I don't get Buddhism

It is mean to be basic and universal for all human beings.
Note the above is genetic and a default, i.e. embedded in the DNA-RNA genetically in the subconscious mind and not within the conscious mind.

Yes, there are varying degrees in how humans strives to survive due to opposing forces from external environment and internal circumstance. But one cannot deny the default will-to-live from the genes.
This default will-to-live and survive may be weakened due to unfoldment in the RNA processes and thus human will have varying degrees of will-to-live to the extreme of really bad damage and the person turned suicidal.
Again one cannot deny the default will-to-live from the genes.

‘To live’ is equivalent to, ‘to avoid death’.
This is a matter of looking at a cup half-full or half-empty but each perspective has it utility.

Thus premise 1 is true.

The fear of death is both activated by the subconscious and conscious mind.

If you observed danger or a threat, e.g. a poisonous snake nearby, you will consciously move away from that snake.

The conscious mind [10% powerful] is limited, therefore the subconscious mind [90%] will drive you away from potential death even before you are conscious of any potential death.
Such unconscious reactions are very common to the normal person.
Note the fight or fight responses, they happen within the brain and body even before you are conscious of it. The other is the freeze response.
Even in the snake case, you subconscious mind had already reacted before you are conscious and rationalize the situation and take rational actions.
In extreme cases, the subconscious mind will even sent the person into coma in the face of a very severe threat of death, even before the person or doctor consciously decides what to do.
This is what doctors will do consciously in a calculated and rational sense in severe cases of emergency, i.e. put the person into temporary coma so that the body can heal itself.

You need to do more research on the unconscious mind and how it works.

I have explained many times.
A fear of death is activated in the subconscious mind.
Because it is in the subconscious mind, one is not conscious of it.
But the powerful impulses of the subconscious fear of death, manifest indirectly as anxieties, unease, Angst and a general mental suffering.
These are the indirect existential pains resulting from the subconscious fear of death.

Note above.

It works in degrees with different people.
To be afraid to die is natural, i.e. to avoid death as in 1.
However the Christian [majority] is not likely to have a fear of physical death, since John 3:16 promised eternal life in heaven based on his 100% faith in Christ/Jesus. Surely a Christian must believed 100% [faith] in the promise of Jesus/Christ.

That you still had existential questions imply your rational mind was working against blind faith. This is perhaps the reason you was able to unchain yourself from the grasp of the terrible impulses of the subconscious fear of death.
For the typical Christian-proper, his subconscious fear of death is very active and powerful and the only way is the contract with Jesus/God’s promise of eternal life re John 3:16 entrench by the Christian’s strong blind faith.

This is why it takes a lot for the typical Christian to break away from the above bondage of faith and often they have to go through terrible stage of cold-turkey, for years in some cases.

Prismatic,

You confirm the validity of your own hypothesis?

As if that would lead to certain answers? What did I specifically state that leads you to say that?

How do you know that these emotions are not generated by the conscious mind?

Then how can you generalise?

Perhaps, but it could also mean that … oh I give up with you…

It is not perceived knowledge.
Mine is justified true belief, i.e. knowledge with varying degree of confidence levels.
I am not sure of your question.
One thing is I had covered tons and tons of materials and knowledge of the subconscious minds from various fields of knowledge.
Then from the above I will rationalize to produce justified true beliefs.

I am not sure, you’ll need to be more specific.

But we can rely on the principle of who is a Christian objective via the Gospel.

It may not be applicable to all.
However from the example of instant reactions, we can infer something has happened inside the brain when the person surrender and accept Christ/Jesus.
To triangulate and infer what it is, we have to refer to many other evidences of experiences and principles to arrive at a conclusion, i.e. it is reducible to the subconscious fear of death.

There are scientific research into the neural wirings associated with fear within the lower and mid brain and how they are manifested to the conscious level in various [directly and indirectly] ways.
I have already made the argument from the genetic striving to live to avoid death and therefrom the fear of death.
Thereupon, that subconscious fear is verified by Science re the neural wirings at the subconscious levels.
There are also research that discuss how this subconscious fear of death exudes indirectly as indirectly existential pains.
You’ll need to do more research on this yourself.

If I were to explain the above in full details, that would warrant a book-size post.

Yes as justified and note the logic and rationale of it.
How else it is false?
Btw, I have also stated the premise can possibly be tested empirically and very likely to be true, i.e. Scientifically.

It is based on what I know of the unconscious mind and what you don’t seem to know.
You keep having doubts with the workings of the subconscious mind.

