Innumerable Deities is Impossible. Depending.

Ra Del-St As far as innumerable deities, that's logically impossible. Ra D-S Why not polytheism? Because God comprehends in Himself the whole perfection of being. If many gods existed, they would necessarily differ from each other. Something therefore would belong to one, which did not belong to another. This is therefore a privation--and if one has a privation, it cannot be absolutely perfect. Thus, it is impossible for many gods to exist.

M R M Ra D-St Arguing for one God is to participate, as you began to note yourself above, in the world of scholarly subject matters from academic disciplines and their scholarship. That is, philosophical scholarship, which is why "science" itself is a form of modern Christian-based ancient-Greek-eclectic-derived philosophy, not a hammer. As you basically observed. The argument for one God is powerful in the Christian-derived view in which Aquinas took Aristotle´s more esoteric view and gave it Judeo-Christian empiricist foundations.

Yet, Aquinas was far from he end of the story. Merely the beginning of a powerful new phase that famously began launching from Vesalius and Copernicus to Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Locke, et al and etc. In evaluating the meaning of polytheism more adequately, it has taken even longer because of the complexities of intercultural study and interpretive issues. Spinoza and Locke made early philosophical advances in proto-psychology, while Catholic missionaries showed their own academic orientation as monks. As the monk Luther´s inspired Reformation created new options for people, study expanded as with C Wolff in Germany using Catholic studies of China´s Confucius already. By 1790, British W Jones founded the first Asia Society, and Max Mueller became a leading scholar combining language, culture, and religion centered around Indian Hinduism.

While the psyychosocial studies disciplines have advanced the study of religion and cultures, they have advanced beyond scientific physicalism and technophilia to interpretivism and naturalism in academia. Transpersonal psychology, at least, has taken a step in the spiritual-religious direction with some room for the transcendental and "supernatural." Spiritism started by "Allen Kardec" around 1850 made an interesting start evaluating mediums, but the subject is widely contaminated by stereotypes and lack of literacy to obscure its empirical foundations. Yet, the U of Virginia´s Dept of Percep. Studies started by I Stevenson MD studying reincarnation in the 1960s has expanded to medical context NDE (return from death) experiences in which new knowledge was obtained. Thus, empirical data of transcendental experiences exists. Polytheism´s more complex significance is clarified. Just as Christians´ own interpretive issues in contrast to all such knowledge. Gandhi, for example, and related cases confront Christians with their own ideological and cultural materialism that deviates from Jesus´ own standard as the self-identifying Son of God and Man.

How might polytheism be a key concept to develop empirically to grasp how human diversity fuels people´s relationship to even one Eternal Creator God, parent of Jesus. Christian human faults and limitations and the wonderful qualities in all cultures and individuals, from original shamanism to Hinduism and so on, can be studied for their relevance. Polytheist Hinduism predisposed Gandhi to learn outside his law studies in London from interfaith theosophists, with spectacular results in his insights and application, for one. Mrm @ J S I´d offer the results of my observations that the adequate use of the liberal arts and sciences involves the understanding of how people develop different ways of perceiving and relating to God. Eliot D. Chapple was an anthropologist who built on foundations like Pavlov´s neurophysiology of conditioning and Watson, Jones´, and Skinner´s kinds of behavioral psychology. Empirically, then, it isn´t God´s imperfection, but humanity´s diversity that can now feed the bodies of knowledge being developed by University-related culture.

R. H. Tawney- British Christian Socialist Historian

R. H. Tawney- British Christian Socialist Historian R.H. Tawney

Born on 30 November 1880 in Calcutta, British India (present-day Kolkata, India), Tawney was the son of the Sanskrit scholar Charles Henry Tawney. He was educated at Rugby School, arriving on the same day as William Temple, a future Archbishop of Canterbury; they remained friends for life.[12] He read Greats at Balliol College, Oxford.[13] The college's "strong ethic of social service" combined with Tawney's own "deep and enduring Anglicanism" helped shape his sense of social responsibility.[14] After graduating from Oxford in 1903, he and his friend William Beveridge lived at Toynbee Hall, then the home of the recently formed Workers' Educational Association (WEA). The experience was to have a profound effect upon him. He realised that charity was insufficient and major structural change was required to bring about social justice for the poor.[15]

Beatrice Webb- pro-labor British advocate Christian socialism Whilst Tawney remained a regular churchgoer, his Christian faith remained a personal affair, and he rarely spoke publicly about the basis of his beliefs.[16] In keeping with his social radicalism, Tawney came to regard the Church of England as a "class institution, making respectful salaams to property and gentility, and with too little faith in its own creed to call a spade a spade in the vulgar manner of the New Testament".[17] For three years from January 1908, Tawney taught the first Workers' Educational Association tutorial classes at Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, and Rochdale, Lancashire.[18] For a time, until he moved to Manchester after marrying Jeannette (William Beveridge's sister and a Somerville graduate), Tawney was working as part-time economics lecturer at Glasgow University. To fulfil his teaching commitments to the WEA, he travelled first to Longton for the evening class every Friday, before travelling north to Rochdale for the Saturday afternoon class. Tawney clearly saw these classes as a two-way learning process. "The friendly smitings of weavers, potters, miners and engineers, have taught me much about the problem of political and economic sciences which cannot easily be learned from books".[19]

