phyllo wrote:To me it looks like he is most concerned with the use and misuse of power.
The religious beliefs and techniques appear to be almost insignificant.
It appears iambiguous has a beef with every objective religion on the basis that it cannot prove or guarantee what it promises in terms of an afterlife. To him any religion that can't do that is worthless.
Now to me that's an epistemological problem in the first place. In the second place it's a problem for institutional objective religions. Those are complex and diverse entities. There isn't one Buddhism. There are many. That's true of every major religion.
I'm pretty sure iambiguous doesn't understand any of them. Yet it is it is easy for him to call them all contraptions. It's like spitting at the sky.
Personally I make no knowledge claims about ultimate reality. To me spirituality is a capacity of the human psyche. I don't rule out a connection between the soul and the Ultimate, but neither can I prove such.
The connection between spiritual experience and the ultimate is more aptly termed "faith" than knowledge. Phenomenologically my inner experience connects me to the Ultimate.
In terms of knowledge claims about it, I am agnostic. My spirituality is personal, non-institutional, nondogmatic.
I don't call myself a Buddhist. But, today I felt I was one with the Buddha. Hence my statements earlier today.
And, in keeping with the faith in perennial wisdom, I showed how the teaching of Buddha harmonizes with the teachings of Jesus.
Iambiguous probably experienced some sort of trauma that cut him off from his own inner life making him hostile to that part of himself. I don't know that for sure but that's my hypothesis. It's not unusual. For all it's potential for callousness and brutality, the human psyche is a sensitive and fragile flower.