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How come all the greats of the past were spiritual to some degree, some even legit theists, while the current generation is a couple of edgelord gnostic atheists? Why is there no middle ground? Why are stuff like Deism and Pantheism disregarded as "unscientific"? Does being a "scientist" mean adhering to a couple of arbitrary rules set by pop-scis?

because the world will be a better place with religion eradicated, it only serves to divide us

Intellectuals from the past were not allowed to say publicily they didn't believe in God and have to be very careful about other people not even thinking they were atheist (whenever it was the case).

In fact it is impossible to tell how many "greats of the past" actually believe in God.

There exists only a split between religion and science in the West. In eastern traditions, and in India specifically, what is believed to be religion is more of a spiritual science. Nothing in Hindu or Buddhist philosophy is to be taken in blind faith, but through direct perception of the truth. Overall however, atheism is on the rise because the world is becoming increasingly more materialistic due to the Kali Yuga, spirituality declined and materialistism runs rampant.

>Overall however, atheism is on the rise because the world is becoming increasingly more materialistic due to the Kali Yuga, spirituality declined and materialistism runs rampant.
So you admit that religion is just about feeling good about yourself and has nothing to do with the truth of this world?

Huh, so I guess greed will also be magically eradicated as well. People will stop killing others for money, countries will all stop wanting to expand and become empires, it will all magically be mellow!

I remember when I was an atheist - I was 10 years old and was a militant atheist until 20. Now, i just can't accept that there is no higher order. I've read aquinas and stuff like that and it's just too narrow minded for me to think that there isn't a power at play, to think everything is random... I find it laughable now. I look around, I can see birds, nature, love... all beautiful and perfect in harmony. There is definitely a God - its just that the perceptions surrounding it are sort-of half truths to me.

I'm a pantheist - but eastern-type philosophy like buddhism is still a very new concept to the West. With the advent of empathogenic and consciousness-shifting drugs being made readily available too, it's just a matter of time.

Scientists, mathematicians and philosophers simply tend to align with the most probable origin of the universe.

If you are born into a christian society where the church controls almost everything and there is little evidence (yet) for evolution and other scientific theories about how our world developed then the most rational belief is christianity.

But once scientific theories started explaining this world (evolution) and then the universe (the big bang) then christianity is not so appealing to intellectuals anymore.

No, I did not imply that at all. The absolute truth cannot be reached by means of materialistic sciences that dominates the western countries, but only by means of spiritual science. Every humans duty in life is to search for the absolute truth, but it is impossible to find the truth by studying material nature. Only by investigation of the spiritual, by inquiring about consciousness and about God, does one actually begin to approach the truth.

not true, the USSR tried that, it didn't work

Shit used to be much more mysterious.

That's because they tried to erradicate religion itself rather than the conditions that gave rise to it in the first place.

>by inquiring about consciousness
sure
>and about God
How did god enter the equation?

how would you go about it if you were in charge?

humanity's increased knowledge isn't what makes it less mysterious, but rather our delusion of wisdom due to increased knowledge

>Every humans duty in life is to search for the absolute truth

If you can convince me of even this, then maybe we can have a conversation.

Consciousness is spiritual, not material. If the living entity begins to investigate the superior spiritual nature then he will gradually come to the platform of the absolute truth. Otherwise, one who hopes to find the truth by investigation of the inferior material nature is acting in vain.

Consciousness is the manifestation of the soul, a persons true self. Without God consciousness, self consciousness is incomplete and the highest truth is not attained. Because the self is part and parcel of God, one also must understand God to know the absolute truth.

Did you know God is a girl and Her name is Eris?

If there is a God, then what other purpose for life would there be than to understand His plan for mankind?

>humanity's increased knowledge isn't what makes it less mysterious
Objectively yes, there are comparatively less unexplained phenomena now.

Literally anything. If He isn't open and clear about His "plan", it's a little rude to pry desu. Maybe there are lots of different religions because He wants to throw us off track.

>Because the self is part and parcel of God
Says who?

The prime goal of life is to be happy, this is only attainable through means of understanding the absolute truth. In this age people attempt to seek out happiness through means of money, intoxicants, career success, fame, and other materialistic means of trying to achieve pleasure. However, the pleasure derived from trying to gratify your own senses is so unsatisfying and temporary that it simply leads a person desiring more and more of said pleasure perpetually, leaving him in misery. On top of this, material life is filled with constant problems, anxieties, disease, old age, and death. How can one possibly try to be happy in such world filled with such miseries? By fully understanding the position of one's true self and the nature of God, one automatically becomes liberated from such material miseries and permanently attains real happiness.

