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The accusation that all religious people are dishonest is yours not mine. In a realm of dishonest claims there is a 2nd group of people. The ones BEING dishonest is the first. The ones who have been fooled is the second.
I think that's unfair to view religion as merely about fooling people. What about the communal aspects of most religions, the shared rituals and rites? People do benefit from those, regardless of what you think about the concept of God that you have in your own mind. For many people, God is found in that community. You don't understand what you don't participate in, and you claim its silliness, but the truth is you don't really want to understand the religious mind, just belittle it. Anthropologists would never study a culture by just reading books and deciding for themselves what makes the barbarians tick, they get into it and get involved, learning the language, and so on. You cannot feign objectivity by refusing to understand the subjective experiences of actual people.
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I have yet to hear anything that was not nonsense from Chopra. Maybe you can adumbrate something you think he has said that is relevant, useful and makes sense. I doubt you can find much at all short of him stating the obvious on occasion.
I've read a few of his books or listened to him talk... I also have a nice computer program where he narrates and does guided meditations. He has alot of good teachings about the value of empathy and compassion. Do you not think these things matter, or are they just nonsense for you? Part of learning to have empathy is comming to grips with the fuzzy thinking you seem to have issues with, because the real wold is a messy place less about right and wrong and more about trying to become a more open, accepting person despite the fear and selfishness we are rooted in.
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The man is a fraud who has made his living out of being great at linguistic cop outs and being so vague about his claims that no one can possibly challenge him because he is not actually saying anything at all.... but using a lot of words to say it.
Well, you are obsessed about being right or wrong and proving everybody else right or wrong instead of seeing learning experiences and ways to grow, which is what Chopra is talking about. There's nothing right or wrong in what Chopra says about a great many things, if you find it useless accept that other people find it useful and beneficial.
Wrong definitions!! No "concept ownership" allowed!
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Originally Posted by jackmccullough
This is the thing that I think is most problematic about Sam Harris's writings (at least the one book that I've read). I just think it's completely soft-headed for an atheist to think about spirituality. Once you get to the point, as I have, and as many atheists eventually do, that you conclude that there is no evidence not only for god, but for any spiritual or non-material stuff, the idea of spirituality becomes meaningless.
You are utilizing the word "spirituality" in a unique but albeit very selective way. As I've stated previously, even as a career scientist, I can and do have "spiritual" moments, which generally orbit around the observation of conditions of "natural" beauty. Why shouldn't I be allowed to say "Gawh-Lee, Andy! Lookitt thet-thar sunset? It's just..... Bee-Yoooo-Tee-Phuul!".
Why should I not enjoy the sense of well-being that both I and my cat experience when I pet her and she purrs and nestles into my lap? I don't interpret everything in terms of "Oh. This must just be some of my neurons firing that weren't firing a few seconds ago. So best to not enjoy it, huh?"
Why indeed. My body is quite capable of enjoying "spiritual moments". That does NOT automatically mean there's some necessary external spiritual entity involved, pushing levers & toggling switches, all while watching me (and everyone else...) through His Holy Celestron™ Binocular Microscope! I.e.: that every such event or feeling in my world that you'd label "spiritual" is thusly and necessarily generated by some Holy Hand of God, down well below the sub-atomic particle level, while He is also supposedly simultaneously watching over the entirety of this Universe. That's just silly!
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Originally Posted by Chango
I get all high-minded and pensive when out in the boonies for an extended period of time, especially if I'm living off the land and/or hunting.
I'm not sure I'd call it "spiritual", I'm just more aware and connected with the world around me. Living free and independent among nature (at least for a short time) as humans are naturally evolved to live just feels right and good.
Oh, I would call it spiritual, and do, Chango. Welcome to my world as well, and I'm sure those feelings "felt" when out in true nature are also shared by many millions of others. Sadly (to my mind anyways...) many of them also accredit it entirely to God being "there" with them, esp. if they happened to pray or Give Praise to Him a few minutes prior. Cause & Effect, don't you see? ('ceptin' when it don't "effect"...)
