Showing posts with label Buddhism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buddhism. Show all posts
Saturday, August 26, 2017
A thought on Pandeism and the Jefferson Bible
Thomas Jefferson famously carved out the supernatural passages of the Bible to retain it as a book of superstition-free moral advice -- and one which happens to, to a great degree, simply repackage moral adages previously presented in a wide range of other systems, such as the Vedas of Hinduism, and the Teachings of the Buddha in the East, and the West's doctrines of Atenism, Code of Hammurabi, Epic of Gilgamesh, and Fables of Aesop. The moral authority of ALL scripture, Pandeism explains, derives from each touching on the mind of a single underlying Creator. Blessings!!
Wednesday, October 09, 2013
Pandeism in Asian Philosophy
Some weeks ago I posted the current state of Wikipedia's Pandeism page. Since then, a bunch of newly added material has popped up, focusing on Pandeism in Asian philsophy, especially as to India, China, and Japan. And here is Wiki's continuing story:
As has been noted, Max Bernhard Weinstein asserted the presence of of pandeism in China,[14] including in Lao-Tze's Taoism,[15] and in India.[16] Weinstein likewise found the views of 17th century Japanese Neo-Confucian philosopher Yamazaki Ansai, who espoused a cosmology of universal mutual interconnectedness, to be especially consonant with pandeism as well.[25] Other philosophers have also pointed to pandeism as having a presence in those cultures. In 1833, religionist Godfrey Higgins theorized in his Anacalypsis that "Pandeism was a doctrine, which had been received both by Buddhists and Brahmins."[42] In 1896, historian Gustavo Uzielli described the world's population as influenced "by a superhuman idealism in Christianity, by an anti-human nihilism in Buddhism, and by an incipient but growing pandeism in Indian Brahmanism."[43] But the following year, the Reverend Henry Grattan Guinness wrote critically that in India, "God is everything, and everything is God, and, therefore, everything may be adored. ... Her pan-deism is a pandemonium."[44] Likewise, twenty years earlier, in 1877, Peruvian scholar and historian Carlos Wiesse Portocarrero had written in an essay titled Philosophical Systems of India that in that country, "Metaphysics is pandeistic and degenerates into idealism."[45]
Pandeism (in Chinese, 泛自然神论)[46] was described by Wen Chi, in a Peking University lecture, as embodying "a major feature of Chinese philosophical thought," in that "there is a harmony between man and the divine, and they are equal."[47] Zhang Dao Kui (张道葵) of the China Three Gorges University proposed that the art of China's Three Gorges area is influenced by "a representation of the romantic essence that is created when integrating rugged simplicity with the natural beauty spoken about by pandeism."[48] Literary critic Wang Junkang (王俊康) has written that, in Chinese folk religion as conveyed in the early novels of noted folk writer Ye Mei (叶梅),[49] "the romantic spirit of Pandeism can be seen everywhere."[50] Wang Junkang additionally writes of Ye Mei's descriptions of "the worship of reproduction under Pandeism, as demonstrated in romantic songs sung by village people to show the strong impulse of vitality and humanity and the beauty of wildness."[51]
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Buddhabrot
The Buddhabrot is a kind of Mandelbrot Set, an image created by graphing the full extrapolation of a simple and essential mathematical function. In this case, the image generated by running the numbers for the set is strikingly similar to the iconic image of the Buddha, seated in lotus position, encased in a halo of light. To the informed eye, the image offers cues including, for example, intersections seemingly closely aligned with the seven traditional chakra points; the appearance of not only a figure seated in the traditional position, but having hair bound up in a tight topnot, and a central heart with two great arteries twinned forth from it.
The formula is actually quite simple:
zn+1 = zn2 + c
(*for all sets for which z0 = 0 does not tend to infinity)
As the number of iterations increases, and the depth and detail of the image are enhanced, it seems to become possible to see cosmic architecture within the calculations, to see our Universe. Its diverse worlds, its stars, its galactic clusters and gaseous clouds, become apparent within the form of the Buddha. This occurrence presents great affinity to Pandeism, for the Pandeist, too, sees mathematical formulae embedded in the truth of our Universe, and our Universe expressed in mathematics underlying all physics, all design.
Confessedly, the image is short enough on detail that some disagreement is possible over things such as the placement of the arms and hands. And it only presents the iconic view from the zero rotation, with the image 'on its side' from how it would initially be graphed at that rotation. From a sidereal rotation, it seems more like a slightly bent two-headed pancake. But the iconography of the essential image could not be more fundamentally presented, this being the most natural presentation of any asymmetric Mandelbrot set appearing to be stacked upon a single broad base.