Sidney Webb- pro-labor British advocate Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) was his classic work[29] and made his reputation as an historian.[30] It explored the relationship between Protestantism and economic development in the 16th and 17th centuries. Tawney "bemoaned the division between commerce and social morality brought about by the Protestant Reformation, leading as it did to the subordination of Christian teaching to the pursuit of material wealth".[31] The Oxford historian Valerie Pearl once described Tawney as having appeared to those in his presence as having an "aura of sanctity". He lent his name to the Tawney Society at Rugby School, the R. H. Tawney Economic History Society at the London School of Economics, the annual Tawney Memorial Lectures (Christian Socialist Movement), the R. H. Tawney Building at Keele University[citation needed] and the Tawney Tower Hall of Residence at Essex University. Adrian Hastings wrote: Behind the list of major publications was the mind of a man tirelessly guiding government, Labour movement, Church and academic community towards a new society, at once fully democratic, consciously socialistic and fully in accord with Christian belief. In effective intellectual terms it is doubtful whether anyone else had remotely comparable influence in the evolution of British society in his generation[12] "Two of Tawney's books stand out as his most influential social criticism:[30] The Acquisitive Society (1920), Richard Crossman's "socialist bible",[12] and Equality (1931), "his seminal work".[32] The former, one of his most widely read books,[27] criticised the selfish individualism of modern society. Capitalism, he insisted, encourages acquisitiveness and thereby corrupts everyone. In the latter book, Tawney argues for an egalitarian society. Both works reflected Tawney's Christian moral values, "exercised a profound influence" in Britain and abroad, and "anticipated the Welfare state".[30] As David Ormrod of the University of Kent stresses, "intermittent opposition from the Churches to the new idolatry of wealth surfaced from time to time but no individual critics have arisen with a combination of political wisdom, historical insight and moral force to match that of R.H. Tawney, the prophet who denounced acquisitiveness".[33]

Psychosomatic Mysticism

It is easy to see the difficulties people have in grasping spiritual and religious seeking as a constructive subject because of the ease with which science is misplaced in a worldview of scientific materialism. I just watched a debate between Sam Harris and Chris Hedges from 2007, and read up on their biographies. Harris, it turns out, spent some length of time up to eleven years before finishing his bachelors degree. He spent some portion of that time in Asia studying Buddhism and religion there at some level. It´s worth noting that his mother created a popular TV series or two, Soap, the old comedy from the 1970s, for one. That actually begins to explain a few things. Harris´ approach was more a comedy routine, with pop philosophical elements and anti-fundamentalist jibes that play on popular prejudices. While therapeutic psychology would be an appropriate academic subject to use to ground the discussion of spiritual-religious experience, Harris uses none of that. As Hedges pointed out, Harris was talking like those who externalize evil. In my own seeking, observations like Piaget´s in human developmental got my attention, and later Freud´s observations of "abreaction" emotional reconnection as the result of the "talking cure," Freud´s method that spans his work before "free association." By John Bradshaw´s innovative work popularized in the 1990s, Bradshaw referred to the dysfunctional family and "inner child work" in books like "Healing the Shame that Binds You" and "Homecoming." My larger interests have included psychosomatic medicine to address the phenomena of responding to disease, as in OC Simonton MD´s Cancer Clinic and support group, visualization, and psychotherapeutic types of techniques in support of combination treatments. As Simonton quickly began supporting the transpersonal, spiritual interests of his patients, so is comparative religious studies the field that ultimately combines the philosophical methodologies being used to assess spiritual-religious experience. The following text is based on comparative studies

"Having their source in the commonality of empirical findings regarding body-consciousness among various traditions, the core principles of Psychosomatic Mysticism (PM) include decentralized consciousness, structural correlations between the psyche and the body (namely the map of meaningful and essential elements of the psyche and spiritual experiences pertaining to the bodily centers of consciousness), in-depth understanding of subtle energy as intentionality, and the possibility of actualizing cosmic awareness in the individual psyche. In Table 1, we present the summary of the essential features of the various forms of PM. These systems are the integral parts of major religions and are immediately connected with the attainment of the grand goals of human fulfillment—such as Enlightenment, Liberation or Union. This includes Hesychasm in Christianity (Dubrovin, 1990; Spidlik, 1986; Ware, 1986), Sufism in general (Renard, 1985), and especially particular systems including the knowledge of lataif (subtle body centers), such as of Simnani (Elias, 1995) and some sections in the work of al-Ghazzali (Gairdner, 1924/1952) in Islam, Shakta-Vedanta with Kundalini Yoga and Kashmir Shaivism (Briggs, 1938/1998; Muller-Ortega, 1989; Vijnanabhairava, 1979; Woodroffe, 1981) in Hinduism, Buddhist Tantra Vajrayana (Bhattaracharyya, 1999; Lama Kun-zang Rinpoche, August 24, 2002, personal communication), Zen and Ch'an Buddhism (Durkheim, 1962; Hershock, 1996), alchemical yoga in Taoism (Yu, 1973), and developed forms of paganism (Johnson, 1998; Yagan, 1984). The use of the bodily centers of awareness is also found in Gnosticism (The Papyrus of Ani, 1998)."