("I'm really spiritually inspired by that monstrous towering creature with the huge fangs and horrid bad breath, but anyhow.... let's just get the heck outa here!" he yelled while sprinting away. But he was also awe-inspired... That "spirit" moved him, truly!)
Now, my re-posts of Nft's insights, slightly edited.
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Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
√ ...religion is entirely unsubstantiated and very likely just made up. Therefore if it gets too specific it will simply be proven wrong.
√ If you keep your language vague, meaningless and as open to interpretation as is possible... then you will be immune to falsification.
√ Chopra is a master of using language this dishonestly. It is not that he is trying to talk about things that are almost too complex for words. He just simply uses language in a way that avoids being falsified in every way.
√ The more you can drop complicated and oft misunderstood words like "Quantum" into a sentence the more people think you know what you are talking about... even when you do not. Chopra just knows this well enough to cash in on it.
√ ...he simply pretended what what he means by god was ENTIRELY different to what anyone else meant and hence he was right all along.
√ Any rags of a pretense of honesty that was left clinging on to him after his career to date were ripped away in that moment.
So very insightful and succinctly stated, Nft! And according to my opinion of that "debunkle", also: right on. Chopra is a master of the vagarities of religious double-speak with a rich double-thick gravy of unsubtle hubris and macro-pedantry™. One can only be left to wonder: what's his end-game angle on all of this? What is he trying to achieve? Earth-bound God-like status?
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
Again we come down to this distrust of logical reasoning and the findings of science and the ongoing belief that inspired guesswork apart from its rather poor track record is more trustworthy. Why is this?
IMHO, it's because of "spiritual necessity" coupled with that hubritic pedantry I mentioned above. The more bright among them however, on seeing their pet "spirituality" being rapidly re-defined on a allowable larger scale eroded, or simply out-argued, must find new ways to camouflage & conceal it and/or re-invent it's meanings and definitions. Hence the high-fallootin' verbiage and unprovable, ambiguous commentary.
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Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
(that) Religious peoples experiences are substantiated for themselves says absolutely nothing to me because the same thing can be said of people who think they are Napolean reincarnated, have met a still living not dead Elvis, or have been abducted by aliens.
Unverifiable, possibly made up, anecdote is not evidence and likely never will be.
The trick of just being even more vague about what "god" is than most people so that you can make even weirder claims about it is just that... a trick. This is the guy who says the moon does not exist unless someone is actually looking at it at the time.
However honest he (Chopra) is not. To enter into a full debate about gods existence and then only at the end of the debate pretending that you actually meant "G.O.D." as an acronym for something entirely not metaphysical while everyone else was talking about "god".... is a low, dirty cheap cop out trick and I think you know that as well as I do.
The man is a fraud who has made his living out of being great at linguistic cop outs and being so vague about his claims that no one can possibly challenge him because he is not actually saying anything at all.... but using a lot of words to say it.
I'd also suggest this is likely a contagious disease! It's been found & confirmed right here on C-D, to be sure!
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Originally Posted by DT113876
I think that's unfair to view religion as merely about fooling people. What about the communal aspects of most religions, the shared rituals and rites? People do benefit from those, regardless of what you think about the concept of God that you have in your own mind. For many people, God is found in that community.
You don't understand what you don't participate in, and you claim its silliness, but the truth is you don't really want to understand the religious mind, just belittle it. Anthropologists would never study a culture by just reading books and deciding for themselves what makes the barbarians tick, they get into it and get involved, learning the language, and so on. You cannot feign objectivity by refusing to understand the subjective experiences of actual people.
I doubt any atheist or agnostic here would ever put down organized religion for it's many community outreach and helping hand programs. I do, however, despise their "additional luggage" & agenda in the form of ongoing efforts (such as Kids in Christ) which are, in fact, based on an agressive brainwashing effort in order to guilt those innocent and naive young minds into a subsequent fear of individual and critical thinking, or in pursuing their illegal efforts to co-mingle fact and fiction in the high school science curriculum.
Or, as some come here to do; they assure us, absolutely, that such biblical fables as Noah's Ark or an outrageous Creation/Genesis event both did indeed happen, dinosaurs and all, just 5000 or so years ago, along with the rest of the universe, the light from which, being actually many millions of light years old, and some of it still in formation, is "just now arriving!" at your local night skies for anyone to observe! This therefore fully validates that there MUST BE a spiritual entity (God) up there! Why... just go outside and look up, FurGawd'sSake! (the proof of the delusional, to be sure...).
