Are atheists being more illogical than agnostics?

Honestly, if the universe and he and you and I and A2K didn't exist, why would CM care enough to lecture us all about it for so long?

This guy deeply cares... about nothing.

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Honestly, if the universe and he and you and I and A2K didn't exist, why would CM care enough to lecture us all about it for so long?

This guy deeply cares... about nothing.

rofl, ok firstly i take that as a compliment, what is wrong with caring? but your intelligence is dropping into dangerously low frank-like territory here. i have clearly pointed out many times that non duality does not mean nothing exists, because that is a more limited philosophy itself (nihilism), which i do not support. and non duality is BEYOND all philosophies, but it simultaneously INCLUDES them.

i mean the idea that nothing exists is at one end of the spectrum of duality between existence and non-existence. in our individual consciousness we experience the entire spectrum, from deep sleep (experience of non-existence) to being fully awake and experiencing existence.

so nihilism is just taking one aspect of human experience and labelling it as the ultimate truth (non-existence).

similarly theism does the same. any human experience which can be labelled unexplainable by other humans (miracles of all the religious figures of the past) gets treated as 'beyond' or 'above' humanity, and this was eventually labelled as 'god' or 'religion' over time. so again, people are taking certain inexplicable aspects of human experience, and labelling them as the ultimate truth/religion/god.

atheism, spirituality, ideas of enlightenment are all the same. taking an idea and labelling it as the ultimate idea, simply because that is the best the intellect can come up with.

non duality integrates all these limited philosophies and goes beyond them. the reason you keep accusing me of nihilism, is because that is the one philosophy which you are 100% against. you love yourself and your belief in yourself so much, that you can't believe that 'nothingness' can have any meaning, you are afraid of it. it is only because you have a false belief in yourself as something which you could 'lose' if you go into 'nothingness' too much. but actually, you can go into nothingness infinitely and never lose yourself, because you are nothingness, and all the somethingnesses which appear to you come from nothingness and go back to nothingness.

so overall, yes nothingness is everything, everything is nothing, but this is only nihilism if you are looking dually. ie. giving the NOTHING importance over the SOMETHING, when it shouldn't be so. the statement 'everything is nothing' does not actually give importance to either concept. it just means they are the same thing. so everything still exists. also nothing exists. that is non duality.

JimmyJ said:@RF- No scientific evidence for anything you just said lol This is why nobody listens to your arguments (and those that do just laugh). You cite the bible to prove itself

But atheists cite quotes from books written by atheists, so why shouldn't people quote from the Bible too?

And speaking of "scientific evidence", where's Dawkins evidence for saying "There's probably no God"? The word "probably" means a guess or hunch without a shred of scientific backup..

JimmyJ said:@RF- Who here has quoted an atheist book?
Nobody. You made that up just like the majority of the nonsense that you talk about lol

Atheists are always going on about how atheists such as Dawks and Hitchens said "this or that"!
They're regarded by atheists as "prophets" and their books are regarded as "Atheist Bibles"..Wink

JimmyJ said:@RF- I asked you to show me a quote of someone quoting an atheist book lol. You can't provide one, then?

Here ya go mate, you said this on Monday about a bit in 'Climbing Mt Improbable' -
"Dawkins was giving an example of how easily a lens can spontaneously come into existence".

And I shot it down in flames.

JimmyJ said: @RF-Just admit that you misspoke and that no such quote exists and we can move on.

You're stuck on that broken-down atheist bus mate and you ain't going nowhere..Smile

Whatever. You're the one who described nothingness as the "ultimate truth".

And your "non-duality" is just another all-encompassing and hence powerless belief.

It cannot rule anything out, and thus serves no purpose whatsoever. It's magic thinking like astrology.

but non duality itself, the concept, if investigated, always remains the ultimate truth, regardless of belief systems. ie. it is a simple philosophy, which when investigated using any form of science or philosophy, can never be disproven. all it means is that duality does not exist, everything is one. if you can disprove that in any way, please try. if not, then non duality is truth.

any idea is, as you say, an all-encompassing and powerless belief.

any idea is, as you say, an all-encompassing and powerless belief.

This is not what I am saying.

There are many powerful ideas around, that have predicting power. The idea, for instance, that earth revolves around itself and around the sun is powerful: it does explain and predict a succession of days and nights and winters and summers and stuff.

What I mean is that all-encompassing theories are generally useless in predicting anything or ruling out something else, because "anything goes" with them. They can justify anything and its contrary, and are thus useless to make sense of the world. I strongly suspect that this applies to your "non-duality" theory.

I could do the same as you do, or as your prehistoric guru did... I could invent a vague philosophic idea – let’s call it “non-non-duality” – and decide that it encompasses all other philosophical theories, including dualism and non-duality. And it would serve what purpose exactly??? None, other than filling my head with lofty words with no meaning whatsoever and feeling "full of purpose".

Again, I leave that to teenagers.

lol, i don't care what you are saying

the idea that an explanation for 'days and nights' is valuable only arises in the realm of duality, thinking that acquiring knowledge is useful. non duality transcends the need for this.

there is no need to predict anything

if you create your own philosophy saying it 'encompasses both duality and non duality', then tell me what is the philosophy? no point just making it up, how does it encompass both? duality involves multiplicity. non duality implies only one. if your philosophy involves duality, it automatically cannot touch nonduality.

your constant need to belittle me by implying i am a teenager is lame and only exposes your frank-like low levels of intelligence.

I know that. I only respond to you for the fun of it.

The human mind exists for a reason: it serves to predict the world. To find solutions, to solve problems. It emerged from a Darwinian process that selected specific capacities such as logic, observation, pattern-seeking, etc, that add up to a capacity to make sense of the world and predict, to a limited degree of course, what may happen next. IOW, the pursuit of some predictive knowledge.

Trying to detach the human mind from its natural function to seek patterns and predictability in the world, is like trying to make the heart stop beating. It may be a fun thing to try and you may even succeed, but I don't see what purpose it serves.

Oh but that is so simple... What naive non-dualists fail to realise is that duality remains forever there in the world even when hidden under the guise of non-duality.

For instance, you admitted some time ago that behind and beneath the concept of nothingness, existed still the concept of existence ("somethingness"), and that the two concepts were in a sort of ying-yang relation within a higher whole. I say this higher whole between duality and non-duality, should be called non-non-duality.