"Health or particular skills-oriented systems of body and energy-work (e.g., Tai Chi, martial arts, Hatha yoga, or Chi-Gong) appear to have developed after, and as the outcrops of, the forms of PM that are listed in Table I. However, this is a preliminary classification not covering the diversity of all existing forms of PM. Classification questions regarding the genealogy of the various forms, their mutual enrichment, and relationship between PM and mystical philosophies, such as Persian philosophy of Illumination (Walbridge, 2000) or the neoplatonic thought of Pseudo-Dionisius (Pseudo-Dionisius, 1987), remain to be researched. Shamanism is also not covered here, as the forms of embodied awareness in shamanism are extremely complex and require special research attention. The material in Table 1 is based on the first author's (Louchakova's) field studies. Psychospiritual practices in all the forms of PM utilize awareness, concentration, devotion and worship, as well as imagination. Table 1 names only the specific forms of practice, targeting the main centers of embodied consciousness in particular traditions." Luchakova, Olga and Arielle S Warner. "Via Kundalini: Psychosomatic excursions in transpersonal psychology." The Humanistic Psychologist, 31(2-3), 115-158; March 2003

Is Metaphysics and Theology Always About Seeking? What About Being? Beyond Waiting to Die

John Alan Shope 2 hrs · This past year, many that I know have died. I often wonder what my dying will be like. Will I struggle and resist until life is forcefully taken from me? Or will I somehow be able to calmly let go...grateful for having lived and at peace with whatever happens next? Some suggest we practice "letting go" every day, so that when we face that final "letting go", it won't be so hard. Eckhart Tolle advises, "The secret of life is to die before you die - and find that there is no death." "Letting go" everyday may help, not only our dying, but also our living. But what about those who survive brushes with death because they refuse to let go? Their "will to live" keeps them alive. When does "letting go" become losing the "will to live"? Dylan Thomas insists, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." "To be or not to be?" Hold on or let go? My 40 year old seminary professor, Oscar Thompson, was dying of cancer. He shared his struggles with us, and often remarked, "God doesn't give dying grace on non-dying days." I saw my dad rage against death, but then peacefully let go at the end. Elizabeth Berg reminds us, "There is love in holding on and there is love in letting go." These words from Aldous Huxley speak to me... "It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly... Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them....Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric...and of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered." 5 Comments Micah Hoover I don't understand how you can value the "dying grace" God gives while saying "no theology" and "no metaphysics". Are you referring to the over analysis of theology and metaphysics ? Reply 1h Kate Johnson Micah Hoover Because, IMO theology isn't from God, it's our inadequate attempt at trying to explain God, and even metaphysics too because it's always "searching/seeking". There seems like there must be a point of letting go of all analyzing and searching and finally just fully embracing the mystery. JMO Reply 1h Mark Rego Monteiro Micah Hoover My dear soul, I have some strong disagreements with you, but on this matter, I am pretty strongly in agreement, although I emphasize the modernized awareness of Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity in University/modern education-based, UN human rights-sustainability concerns and society with structured pluralism and the need for spiritual modernization. Reply 55mEdited John Alan Shope Micah Hoover over analysis and over confidence. I tend to agree with Kate. There's a time, perhaps, to let go of all our explaining, controlling, debating, judging...and just be. Reply 43mEdited Mark Rego Monteiro Kate Johnson I think you´re really on to something when you say that "there must be a point of letting go ... and embracing the mystery." I was simply raised oriented to education, and with minimal prejudice and strong inclinations of curiosity. So, I strongly agree with how you recognize the problem when you say metaphysics "is always searching/seeking". Yet, I am happy to understand and share from good time and effort that that´s not based on the available reality of resources. I´m an interfaith UU Quaker Christian, aka Gandhian Christian, in which UU stands for Unitarian Universalist interfaith association. Thus, Huxley´s reference to "the clear light" and the "quicksands of fear" hardly does justice to the incredible awareness of loving and just accomplishment that observe resurgent integrity in Christianity most centrally, with Huxley from an accomplished, frequently dissenting, yet privileged family, which deserves identifying in such detail to acknowledge the actual scope and dimensions of his own reality itself. My suggesting that approach isn´t just an idea, but based on my own meditative appreciation of the resources that have been available to me, and how I began to embrace approaches like Chinese Taoism and Buddhism which for all their own anti-intellectual angles, ultimately are not treated with chaos nor limited to mere disconnection from metaphysics not least of all. Quaker-Friend Christianity is perhaps one of the greatest reference points that shows how we can benefit from becoming aware of meditative appreciation of our spiritual-religious reality for its beneficial qualities, and that sustains the meaning of the Divine Love that Jesus actually put a the center of his mission in two loving Commandments for a Transcendental Divine Parent Entity of the Universe and its physical processes that evolved human minds. And the loving quality of that Entity when identified through the hub of the resources that trace to those loving Commandments in Jesus´ context. "The clear light" that Huxley referred to isn´t just a physical reality, or a metaphorical use of symbolic language, but a glimpse of a larger reality that people aren´t used to calling transcendental, which isn´t just a reference to the school of thought of Emerson. Still, Emerson himself had proposed the "Oversoul" for the transcendental Entity based on his studies of Hinduism. And so, "seeking" can very much mean, "facilitating" and I certainly advocate spiritual modernization to emphasize spiritual practice. Much like Karen Armstrong, in fact. I have found that my own interfaith and scholarly interests allow me to grasp the issues in the philosophy of metaphysics to address issues that have been left hanging, and to build on the great modern work in ideas by people like Ms. Armstrong, physicist-Systems Theorist Fritjof Capra, comparative religion scholar Huston Smith, and Process Theologian JB Cobb, not least of all. We definitely don´t need to wait before dying to achieve the benefits of just "being," and making the philosophy of metaphysics relevant to the full meaning of Jesus´ living and spiritual-religious legacy in University-based, UN human rights-sustainability society with structured pluralism with spiritual modernization resources.

