3000 gods but only yours exists

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rossum said:
Consider, you are in a luxury five-star hotel room, being pampered with top-notch service. In the room next door your family is screaming in pain as they are being tortured. You can hear them suffering horribly. Are you happy? Of course not. All Christians and Buddhists love their neighbours. As long as even one neighbour is suffering in hell, how can you be happy in heaven?

Christianity gives no such guarantee, as I pointed out above. Buddhism does give the guarantee. Karma does not forgive. Karma does not decide beforehand.

rossum
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How can a Buddhist be happy knowing evil people will suffer eternal reincarnation?
 
PRmerger said:
Really? How is it wrong if no one is hurt? In fact, at the moment the adultery is occurring both parties are experiencing great happiness and pleasure.
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Partners who had a reasonable expectation of faithfulness in marriage would be hurt. That is why I mentioned the possibility of an open marriage, where faithfulness was not expected, hence no disappointment.

The outcome is dependent on the situation.

rossum
 
PRmerger said:
You actually have been asserting many, many absolute truths here.
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No. I have been asserting some non-absolute truths here.

If you want absolute truths then please indicate an absolute source of absolute truths, together with an absolute proof that your claimed source is actually a true source of absolute truths.

In the absence of such a source then we will all have to make do with contingent truths that work here-and-now. For the moment I do not need to worry about whether those truths will still work in 1,000,000,000 years time. Here-and-now is good enough for the moment.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Partners who had a reasonable expectation of faithfulness in marriage would be hurt.
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They can’t be hurt if they don’t know, can they?

It’s only hurtful, using your paradigm, at the moment a negative effect happens–meaning, the spouse finds out.

So, when the adultery is actually occurring–mutually pleasurable for both parties–it’s morally GOOD, then, using your paradigm?

Yes?
 
rossum said:
No. I have been asserting some non-absolute truths here.
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LOL!

Ok. Then this means that what you have asserted isn’t actually true for anyone, except for you.

So, let’s go back to your assertions.

For example:
rossum said:
No, they are man-discovered entities. They existed before men discovered them.
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This isn’t true for the rest of us here? Only you?

And this:
rossum said:
Buddhism has many more gods than Christianity;
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I assert that Buddhism has only One God, a Trinitarian God, which claims that Jesus died for your sins.

Now what?

Is that true for me?

😃

Oh, the silly, silly web that your assertion of No Absolute Truth has wrought you, rossum.

😃

It’s clear that you actually believe, quite strongly, what you believe, and that it is true, not only for you, but for everyone who desires to be consonant with reality.

Would that you could see this truth.
 
rossum said:
Nobody will reincarnate for ever. Everyone attains nirvana eventually.

rossum
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Do they in every universe, or is there a possible universe where they don’t?

We are talking about “all the infinite worlds that stretch right and left,” are we not?

How would you know for certain that “everyone attains nirvana,” in every universe?

I mean, this comes very close to being an “absolute” truth if it obtains in every possible universe among the infinite number, no?

Come to think of it, couldn’t there be a universe where Buddhism doesn’t hold and things turn out just the opposite – i.e., no one attains nirvana?

How do you KNOW with absolute certainty?
 
PRmerger said:
Ok. Then this means that what you have asserted isn’t actually true for anyone, except for you.
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No. It means that they are true in the current time and place. That may not be the case in a different time and a different place. They are contingent truths, and so are dependent on other external circumstances. It is true that it is wrong to lie, except when you are hiding Jews in your basement. The truth is not absolute, but depends on other factors.

You have a very strange idea of what a non-absolute truth is.

rossum
 
Peter_Plato said:
How do you KNOW with absolute certainty?
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I don’t. The Buddha said so, and I trust the Buddha.

How do you KNOW with absolute certainty that you are not a brain-in-a-jar and that you and your jar were not created last Thursday?

We live in a world of contingent truths, where there is nothing that we can KNOW with absolute certainty. We have to do the best we can with contingent truths.

rossum
 
rossum said:
I don’t. The Buddha said so, and I trust the Buddha.

How do you KNOW with absolute certainty that you are not a brain-in-a-jar and that you and your jar were not created last Thursday?

We live in a world of contingent truths, where there is nothing that we can KNOW with absolute certainty. We have to do the best we can with contingent truths.

rossum
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Well, I trust my day to day experiences as being generally reliable. Neither am I required to reconcile that totality of experiences with an alleged multiverse that I have no access to the possibility of any knowledge about but at the same time, as you do, must insist that it has to be so.