Sadly, thus caught in multiple factual & logical conundra, their instantly-creative (but scientifically ill-prepared) imaginations are engaged, such as when they assert their God just "adjusted" time and space to make it look like that light came from fawh fawh away. "Selective Beliefs of Convenience", yes?
Well then, he's one mischievous but also gleefully arrogant nutjob.
Fortunately, that's not the only definition of "spiritual". And it's not one that devout Christians can also hijack and claim ownership of, and then astutely claim: "If you say you're spiritual at all then you're also a lying atheist!"
As in: If in need of a good atheist put-down, go for their jugular and don't stop 'til you see blood! And make sure you insult their "spirituality" as well! After all, they're just spiritually disemboweled zombies, right?
People benefit from shared experiences, such aa a group of people who are viewing a globular cluster through a large telescope. I can feel awe and wonder in such a setting with no need for religious context. I've tried the latter, and the real showpieces of the cosmos are preferable. No faith necessary; they are really there.
I am atheist and a spiritual naturalist (i.e., I don't believe that the supernatural exists, but I do value what are traditionally referred to as "spiritual" experiences - transcendence, awe, elevation, peace, connectedness, etc - I just believe that they are products of natural psychological and physiological processes).
The spiritual experience - the experience of meaning, connection and joy, often informed by philosophy or religion - is, from a naturalistic perspective, a state of the physical person, not evidence for a higher realm or non-physical essence. Nevertheless, this understanding of spirituality doesn’t lessen the attraction of such an experience, or its value for the naturalist. We naturally crave such feelings and so will seek the means to achieve them consistent with our philosophy.
Although naturalism may at first seem an unlikely basis for spirituality, a naturalistic vision of ourselves and the world can inspire and inform spiritual experience. Naturalism understands such experience as psychological states constituted by the activity of our brains, but this doesn't lessen the appeal of such experience, or render it less profound. Appreciating the fact of our complete inclusion in nature can generate feelings of connection and meaning that rival those offered by traditional religions, and those feelings reflect the empirical reality of our being at home in the cosmos.
If you look up the etymology of the word "spiritual," you’ll find that it derives from the Latin "spiritus," meaning "wind" or "breath." Standard dictionary definitions of spiritual contrast it with physical or material, so dualism is more or less built into the ordinary conception of spirituality. But I will argue that just as we can be good without God, we can have spirituality without spirits. Even within the monistic view of the cosmos entailed by a commitment to scientific empiricism, we can avail ourselves of spiritual experience and take an authentically spiritual stance when appreciating our situation as fully physical creatures embedded in a material universe. I hope to show that in its dualism, the traditional notion of spirituality in effect sets up problems of existential alienation and cognitive dissonance that religions have wrestled with, more or less unsuccessfully, for millennia. At a stroke, naturalism cuts these problems off at the root, providing an emotionally satisfying and cognitively unified basis for feeling completely at home in the world.
I think you we can keep adjusting the doomsday clock as we are totally honest about the detail of the changes and revisions of our observations for something like climate's change, once called the Global Warming prediction of balanced re-emission of the radiation to the Earth's surface. I want the whole world to know. Previous ice ages, previous CO2 concentrations and their cyclical causes. If man is so helpless, then in the short while of realizing that the atmosphere is just the same an absorption and emission of radiation the world's weather for the sensible and reasonable actions of citizens exists. No reason not to seek one's own political thrill and rationalization of the empirical spiritualism as you would have it. That is spiritual and afforded to be uncertain of conclusive content. Just the doomsday effect.
You are utilizing the word "spirituality" in a unique but albeit very selective way. As I've stated previously, even as a career scientist, I can and do have "spiritual" moments, which generally orbit around the observation of conditions of "natural" beauty. Why shouldn't I be allowed to say "Gawh-Lee, Andy! Lookitt thet-thar sunset? It's just..... Bee-Yoooo-Tee-Phuul!".
