ayase said:
Are you just trying to start arguments with me this evening vash? :lol:
If gods exist they should show themselves. Nothing is worthy of the worship and obedience of humanity, for all our flaws still the highest form of life in the known universe. C'mon god you pansy, come out and play - or are you just frightened we'll kick your ****?
/hubris
Ah, we have a Dawkins fan do we *crackes knuckles*.....lol no I'm just playin
Ayase, there's just so many ways I could possibly try and address your post, I'm not really sure where to begin or if indeed I should even begin. But thats part of the big problem with Dawkins, the subject is just too vast and he just doesn't have enough in depth understanding to reasonably be able to make some of the claims he does. Firstly he (like many other athiestic philosophers) only ever attack the easy target: the christian idea of god, or the idea of god that traditionally exists in organiased western religion at least. To only look at those basic example's (without any examination of the esoteric teachings/meanings behind it all) and then categorically claiming anyone who believes in God is "Delusional", well it's pure egotism frankly.
I know the word God does carry some rather strong specific connotaions along with it in the west i.e man with beard sitting on cloud, but it's important to remember that there are many other, maybe more intricate definitions of what you could call "God" or call something else if you wished, and even these definitions might carry many further esoteric meanings behind them, which may be important to grasp.
For example I can briefly explain my own definition of God, which was heavily influenced by the teachings of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (with commentry from Sri Swami Satchidananda) as I found this to be a delightfully direct and practical text, anyway: Essentially what you could call "God" or "The Supreme soul" or "Supreme Purusha" or "Kami" is everything, incuding us. Or more specifically Godhood or being in "liberation" with God is our innate and highest state, so we all have the spark of god within us but we just need to work towards realizing our true state of oness with what I call "God" the origin of all knowledge and phenomena in the universe. I suppose this is the big difference between traditional eastern and western spirituality (well, organised at least) the idea that God is either a seperate bieng or that
we at our highest level are God, personally I find the latter more liberating. So when you said "we are highest forms of life in the universe" in a sense you were right. This is not so easy to palm off as "delusional" (well it could be, but you know what I mean) this is the core of a detailed explanation of the existence of everything, and I mean very detailed so I am obviously not going into it.
Even if you look at Buddhism, the Lotus Sutras(Supposedly the Buddhas original work) for example describes an immense amount incricate metaphysical activity as does Tibetan Buddhism with it's different realms. And as we discover more and more about quantum (and other kinds) of physics and realize how little we actually understand and how much is possible, it's seeming more and more that science is actually the one catching up, but catching up it is.
So do you now understand clearer my problem with Dawkins? He is writing with such authority about a subject he clearly hasn't even tried to fully grasp, he is writing on such a simpleton(Sorry, I couldn't help that) level.
But yes, Fundamentally with a scientist like him though, it comes down to empirical evidence. I could say yes I have the best empirical evidence for God one could ever hope for, but unfortuanetly I could not share it with him, it comes down to personal experience. In my opinion God cannot be fully understood with a logical/rational/intellectual brain, since our intellectual brains our made of matter and and God is beyond matter, in my opinion. We have to bypass those parts of our mind to find true understanding. So me and Dawkins would be forced to disagree on that one, but at least he could show more depth of knowledge in his work.