If that is the case, then it would be in something like a movie, where actors consciously generate various feelings of happiness, dread, anxieties or fear on a pseudo basis.
The conscious can feel and be conscious of those feelings but the conscious mind do not generate them except where one deliberately generate them.
If one is consciously generating those dreadful feelings, one can consciously stop them.

Note in the case of anxieties and trembling with some kind of fear when one is faced with the need to do public speaking. It is not easy to control such fears because they emanate from the subconscious mind like indirectly existential pains as anxieties, etc.
I read, one of the greatest fears polled is ‘fear of public speaking’
WHY? here is the main reason,

Why Are We Scared of Public Speaking?

  1. Physiology
    Fear and anxiety involve the arousal of the autonomic nervous system in response to a potentially threatening stimulus. When confronted with a threat, our bodies prepare for battle. This hyperarousal leads to the emotional experience of fear, and it interferes with our ability to perform comfortably in front of audiences. Eventually, it prevents people from pursuing opportunities for public speaking.

(read more at)
psychologytoday.com/us/blog … c-speaking

If we dig deeper, the above fear is traceable as a form of the subconscious fear of death, in avoiding death so to live as in my premise 1.

Intensity and degrees are part of reality, note the Bell Curves and the Shades of Grey.
I can’t be wrong by referring to this general principle.

You will note I have justified all my counters with facts, evidence and generally accepted principles.
It is your discretion to give up.
As for me, it is beneficial since I can refresh from my database and polished up my arguments.

I seldom give up as far as the path forward is rational. This is why I spent so much time digging deeper and deeper into reality, note 2+ years full time on Buddhism, 3 years full time on Kant, 3+ years full time on Islam and much time on others.

Prismatic,

Thank you for taking the time to respond, but I’ve given up brother.

Prismatic,

And this is still confused. All humans who are alive are alive. Those who are not do not strive to live. Those who are alive, do not need to strive to live, they need to strive to find food and so on. The will try to avoid threats including deadly ones. They are conscious of this and also will react for reasons that may not be conscious of to threats.

No, they are afraid of threats, some of which are deadly, many can or do cause bodily harm.

These are pretty conscious.

Maybe, maybe not. It might simply be stating a fact. It might have a more mystical purpose that is not about life beyond the grave.

I do think it can be linked, associated with by believers and others, with death and thus with fears of it. None of this demonstrates that Christianity is 90% focusing on assuaging the fear of death. Further calling this always an unconscious fear of death is odd since animals do not have religions but also exhibit fears related to threats. What makes us unique is the conscious conception of death. So the motivator for religions, if it were death, would be related to conscious fears, not unconscious fears of threats that are possibly mortal ones.

See, one of the mistakes here is that we need to have an unconscious fear of death, rather than a fear of threats fo various kinds.

And of course you are just assuming there is no God, experiences that lead to religions are not real or misinterpreted.

I have argued the above is not Buddhism-proper.

Buddhism-proper [based on its core principles] in this case, the ‘two-truths theory’ believes in the following;

  1. The empirical-I-self is very real within reality.

  2. Where 1 above is extended beyond and reified as a transcendental-I-self, that is an illusion.

It is the same with all of reality;

  1. All of reality is empirically real.

  2. Where 1 above is extended beyond and reified as a transcendental reality, that is an illusion.

Thus Buddhism proper recognized the empirical-I-self as very real and the believer need to optimize the well-being of the empirical person.
It is real and not an illusion, as such if the real empirical self is standing on a track of an oncoming train he will maintain his reality by jumping off the track as soon and a far as possible to avoid a premature death.

However Buddhism-proper do not recognize the empirical-I-self as a transcendental-I-self as a soul that has essence and can survive physical death to eternal life. This is the empirical-I-self engaging in an illusion which will bring sufferings to the empirical-I-self thus hindering the empirical-I-self from optimizing his empirical being.

Thus a Buddhist-proper do not throw the baby out with the bathwater but only throw away plain dirty water.

The general principle is;

  1. All humans strive to live, thus to avoid death.
    To avoid death, humans has sub-programs to fear death, to find food, to breathe, to ensure security, etc.
    But one cannot deny the overriding drive, i.e. 1. All humans strive to live, thus to avoid death.
    As for striving, it comes in degree due to various factors.
    It is known, no normal humans want to die and there are loads of evidence humans will strive to survive against all odds.
    I presume, if you are the normal average human, you will strive to survive, if you are faced with rising waters, loss in a jungle, trapped in a burning house and other potential fatal situations?

