Darth Dane

In my days as pseudo-mystic, I always identified Tao with the Gnostic plenum. The Tao itself is nothing, but is expressed as an equal opposites. Like 0=1+(-1).

Well put, nothing is real eh?

I do not see any connection at all between the theistic God -- which is a person with attributes-- and the concept of Tao.

I have lost my sense of dividing, both concepts follow the rule of 2 in 1, hence they are teh same, I don't KNOW if God has personal attributes, and thus it could easily be teh same thing.


They are totally different concepts.

What teh concepts re-present is different, but they follow teh same idea as I see it.

I think I could write a much better Tao te Ching, BTW. It would go like this: Sit Down, Be Still, Stop Thinking.

Hmm, maybe mine would be: "love thy neighbor as you would like to be loved", oh someone already took that one?

or maybe: stand up, move, think

Stand up to God and as God
Move/act as God
Think as God


I think the parts of the bible in red letters are just as silly as the parts with the talking donkies. Except for the parts about forgiveness and loving your neighbor, which I think is good advice.

I concur, good advice it is

Patrick


I see the concept of yin/yang expressed throughout reality.

As do I, do you also see the Tao?

Which makes me wonder - IS the concept an aspect of reality, or am I forcing observations into a template?

The template was given Buddha, and he verified it with his observations in reality, as you and I do, I assume How can we see the difference?
Only you will know




DD - Love Spliff

Jeremy Pallant

I think the OP would be better suited to BC&A. Consider it moved.

YHWHtruth

Interesting Observations, this one especially

ON SEEING GOD
"... I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." -- Genesis 32:30

"No man hath seen God at any time..."-- John 1:18

Actually you could have gone into a little more detail.

John 1:18 "No man hath seen God at any time."
Exodus 33:20 "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live."
John 6:46 "Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God [Jesus], he hath
seen the Father."
I John 4:12 "No man hath seen God at any time."

vs.

Genesis 32:30 "For I have seen God face to face."
Exodus 33:11 "And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his
friend." Lord sitting upon a throne, high
Isaiah 6:1 "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the
and lifted up, and his train filled the temple."
Job 42:5 "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee."

Answer: When an angel of God appeared to Manoah and his wife they viewed this representative as God himself: “Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the LORD. And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God.”—Judg. 13:3-22. The Bible does not hide this fact. Exodus 3:2 says,"And the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a thorn-bush: and he looked, and behold, the thorn-bush burned with fire, and the thorn-bush was not being consumed." But later it says,"And he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look at God.(Darby) God uses angels to represent him, and he has also used Jesus to reveal the "God no man hath seen." John 1:18
Also, Matthew 18:10 states that "angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven." So face to face simply means to speak to angels.

Nice try though

Max

JGL53

Yeah, whatever. But since an imaginary being would only have an imaginary face, whether one imagined one saw it or not would hinge on several conditions, not the least of which in importance would be the healthiness/unhealthiness of one's brain.

YHWHtruth

Hence the comment "Yeah Whatever"!

Max

YHWHtruth

I have never known the reason why atheists feel the need to proselytize their "FAITH"!!

Max

Llyricist

LOL this is a support forum FOR atheists, we didn't go looking for YOU, YOU came HERE :banghead:

Felstorm

And this is coming from a Jehovahs Witness.

This is hilarious. This guy is a riot. I love this dude. He's so awesome.

"Prostelytizing Atheists."

ROFLMAO....

Atheist "faith" is not the same as religous faith. Was that supposed to make those of us that are atheist-agnostic to do a double take and start saying that atheist-agnostics don't have faith, so you can whip out your theist logic and project your religion upon our "beliefs" and anthropomorphise them? You think we haven't heard this before?

Max. There is such a thing as 'rational' faith. Believe it or not you use it all the time, and so do we.

Atheist "rational faith" is relegated to that which we can predict with a good degree of certainty to exist in actuality based upon not only our own observations but the consistent observations of of actuality by others as well.

Example. I have faith that the sun will come up in the east and not west tomorrow. Why? Because that is how our heliocentric solar system works. I have solid proof of this by looking in a telescope and mathematics to prove that the sun will come up in the east tomorrow. Therefore my seemingly irrational "faith" is actually based upon rational consistent observations of the solar system.

When it comes to god and the supernatural. I do not have faith that it exists, because god-concept is as unique and original as the person that holds it. Also god-concept is often completely unprovable, either to the negative or positive. Therefore I do not wish to put faith into something that cannot be proven either way.

It would be irrational of me to have faith that goblins live in my telephone handset, write things down really fast as I say them, run to the other end of the wire and tell the other guy what I said, write down what he said and run back in a split second. Which provides a real problem for me because I have a cordless phone, how are they gonna run to my handset?! Easy fix! They are invisible! Funny how the invisible and nonexistent look alot like.

But until that time until I can come up with an experiment to prove those speedy secretarial goblins exist, microwave radiation and electricity will suffice for me.

(I'm taking bets for how long it takes for us to make him cry.)

Darth Dane

My point on this is:

500 years ago, the common observance was that there was no hidden(invisible) electric signals, today that is common knowledge, would it be possible to assume that maybe there is a lot more to the "hidden" universe than just mobile phone signals, or television signals, maybe there are "thought signals", but we haven't "seen" them yet with devices, mechanical devices.


I don't know if there are any, but to rule them out entirely seems like an arrogant stance, what will science discover in 50 years?
Today they have succesfully teleported a light beam, a thought that would have been ludicrous 10 years ago, but the boundary of Reality seems to shift constantly, and we have many years left to discover the secrets of the universe, many years indeed.






DD - Love Spliff

JGL53

Sure, Darth, "maybe" a lot of things. But since god, the Tooth Fairy, and the invisible, immaterial pink unicorns who live in the center of the sun are all defined as unknowable, where does that leave us? The unknowable by definition, seems to me, is utterly useless and utterly unimportant.

The burden of proof is on those who 'believe' in (fill in the blank with an imaginary, invisible, immaterial conscious entity). Until they come through (how, by the way?), I don't consider it 'arrogant' to wonder just WTF they are jabbering about. If someone brings a god to show and tell one day, I'll happily admit at that point that I was a fool for ever doubting other people's 'word'. That's as non-arrogant as I can get.

- For YHWHtruth - Here's some big words for you to look up:
Philosophical Naturalist
Metaphysical Materialist

This is what 'atheism' is - a positive world view. It's not based on any wish-fulfillment fantasy. It's based on a commitment to viewing the evidence as objectively as is humanly possible. It comes with no absolute guarentees, but is based on a 'conviction beyond a reasonable doubt'.

I don't know of any atheists who go door to door trying to sell this. It isn't, and probably never will be, a popular product, because it isn't what most people WANT.

And speaking of going door to door, Felstorm just stated the obvious. Look in the dictionary under the word 'irony' and you'll find a picture of a JW accusing an atheist of being a proselytizer.