Authoritative Vedic texts that describe the spiritual science of consciousness can attest to this claim. Numerous religious systems around the world, Abrahamic ones included, also accept this. If you're not willing to accept the authority of scripture, then any bonafide yogi, one dedicated to understanding the science of consciousness, will also accept this claim because they have seen the truth themselves.

>Does being a "scientist" mean adhering to a couple of arbitrary rules set by pop-scis?

Because, in the end, science is the philosophy of empiricism. You can talk about the merits of belief in higher powers (or whatever you might call it) but in the end one thing is clear--these worldviews have essential unempirical components.

It should be no surprise that they steadily fall out of favor with the empiricist community.

What "current generation of greats"? You talking about "Mr. Anthropomorphize DNA"? Or "Mr. Museum Curator Who Did One or Two Pieces of Legwork Science Cataloging Stars #8a768s8b and #alpha8247b7, So He's Technically A Scientist?"

There are no modern greats among the TV celebrities whose opinions about spirituality you know.

Men, I don't know if i'll be happier If there was a proof that God exist. But I think that was a way to
1. Reassure people about death
2. Trying to have some sort of control over peoples
And 3.explain the unexplainable.

The only thing that kind of make me thinking is, the hero of my homeland, jeanne d'arc, according to atheists she was just mentally ill, but I doubt that a mentally ill could push an entire army, I think that just saying "Christian are blind ship" is dumb and yes, I say Christian because the other religions are either copies (Islam) or just weird things about karma or just complete nonsense.Anyway just to say that there is a lot of things that are unexplained and we have a lot of things to discover.

>they don't know the difference between religious spirituality and God
Guys, God died like 250 years ago. Religious spirituality only died like 40 years ago.

None of the great contemporary thinkers believed in God, but all of them up until recently were religiously spiritual. The question is why?

>none of them believed in God.
Try harder merchant.

people used to think the world was flat too until we learned better. get with the current state of knowledge brainlet.

People have always sought happiness through intoxication, capital, and power.

Every day and age. People have been fuckhheads. There is no and has never been a perfect society; we've always enjoyed buttrape, getting high, and having more of a thing than the next person. Theism, pantheism, or not.

In Kali Yuga perhaps, when society has degenerated, but that is not the case for the other Yugas. However, no happiness can be found through these methods, only misery and anxiety.

cultural marxism

How about Einstein, genius.

And that God-believing glorious son of a bitch came up with the theory of relativity.

>Authoritative Vedic texts
Come on now.

>accused of jewishness
>appeals to jew

Get it together guys.

If Marx was right about religion being a sort of escapism people turn to in order to cope with the stress in their lives, then the best thing to do is to look at religiosity the same way one would look at the rates of suicide or addiction in society.

People don't become happier by being forced not to be religious, they stop being religious by not needing religion to be happy, or finding other things to fill that role

To be fair, Einstien believed in an impersonal God that wasn't there to care about your life or save you after death, just to jump-start the universe.

The Vedas accurately describe consciousness, otherwise known as Brahman, what objection is there to make? Simply viewing them as religious and automatically rejecting them is not very wise. In order to understand the truth you obtain the knowledge from an authority, there is no other way.

The guy that headed the human genome project was Christian I believe, and I'm sure there are many physicists at CERN who also believe in God.

>The Vedas accurately describe consciousness
How do you from that to
>>Because the self is part and parcel of God
this

I missed the part where god exists.

>. In order to understand the truth you obtain the knowledge from an authority,
Where did the authority get the knowledge?
And if you say god, tell me hpw you know the authority was given info by god.

>Mr. Anthropomorphize DNA

What a gross mischaracterization. At least you managed to read the whole title.

The ancient mystics received revelation directly, supposedly. Technically, it is empirical data if it can be perceived and verified among others.

>supposedly
Like I said.

>Technically, it is empirical data if it can be perceived and verified among others.
What is your standard for verification?
Multiple mudslimes will tell you that the dome of the rock is where Muhammad flrw to heaven on a horse, doesn't make it true.

Well, let's take their word at face value for a moment.
"If you sit and meditate in this cave you will see an infinite spirit of light. Many have seen it." If you do see it, something that is beyond the normal realm of perception, it certainly raises some eyebrows. As far as empiricism goes, it would be as valid as agreeing that a red rose is red.

In Vedic texts there are numerous references to the soul being a part and parcel of the Supreme. In the Bhagavad Gita, for example, it is spoken by Krishna, God.

"Physical nature is known to be endlessly mutable. The universe is the cosmic form of the Supreme Lord, and I am that Lord represented as the Supersoul, dwelling in the heart of every embodied being." (Bg 8.4)

"Although the Supersoul appears to be divided, He is never divided. He is situated as one. Although He is the maintainer of every living entity, it is to be understood that He devours and develops all." (Bg 13.17)

Because it is a scientific investigation of God, this purport is not only found in the Vedas but in other religious systems as well.

