I am over 40 and ever since I was 10 or so it has been my opinion that spiritual belief, though giving rise to some positive social activities, is a childish delusion of adults and mental abuse of their children.
Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#762Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recommend that you pick up a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. It may really resonate with you as well as deepen your insight. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0834800527/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_MK...
This is the philosophy that Steve Jobs followed, if I'm not mistaken.
Yes but please don't hold that against Zen Buddhism.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#763Earlier 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?
>So, what do you call me the thing that drives otherwise reasonable humans to hate each other?
Go to Google News and search for the terms 'sectarian violence', 'religious violence' and 'blasphemy'.
There are the Sunni and Shia killing each other in the Middle East, the Christians and Muslims killing each other in Nigeria and Hindu religious leaders calling for the mass killing of Muslims in India. In Pakistan, angry mobs regularly beat people to death and set them on fire for the merest perceived slight against Islam.
There is far too much intolerance, violence, misery and death in the world today caused by people acting on or motivated by their unsubstantiated religious beliefs.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#764If there are depressing threads on HN, this is the "best" of them to me.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#765Earlier 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.
It's not really pointing out flaws, it's more of a "your worldview, superimposed on my personal ethical framework, creates inconsistencies", which isn't really an insightful comment.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#766Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 think that anyone who believed in Santa Clause as a kid should automatically discredit any “intuition” they have about things. How much more evidence do you need that you’ll just believe in kooky nice sounding things?
Maybe you didn’t believe in The Red Guy, but I did, and in retrospect I must be a complete retard.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#767Earlier quoted context omitted.
> fortune cookies may actually be personal messages from the universe. Try this next time you get one: Take a few seconds and hold the fortune cookie in your hand. Deeply consider for a moment the comedic possibility that this fortune cookie contains a message from a higher power. Suspend your disbelief, just like you do when engrossed in a work of fiction. Now, the key: ask a question . Questions in the form of "Tel…
> My hit rate for meaningful messages skyrocketed since applying the above approach. As a skeptic and non-believer of all things spiritual, whenever I have one of those "meaningful messages" moments (we get them too), my reaction is to debunk that feeling by thinking about how others might have interpreted the same event, or how the fortune cookie supply chain actually works. It's funny that some people lean into tha…
> It's funny that some people lean into that feeling and assign it great cosmic meaning while others rationalize it away
Yep. There's a point in that spectrum named "trans-rational" where you have a conversation with yourself that goes something like
0) pre-rational: this is significant
1) rational: it's probably not significant, due to
2) trans-rational: well, it may or may not be significant, but what do I stand to gain or lose from assigning some significance or other to it?
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#768100% 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…
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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#769Follow Dvaita Vedanta (Tattvavada). Part of Sanatan Dharma/Hinduism and one of the schools of Vedanta. The process of learning though spans the entire lifetime. It is not a simple set of scriptures that you read and understand. It has multiple layers and takes decades to get a grasp of. Sometimes even more. The works of Shri Madhvacharya have influenced and changed my perception of Universe (Jagat/Srushti), Life (Aat…
Can you actually summarize the nature of the beliefs? All major religions/belief systems can be summarized in a sentence or two. e.g. Buddhism - if you want things, you suffer, stop wanting things, said the prince who got bored with being rich and spoiled.
I'll try to summarize it. It is not possible to combine it in couple of sentences so please excuse if I add some more.
"Dvaita Vedanta espouses 5 fold eternal differences between Brahman (God), Aatma (Soul/Self) and Jada (Non-living matter). Brahman is the only Independent entity - Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, All Pervading, Eternal. Aatma is also Eternal but is always dependent on Brahman. Creation/Jada is real but temporary and will get destroyed and remade by Brahman forever[1]. All 3 are different from each other making the Prapancha (5 eternal differences). Moksha/Enlightenment/Liberation is attainment of maximum potential of Aatma resulting in permanent bliss with zero suffering (complete self-expression, self-manifestation and self-realization). All Aatmas have gradation/positions based on their Karma and go through Karmic cycle of birth and death of the bodies they inhabit. Few great Aatmas are eligible for Moksha ending their Karmic cycle of birth and death in material Creation."
I tried to fit the entire philosophy in as simple/brief words as possible. If you have more questions I will happily provide in depth answers.
[1] It is called Mahapralaya or the Great Dissolution and happens every 311.04 trillion years (or 100 Brahma Years) where everything goes back into singularity and gets recreated again through the Hiranyagarbha/Golden Womb/Big Bang.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#770Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Different people want different things. I hate when people feel that harsh criticism isn't nice. It starts to make everything feel like fluffy bullshit.
I wish HN was way, way harsher with its commentary. I understand your perspective and realize I'm outnumbered here, but basically we fundamentally disagree (and that's okay!).
I'd rather see more arguments about controversial topics from people with differing perspectives who bring data and logic to make their points. I hate that many things feel heavily censored on this site.