Then here we will just have to agree to disagree. If you think your moral and political values reflect the real me in sync with the right thing to do…and that in embodying them you will attain immortality and salvation on the other side…then, from my point of view, you are beyond doubt holding a winning hand next to the hand that someone like me is holding.
At least when the criteria is peace of mind.
Even if it is all only in your head. With things like this it doesn’t matter what is in fact true. That’s the beauty of it.
In fact, from my vantage point, to think otherwise is nothing short of ludicrous.
Anyone else here not see a religious commitment as the equivalent of a winning hand given the stakes involved? Please explain why.
There you go again, explaining to others what is really behind my motivation and intention here. Still, the bottom line [mine] stays the same: Where’s the beef?
What did I say that is problematic?
That I would be "thinking at every step that ‘this Buddhist is imagining a fantasy world ‘on the other side’’?
How on earth could I psossibly know that? All I am basically interested in exploring on this thread is how Buddhists connect the dots between morality and immortality. And the extent to which what they believe here, they are able to demonstrate.
That beef.
You have said hundreds of times that gods are imagined, the afterlife is imagined and religions are invented.
No, I noted only that I do not believe in religion or in God or in the afterlife. Here and now. And others that do are either able to take what they imagine is true here “in their head” and reconfigure it into an argument able to be tested and verified as demonstrable or they are not.
You said so here : " able to think themselves into believing that enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana are actually real things"
And here: “Both championing enlightenment, and both thinking their own political prejudices will afford them a better reincarnation. If only in their heads.”
And here : “Unless of course they can demonstrate to me that it’s not just in their heads.”
How does that not make their convictions here any less “in their head”. How does that prevent them from making the attempt to demonstrate that what they do believe is in fact demonstrable?
Where’s the part that demonstrates that what I think they do believe can only be imaginary?
But how does someone like me go about making that leap of faith without demonstrable arguments from those who already have?
By engaging in practices instead of looking for arguments. That's what people keep suggesting to you.
And around and around we go. My “situation” precludes any number of options open to others. And, trust me: If someone here is able to convince me that Buddhism is the real deal in regard to the morality/immortality nexus, well, that’s a whole other level of reality.
And, again, as I point out time and again, given what is on the line here, how can you not be out there yourself trying different religious practices…to be sure that one other than your own isn’t the one true path instead.