Why are they afraid of threats?
Threats = potential death
It is because they fear death thus want to avoid death so that they will live as programmed to.

Yes one is conscious of them, but one is ignorant of what is the root cause.
If one step on a nail and it is stuck to the foot, the root cause of the pain is the nail, thus pulling out the nail will eliminate the pain.
In the case of existential pains, people do not know what is its root cause, but for the majority theism is the most effective to soothe these existential pains.

I have given an example of the fear of public speaking where one is not conscious of its root cause. Therefore one cannot effective control it consciously. Some may be able to modulate their fears of public speaking via practicing public speaking but some it is impossible to cure them of the fear, anxieties, worries and mental pains related to public speaking.

I would argued, the proximate root cause of that exudes the fear of public speaking for most is from the subconscious fear of death.
Thus when we can track the pathways of the fears of public speaking to the subconscious fear of death neural wise, we will be able to deal with the outer indirect fears effectively. To do so will take time.

For the majority of Christian-proper who are driven subconsciously by the subconscious fear of death, there will be some kind of relief of the indirect existential pains.
A Christian who believe his God is omni-whatever, i.e. omni-powerful will believe thus feel confident what his all-powerful God promise will be true.

Analogy:
Suppose a weak person A is chase by a person who threatened him with knife showing intent to kill him. Such a obvious situation will trigger his subconscious fear of death first and then the conscious fear of death and he will be very fearful.
But for some fortunate event, suddenly his best friend, 300 pounds of muscle, martial artist expert and with a gun appeared and he ran behind him.
One can guess whatever of A’s terrible fears will disappear immediately.

In John 3:16 case, the Christian when faced with threats then ran behind an all-powerful God, it is likely whatever existential pains he has will disappear immediately in most case, if not drastically mitigated.

I have not analyzed 100% of the Gospel, but in principle the eschatological elements are critical just like its Abrahamic related Islam which I have researched.
The whole religious ethos of Islam is 90% about the subconscious fear of death which is exploited originally for a political and imperialistic purpose.
I have researched Buddhism and it is 90% about death.
I have researched Hinduism, the idea of reincarnation is prominent and that is about death.

All animals are programmed to avoid death and has the same internal neural circuit of the fear of death [especially mammals] to avoid death so to live.
But non-human mammals do not have a conscious brain like humans do.
Therefore in the case of non-human mammals the impulse of the subconscious fear of death are not manifest indirectly to a conscious brain for them to have conscious anxieties, loss of meaning of life, worries, Angst.

It is only humans who has a conscious brain to be activated with conscious anxieties, loss of meaning of life, worries, Angst exuding from the root cause of the subconscious fear of death.
These indirect existential pains from the subconscious fear of death but felt as anxieties, loss of meaning of life, worries, Angst at the conscious level of the mind, drive these suffering humans to make a conscious effort to theism to be soothed by a promise of eternal life via John 3:16 and the likes.

I bet if Chimpanzees later after 200,000 years evolve with a conscious mind and self-awareness to consciously feel conscious anxieties, loss of meaning of life, worries, Angst, like humans, these self-consciousness Chimpanzees will turn to theism.

Maybe that’s just you. Maybe you are very concerned about death and you look for confirmation of your own fears.

So you link every stress response to “the subconscious fear of death”. That says something interesting.

Your “objective” example is subjective because it is based on your personal evaluation of what is “anti-Non-Muslim”. Others may consider the same verses as neutral or even pro-Non-Muslim.

Apparently you can’t see your own biases in these discussions.

And since this is supposedly controlled by DNA, it is odd that it is not about, for example, managing to procreate. From a DNA perspective managing to procreate is key. Now of course one needs to be alive, to a certain age to procreate, but we live longer. And notice how many times children appears in the Bible as opposed to death.

But one thing he presumes is that there is no God. Fine, let’s presume that for a moment.

People have religious experiences of all kinds, often with encounters of what they end up calling or defining similarly to God. This is often central to their beliefs. Even if they are wrong and misinterpreting what is happening, most of these experiences and the deciding there is a God that has now been experienced is not about death. Yes, religious experiences about death do occur, but they are not 90%.

It is pure fantasy on his part to throw out numbers.

Prismatic,

Just to clarify in signing off;

  1. It is not a fact that all religious ideologies are based upon the subconscious fear of death.

  2. There is no evidence which proves that all religious ideologies are based upon the subconscious fear of death.

  3. There is no generally accepted principle that all religious ideologies are based upon the subconscious fear of death.

  4. That all religious ideologies are based upon the subconscious fear of death is your belief. If you think its justified then fine, but from my perspective, as I have argued, you are not correct - neither are you justified.

