So our relationship can be "co-causal" where past influences future, and future influences the past.
==============================
Personal note:
Sorry I just have a thing for Thomas Jefferson, which I blame on some karma that "he didn't finish" that landed on me. I guess when playing musical chairs, I didn't move my ass fast enough and got stuck with the really bad slavery/Constitutional hypocrite BS to have to fix in this lifetime. Not sure where it comes from, but for some reason I have this drive to resolve "church-state" Constitutional issues that isn't from anything I studied in school, in fact I avoided studying it because I had not interest at all but an aversion to religion or politics and just had it forced on me and had to deal with it.
I may post some things I wrote from this "Jefferson" mindset under Buddhism if it counts as karma from "past life soulmates". I don't think I "was Jefferson in a past life" but just think I have this "spiritual connection" to him or other founding fathers that left some messes that still need to be cleaned up. When I started volunteering in Freedmen's Town, and all the leftover "karma" was still repeating in a vicious cycle, that's when I got consciously drawn into this against my will, really. I keep hoping this "Constitutional kick" is just a fundamentalist phase I will pass through like bad cramps or kidney stones and get it out of my system....
(February 16, 2015 at 1:42 am)robvalue Wrote: Sure yes, that's a good point, we don't know if time really "works" how it appears to.
But the idea of a cause seems to be necessarily bound to the idea of a "before" state, which relies on linear time. I suppose once you abandon that model, causes fail to be a coherent concept in a more complex model.
Also Rob, what a monk pointed out using a frog as an example:
the frog's eye is already "designed" to see insects and plants that are necessary for its survival. This starts happening while the frog is still forming in the egg. But the other insects and plants in the ecosystem are forming "simultaneously" not before/after.
So this example is used to explain "interconnectedness" of life.
And no you don't have to believe in any God to recognize how the elements co-influence each other, and the point is to seek balance.