Carl Sagan´s Materialism, Backhanded or Otherwise

Here´s some fun dialoguing I had around this meme with Carl Sagan: Ma You Well, we do know a great deal more about the universe than when Sagan was alive and we still don't see a god. Reply 5h Ez Ro 📷 @Ma Yo Where did you look? You won't be given a pass on collective ignorance Mark Rego Monteiro Ez Ro Clarity counts. If MY can´t see it, it´s because he can´t see it with the JWS telescope that is astronomy. That´s a powerful point right there, since within scientific natural physical phenomena there are distinctions. And actually, biology is the result of cosmology and the passage of time, resulting in phenomena that aren´t just "physical", but a new category, "life." Microscopes aren´t the only tool in studying "life," moreover, just like even the conduct necessary for astronomy isn´t just a "telescope." The historical sociology of science, as advanced significantly by Thomas Kuhn, but for scientists in particular. G. Vico already made an important distinction back in the 1700s in response to some people trying to apply Cartesian geometric techniques to people. What we know as "emergent properties" like biology and the mind behind psychology etc, causes epistemological distinctions. That means in how the phenomena is recognized with conceptual names and their processes for knowledge systems. All that fancy clarity comes thanks to the historical sociological contemplative method with empiricism, that underlies "science" itself, and centers back on the origins of "science" in the University-based community with multiple disciplines, called the "liberal arts and sciences," that use empiricism. Newton didn´t just call the Royal Society, because scientists were self-sustaining. He read up works from the combined networks centered on University-based philosophical scholarship with empiricism and the mathematical and natural philosophers like Descartes. Who go back to the pivotal monk Thomas Aquinas at the U of Paris who took Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause, made a powerful argument indicating the incoherence of empirical infinity in the real world beyond abstraction (or Divine transcendence), along with his deductive reasoning axioms for God like the one from motion. Ez Ro 📷 @ Mark Rego Monteiro If you put as much time and thought into study as you do deflection, you would be enlightened and enlightening. Ez Ro Author 📷 @Mark Young And all organization is indicative of INTELLIGENCE Mark Rego Monteiro @Ez Ro Yeah, too bad attitude doesn´t give you ground to stand on, as you respond to me and my presentation. That´s the substance here that you try to slip in your pocket. When a holy man meets a pickpocket, the pickpocket picks his own pocket, no matter where his hand started. And gets the chance to appreciate value in more than coins. God is real, God´s love through Jesus is real. Jesus´ legacy in interfaith society is real. And when a seeker becomes a holy man and deals with the unscrupulous, here´s how that goes: Frankly, your expressing yourself using the words "deflection" and "enlightened" get evaluated by the old goodies of philosophical truth that makes Christianity capable of honoring Jesus as Savior in structured pluralism with interfaith master collaboration with the likes of the Buddha. When you say, "deflection," you mean, "I don´t really get it, and it sounds hard to understand." When you say "enlightened", you mean "I think I get it, so I´m going to do some ad hom like I do." As for your comment on "organization," physical reality that science does study legitimately, does actually raise the real question that confuses and deludes them, and others in all kinds of related ways, including yourself in an opposite extreme. And I went over this with you previously, without your actually getting it, clearly. You just leaped to your enjoyment of joining a meme´s ridiculing "randomness." That´s not how communicating about the truth works, with logical coherence and correspondence to reality, and grasping the importance of philosophy, not attitude alone. I have both, by the way. The issue isn´t just organization, since scientists are coherent when they say, "It´s all just a multiverse." No God necessary. They get pretty far if they control the conversation. And your posture of "organization is INTELLIGENCE" is more a reflection of the profiteers funding literalists, but who are actually economic materialists putting everything into the commodified handbasket to Hell. So, the fact that perceiving organization requires people with minds who can cooperate sufficiently to study the Universe didn´t just happen because of ancient Greek natural philosophers like Thales and Socrates´ legacy in Aristotle. Their culture was dying out with the pagan Romans. Their multiple accomplishments on paper required Jesus´ legacy with his 2 loving Commandments, teachings AND suffering to Resurrection and apostolic legacy to get to Thomas Aquinas to show how to Christianize ancient Greek philosophy to make empiricism and modern philosophy. Ma Yo Ez Ro What has that got to do with the conversation To Sit Ma Yo when did you see your mind ? Ma Yo To Sit Do you mean brain? Because the mind is a byproduct of the brain. 