See, on the other hand you can prove certain things. And if god does exist you CAN prove so, but you would have to know what the evidence is in order to use it.

The part I don't like is when a religion calls for you to believe, in order to be "saved" or what have you. If there is a god, I doubt he cares whether you believe it or not, but in how you live lies the important factors. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Hf you are making some huge assumptions about my path that has led me to my current understandings on this subject. You some how assume that I haven't searched for God In my life and that I'm simply choosing out of no where to believe there is no god. You have no idea where I've been or what I've experienced in life to get me to this point so stop assuming.

I've done more work and spent countless hours integrating and contemplating than your giving me credit for and more than anyone I know. How many people sell all their possessions , home, successful business, clothing EVERYTHING to allow myself the uninterrupted time to answer a calling I have heard my whole life with the help of plant teachers and shamans.

So do me this one favor, I could give a shit if you disagree with me, think I have no idea what I'm talking about or generally think I am full of shit but you need to stop assuming you know how little I've done to answer these questions for myself. I didn't just sit around reading books, I didn't attend some retreat weekend or lecture . What i did is I walked the walk and found my own truth and one I will defend. You act as if your the only person that's dine the work your so quick to throw in my face.

Your repeated condescending replys to me don't bother me what does is your arrogance that you know so much about me and what I've done in life because on that subject you are dead wrong.

None if these arguments for the existence of God are anything new or profound. I'll leave all you to it. Have a ball. Its incredibly arrogant that you assume nobody has done the searching or footwork if they came up with different conclusions than you.

I can understand how you could feel that way, but also think it's kind of a shame, I was hoping for an opportunity to understand your perspective better. I hope that you don't interpret my questions as an attempt to prove you wrong or change your mind. I can just as easily support the athiest POV as any other, my only reason for taking up an opposing stance is because that's how I learn new ways of seeing things, and come to understand other people better. It's kind of hard to find out why someone thinks the things they do by just agreeing with them.

As for me, while I consider myself to be someone on a spiritual path, I follow that path from a very agnostic standpoint. I feel sure there's SOMETHING important going on beyond the easily explainable, but I'm equally sure it's impossible to know for certain exactly what that something is. For me it's the search itself that's important. I tend towards holding ideas and concepts, rather than beliefs. And I love talking with other people about whatever they happen to believe (or why they choose not to believe) because it opens me up to possibilities I might not have considered otherwise.

So, I dunno what my point is really, you've gotta do what you feel. But I'd like to talk about this more sometime.

Why would materialism automatically negate spirituality? Why couldn´t the spirit/soul be the result of neural activity? Materialists certainly don´t deny that they have a mind, a counsciousness, feelings or a form of self-awareness. Is there a difference between a persons spirit or a persons counsciousness, mind, etc? Stating that the spirit is a separate identity from the mind, the counsciousness, etc, eventually would push the spirit out of the realm of anything that we could perceive as being part of ourselves, making the whole concept of spirituality as defined this way kind of pointless. What is this spirit then, if it has nothing to do with my counsciousness, feelings, mind, self awareness, etc? An identity that is separate from all the elements that i define as 'me', yet is the essence of all that i am, that i, as long as i´m alive cannot have any acces to, yet carries the essence of 'me', even when my physical body ceases to exist? That would degrade spirituality to nothing more than an academic sort of discipline. A study of something that i can´t have any acces to during my life, that does not have anything to do with my life, something separate from all that defines me, that has nothing to do with anything of any value (like feelings for instance) in relation to my life and that may not even exist. It would be nothing more than a mysterious, undetectable substance that does not contribute in any way to any attempt to explain the mystery of life. So what´s the whole point of spirituality then?

Claiming though, that the mind, counsciousness, self-awareness, feelings, etc, can not be material or have a material cause, imply´s that one has certain knowledge about the nature of this thing that we call 'me'.

I don´t see how we could be sure of anything though.

Hyperspace fool wrote,

People who complain about the lack of evidence for a deity by and large have never actually looked for such evidence. What you are saying Oly, is that unless the greatest, grand ultimate creative force actively comes directly to you uninvited and for the sole purpose of proving itself to you... it doesn't exist?

I hope you realize how petulant this can come off. No offense, as I think you are an intelligent guy, and many of my most intelligent friends have (or have held) opinions along these lines.

But the fact is, even a cursory glance at the historical record shows that a great number of people have claimed to have the existence of G*d proven... to them. Prophets, saints, mystics, sadhus, shaman and more all have said that you can have this proven for you... but you have to want it, and put in the hard work.