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God." (Galatians 4:4-7)

All authority stems from God, there is no other source of authority. So to obtain factual transcendental knowledge, it has to be taken in a channel from God, called disciplic succession or sampradaya. Just as electricity originates with the power station and is transferred along the power lines to the destination, authority originates with God and is passed down either in through the chain of disciplic succession of gurus. Texts like the Bhagavad Gita listed above are specifically spoken by God, and are considered to be an authority in that matter.

No?
Mental is not the same.
That could be anything from already having the idea in your head to thinking In the same mode due to personality similarities etc.

A rose is red. The mind is not so simple.

>All authority stems from God
But wher are you fetting this from?

*getting

Data from your senses is mental.

And?
No part of your white light thing is physical.
50% of the rose example is physical and unchanging between two seperate minds

"That Supersoul is perceived by some through meditation, by some through the cultivation of knowledge, and by others through working without fruitive desire." (Bg. 13.25)

If you are serious enough and attain a deep enough meditation, you attain a direct revelation of God within yourself. You perceive the truth directly at that point.

God is the source of all things manifested and unmanifested, knowledge included. Because he is the highest universal principle, he is authoritative. Unlike you or I not only does God create these systems of knowledge, but he cannot become forgetful and ignorant of the truth like souls tend to do.

You only know it is physical based on an interpretation of sense data. Without sense data, where does this knowledge originate? It could be the same with God. He could be "physically" real and perceptible.

God is not physical, but spiritual. You cannot perceive god by means of the material senses.

>God is the source of all things manifested and unmanifested, knowledge included.
But where are you getting this information?

This.
It just has a trendy tendency of explaining less and less.

Through the Gita, revealed scripture spoken by the personality of God himself.

"I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me. The wise who know this perfectly engage in My devotional service and worship Me with all their hearts." (Bg 10.8)

>spoken by the personality of God himself.
And you know this how?

knowledge will continue to increase, yet the amount of unexplained phenomena does not, because with each increase of knowledge new questions arise. Unfortunately, gaining some knowledge has the effect on many peoples' minds of making us believe that we know more than we actually do. Thus, losing your sense of wonder is due not to knowledge, but ignorance

>yet the amount of unexplained phenomena does not, because with each increase of knowledge new questions arise.
Does not compute.
Learing something we didn't is objectively an addition to our knowledge base.

The relationship between the God and the Bhagavad-Gita, or any scripture, is that God is the established and the Bhagavad-Gita is the establisher. God is the original authority. Scripture and gurus in discplic succession are considered representative of God, as they bear his message.

>as they bear his message.
How can you or anyone know this?

By reading the scriptures themselves. If a guru is in the disciplic succession, telling you to devote yourself onto God and talks entirely of God, then what question is there of him being bonafide?

Additionally, if the practices recommended by the scriptures and guru and is able to verify the results as legitimate firsthand, then how could there be doubt?

What I'm getting at is that we don't know what we don't know, so there's no way to know how much more information there is to discover, and as we've seen in the past new discoveries often force us to reevaluate things we thought we knew before or even discard them. Anyone who subscribes to the idea that we'll soon know all there is to know and have nothing left to find is kidding themselves. 100 years from now people will laugh at current things that are accepted as fact as we do now about things like the earth being flat. So those who accept that they know nothing are more accurate than those who consider the current knowledge to be final.

that's not going to work on him dude, you have to tell him why you believe it or he'll just accuse you of begging the question

My friend, answer the question.

How do you know they got infomation from god?

>What I'm getting at is that we don't know what we don't know, so there's no way to know how much more information there is to discover, and as we've seen in the past new discoveries often force us to reevaluate things we thought we knew before or even discard them. Anyone who subscribes to the idea that we'll soon know all there is to know and have nothing left to find is kidding themselves. 100 years from now people will laugh at current things that are accepted as fact as we do now about things like the earth being flat. So those who accept that they know nothing are more accurate than those who consider the current knowledge to be final.
????
Every time we find out something new, even something that supersedes old info, that's progress.
You have no proof that there is not a finite anount of data to be revealed.

Whether or not it's finite isn't the issue, my point is that there's no end in sight. We can plainly see things around us that are eons beyond our understanding.

Two reasons:
1. There are no longer any greats. Hyperspecialization and incrementalism have replaced the generalist, as many lower hanging fruit have been plucked. Individuals with varying beliefs are rarely heard and instead implicitly lumped into a simplified and stereotyped idea of the "Scientist".

2. Applied crowd psychology, divide and conquer, controlled opposition, and mass media. ie, most people are dumbed down and drowned in a maze of irrelevant trash to which they never truly emerge, nor become capable of meaningful self discovery or legitimate evaluation of the truths held by, and purported value system of, their cultural and immediate social ecology. Dogma rules. No one desires to be pariah, and because of the above, it is very easy to be cast out when you go against the grain.