I don't think spirituality can be equivocated with appreciation aesthetics or the sublime. An atheist in the sense being discussed cannot be spiritual because usually the metaphysics denies that that the various phenomena one experiences have no deeper meaning or relationship.
Your idea of God doesn't square with what Chopra is talking about. The Hindu concept of Brahman is not a being outside of nature controlling everything and watching everything apart from everything. That idea owes far more to a naive reading Christian piety than to serious thought about God. Even many Christian clerics and theologians do not talk about God in those terms. It's a straw-man. People like Harris and Dawkins are often engaged in this sort of straw-man attacks on religious belief, whereas many professional philosophers realize how naive this sort of argumentation is.
I don't think spirituality can be equivocated with appreciation aesthetics or the sublime. An atheist in the sense being discussed cannot be spiritual because usually the metaphysics denies that that the various phenomena one experiences have no deeper meaning or relationship.
Nothing has any "meaning" aside from what we humans ascribe to it. "Meaning" is a personal and social construct, not an objective reality.
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Your idea of God doesn't square with what Chopra is talking about. The Hindu concept of Brahman is not a being outside of nature controlling everything and watching everything apart from everything. That idea owes far more to a naive reading Christian piety than to serious thought about God. Even many Christian clerics and theologians do not talk about God in those terms. It's a straw-man. People like Harris and Dawkins are often engaged in this sort of straw-man attacks on religious belief, whereas many professional philosophers realize how naive this sort of argumentation is.
Your view of god is more of a pantheism, to which I say, how is that any different from atheism? What I call nature, you call "god," but we really believe the same thing -- physicalism and naturalism. You're arguing semantics.
I will reply to everything except the personal comments and the wholly invented aspects of my character you created as straw man and ad hominem. Comments like "You just do not understand...." or "You do not even want to understand..." are of no use to me, are ad hominem, are false, are fantasy, and are just easy to type cop out throw away comments that either of us could engage in but only one of us has.
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Originally Posted by DT113876
I think that's unfair to view religion as merely about fooling people.
How nice for you. I do not. Given that the claim of religion are not just slightly, but ENTIRELY unsubstantiated then I have no other option other than to think it a system of lies, liars, and the lied to. If there was a kernal or truth or evidence to the claims I would speak differently, but the religions are built up around a core claim.... the existence of a god.... and that core claim is entirely unsubstantiated in any way.
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Originally Posted by DT113876
What about the communal aspects of most religions, the shared rituals and rites? People do benefit from those
People benefit from being social with other people. That is true, but it is nothing to do with religion per se and religion is far from the only method of doing so. The other methods also do not carry the lies religion does or cause the harm religion does.
It is important to note that I never once claim that religion can not be beneficial at all to people who engage in it. You are of course going to find anecdotal evidence of people claiming to have benefitted greatly from it.
But the things to note are:
1) Quite often the benefit comes from things that are nothing to do with religion at all, such as the presence of other people in a community.
2) Little bits of anecdotal evidence towards benefits is not enough to justify the harms and damages religion causes.
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Originally Posted by DT113876
He has alot of good teachings about the value of empathy and compassion.
Like religion, what he has is a product that he wants to sell and he wraps it up in dishonesty, lies, woo, and linguistic nonsense in order to sell it.
Like religion however there is always a kernel of truth and importance and usefulness in there somewhere. Religion and his nonsense is just the packaging. Of course compassion and empathy are important aspects of the human animal but they are nothing to do with religion or the woo he is selling.
The tactics of religion is to latch on to and associate with things that people genuinely are concerned with. Empathy, compassion, love, morality, meaning in life and more. You then build up a system of nonsense around it as packaging and you have your sellable product to profit off. That is what religion does. That is what deepak does.
If you distill religion or Deepak to the things that actually matter then you will find there is absolutely nothing in either that you need to subscribe to on little to no evidence in order to subscribe to the useful parts.
Take anything that Deepak or Jesus has said about compassion, empathy and so on that is actual of practical use to humanity and society. List them all. Then tell me any one of them... just one single one.... that requires you to think that Jesus was a god, or that the moon only exists when people are looking at it before you can subscribe to it. I bet you can not. Nor did you attempt to adumbrate a single thing on the subject that he said that made sense despite me asking you to.