These people who claim to have the existance of god, do you mean people like....David Koresh, Jim Jones or David Smith? Or do you mean one of the more believable prophets who lived thousands of years ago? There are still people today who believe that they are god etc.. Theres one nutcase who lives in australia, i forget his name who says he is the second coming and has quite a large following.

Excuse me as i dont mean to insult but all those people are freakin whackjobs!!

God may or may not exist but the likelihood of it is pretty minimal seeing as most of the people associated with god are nutters.

This is pretty much the Buddhist perspective on it, and why they don't believe in the individual "soul". Under careful observation (through meditation), they find that the self is empty of anything that can be called "soul" or "spirit". The mind is just the mind and houses our very temporary ego, the body is just the body and supports the functioning of the mind, so what can you point to and say "this is my true essence"?

They deny the existance of God for basically the same reason. Some schools believe in gods, plural, but consider them to be mortal representations of aspects of nature and the mind. Sort of like Jungian archetypes. But no big daddy Uber God. Sounds a lot like atheism, doesn't it? And yet, Buddhism is usually considered a spiritual belief, and even called a religion. Go figure.

Oly has definitely done the work, folks. Check out some of his experience reports.

I'm just echoing an age- old conclusion here, but I think that, BY DEFINITION, God is unprovable. You can either choose to believe, or not. I personally find beliefs to be limiting, so I keep an open mind.

The idea that some chemicals got together and reacted and formed new things etc and eventually those things became conscious and aware and started evolving and branching off all over the universe and voila here we are. Why is that story so unbelievable to god fearing folks? Its a lovely natural story that doesnt involve psychotic supernatural forces.

As i said religious people are pretty nutty

Oly -->

I may have directed my general assumptions that people who say what you say generally have not looked for the evidence they want others to provide... but those assumptions are nearly always true. To really avail yourself of the evidence of divine beings, you have to really try... often for decades. Exceptions abound, but most of the people who find such evidence put in a ton of blood, sweat & tears, and went well past their wits end.

I don't know you personally, and have no idea what you consider a lot of work in this regards. I have no idea what practices you did, or how much sacrifice and austerity you underwent. Why don't I know this? Because you never mentioned it.

I responded to the posts you actually wrote. If you wanted to make a case for your seeking and not finding... you could have made that case. But as it is, you did not.

While I did mention you by name 2x in my last post, it should be clear that I was addressing a vast number of people who demand proof be given to them and have never even contemplated doing any legwork themselves.

My point is thus still valid even (especially) if it happens to not apply to you. The fact is that all spiritual systems I am aware of are arduous and no one ever made the claim that finding the ultimate would be easy. So, your idea that The fact that it makes nonsense (sic) to you doesn't mean that all the theologians and philosophers since the dawn of time are idiots... or as you said... silly. I challenged your claim that it is illogical, and whether my arguments are new or not, they are still valid... and pass the test of logic with flying colors. If you want to point out some logical fallacies in what I said, be my guest. I am always happy to have my mistakes pointed out to me.

But I think the crux of the matter is that there is no objective proof of ANYTHING. Materialism is not more provable than Spiritualism or Rationalism or any other stance.

You can call me arrogant for responding to what you actually said, and not projecting overly about your level of esoteric commitment in your past.

I could say that your original posts on the subject are arrogant for assuming what G*d can and can not do with his "all powerful omnipotence." But generally, I find it to be poor debate technique to assume that attacking the morality of a debater does anything to mitigate their argument.

I am assuming, but I think you know what those words you chose to use mean. Thus, nothing is impossible for such a being. And yet you follow that statement with continued assertions about what is possible or "beyond illogical" for a being that is, by definition, beyond your logic. You purport to know that if this being existed, there should be evidence (not necessarily) AND simultaneously ignore the fact that millions of people throughout time have had evidence that was convincing to them revealed for them in some fashion or another.


DeMenTed --->

You are free to think that everyone who feels they have personal and solid proof of the existence of a divine being is a "freakin whakjob" or say that "most of the people associated with god are nutters." I am even willing to bet that Oly won't be calling you out on your arrogance. But you must realize that you are making unsubstantiated claims and ad hominem attacks on legions of people you know absolutely nothing about.

I hate to whip out the old Ad Hominem card, as it, like most cards, is overplayed and generally inappropriately... as simply insulting people is not an Ad Hominem Logical Fallacy. But what you have done, IS classic ad hominem on top of an enthememe no less. You are assuming that because some people who have claimed divine revelation are quite possibly crazy, that therefore most people who make such claims are also insane. And, you do this as an argument against your sole argument against the beliefs and experiences of millions of people.