💁 Mark Rego Mon Ma Yo You´re actually making TS´s point. You try to reduce the human mind to the brain, but can only do it in denial and by ignoring reality. Freud didn´t make his landmark breakthrough´s in psychology because of a microscope. He was just a tecchie neuropathologist when he ran into patients reporting pain without organic wounds or disease. Freud went to Paris to study with Charcot et al and learn some relaxation and visualization techniques. Back in Vienna, he didn´t pull out the microscope, but a notepad as he sat, helped his human patients relax, and asked them to think about their pain and talk about it. That began to heal them. Freud studied his notes, not slide samples to develop his psychological concepts of "ego" and "id" (the "I" and "it"), along with the healing process of "abreaction (emotional reconnection)" and "catharsis" reflecting the trauma associated with emotional repression. Human symbol using has tool-related and communication-related major areas of use, involving the reality of "Mind over Matter." Human individuals can understand themselves in ways that allow them to ignore and override their biological impulses. Pushing on to conduct an all-nighter is a modern context. Shamanic relating to transcendent reality that generated the Judeo-Christian supershamanic tradition, and Jesus´ legacy and its interfaith needs in structured pluralism are at least two other angles of what might be tentatively posited as human shamanic behavior. Or perhaps spiritual-religious is the more appropriate major category of human behavior, phenomena, and its knowledge factors. It is those dynamics that reflect the empirical demonstrations of shamanic healing by the Great Spirit, as medically attested, medically impossible healing correlated with spiritual-religious testimony, as in L Mehl-Madrona MD´s books like Coyote Medicine, part of the new multi-cultural level in Jesus´ legacy that centers around the even more accessible healing through Christian spiritual practice, as in OC Simonton MD´s work and more. Human minds, exceeding their physical biological foundations and achieving energetic types of healing. Except that "energy" is itself physical, and isn´t a sufficient conceptual framework. Holographic technology gets a few steps closer in its informational paradigm, but is still material. Spiritual-religious healing testimony goes further in combining the human mental faculties of memory, psychosocial and transpersonal relationship, emotional awareness, ecological awareness, and in Christianity´s legacy for Jesus, the direct relationship over generations through Jesus the self-identifying and prophecied Son of God and Man teaching God the Creator´s parental love and accessibility to people who seek. All of which goes beyond any one brain, and goes with in fact a whole lot of visible evidence that requires interpretation by minds. Then a person can catch up to the terms already translated in the Bible as "the mind of Christ," Bishop Berkeley´s "mind of God," and James Frederick Ferrier´s metaphysical analaogy argument for God based on the need for a Divine Mind in relation to the existence of the Universe itself. Ma Yo Mark Rego Monteiro Guess what, we have advanced since Freud. We have far more advanced ways of telling pathologies. We have machines that can see the brains function and see where it's not going normally. You speak from.over 150 years ago. Keep up with the times and stop thinking that your the only one who has done research Ma Yo Mark Rego Monteiro And FYI, you've said nothing about damage to the brain causing damage to the mind. Just ramblings from authority....old authority Mark Rego Monteiro Ma Yo Oh my. Yeah, the materialistic anachronistic fallacy assumes that the passage of time invalidates all things old. That´s a fallacy, and you got your timeframe wrong. Freud´s pioneering and key work was 1896, as far as that goes. And on you go, dropping balls as easy as it is to mix and match words unempirically. Indeed, "we" have advanced since Freud, yet you confuse the meaning of that very reality in your ideological filtering. Empirical reality isn´t your projection. Having machines that identify brain functions is a different phenomena and knowledge system, that exists still in the physical scientific area. It doesn´t invalidate the realm opened up by Freud not merely in therapeutic psychological study and approaches. You deviated into the physical, as usual in denial of and ignoring the relevant areas of Freud´s diverging proteges like Jung, Reich, Assagioli, and Rank and colleagues like Adler, who developed psychotherapeutic techniques elaborating on various aspects of Freud, with the Rank-Rogers-Rosenberg line especially clear about the psychosocial system of emotions, also recognized by Alice Miller and John Bradshaw in their various contexts. Even the DMS has advanced in ways that reflect the psychosocial qualities of mind, handled in terms of human communication and interaction, not brainscans or pharmacology. RD Laing can represent a movement developed to oppose reductionists in that field and the like who have tried to be as reductionist as you. And your claim to having done "research" falls itself into a projection fallacy. If you want to claim to do research, you should actually check your details first of all. It is, however, not even just research. You just missed the ball on the subject of epistemics and epistemology, the areas of phenomena and knowledge. Brainscans don´t address the issues of the material contained in psychologists notepads that they have used to identify the psychological and emotional empirical factors: needs, operating beliefs, feelings, and so on. Mark Rego Monteiro Ma Yo "Damage to the brain and mind" is another category. That´s not in question, although it involves additional points. Your continuing reductionist ideologizing simply remains ignorant of things like the spiritual-religious phenomenon that made Mother Theresa a Catholic saint. A patient with brain tumors was healed in connection to an item recalling Theresa, resulting in a medically attested, medically impossible healing with spiritual-religious testimony. Standard medical records don´t note such accessory patient information, although there is a movement associated with the Medical Humanities to address such issues, and schools and Medical Centers like Harvard have instituted Spiritual and Religious components in their services. Social Workers, on the other hand, operate in terms of patients as people with their psychosocial experiences. Your ideology, based on one or more forms of ideological materialism, is simply insufficient to deal honestly with empirical reality. That´s what a mind capable of grasping the full empirical scope of phenomena relevant to this very site needs to address without your kind of denialism and fallacies.