You have the problem of not merely being uncertain about this universe, you have to claim certainty about an infinite number of them in the same instance as you claim no certain knowledge of any of them albeit with certainty that they exist in the first place.

Speaking of compounding unnecessary entities, your resort to an infinite number of universes would seem the least parsimonious of all options, along with the fact that you cannot trust your own experiences but must place all of your trust someone else’s (the Buddha’s) to have any sense of certainty whatsoever.
 
Shaolen said:
An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Of course hes speaking sarcastically. What are good arguments to make against this. The idea that because many gods have been proven false over the years therefore God is false as well
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Your friend is quoting a recent twitter comment from Ricky Gervais, the attention -seeking atheist celebrity, who apparently has a lot more time on his hands lately.
 
rossum said:
I don’t. The Buddha said so, and I trust the Buddha.

How do you KNOW with absolute certainty that you are not a brain-in-a-jar and that you and your jar were not created last Thursday?

We live in a world of contingent truths, where there is nothing that we can KNOW with absolute certainty. We have to do the best we can with contingent truths.

rossum
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Don’t get me wrong, I in no way deny that my mind is imperfect and the need for trust and so on. But who could you even trust to tell you that you were preceded by an infinite sequence of early beings?
 
Peter_Plato said:
Well, I trust my day to day experiences as being generally reliable.
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As do I. Our senses are definitely not perfect, but they are generally reliable.
Neither am I required to reconcile that totality of experiences with an alleged multiverse that I have no access to the possibility of any knowledge about but at the same time, as you do, must insist that it has to be so.
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I do not “insist”, the multiverse is one possible option that happens to share some characteristics with the Abrahamic God. I find it useful to tease out some of the issues it shares with that God. If you feel easier with colliding branes or string theory then by all means go with that instead. Currently cosmology offers a number of options.
You have the problem of not merely being uncertain about this universe, you have to claim certainty about an infinite number of them in the same instance as you claim no certain knowledge of any of them albeit with certainty that they exist in the first place.
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Certainty? No. No more than you have “certainty” about the existence of a heaven you have never seen. I do have a method, as given in the Visuddhimagga, for remembering my previous lives.

rossum
 
rossum said:
I disagree. See below.

Look at the top right of my posts where it says: “Religion: Buddhist”. There is more to life than merely the physical.

Buddhism is not an Abrahamic religion; nothing can live forever. Everything changes and everything dies, eventually. The gods may be vastly longer lived than humans, but all the gods (yes, even yours) die eventually and are reborn, unless they have attained enlightenment during their current lifetime.

Not difficult. Any living being that does not attain nirvana will outlast the current physical universe and be reborn in the following physical universe. Buddhism follows a version of the oscillating universe hypothesis with alternating Big Bangs and Big Crunches.

The point is to avoid coming back again and again and again, which means dying again and again and again.

At Savatthi. There the Blessed One said: “From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on. What do you think, monks: Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating and wandering this long, long time – crying and weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing – or the water in the four great oceans?”

“As we understand the Dhamma taught to us by the Blessed One, this is the greater: the tears we have shed while transmigrating and wandering this long, long time – crying and weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing – not the water in the four great oceans.”

“Excellent, monks. Excellent. It is excellent that you thus understand the Dhamma taught by me.”

– Assu sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 15.3

You are making a lot of assumptions here based on the Abrahamic approach. Many of those assumptions do not apply in Buddhism where things can be very different.

Yes so with your God and with everything else. All things have causes. It is not your God that is infinite, but the chain of causation that is infinite and without origin: “A beginning point is not evident.”

rossum
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It would seem that Assumption Street is a two way street.

The peace of Christ,
Mark
 
rose_kelly said:
Your friend is quoting a recent twitter comment from Ricky Gervais, the attention -seeking atheist celebrity, who apparently has a lot more time on his hands lately.
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Perhaps Mr. Gervais should take up the Bible with the extra time he has on his hands! 👍
 
rossum said:
I don’t. The Buddha said so, and I trust the Buddha.

How do you KNOW with absolute certainty that you are not a brain-in-a-jar and that you and your jar were not created last Thursday?

We live in a world of contingent truths, where there is nothing that we can KNOW with absolute certainty. We have to do the best we can with contingent truths.

rossum
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You state many things as fact, but you should preface them as “beliefs”. Religions are not scientifically based, but ultimately depend on an element of faith. This is as true for Buddhism as for Christianity.
 
based only on my personal experiences, I know of few things more futile than trying to reason with an atheist.
 
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