You didn`t even bother to state this as your opinion, but claim with certainty that A) All those people are freakin whackjobs B) The likelihood of G*d's existence is pretty minimal. and C) that most people associated with G*d are nutters. You present absolutely no evidence for any of these wild statements which, logically would be rather difficult to prove.

Any statement prefaced with the word all (or any absolute for that matter) is something like 99% of the time false. This is why debate team members are trained to look for such statements as they inevitably open a door by which the opponent can be made to look foolish. As for likelihood being minimal... by what benchmark? How did you measure the likelihood of this? And most people associated with G*d being nutters? This is self evident as there are plenty of rational sane people who are thusly associated.

Cherry picking a data set is also poor debate form. Everyone who believes they have proof of G*d is David Koresh or Jim Jones now? Please. Straw Man and Red Herring in a single sentence.

If you guys want to have a theological debate... let's go. But this is a rather poor start for both of you.

I very much like budhism. But like you say: although no-one would call budhism non-spiritual, it doesn´t automatically imply either the existence or non-existence of unworldly phenomena. Whether budhists believe in god very much depends on their personal background or attitude towards life.

The people i named are freakin whackjobs, don't you agree?

I do believe that the existence of a god that created everything is pretty minimal as there isnt the slightest shred of evidence. The god you talk of is supposed to be aloving caring god. Why in his book the bible does he go around killing people that piss him off or why does he allow newborn kids to be born with agonizing incurable diseases? Thats not what is advertised in gods teachings so obviously someone is talking shit and i believe that someone is a human, quite possibly a nutter.

Most people associated with god are nutters. Just look at the killings going on because of peoples beliefs in the abrahamic god. I rest my case.

I believe that there is higher evolved lifeforms that quite possibly work in a heirarchyl system and can behave like a god to us because they are so much more evolved than us. But to think that one omnipotent being created everything else without there being any evidence is just plain ignorant imho. Peace man.

Because they are antithetical beliefs that in their definitions leave no room for common ground. You may just as well ask why light automatically negates darkness.

Spirituality is defined by a belief in things that transcend the material world.

Materialism is defined by the belief that there is NOTHING outside of the material world.

People have managed to blend the two, and most people are not fixed in one camp or the other IMO... but people are often able to hold two opposing thoughts in their mind simultaneously. Often they don't even recognize this. Never underestimate human ability to endure cognitive dissonance.


If it was a result of neural activity it wouldn't be a spirit or a soul. Again this is the definition of the word. If you mean mind, then use mind. Spirit is something that transcends the material world.

I tend to think of mind, spirit and soul to be mostly synonymous in practice... but then I am coming at it from the other direction. I don't think that the material world is real. Like the Buddhists that you seem to admire to some degree... I believe that this world is an illusion. A persistent dream of sorts. Thus, there is no brain for mind to be a product of... except here within the illusion. The mind that we transcend the illusion with is thus a subset of our true spirit or soul as it exists outside of the illusion.

I would be very interested to hear of your views on what you think you were before you came to be alive on this earth hyperspace fool? Were you nothing that didn't exist or were you a soul waiting in line to join the world?

I tend to believe that we always have been and always will be but that we evolve in mind body and soul. Do have any views on this type of thinking?

Quite likely, but I never met any of them, and have no mental health records of their ever being examined by someone qualified to make that assessment. I am fairly sure you are speaking colloquially, but even there, I must leave room for the idea that Jim Jones (for instance), as part of the MK Ultra program... knew exactly what he was doing. Perhaps he was evil and not crazy at all. I have no idea.



1) The fact that you have had no evidence presented to you doesn't mean that evidence doesn't exist.

2) The G*d I talk of is clearly NOT the Abrahamic god represented in 85% of the Bible. I have already stated my opinion that this character is cobbled together from a variety of Sumerian type gods that later had a sheen of monotheism thrown over them. This is a long thread, so I don't look down on anyone for skimming it, skipping over entire pages or simply forgetting what we have already discussed.

3) I don't consider the Bible to be G*d's book. I agree that this is a laughable conjecture. It is clearly the work of a large number of people over a large number of centuries, and most of these groups had ulterior motives for manipulating it. The fact that every branch of Christianity chooses to include different books in their official cannonization and accepts a variety of different apocrypha is ample evidence that there is not one Bible... the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible has as many as 81 books in it for example.