I have given up because of your dispositions.

Yes, to reinforce your beliefs.

That doesn’t mean that you understand reality. From the reading of your posts, it seems that your perception of reality is based upon what you infer. You then search for evidence which you think confirms this, and claim that you are stating objective facts, or that your beliefs are justified, excluding all other possibilities. This is called, confirmation bias.

I am not that narrow-minded.

  1. My vision and mission is Perpetual Peace.
    In a way, this is in alignment with the Boddhisattva Vow of peace and compassion to all.

  2. Evil and violent acts from ideologies, etc, are a threat [antithetic] to the above vision and mission.

  3. One of ALL the evil and violent ideology is from one main category, i.e. religion.

  4. The fundamental root of religion is the subconscious fear of death [as argued and justified].

  5. Therefore to deal with the evil and violence from religion, we need to understand its fundamental root, i.e. the subconscious fear of death.

Why I focus on the subconscious fear of death is not an arbitrary and fanciful ignorant response, but grounded upon my vision and mission in 1 above for humanity.

Another point one person cannot be a jack of all trades to deal with every kind of evil and violence, so since have philosophical and religious knowledge, thus I contribute what I can.

What concern have you for humanity as a whole?

Your above statement do not have any credibility unless you have read ALL the 6236 verses in their contexts.
I invite you to read the 6236 verses in the Quran and challenge me with evidence I am wrong.

The majority of the verses are objectively anti-non_Muslims as represented its meaning and context.
Note you need to scrutinize each verses in their contexts specifically.

There are some verses that are on the surface direct to be good an non-Muslims, how there are not more than 20 of them. Ultimately they are abrogated by the tsunami of evil and violent verses.

There are also a large quantity of good but they are only applicable if one is a Muslim.

I strive to maintain intellectual integrity and make every attempt to be objective based on critical thinking, logical, and sound philosophical justifications.
Rather than making subjective opinions yourself, you should read up the Quran thoroughly and challenge me objectively.

There are two sub-purposes embedded in the DNA, i.e.

  1. To produce the next generation via procreation.

  2. To enable 1, all humans has to avoid death.

  3. To avoid death, all humans are programmed to fear death, plus many other strategies.

  4. This program is activated within the subconscious mind because it is nature’s way of not relying on the human conscious mind to achieve 1.

  5. Nature’s way is to rely on the efficiency of large numbers to increase it chances.

In 3 I mentioned only ‘fear of death’ i.e. subconscious fear of death to support my thesis re the basis of religion. The basis of religion is not driven by the basic fundamental drive to breathe, to eat, to have sex, physical security but to soothe the subconscious fear of death.

In this regard to religion it is not ‘fear’ but specifically the subconscious fear, i.e. the subconscious fear of death that drives all to religions.
I would define the ultimate purpose of all mainstream ‘religions’ is to soothe the subconscious fear of death, whatever else is secondary.

What is your perspective?
I don’t see you have a justified perspective at all.

To abduct a possible hypothesis you need to study and be familiar with all variables of the topic, if not, as many as possible, to extract patterns that you can model from to extract a possible hypothesis.
You have not shown any evidence you are doing the above. If so, where?

From the tons of work and time spent I am confident I have done sufficient to have a great conviction to my hypothesis and finding.
Note at all times I have provided evidence, examples, analogies, arguments, etc. to justify my position and you have got given any convincing counter to them.

To maintain intellectual integrity I have taken efforts to ensure there is no confirmation bias which is more noticeable from you than from me.

What is reality?
Reality is whatever is real and true empirically and philosophically.
What is inferred is from what is justified empirically and philosophically.

In the case of confirmation bias, you have to show I have deliberately deny what is proven to be real and true, which I have not done so.
If you are convinced I am ignorant of something, that is not confirmation bias, then in this case you will have to bring to my attention on what I am ignorant of and justify that is a truth I have omitted.

Btw, what would it take or for me to prove to you [or others] to accept the claim that the ideology of Islam is "anti-Non_Muslim?

Prismatic,

I have argued my perspective. I didn’t claim that it was justified, but I do believe that I am justified, in debate with you, in saying that all religions are not based upon the subconscious fear of death. I don’t believe you have demonstrated that it is. Given the diversity of the subject, substantiating such a broad claim as you are making is problematic.