Does Accepting Jesus As Your Personal Savior Save You? Yeah? Who Told You That In The First Place?

Meme Post: Accepting Jesus as your personal savior doesn´t save you. Realizing you need to change by becoming self-aware and compassionate does. Almost. See, yet this phrasing doesn´t quite make the necessary connection. Jesus does matter. I love the Buddha and Buddhism, after starting an interfaith path thanks to scholar Huston Smith´s description of the Chinese Tao and Unitarian Universalism´s validating respectful spiritual paths. Yet, all of that became subject to my educational values, and their origin. Buddha teaches a "doctrine of the non-existence of self." Progressives of all kinds treat Jesus as subordinate to "the science" and let the fundamentalists scare them away from things like spiritual healing. Jesus´ teaching to "love thy neighbor as thyself" and to "take the plank out of your own eye..." are powerful parts of the reasons why I could realize that the Buddha wasn´t "perfect" in his amazing enlightenment, and why my love of psychology and its discoveries as part of a well-rounded education all led me to appreciate activism against profiteering businesspeople´s creation everywhere of unsustainable lifestyles that violate human rights. Psychosomatic medicine is part of the educational system, and validates not just "the science", but the importance of well-rounded education, and actually the full scope of liberal arts and sciences, that needs to be elevated to interrelate knowledge. Multidisciplinary Philosophy with empiricism is the thing that does that. Jesus needs to be reclaimed from fundamentalists, who are actually funded by profiteering businesspeople in the first place. The way to reclaim Jesus fully is to recognize that things like the UN human rights and US Civil Rights are not just random developments by nice guys. FD Roosevelt was influenced by the Social Gospel of W Gladden et al, and Jefferson recognized Jesus as the "greatest moral teacher of all time." At least, in his Deist Christianity. I gained important clarity working with Buddhism before engaging with Christianity in the modern context and in search of spiritual integrity. Reclaiming Jesus, and God through Jesus, and how that grounds modern structured UN human rights pluralism is not optional, because Jesus and all masters and all people are unique and not subject to mere equivalencies. There is a real problem of unsustainability and human rights violations, despite the UN´s being founded. And the source is in the very juggernaut that produced FDR. The US-led profiteering corporate businesspeople´s model has unleashed itself, and people need touches of clarity and courage to make the necessary shifts to sustainable and just lifestyles. Food co-op stores are one of my favorite simple examples, along with credit union local community co-op banks. Our ultimate courage in resisting the impulses to buy the most advertised Big Biz brand for a local or Fair Trade type version is part of a spiritual process and practice that gets centered by Jesus, and restores us to the power of God. That´s how subtle things have gotten, and why "free will" is part of that subtle distinction. The profiteers are using their college educations in many cases, and that is what has been used to fabricate unsustainable ideologies. Bringing God back from the symbolic and mythic into the reality of spiritual-religious practice, experience and phenomena like spiritual healing for progressives and sustainable justice activist lifestyles to avoid the origin of Social Europe´s leap to its advanced pro-eco-social market democracies. WW II, to be clear. Or, the equivalent of WW III being what we´re trying to avoid.