You have not made a case. This isn't even a syllogism with a missing component.

People who kill in the name of their god are IMHO nutters... but you do realize that this is a tiny percentage of people who are associated with gods. Do you think Ghandi & MLK were nutters? Even modern god-pop writers like Eckhart Tolle and Neil Donald Walsch are clearly not crazy... whatever you think of their books.


I also believe this.

You might be interested to know that this belief alone makes you a theist. Theism is not restricted to Abrahamic belief systems... and is not tied to religion.

Ummm... not according to the Dalai Lama, or any other Buddhist authority or authentic Dharma teachings I've ever heard of. Goggle will give you a ton of references on this but Wikipedia is about as good a starting place as any. Mortal gods with limited powers living in the "heavenly realms", sure, Tibetan buddhism in particular is full of them. But any supreme God figure would directly contradict the teachings of dependent arising and emptiness, which are central to the whole philosophy. God can't arise dependentaly like everything else, since God created everything. Or at least that's my understanding of it, though I'd be very interested in learning about anything specific you know of to the contrary.

Now, I don't doubt there are people who somehow rationalize and justify this contradiction to themselves,but it does go directly against what Buddha taught so is it really Buddhism? I've personally got no problem with anyone claiming either the existence or non existence of God, but technically yeah to the best of my knowledge the major schools of Buddhist doctorine outright say "Nope, no God, no Soul." Otherwise how's it any different from Hinduism?

OK, i get what you´re saying. I also tend to think that mind, spirit and soul basically refer to the same thing. I do however disagree with your definition of the word. I think that you and i basically agree that the world of the phenomena and the world of the spirit are not separate and can not be completely separate either.

Where you and i seem to disagree is that you believe that because the world of the phenomena is an illusion, the material world is an illusion as well, where i think that if the phenomana are an illusion, that would mean that the nature of substance is just different from what we perceive it to be, but that this illusion would still HAVE substance, even if we would have to call that substance 'spirit' or something else:
If the material world is an illusion, that illusion would still be real and therefore would have be formed out of something. Then what we call matter would simply be the force of our interaction with this illusion, so it would not be matter as what we think it is. But there would be something behind what we call matter. In other words: when we touch something and we say that the thing we touch is matter, we do touch SOMETHING, we just don´t know what. But to call it matter is not completely senseless because that term is simply our way to acces this substance of wich we don´t know it´s nature but of wich we do recognize it´s very existence. Just like, within the material world, it still makes sense to call something a rock, even though it´s actually a bunch of molecules lumped toghether. 'rock' is just our way of perceiving or accessing this bunch of molecules. The word 'rock' doesn´t negate the existence of molecules. 'rock' is the result of the interaction of our senses with these molecules. So if this world would be an illusion, 'matter' would be the result of our interaction with this substance that may be spirit, god or whatever.

At least that´s how i see it. The word matter is just a 'handle'.

There are budhists who have incorporated hinduism, taoism or animism into their philosophy. It´s a philosophy that can be reinvented endlessly. Basically because the essence of budhist philosophy is that it´s a sort of practical psychology. It´s practicality comes first. So if any religious person would want to use the psychological insights provided by budhism, there is no law that forbids him doing this. How he would want to put it all toghether coherently is the persons own responsibility. I suppose it´s possible.

Yeah sorry hyperspace fool. When i talk of god i automatically associate it with the abrahamic christian, jewish and muslim god. The leaders of those religions love starting wars. I did say most godly people are nutters, clearly all of them aren't nutters. I did do a bit of whitewashing, sorry about that.

I must admit i have very little knowledge on the god you are talking about. Iam open to the idea of a god or a heirarchyl system of gods, i think i'm gnostic, im not sure what the name is for what i believe.

I believe in life

Most people have the tendency to look up at authority figures. I think thát´s the real problem. Not the religiousness of these people as such.

Well sure, just like there's no law saying I can't call myself a True Christian at the same time I go around saying there was never any such person as Jesus, or that he wasn't the Son of God, and it was Satan that really died for our sins, or somesuch. But it would sure piss a lot of people off!

Animisim and Particularly Taoism aren't really in conflict, since they don't require an all powerful creator deity. Buddhism plus the idea of a soul and a creator god is pretty much just Hinduism anyway, so trying to combine those seems fairly pointless. But it would take some serious mental gymnastics to accept even the most basic buddhist ideas, and still believe in the abrahamic God. Although I don't doubt there are some people out there who manage it anyway. Just like they justify killing each other in epic numbers in spite of that whole "Thou shalt not" thing.