IFeelFree wrote:It is one thing to criticize what someone says but your remarks reflect a mean-spiritedness and contempt for those who express views opposed to yours.
You know, i only hear this sort of thing from religionists such as you who are angry that i attack what they believe. If you persist in posting drivel, despite having had it pointed out to you that it is drivel, don't be surprised is i soon begin to refer to it as drivel. I suspect you consider it mean-spirited because you have the same attitude as so many religionists--that what you believe ought to be according special respect because it entails articles of faith.
Quote:You seem to have convinced a small group of disciples here that you are just calling people on their bullshit. In fact, what you have done is to create a hostile environment where many potential contributors are probably reluctant to post.
I have no "disciples," and if you truly believe that, then you really don't know this site very well. It is likely that there is not a single member at this site with whom i have not disagreed at one time or another. How sharp the disagreement will be is a function of whether or not i hold the ideas expressed by the member in contempt, and to what extent. In fact, there are very few people here whose expressed opinions in hold in contempt. There are tens of thousands of registered members, and i know literally hundreds of them, many for longer than this site has existed, and quite a few whom i have met in person. I find this sort of whining about how and what i post common among the denizens of S & R and Politics, who don't post anywhere else, and whose "life" at this site is restricted to these narrow fora. Even among those who post only in S & R or Politics, there are only a few whose opinions i hold in contempt.
Your opinions happen to fall into that category. You make claims for the validity of your experience as evidence of a "spiritual dimension." For whatever your experiences may be, they are not evidence that there is any such thing as a spiritual dimension in the cosmos--at best, they are evidence that you believe so. You persist, however, despite many people expressing to you in a variety of ways, that for whatever your experiences are, they are not evidence of a spiritual dimension. So, the more you insist that your experiences is evidence of what it patently is
not evidence for, my contempt for your expressed opinions grows. If you can't deal with that, it is certainly no fault or problem of mine.
Quote:It is absurd that personal experience is not a valid topic for discussion on a spirituality and religion forum, or that if anyone is so bold as to discuss their experience, they should not be allowed to assign it any significance or meaning.
Neither i, nor anyone else has ever told you that your experience is not a valid topic for discussion, in this forum or any other. No one tells you that you may not assign to it any significance or meaning which you wish to do. And nothing obliges me or anyone else to refrain from pointing out that what you claim about your experience is
not evidence for the existence of a spiritual dimension, no matter how much you chose to whine about it.
Quote:That is precisely what Setanta's attack against me has been. If only empirical evidence and logic is allowed, spirituality is reduced to a discussion of the natural world, or an argument over the shortcomings of various belief systems. We would not be discussing spirituality. Spirituality is an exploration of the subjective, intuitive, psychic realm. Spirituality is about the transformation of human consciousness, not about empirical knowledge of the world. There is no way to talk about real spirituality without reporting personal subjective experiences and interpreting the significance of those experiences. If you remain stuck in a rigid ideology, or mental positions, you deny the possibility of alternative interpretations of reality. Spirituality has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.
You are hilarious. You make is sound as though i have some sort of control, and i'm preventing you from bringing the light of true enlightenment to the benighted members here.
Nothing stops you from discussing whatever you want. And nothing obliges me to refrain from pointing out that i consider it codswallop when you make claims for your experiences which you cannot support.