Are Eastern Religions Universal or just Academic? An Indian Guy´s Question

Rowdy-Rohan greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 16 hours ago Do you see anything universal in Asian philsophies and faiths or is it simply academic. Can you apply satyagraha, nirvana, dharma to every day life of Americans or modern western history and how these aspects would have changed history? have you read E Michael Jones books or heard his videos on the Holocaust and if you have what is your take on him • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Rowdy-Rohan • 12 minutes ago First of all, you use the terms "universal" and "academic" with certain associations, some limiting. For clarity´s sake, I am responding based on my recognition that the modern culture conceptual discussion is based on University-based philosophical scholarship with empiricism. "Science", which is actually scientific natural philosophy, has become a highly visible and somewhat distorted subset of that. The US drew on diverse European resources to develop the atomic bombs in WWII, used them against Japan in the magnitude of the conflict, and established a primary example of how "science"-related technology can be said to have developed the world´s most destructive kind of weapon. And it has spread. Throughout Asia, to speak geographically. Because of its power. But, underlying that is the University-based system of education, which is in fact philosophial scholarship with empiricism. Moreover, not only scientific natural philosophy is involved, but popular terms like "democracy" and "free markets" with their ideological misrepresentations and their empirical, philosophical realities. University-based education with empiricism, however, underlies the truths of all of that. And its own normally disguised truth as having origins in Christian monastic spiritual practice, developed from ancient Greek philosophy as spiritual practice. It is illuminating, moreover, to be clear about the monk Thomas Aquinas´ role as identifying "infinity" as an abstraction and unempirical, and not of the real world. That, along with his philosophical formulation from motion of God as First Cause. In the context of Jesus´ role, teachings with spiritual practice, and his legacy. That is the key knowledge-based framework that I was operating in back in high school when I read scholar Huston Smith´s World Religions book, and appreciated his description of the Chinese Tao at first. I also appreciated Unitarian Universalist interfaith´s support of spiritual paths. Thus, your question relates to phenomena operating at multiple levels. First of all, whatever strengths Asian philosophies and spiritual-religious traditions have, it was European merchants, soldiers, and politicians using Christianity´s University-based fruits in Jesus´ legacy that colonized the world. And opened up Japan, that recognized the power of University-based education. The timing and events around WWII are all important to grasping the different levels that are in operation across cultures in affecting people´s minds. Like European colonialism reflected human bio-psycho-social tendencies, it has gone with ideological materialism that permit objectifying situations. FD Roosevelt´s Christian Social Gospel vision and legacy proposing the UN and human rights then established a highly moral secular materialist form of international quasi-governance, or at least, standards of conduct. That supplements, and extends, the framework of University-based philosophical scholarship, as forms of communication and interaction. You say, "academic," in a way that subordinates University-based practices, as if it is less than real world effectiveness. Thus, Buddhism has universal insights, but is centered around its own limiting factors. Buddhism certainly spread naturally in history, and has some important popularity in the West already. Yet, it is secularized Christian structures that form the mainline structures for knowledge development, communication, and interaction standards. I find Buddhism essential to my orienting to spiritual practice with depth of integrity for personal growth as an interfaith Christian . The Four Noble Truths, for example, and the goal of nirvana. That gave me powerful insights as I researched Christian history itself, and learned about Christian monasticism and Anthony of the Desert´s own demonstration of what became called "divinization/theosis." Gandhi´s demonstration of satyagraha at least involved Gandhi´s applying the orientation of the likes of the dissident high integrity Christian Thoreau et al. Yet, Thoreau was somehow co-existing with the abolition anti-slavery movement and Quaker-Friend Christianity´s remarkable developments, led in being co-founded by George Fox in the 1600s. Thus, in taking Gandhi´s interfaith Christian Hinduism and satyagraha, we can understand its relationship more or less directly with a full range of phenomena in Christian culture in the first place. The abolition anti-slavery movement initiated modern social movements and Civil Society, and that is what I have been mentioning to you represented by Right Livelihood Award winners of all kinds, including India´s Colin Goncalves, LAFTI, Swami Agnivesh, and the prominent Vandana Shiva. She may have won a RLA also. Ela Bhatt who founded SEWA also comes to mind. So, yes, I do see the Asian philosophies as having universal qualities. However, it is Jesus´ legacy in University-based philosophical scholarship with empiricism and societal innovations that have established the standardizing frameworks that can operate non-violently. Gandhi´s example illuminates various qualities, including the relevance of spiritual practice hard to see in Western culture. The Quaker-Friends were involved in the founding of Greenpeace, and