I think we can agree that religions are based upon people’s belief in deities. If you want to make a claim (as you have) as to why people believe in deities, or have religious beliefs you have to consider all of the different possible variables (and there will likely be variables that you aren’t aware of), and reflect upon how they can influence a person. To posit one root cause, as you have done, is based upon how you interpret things and how you prioritise things in your way of thinking - which, like everyone, is influenced by your biases. There is no necessity for anyone to agree with you, or for anyone to have to justify disagreeing with you, because what you are claiming, is not a fact.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You have interpreted that all religions are based upon the subconscious fear of death. You have rejected all other possible variables (and arguments) and created a hypothesis which is based upon what you think. You are now, for some reason acting as though it is a fact. You should reflect upon your own methods of how you reached your conclusion. I don’t need to have read extensively to debate this subject with you.

Are you claiming that there is only one way to interpret the “evidence and examples” you have provided, or that your interpretation of them is the correct one? If so, why? None of the excerpts claim that the subconscious fear of death is the cause of all religions. How can they then be “evidence and examples”?

That’s possible, where I have shown confirmation bias?

That is just one of many perspectives - don’t you realise that? Some people have justifications for their beliefs, and not all beliefs are religious. You may not agree with them, but that doesn’t automatically mean you are right. I would expect you to realise that.

No I don’t. There is no substantive evidence that religion is based upon the subconscious fear of death. You have interpreted that it is. Your justification despite your “evidence and examples” is your interpretation of them. The links and excerpts you have provided do not claim that all religions are based upon the subconscious fear of death, you are interpreting them as confirming what you believe. Like your excerpt pertaining to the fear of public speaking, which you reduce to the subconscious fear of death. Your interlocutors have argued reasonably, that there are other possibilities, but you reject them because they do not agree with what you interpret. You are looking for things which agree with what you interpret, rebuffing counter claims rather than considering how they affect your claim, and if you find something that you interpret as agreeing with you, you claim it is evidence and believe that this gives you a justification. This, is confirmation bias.

I have presented a summary of human life at the fundamental level to KT above [with some changes], which is as follows;

There are two sub-purposes embedded in the DNA, i.e.

  1. To produce the next generation via procreation.

  2. To enable 1, all humans has to avoid death to live,

  3. To avoid death, all humans are programmed with many strategies, one of them is to the fear of death.

  4. This program is activated within the subconscious mind because it is nature’s way of not relying on the human conscious mind to achieve 1.

  5. Nature’s way is to rely on the efficiency of large numbers to increase it chances.

In 3, the various strategies besides the subconscious fear of death are, all humans are programmed with the following other strategies;

  1. To breathe,
  2. To eat via hunger drive, pangs,
  3. Fight or flight, freeze
  4. To ensure physical security
  5. ??

The religious thoughts and activities of the religious can only be reduced to the above and I don’t see anything else.
Can you think of anything else or possible?

The most likely root cause for religion is driven by the subconscious fear of death as justified by acts, thoughts and evidence from the authorized texts of the respective religion.
In addition, the subconscious fear of death is very explicitly dealt with in the core of Buddhism as in the Buddha Story followed by its core principles and practices.

I cannot see how the root cause of religion is driven directly by hunger, need to breathe, need of physical security,

If a person is prevented from breathing, eating, put into an insecured position, the fear of death circuit will be triggered and subsequently pains and mental anguished.

Thus the most likely root cause for religion is driven by the subconscious fear of death.

The other set of fundamental strategies are those related to procreation which is the sex drive and its associated impulses. I don’t think this the root that drive the majority to religions.

I have not come across any counter other possibilities from others that I have not challenged successfully.
If so, what other possibilities. I would be very interested to know them since I would not want to leave any challenges against my thesis unchallenged.

Prismatic,

Trying to pinpoint the root cause of religious belief is dependant on the perspective you are viewing it from. For a theist, the root cause of religion is a deity. I am agnostic, I don’t have a fixed view upon the root cause for religion. I believe that there could be many causes. Therefore, in this latest version of your thesis, I don’t think that I can contribute without committing to a belief system which I am not a part of. I see people as consisting of more than you posit on a fundamental level. For example, I am of the inclination (not belief) that there is a part or aspect of a person which is transcendent, something which is commonly described as a soul. Which is incongruent with what you propose. Or for instance, I place value on gut feeling or intuition, and feel this is fundamental to human-beings, which is also incompatible with your thesis. Therefore, I cannot offer my opinion on this subject without going down a road that I don’t really believe in. Or (how do I put it), thinking in a way that I don’t agree with.

Choice?

Hm, what are you attempting to do here, on this forum?