I don't get Buddhism

We can have another take on this. We can do what we want. There is no must. That is for the objectivists. It’s scary, I get that. What if there is some good out there and what I want is bad. But here we are. You can’t mock the objectivists on the one hand, look down on them.

and then say that we MUST wait for one of them to produce the proof. We must…must…wait for one of these people that you gloat over being able to defeat…

we must wait for one of them to prove something before we can start following our own personal preferences and doing things that fit what we value?

That’s an objectivist stance and a weird one.

Your path is to not try anything else until people you mock not only as fish but fish ina barrell prove something to you. You are hinging your life on the argumentative skills of people you mock as easy to defeat.

And this is a must. And this is the real context.

Nope, it’s still all about me and nothing about the behaviors one chooses here and now in any specific context as that relates to what they want their fate to be there and then after they die.

Really, I don’t know how to make this fundamental aspect of religion any clearer!!

i’ll check in again in a couple of years, or not Iambiguous.

This describes a Sufi story that is also used in the social sciences as a concept, The Streetlight Effect…

Buddhism and Sufism have a number of similarities. I often think of this story when I think of you Iambiguous. When one reads your posts one finds enough information to show you more or less know the Streetlight Effect is in action in you.

Or we can use a Zen Koan that is more complimentary…

Good luck.

I know, none of that solved all your problems or proved which path all rational people should realize is THE right one for everyone.

Perhaps humbleness, a realistic version, cuts down on some of the pain and fracturedness.

Any Sufists here?

If so, let me ask you to explore with me the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave as that relates to what you imagine is in store for you after you die.

As for the streetlight, isn’t that basically what religion is all about? You go to the light because it will seem considerably more comforting and consoling then stumbling about in the dark.

And, believe me, it doesn’t get much darker than the manner in which I construe “I” here as basically a fractured and fragmented existential contraption living in an essentially meaningless world about to be obliterated once and for all in tumbling over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Unless, of course, someone here is able to convince me otherwise.

You know, before I succeed in in convincing them instead. :open_mouth: :astonished: :open_mouth:

Biggus ain’t looking for anything.

It just seems that he is by the roundabout way that he presents his points.

“We need a demonstration …”

No. He wants to show that there is no demonstration. He makes sure that there isn’t one.

I think that you misunderstand what he is doing.

He is not waiting for an answer. He knows that there is no answer.

The fish try to convince him by they can’t because he controls whether he is convinced or not. He holds all the cards. Therefore, he is always going to win.

Getting the fish to jump around is part of the entertainment. :animals-fishblue: :animals-fishgreen:

Sure, I’ve said similar things. Sometimes take it at face value. Sometimes not. Nothing’s gonna shift this.

The only model of religion that seems to interest iambiguous is the objective one that he once held with an imaginable omni-god and a literal heaven and hell. That’s the religion which seems to fuel his obsessive, perseverative ambivalence. The only version of Buddhism he is willing to engage on amounts to the same thing. His preoccupation seems to hold him in a perpetual recapitulation of the crisis of his loss of faith and the resulting overwhelming terror of oblivion. Perhaps his mindset can be best understood in the context of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

ya’ll niggas is gettin played by biggs. this dude ain’t scared of oblivion or fractured or any of that shit he pretends to be. that’s part of his game, man. it’s all tongue-in-cheek. what he’s doin is subliminally suggesting that all ya’ll are scared and fractured and shit, or else you wouldn’t be hanging on so dearly to the crap you want to believe/hope is true. the irony is, he’s saying that what ya’ll niggas is doing is terror management theory because you ain’t got the cajones to be nihilists.

when will the day come when philosophy is no longer terror management theory?

you folks need to face your mortality squarely and find your inner tyler durdens.

If so, he’s lying because he has described how fear of oblivion for himself and people he cares about is chewing him up.

no he’s bullshitting again. he won’t admit it publicly, but he’s starting with the affirmation of man, and he works his way backwards using cyyn-nicism. the time monitor. the space maasurer.

Are you like 12? niggas?

Well, duh, of course he’s been saying that. You haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about when you talk about what we know, or believe, for that matter. You’re just skimming in and defending him without much info. He’s has said what you are saying he is really, underneath doing. He has said that people are afraid of his ideas. Not much of a game if he comes out and says it, it’s just a straight accusation.

