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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#911

Post by theonething »

Thiez wrote: post #907
theonething wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that Jesus had to suffer, to what, to make God decide to be more lenient with how he interprets our sins? Justice requires accountability for wrongs committed. When we break God's moral law, justice requires that we be held accountable. Jesus suffered for us to take the punishment that our sins require. Jesus took the penalty for us. That allows God to be a merciful judge, yet still fulfill all justice.

To punish one for the sins of another does not sound like justice to me, not does it hold the sinner accountable. A judge who kills his own son so that he could pardon the people that come before him is clearly insane. Doubly so if the judge is the same one who wrote the laws.

Jesus took the punishment out of His own volition.

A man is convicted of a crime and the penalty is $1 million. Another man steps up and says he will pay the penalty.

In a way, you are right about it not being just. The convict deserves the punishment, but gets mercy instead. This is the nature of mercy and justice. They are opposed. Jesus paying for our penalty intertwines the two.

You obviously don't believe any of this is true or right. I don't make it my aim to convince you or anyone else. I'd be kidding myself if I thought I could do that. Just presenting Christian doctrine as accurately as I can.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#912

Post by aristofun »

alecbz wrote: post #898
aristofun wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> C'mon, no atheist is remotely claiming that God doesn't exist even as a concept. You can't possibly think this is what any atheist ever meant? Personally I don’t care neither abou atheists nor about religious people in general. I was just answering the question.

> I was just answering the question. But you misinterpreted what "exists" means in this context.

And what does it mean exactly?

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#913

Post by Thiez »

theonething wrote: post #911
Thiez wrote: post #907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To punish one for the sins of another does not sound like justice to me, not does it hold the sinner accountable. A judge who kills his own son so that he could pardon the people that come before him is clearly insane. Doubly so if the judge is the same one who wrote the laws.

Jesus took the punishment out of His own volition. A man is convicted of a crime and the penalty is $1 million. Another man steps up and says he will pay the penalty. In a way, you are right about it not being just. The convict deserves the punishment, but gets mercy instead. This is the nature of mercy and justice. They are opposed. Jesus paying for our penalty intertwines the two. You obviously don't believe any of…

That example only works for fines. If the punishment is 1 year in prison, then you can't get someone else to volunteer for you, even if they wanted to. And it would be quite ridiculous if suicidal (or terminally ill) people could volunteer to die so that a murderer (that they perhaps like or admire, for whatever reason) convicted to death would be pardoned.

It's true that I don't believe it all of this, but let's assume for a moment that the following is true (quoting your previous post):

> Justice requires accountability for wrongs committed. When we break God's moral law, justice requires that we be held accountable.

To me another man suddenly showing up paying the penalty is completely contradicting and undermining this accountability.

When making the rules, a god could just say "I forbid these things, and there will be consequences for breaking the rules, but in the end I will forgive, because eternity is a long time and I'm so kind and loving". Instead, the Christian rules demand that somebody (who may or may not be the one who violated the rules) is hurt. So the Christian god orchestrated the killing of either himself or his son (or maybe a bit of both? So it's suicide and/or filicide. The holy trinity is confusing), because he kind of wants to forgive people, but the rules (that he himself made, and presumably could change, being all-powerful) demand that someone is hurt. Oh, and most interpretations hold this god to be omniscient, so in that case it's not like he didn't see this mess coming when he made the rules in the first place.

If you are completely in control of a situation and voluntarily set it up in such a way that in the future you have to hurt yourself (or have you children hurt themselves) to get things to work out, is it really self-sacrifice? Having Jesus die for our sins makes the Christian god seems like a heroic firefighter who is also the arsonist.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#914

Post by sam0x17 »

mbg721 wrote: post #821
theonething wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that Jesus had to suffer, to what, to make God decide to be more lenient with how he interprets our sins? Justice requires accountability for wrongs committed. When we break God's moral law, justice requires that we be held accountable. Jesus suffered for us to take the punishment that our sins require. Jesus took the penalty for us. That allows God to be a merciful judge, yet still fulfill all justice.

Put another way, at least how my understanding of Catholic tradition goes, atoning for sin (which was present from the Original Sin of Adam to every little or big sin we commit from time to time) demands sacrifice, and no sacrifice is sufficient to atone for all of it except for a sacrifice of God Himself. Various religions tried grain sacrifices, animals, even the ultimate sacrifice of humans, the one creature made…

Right, and the puzzling implication is even God isn't powerful enough to simply write off sin without there being some sort of sacrifice. IMHO this combined with the fact that God regularly violates his own moral codes in the bible tells me that really according to Christian doctrine, God is neither perfect, nor the most powerful being/force in the universe -- instead whatever this abstract force that requires sacrifice to negate sins --- that force is more powerful than God.

