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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#701

Post by titzer »

MegaButts wrote: post #574
JohnBooty wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but your post feels out of place. This Ask HN is "What is your spiritual practice?", not "Debate others' beliefs."

I think pointing out flaws in other people's reasoning is perfectly valid. You could argue the response was mean-spirited, but I actually enjoyed how well it articulated something I was thinking. Honestly I think we need more posts like the above, not fewer.

> I think pointing out flaws in other people's reasoning is perfectly valid.

Frankly my knee-jerk reaction on some of the above comments was to start picking apart their reasoning and thinking of ways to explain why they're wrong. I was gearing up to drop some bombs. I have done this a lot. The internet is full of it. And it sucks.

There's so much of "I'm just pointing out the flaws in other people's reasoning". It's more than just snootiness; it's exhausting for everyone, even the out-pointer and out-pointed. It saps energy and....damn it...I'm doing it right now. The end result is just a cloud of bad feelings.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could write something on the internet and people would just listen....fuuuuu...and maybe some people would agree, and you wouldn't have to have an argument? What a world!

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#702

Post by skinkestek »

lisper wrote: post #695
Barrin92 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>concept of original sin Personally as an atheist-ish / lapsed Catholic, original sin is just about the only thing I've never actually doubted, Chesterton put it very well: “Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin – a fact as practical as potatoes.…

> the fact of sin Yeah, there's your problem right there. At the risk of stating what should be painfully obvious to any sane person, there is no "fact of sin", and you certainly can't use the claim of a "fact of sin" as a justification for the idea of original sin. It's a completely circular argument. Garbage in, garbage out.

> there is no "fact of sin", and you certainly can't use the claim of a "fact of sin" as a justification for the idea of original sin.

So, what do you call me the thing that drives otherwise reasonable humans to hate each other?

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#703

Post by xupybd »

omarfarooq wrote: post #609
xupybd wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus was God in flesh. So God the father is separate but connected. ( I'm a little under qualified to describe the exact nature of the Holy Trinity) So God the father has always been looking over creation. After Jesus ascended to heaven the Holy Spirit was sent to help the church in place of Jesus her on earth. Jesus was God in flesh so he purposely limited himself to experience all that we experience, to suffer all…

> Jesus was God in flesh so he purposely limited himself to experience all that we experience, to suffer all that we suffer. There is nothing that He can't empathize with. This implies that God is incapable of fully knowing the experience of humans without becoming human, hence God is not omniscient; since now his omniscience is contingent on becoming contingent.

I don't think I've seen the word Omniscient used in the Bible.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#704

Post by gregfjohnson »

My goal: predispose myself to be receptive to the gift of inner transformation. I have four words that resonate these days: wise, thoughtful, mature, sane. As a Catholic Christian, I see a good deal of unwise, unthoughtful, immature, and insane Christianity, and also, albeit less vocally, a good deal of wise, thoughtful, mature, and sane Christianity. I have personally spent a disconcertingly large amount of time in the first of those places. I do see moments, perhaps even a bit more frequently theses days, of being in the second of those places. Best I can tell, Sturgeon's Law applies to religion just as it applies to everything else: "ninety percent of everything is crap." That being said, I am convinced that the other 10% of religion is rich, sublime, beautiful, and worthy. The first ultimately amounts to nothing, and the second everything. For my daily practice, I read the day's scripture passages from the Catholic Missal, and then do 20 minutes of centering prayer. The Trappist monk Thomas Keating's work is my main guide, along with Thomas Merton, James Finley, Richard Rohr, and Cynthia Bourgeault. Centering prayer is a simple practice of wordless receptive awareness of being in God's presence, and an openness to God's ongoing work within and without.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#706

Post by geoduck14 »

pg_1234 wrote: post #282
sam0x17 wrote: post #233

100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9. I knew I was gay at the time and wouldn't come out until I was 18 or so, but my life just got a lot easier when I removed religion completely. I also recall discovering increased moral agency -- as a Christian I had been taugh…

+100% ... well, straight here ... but I was 7 when I realised that religion was not only bullshit but actually dangerous as it represents a way for people to justify reprehensible acts by putting the importance of pandering to the alleged whims of a "supreme" being above any rational standard of decency and morality.

>but I was 7 when I realised that religion was not only bullshit but actually dangerous as it represents a way for people to justify reprehensible acts

I have a 7 yo daughter. I wonder if she believes this stuff, too.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#707

Post by namero999 »

DocTomoe wrote: post #112

After a psychedelic experience, I have come to have a weird combination of philosophical Vedanta Hinduism, Daoism and Buddhism, with some more animist ideas sprinkled in. My spiritual practice is to make myself aware of the world as a system and framework, but ultimately the meaninglessness it has, through meditation several times during the day, but usually at least in the morning after rising and at night before be…

Tagging along, as this resonated as similar to my journey. Happy to chat.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#708

Post by omarfarooq »

xupybd wrote: post #703
omarfarooq wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jesus was God in flesh so he purposely limited himself to experience all that we experience, to suffer all that we suffer. There is nothing that He can't empathize with. This implies that God is incapable of fully knowing the experience of humans without becoming human, hence God is not omniscient; since now his omniscience is contingent on becoming contingent.

I don't think I've seen the word Omniscient used in the Bible.

> Psalm 147:5 - Great is our Lord and abundant in strength;His understanding is infinite.

> For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things (1 John 3:20).

> Known to God from eternity are all his works (Acts 15:18).

> The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good (Proverbs 15:3).

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#709

Post by namero999 »

asiachick wrote: post #249

I'll take the downvotes but this entire thread is mostly depressing. If you want to know why people believe in 5G nanobots from vaccines or pizzagate you need only look here in this thread at all these people believing in nonsense. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j8llkjvURyg most similar videos critique religion but to me, spirituality just means persoal religion and has many of the same traps, bad reasoning, and bad c…

Not going to downvote you, but I consider that view extremely naive. Without an all encompassing worldview, you are going to need lots of luck to navigate life and the world. The word religion, once you divest it of superstitions, means re-legare, to bind together. And this is what spirituality essentially is, the construction of a coherent worldview that makes sense. God or other concepts like that are just syntactical proxies. Don't read things too literally, or you'll end up coming across as more deluded than the targets of your criticism (or as Harris). "Only the shallowest of minds would think that in great controversy one side is pure folly".

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#710

Post by jollybean »

sam0x17 wrote: post #233

100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9. I knew I was gay at the time and wouldn't come out until I was 18 or so, but my life just got a lot easier when I removed religion completely. I also recall discovering increased moral agency -- as a Christian I had been taugh…

This does read a bit like a (albeit smart) 9-year-old's interpretation of spirituality, but I'm afraid I think you might have missed the opportunity to understand your parent's religion.
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