I mean, did you miss existentialism, nihilism, or what about all the physicalists - and they are all over philosophy forums. They have no beliefs different from nihilists as far as ontology. And yet they do not share his pathological repetition.

yo

If you weren’t on his team he’d call you one of the youngsters for this infantile post. If only he could admit to having an innner Tyler Durdan. And it’s not facing your own mortality being jealous of people who don’t wallow in shit they are at least as aware of as he is and his passive aggressive approach.

But your pom poms and cheer are noted as always.

Yo, chill, dog. He be messing wit our minds, feel me? Prometheus, he like Flava Fav to Iamb’s Chuck D, Tony Yayo to 50 cent. He just splainin’ Iambs banging shit, like, transcends our craniums. Lying? nah, it be freedom, word, yo.

We got’s to suss Iamb’s fly posts full time, bro, or we be just dissing his bluh.

Iambiguous, man, he’s, like, the shit. We been bumrushing a Boddhisatva. His posts be pointing at the moon, not describing it.

Gots to grow up, you and me.

Well, I see nothing has changed around here: 30 pages of the same group of guys perpetually peddling perceptions like some sort of philosopher purgatory :smiley:

I must say that it is good to see everyone is still around.

“Are you like 12?”

vocaroo.com/5hER1seEX2M

On the contrary, I am always looking for an argument able to be demonstrated that morality on this side of the grave relating to any particular behaviors revolving around conflicting goods of note is objective; and that death is not falling over into the abyss that is oblivion. The obliteration of “I” on the sojourn back to star stuff.

Here the arguments of Buddhists.

And, given what is at stake here, including moral obligations here and now, immortality, salvation, reincarnation, Nirvana etc., there and then, how on earth is it inappropriate to ask for a demonstration.

You have made arguments in favor of objective morality, and you seem to have something in the way of a belief in God that may or may not include an afterlife. But: I still have no clear sense of how you connect the dots here in the course of living your life from day to day. Not even “in your head”.

And, please, why in the world would I not want to be persuaded that the objective moral views I once embodied as a Christian and the objective political values I once embodied as a Marxist – views and values that gave me considerable comfort and consolation – may well still be within my reach.

So, go ahead, name a moral conflagration we are all likely to be familiar with here, cite an argument that expresses your views embodied in objective morality, note the behaviors this view propels you to choose here and now, and, given your own religious values, attempt to encompass what you imagine sustaining these behaviors all the way to the grave will result in on the other side.

Or, sure, skip that part altogether [again] and make it all about me.

Over and over again, I note the staggering gap between what any of us think the answer is and all that we simply do not know about the nature of existence itself. Thus [given that] the distinction I make revolves around another gap: the one between what we believe is true and what we able to demonstrate is true in regard to our value judgments on this side of the grave and what our fate is to be on the other side.

As [on this thread] that revolves around our thoughts and feelings about Buddhism.

Instead, over and again from folks like Phyllo and Karpel Tunnel, we get truly pathetic psycho-babble crap like this:

You decide how seriously to take him.

“Model” of religion? Back in the day when I was truly a devout Christian, the thing I remember most revolved around the Ten Commandments and Heaven. There was a way to know how to live. Righteously. And, if you behaved in sync with the will of God, you would be judged worthy of immortality and salvation. That was above all else what Reverend Deerdorf always focused in on. And that has stuck with me to this day. Call it a manifestation of dasein.

After all, what could possibly be more important in regard to one’s belief in God? Or, here, on the enlightened path to Nirvana.

Again, as though a psychologism of this sort can’t be thought up to encompass any number of additional “types” of God/No God folks.

Yes, I am no longer able to think myself into believing there are inherently good and bad behaviors. I am no longer able to believe that all of the things I love in life won’t be swallowed up in the obliteration of “I” for all of eternity.

Like it is strange that thinking this way might be disturbing.

But what of your own religious beliefs? What “type” are you? Are you still able to think yourself into believing there is an objective right and an objective wrong way to live? Are you still able to believe that death is merely a passage to bigger and better things?

If so, then what do you really know about my “type”?