Re: A larger presence, the unknowable total of all there is

On May 14, 7:05 pm, Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> Richard Corfield wrote:
> > D=E9j=E0 Flu:
>
> > >:) You sound like Keynes here, bud. What "presumptions"?
>
> > > Hymnals (media and advertising) notwithstanding, could one
> > > therefore presume they've explored the efficacy of prayer,
> > > vs antibiotics and vaccines?
>
> > It has been done. I think the ones who knew they were being prayed for
> > came out slightly, but very slightly, worse in one study, but other
> > people have re****ted very slight improvement.
>
> > I'd guess at statistical noise or psychological effects of knowing
> > you're being prayed for combined with whatever you believe about that.
>
> > I wonder what would happen if you told a load of Christians that
Vishnu
> > was being prayed to for their healing.
>
> This is a red herring. Fu is here misleading
> people with the error of overpervasion, in
> that he insinuates that because prayer
> doesn't work, therefore all spirituality is
> useless.

And interesting point, Tang.

First, I don't know if Fu is insinuating this, and you are notorious
for projecting false motives and intentions into others, Tang.

But suppose you are right.  Then I agree it would be a mistake to
throw out spirutuality.  However, I think it would be very reasonable
to throw out superstition.  You can have all the ethics and mystery
without superstition and blind faith.  Indeed I claim that
spirituality without blind faith is even stronger than with it.

To know that praying to a magical beastie doesn't work, and that this
has been demonstrated over and over, may help you find a more
authentic kind of spirituality.  Just as knowing that magical s****
oils and acupuncture and reflexology and homeopathy are all just
exploiting the placebo effect might lead you to seek out actual
medicine that is causally effective.

In several other posts, my mind/body dualist nemesis Keynes claims
over and over that to ground oneself in naturalism is deluded, and
only in supernaturalism with his capital-lettered babble, is wisdom to
be found.  The idea that we are natural animals, that brains are
conscious, and no ghost is needed, horrifies him.

It likewise horrified his Christian counterparts like Jerry Falwell.
Creationist fundies see Darwin as the anti-Christ.  Why?  Because he
said we were wholly, fundamentally animals.  No spookies.  No
ineffable beasties.  No magic powers.  Our consciousness is the fruit
on the tree of evolution.  That horrifies the Christianist fundies as
well as the supernaturalists like Keynes here.

Why is nature so scary?  Why are Keynes and his Christionist
counterparts so quick to condemn grounding oneself in the physical
(natural) world as deluded or evil, and find clinging to magic
ineffable minds or Gods gives them a feeling of security?

The original Buddha's Buddhism has a wonderful dry, physicalist/
naturalist sense to it.  The Mahayanist and Tibetan flavors get more
supernatural.  There are Buddhisms for all types.  Buy why the
alienation from nature, from the physical.

The Atlantic Monthly republished one of my favorite articles on its
100th anniversary.  This is great.  You like what I say -- read this.
It was one of the things that stirred me spiritually in high school.
You can't stand me?  Read this -- it will give you a big target to
attack.

For a lot of these discussions seem to boil down to supernaturalists
saying that grounding oneself in physicality, in nature, is deluded or
evil, and naturalists responding, no it's not, and that the deepest
spirituality is the rediscovering a deep interconnection with nature,
a unity with nature, instead of a split from or transcendence of
nature.  Regardless of which side you are on, this article is a great
read.  It jarred me out of Catholicism and toward Buddhism, at least
the physicalist, agnostic Buddhism that is found in Theravadins such
as Stephen Batchelor.

Enjoy.

--DharmaTroll

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/190804/burroughs

The Divine Soil | John Burroughs | April 1908 | The Atlantic Online

Excerpt:

It jars upon our sensibilities and disturbs our preconceived notions
to be told that the spiritual has its root in the carnal and is as
truly its product as the flower is the product of the roots and the
stalk of the plant. The conception does not cheapen or degrade the
spiritual, it elevates the carnal, the material. To regard the soul
and body as one, or to ascribe to consciousness a physiological
origin, is not detracting from its divinity, it is rather conferring
divinity upon the body. One thing is inevitably linked with another.

How science has enlarged and ennobled and purified our conception of
the universe; how it has cleaned out the evil spirits that have so
long terrified mankind. It has prepared the way for a conception of
man, his origin, his development, and in a measure his destiny, that
at last makes him at home in the universe.