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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#711

Post by 3sigma »

skinkestek wrote: post #702
lisper wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Religion.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#712

Post by uxisnotui »

Many responses here don't address OP's question about day-to-day practices.

My spiritual practice: meditation, journaling, breathwork. Occasionally, psychedelics with close friends in nature, which often starts out with a prompt regarding with we want to get out of the experience

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#713

Post by uxisnotui »

kazinator wrote: post #417
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% atheism" isn't a spiritual practice. It's just the absence of belief in the existence of gods. A rock is 100% atheist, yet in all likelihood doesn't have spiritual practice. You can have a spiritual practice under the umbrella of atheism, as long as it doesn't involve any kind of belief in gods. Whatever that practice is, that practice isn't identified with the atheism itself.

This.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#714

Post by skinkestek »

3sigma wrote: post #711
skinkestek wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Religion.

You'll find atheists hate each other as much as religious people. Maybe more.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#715

Post by aappleby »

Thorentis wrote: post #693
aappleby wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can certainly understand religion in an external, objective sense much as you can understand the various interconnected storylines in something like the Marvel comics/movies, but as soon as you ask me "...but do you _believe_ it?", my brain just fails its saving throw versus comprehension and I can't give an answer based on what I "feel" is correct, because on that particular question I am unable to "feel" anything…

Okay, but you said: "that would require assuming that the statement "Is there a god?" is both coherent, meaningful, and answerable." What part of this question is incoherent, unmeaningful, and unanswerable, if you are able to understand religion in an objective sense?

What's a god? How can I meaningfully ascribe any qualities whatsoever to a non-corporeal, non-perceptible entity? What does it even mean to ask if things that are outside of our universe "exist"?

Etcetera etcetera. You can't even get past the superficial layers of "Is there a god?" without hitting questions that are ill-formed.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#716

Post by rileyphone »

icytrumpet wrote: post #460
autopilot23 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even bother "trying to live a good life" if "a good life" is just a human construct and there is no judgement on that in the afterlife? By your assumptions, every atheist should just, like, die or at best, live a meaningless life.

Most anthiests seem to be nihilists, so they're already (claiming to be) doing that. I just always find it strange the way that "100% athiests" seem to ignore the logical conundrum of "I don't need a God or theology to live a good life" when our constructed definition of "good" comes from religion.

Nietzsche addresses this best in Beyond Good and Evil, we can cast if the constructed definitions from religion of “Good” and “Evil” and instead subjectively form our own morality based on what we find good or bad. But the constructed version of morality today comes more from culture and media than religion.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#717

Post by jollybean »

Going to Church and not necessarily paying attention to anything.

Or any other kind of 'Temple Service' for that matter.

Sneaking a peak at the men in the Mosque from the doorway, without knowing much about Islam, I was moved.

I've often visited Catholic Churches in Europe (I'm not Catholic), to take a set and contemplate a bit.

Much like the current comments about the Swiss photographer who sees Japan in a different light than they might, it sort of made me reflect on my on rather limited Church-going experience and mini-experiences of witnessing bits of ceremony of other religions.

I find intellectual people may be over analyzing a lot of issues, our egos lead us down one rabbit hole after the next and I feel we are missing the point.

'Going through the motions' can be a potent thing to help transcend that, because it doesn't involve focusing on the language or intellectual rhetoric directly.

In Buddhism they certainly have a lot of focus on 'transcending thought' which I think could equally apply to Abrahamic faith, but we get caught up a lot in the language and the 'applied rules' and it trips us up.

Just go into the Cathedral when there's no service and sit for a while.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#718

Post by xupybd »

coryfklein wrote: post #522
good8675309 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raised Christian, became an atheist, then evaluated a bunch of religions for myself. Found Christianity to be the most historically and spiritually compelling but still didn’t believe. After feeling hollow and aimless for years I re-evaluated things, read about Jesus love for me. Really meditated on His perfect life, sacrifice on the cross, and resurrection. He died for me, in my place. It became personal. When I rea…

I'm curious; do you believe that your subjective experience of God's love to be objective evidence for the existence of God, and thus you made a scientific observation that God must exist and therefore believe in him? Or is it more that your experience touching the divine had such a positive effect on your life that you simply decided to continue cultivating that experience? Or maybe a bit of both?

Personally I've not met anyone who believes in God because of scientific evidence for Gods existence. However I think Lee Strobale makes a claim of that nature in "The case for Christ".

Alvin Plantinga argues that you can have warranted belief without scientific proof in "warranted christian".

Me personally I believe that God revealed himself through revelation. That is, He convinced me internally to believe in Him. I know most would discount this as a source of truth but it's enough for me.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#719

Post by poulsbohemian »

thevardanian wrote: post #689
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.…

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This is at least a philosophically interesting perspective worthy of contemplation and conversation.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#720

Post by UnpossibleJim »

bananamerica wrote: post #687
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask a question in a form that has an answer where they are forced to lie or give you an answer you don't like, which do you prefer? EDIT: Mobile mistake =(

No one needs to lie. Not replying is an option.

I was talking about this poster's question.
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