Define "believe in" and "God". That's meant strictly rhetorically. You likely hold many ideas that are at best trivially different from the the underlying ideas in many religions, a creator or omnipresence included. This bias against the mere concept of a higher intelligence, or a creator, in any form, is new and appears highly artificial.

>and appears highly artificial.
I'd argue the opposite. A similar underline minus the superstition is less memey.

And?

Through the disciplic succession system, or sampradaya. You can trace lineage of gurus back to God and verify him as legitimate. You're at the epistemological root here. You have to accept God as an authority first and foremost, otherwise there cannot be progress. Since God is not personally present to distribute transcendental knowledge, you must accept the authority of his representatives in form of scriptures or gurus.

I get where you're coming from, but until you have directly perceived the truth you have to accept an authority on the matter, a guru, who has already perceived the truth. A scientist may run and experiment and publish results which would then be accepted as authoritative. In order to validate that authority's legitimacy yourself you must test that authority by replicating the experiment. If the experiment yields the same results the scientist can be considered authoritative. Similarly, one can come to accept the of a bonafide guru by verifying the legitimacy of their teachings by actually practicing what they teach. One shouldn't blindly accept any guru as bonafide, as there exists many fake gurus who will mislead students.

As for scripture, you can also test the authority of the scripture by putting to practice their teachings. As a whole, however, scripture is to be considered authoritative automatically since it comes from God. If you don't accept scripture then you’re unfortunate, because you won’t be able to take advantage of the knowledge it contains. For example, if you want to know who your father is, you have to find out from your mother. She’s the authority. If you don’t want to take her word for it, that’s your privilege. But then you’ll never know for sure. In the same way, if you don’t accept the the authority of scripture, you’ll never grasp the time-tested spiritual wisdom it contains.

God is a concept. Concepts can be reduced to underlying logical and mechanical features. God can map to many concepts.

I do not the inherent relationship with superstition. I might be slave to other people's stupidity in body, but I will not be the same in mind.

idk, we were originally arguing over whether the world is mysterious

>You have to accept God as an authority first and foremost, otherwise there cannot be progress. Since God is not personally present to distribute transcendental knowledge, you must accept the authority of his representatives in form of scriptures or gurus.
And at last we reach the obvious truth.
That's all I wanted to hear.

Not seeing how that explains why god isn't arbitrary.

I literally just said "God" is arbitrary, though.

he seemed to imply that he personally accepts the Hindu scriptures and gurus out of testing them in his own life, did you just bypass that part or do you figure that trying it yourself is below you?

I'm not interested in it. He kept dancing around the fact that it starts with a leap of faith, not proof.
Now he said that and I'm satisfied.

Then why use the term, butthead?

Because it is apt.

for you

If you do not test the regulations and yogic practices yourself, then you no longer have a spiritual science on your hands at all and it is all merely based on blind faith. This is what Abraham religions are mainly composed of, faith but no practice.

I can't logically present to you proof of god because logical proof requires a qualified audience. Laymen trying to understand high level calculus won't follow the logic because they have not been educated to understand the terms and equations that are essential to comprehending it. Similarly, because you have not read the scriptures and do not understand some of the more advanced concepts yet I cannot logically present to you proof without giving you immense background first. Logic is a secondary process that follows consciousness. Therefore, my only method of trying to convince you is to tell you to replicate yogic practices recommended in scripture and reference back to them to confirm their legitimacy. If you refuse to attempt that then I have no means of convincing you otherwise.

>Similarly, because you have not read the scriptures
NO
You yourself just admitted that the scriptures being the word of god/god dictated has no basis in fact!

You're going backwards now.

Unscientific gets used as an insult but technically it just means not empiricism or methodological naturalism. Math is unscientific, so is theology.
Theology thinks it has proven God, science needs some time to catch up.

>thinks
Being the operative word.

Well until science thinks it's worked God out too the theologians lead the field.

>Anyone who subscribes to the idea that we'll soon know all there is to know and have nothing left to find is kidding themselves.

And anyone who bases their argument on how science cannot explain everything and how spiritualism is viable model of reality is commiting fallacy of ignorance.

Just like astrologers lead the field of astrology, homeopaths lead the field of homeopathy, psychics lead the field of extrasensory perception, etc.

>evolution
>the big bang

But the big bang was initially dismissed as creationism because it was proposed by a Catholic priest. And evolution is only contradictory with fundamentalist churches in the US. There has to be more going on. How did the big bang theory become a tool of atheism instead of a theistic takeover of the sciences?

Doctors in medicine, physicists in physics, ethicists in ethics...