The world, as you say, is a messy place. What we do not need is people like Deepak selling woo that obfuscates it further just so he can profit off a nonsense product using nonsense language. People like him are out to make a profit and they will take things you know are important, like empathy and compassion, and build up nonsense and unsubstantiated claims around it to make you buy into their brand of it.
Maybe you can keep a straight face while defending the nonsense of a guy who thinks the moon only exists when people are looking at it. I can not.
The world is a messy place and to get to things that are "true" and "important" we must distill away the nonsense, lies and unsubstantiated claims of people like Deepak and our religions.
How nice for you. I do not. Given that the claim of religion are not just slightly, but ENTIRELY unsubstantiated then I have no other option other than to think it a system of lies, liars, and the lied to.
FIne, you've made your point... you don't believe that the religious are anything but the duped and the ******. I guess I have nothing more to say to you, if you believe that.
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Originally Posted by northstar22
Your view of god is more of a pantheism, to which I say, how is that any different from atheism? What I call nature, you call "god," but we really believe the same thing -- physicalism and naturalism. You're arguing semantics.
Physicalism and naturalism are western philosophical terms and don't apply to my beliefs. I do not hold to a natural/supernatural distinction but I also believe things exist that science doesn't understand. I practice Qi Gong and believe in it. I go to a chinese medical doctor for most of my healthcare, too. I'm not the least bit commited to your atheism, so don't equivocate my beliefs.
Look up panentheism, it is not the same as pantheism. Scholars of religion would disagree wheather Vedanta is Pantheism or Panentheism. Even in Vedanta God has a personal aspect, Ishvara, but also the impersonal, absolute, and unknowable aspect called Nirguna Brahman.
The big difference between pan(en)theism and atheism, atheism fails to take spiritual sentiments seriously and considers paradox and metaphor absurd and childish rather than mysterious and illuminating (look at our friends usage of the term "woo" for instance). Whether or not you happen to think a bronze age mesopotamian king is an adequate metaphor for the Numinous has little to do with whether you'll find Dawkins atheism palatable- I for one do not, its too smug, narrow, and ethnocentric for one.
FIne, you've made your point... you don't believe that the religious are anything but the duped and the ******. I guess I have nothing more to say to you, if you believe that.
No idea what you are saying due to the fact you are unable to use language that is not censored. Maybe if you clean up your own language I can understand better what you mean.
My point is simply that if a system of thought is at its very core based on a foundation of unsubstantiated and likely entirely made up ideas then I have little time for such a system of thought as it is little better than lies.
Lying generally is considered to be when people espouse falsehoods they know to be false. I however would also include people who espouse ideas they have absolutely no basis for thinking true. If I tell you I know the next random card from a deck will be the Ace of Hearts... I am lying. If you turn it over and it just so happens my guess was right, that does not change the fact I was lying.
Espousing things we have literally no reason at all to think true is dishonest, unhelpful and often damaging and dangerous and religion is indeed all of these things.
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Originally Posted by DT113876
I also believe things exist that science doesn't understand.
As do I, most atheists and most skeptics. Clearly we do not know everything and hence there are things we do not understand.
The issue however is that people use this fact that we do not understand everything AS EVIDENCE for things that are otherwise entirely unsubstantiated.
Whether it is ghosts, gods, precognition, homeopathy, alien abduction... it does not matter.... the people espousing all these things have no evidence and they just say "Well there are things we do not understand...." as if this somehow adds credibility to ideas they have simply just made up out of nowhere.
Yes there are things that we do not understand but this does not, never has, and never will mean that something someone just makes up is more credible. Our lack of understanding is not itself evidence for unsubstantiated claims.
I practice Qi Gong and believe in it. I go to a chinese medical doctor for most of my healthcare, too. I'm not the least bit commited to your atheism, so don't equivocate my beliefs.
You had better hope that you don't get really ill... Qigong, acupuncture, acupressure, reki and all the other so called spiritual healing practices are no better than placebos...Pure proven quackery.
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Wrong definitions!! No "concept ownership" allowed!