John Muir in founding the Sierra Club,, but secular materialism has significant influence in their image and conduct. I´ve found it necessary to define spiritual-religious phenomena, since materialistic tendencies have simply been trapped by compartmentalizing and reductionism. Defining Multidisciplinary Philosophy with empiricism, too. Buddha and Gandhi both have served as important guides for me to consider in identifying those two key conceptual innovations that I ´ve had to make. They are related to some published insights, but are otherwise significant and unique. Pantanjali´s Yoga, Morihei Ueshiba´s aikido, too, have been helpful. Lao Tzu and Taoism, also, in fact. Tai chi and qi gong as part of that. "Science" has identified brain wave and brainscan data to identify meditative and prayerful states, yet it is the Eastern / Asian traditions that provide powerful human systemic examples. How they would have changed history? Study the history of comparative religious studies, and observe that a foundation has been established for what is in fact necessary for a saving history and the future. UN reports demonstrate a catastrophic combination of human rights abuses and unsustainable industrial socioeconomic process underway. Asian practices and philosophies have powerful elements, but not an interactive framework. Secularized Christianity has provided the interactional framework, and needs infusions of the spiritual-religious insights of Asian/Eastern spiritual-religious practices and their insightful elements. Thus, I have been learning about how Catholic missionaries studied things like Confucius, which was recognized by the atheist scholar Christian Wolff in the 1700s already in Germany. Great Britain´s Wm Jones established the Asia Society around 1790 as a major step in cultural studies. Franz Boff was an important early scholar, among others. Thoreau, in some relation to Emerson, was also studying Hinduism. Emerson developed the idea of Oversoul as an alternative idea about God. I don´t know that I´ve heard of EM Jones. The Holocaust is part of Nazi Germany´s rise, at the same time as Japan´s imperial militarism and Stalinist Soviet Communism, along with US industrial corporate profiteering businesspeople which caused the Stock Market Crash of 1929. So, I relate all this around University-based educational culture, ie philosophical scholarship with empiricism, and how Jesus´ legacy in spiritual practice and phenomena relates to the rise of modern social movements in the sequence of Luther´s inspiring the Reformation and George Fox´s leading the co-founding of the Quaker Friends in Great Britain. The American Revolution with Jefferson et al´s ending absolute monarchy with constitutional democracy and Civil Rights coincides with the rise of the modern abolition anti-slavery movement. The co-operative pro-social business movement, also, was founded by workingpeople in the UK in the 1840s. The efforts in comparative cultural and religious studies led to the 1893 Chicago World Parliament of Religions, organized by Bonney and Barrows. The US Social Gospel initiated as pro-labor by Washington Gladden in 1877 is also key there, creating a thread to FD Roosevelt. All of that is where Gandhi´s satyagraha ultimately fits in. "Dharma" represents the need for practice, and the cause-effect nature of moral law, and illuminates all manner of these events now interrelated through the study of human psychology, sociology, and international relations. The Holocaust primarily involved the transition in Germany from monarchy to secular democracy, based around their intense secularized University enriched culture, with minimal international colonialism. Now, that phenomena "vented" sociohistorically, Greenpeace represents one Civil Society group that has been taken up intensively throughout Germany. Germans have some appreciation for Eastern religions, and so it is through that lens that further insights need to develop. Comparative Religious Studies is a multidisciplinary subject that allows for the comprehensive grasping of the issues involved. That is simply necessary in the face of ideological materialism´s three rather treacherous forms: scientific, secular, and economic. If you are obsessing about the Holocaust, I can share that I certainly benefited in studying Hitler´s psychology and the anthropological meaning of the Nuremberg Rallies. That is no less related to Aztec human sacrifices and cannibalism. If European brutality intrigues you, the history of European wars, including Luther´s inspired Reformation, are full of bloodshed. The Battle of Lepanto in the 1570s was part of the chronology of Muslim-European Christian conflict, with the 1683 Siege of Vienna the last in Europe. WWI is also not to be neglected, as it resulted in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. All that technical knowledge needs to satisfy a person´s capacity for military realism. It is at the same time, however, that psychological insight becomes necessary, along with that of social movements. Satyagraha, nirvana, and dharma are important correlates to psychology, anthropology, and sociology perhaps most of all, with political science and economics actually reflecting those primary subjects. Again, the Right Livelihood Award now serves an important role in identifying further key actors in social movements in the UN human rights world community that is in Jesus´, and then FD Roosevelt´s legacy negotiated with the world as it led to decolonization and reorientation to the potential of University-based society. I refer to spiritual modernization as the process needed in secularized Christianity, with Eastern and indigenous traditions offering powerful resources in the study of phenomena and developing knowledge about practices through experience.