All hogwash of course, but just shows you how poorly thought out it all is.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#915

Post by sam0x17 »

chernevik wrote: post #638
criddell wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood what part of the crucifixion was a sacrifice. Jesus is literally a god. He knew he would end up on the cross before he even took on human form. He could have left at any time. He can return any time he wants. And how can his death on the cross be actually considered a death? If he was dead, are we to understand that for those few days there was no god overlooking all of creation? It seems to me…

God created Time and does not experience it as we do. There is a school of thought that says that, for God, all times are _now_ -- there is no difference between past, present or future. All are equally "present" to Him. In this frame, the Crucifixion is happening _now_. Jesus, as a man, is suffering and dying at this very moment. As humans experience time, He always will be. It seems to me that, for any entity, this…

An entity that experiences all of time at the same time would be pretty used to suffering, as all suffering that has ever and will ever occur is experienced by this entity all the time, so hardly a sacrifice. Jesus's suffering is a small drop in an ocean of suffering experienced at all times by such an entity.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#917

Post by dragonwriter »

aristofun wrote: post #850
dragonwriter wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this case god-hating atheists confirm the existence of god in the form of ‘concept’ you may say. The existence of a concept is not the same thing as the existence of the thing the concept refers to.

> The existence of a concept is not the same thing as the existence of the thing the concept refers to. Yes it is, for most of the average Joe believers the concept of god is the god, since they never faced any other kind of god in their life. The same with zombies - if you afraid of them => they definitely exist _at least_ in your head! Otherwise what the hell exactly are you afraid of?

> > > The existence of a concept is not the same thing as the existence of the thing the concept refers to.

> Yes it is

No, it's not.

> for most of the average Joe believers the concept of god is the god, since they never faced any other kind of god in their life.

This...requires the assumption that God does not exist (in re, if we must, since you seem to insist on the archaic, Anselm-like insistence that existence in intellectu is a real thing and that material existence is a predicate), but, even ignoring that giant problem with one premise, that's not true. I may have a concept of a robber who robbed my house when no such robbery actually occurred in the material universe, but the existence of they concept doesn't mean that a robber who robbed my house exists even if I have had no experience of a material robber only the concept, it means the concept refers to a thing that does not exist.

Ditto with concepts of God to the extent that God does not exist.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#918

Post by mistermann »

Trex_Egg wrote: post #827
mistermann wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. As an armchair Taoist (and psychologist/neuroscientist), I consider this as jumping from the frying pan into the fire, or another frying pan at least. Although, the current popularity of this metaphysical framework is undeni…

So you are saying the atheism is another religion.

I would say there are substantial behavioural similarities (thinking styles and patterns, epistemic approaches, etc) that can be reliably observed, and despite their claims that they "have no opinion" on the existence of God, it's pretty easy to get them to slip up if one is debating from an actually neutral position. Also, they tend to have quite strong emotions on the subject for people who have no opinion.

Regardless, any such claim that it is another religion can be quickly debunked by a quick Google of a dictionary definition:

>> religion: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods

The dictionary entry proves that atheism is nothing at all like religion.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#919

Post by geoduck14 »

nogridbag wrote: post #345
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…

> I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven I still remember the day at Sunday school when we had to confess. I was a good kid. I had absolutely no idea what to confess. I consulted my Mom who told me to "make something up". And thus my first sin, that I can remember, was lying to the priest.

I'd like to make a suggestion. If you aren't sure if you have anything to confess, then pray.

Ask God to reveal any sin to you so you can confess it, pause for a little bit and listen for God. You can also take this time to thank God for things in your life.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#920

Post by methusala8 »

_ywdj wrote: post #96
eliotSplyt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to learn more about this. Do you have any links or resources you would recommend?

It's hard to recommend stuff here (I've been trying for years to work out how to reply to this answer FWIW), as a lot of the popular books about it are too close to law-of-attraction, Tony Robbins, Think and Grow Rich kind of stuff, or linked to the chiropractic field, which is a turnoff for a lot of for most people here, for reasons I understand, as I don't subscribe to much of that myself. I also don't want to reco…

I have sent an email. This sounds very interesting. Would like to know more about the breathing practice that you mentioned earlier.
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