And so, to a devout Buddhist, it might well seem that the incidence of this mathematical as if our Universe itself were tugging at our sleeves and declaring, 'hey, check this out.' One can only imagine how representatives of other religions might behave if mathematical formulae unexpectedly produced imagery of their symbols or favoured characters. But they don't so we may never know.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Pandeism versus the wars and violence of Theism and Atheism
All music is an original creation of the YouTube PanDeism Channel, and may be reused for any purpose of the YouTube PanDeism Channel is rightly given credit. All images are public domain or self-made.
One need not venture deeply into the realm of theological discourse to discover atheists and all kinds of theists arguing endlessly over which faith is responsible for the most wars, oppression, violence, and deaths.
Christians:
The Crusades, the Inquisition, European wars from the Dark Ages right up through the Twentieth Century, including the English Civil Wars, Napoleanic Wars, the Pogroms, the Holocaust, Witch burnings, Genocide against Balkan Muslims, and the new Twenty-First Century Crusades.
Muslims:
Wars of conquest, the Armenian Genocide, invasions against Israel, Islamofascist regimes, Terrorism, 9/11, 7/7, theologically based execution of gays, and virtually enslaving women through denial of rights....
Jews and Palestinians:
Generations lost to unending oppression, strife, and recalcitrance in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank
Hindus and Muslims:
Unending strife between India and Pakistan; many wars and acts of terror....
Shintoism:
Religion of Japan, authors of Nazi-allied World War II aggression
Even Buddhism:
Religion of the Vietnamese, both North and South, who used brutal tactics in Vietnam's Wars.
And too many tribal and folk religions to count having blood, murder, and war on their hands as well....
Atheists:
The deadly regimes of Stalin and Mao and their totalitarian successors, including persecution of those wishing to exercise religion.
Arguments fly back and forth over which despots and killers were of what faith and how much every one amongst them was motivated by religious beliefs.
But then we come to Pandeism
No nation has ever been stirred to war by Pandeists. No government has ever sought to justify oppression or tyranny with Pandeism. No pandeist has ever sought to force another person to change his practices or beliefs through threats and torture.
And why not?
Perhaps because violence and oppression are the means left to those not having the whole of the truth on their side. But, as well, because pandeists believe that we are ALL part of our Creator, and so to do harm or injustice to another person is to inflict the same harm or injustice upon our Creator; and, ultimately, upon ourselves!!
Pandeism: A Philosophy of Peace!!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Existential relevancy, and other theological lies
I have of late noticed the same lengthy theological exhortation being posted in forums and discussion sites all over the internet, as if with each posting it was a new and spontaneous pronouncement -- it begins by posing the question (or pretending to answer the question, posed by someone else), "With all of the different religions, how can I know which one is correct?" The tract then launches into what would seem to be, actually, a promising discussion, insisting, "How do we arrive at the truth about God? We use a systematic methodology that is designed to separate truth from error by using various tests for truth, with the end result being a set of right conclusions." It therefrom deigns to outline characteristics which a theological model must possess to pass the sort of scientific muster contemplated by the tract.
So the piece begins by setting forth that a "true" faith must evince
Now it is surely true that that which is determinable to be true must be logically consistent, for that is itself one of the chief ways we are able to test truth -- all else ultimately falls to gibberish, belief for the sake of believing something no matter how irrationally held. How sad then that this author misunderstands or chooses to misrepresent Buddhism in so doing, for any person knowledgeable enough to speak competently on the subject would know that the goal of Buddhism is to rid oneself of only those desires which stand in the way of enlightenment!! Naturally, it is not to rid oneself of the desire for enlightenment itself, though in the end the enlightened soul, having achieved this final thing, is indeed shed of all desires.
Let us consider a comparable misrepresentation which could be made against the deity popularly presented by the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism). That deity is claimed to command its adherents to rid themselves of sin. But disobedience to this deity is a sin, and since it is claimed to be an all-knowing Creator which knew all of the outcomes each of us would come to even before we were born -- including all expressions of the sinfulness with which we were made -- then attempting to change the outcome which such Creator has foreseen for us is a form of disobedience, and so we sin by seeking to rid ourselves of sin. Whether ignorant or deceitful, precisely such an error made as to Buddhism bodes ill for any wisdom coming from this source. But we continue.
And so the tract goes
Again, the author identifies, in empirical adequacy, a necessary element in at least measuring the probability of a possible truth. But again our author ignorantly or for malicious purpose misstates the teachings of an example faith. Mormons, as it happens, do not teach that Jesus "lived" in North America, but rather that Jesus simply appeared for a time before the people living in the unidentified settlement described by their scripture. While it is true that Mormons traditionally assign such a geographic identity to this settlement, empirically it may as easily have been South America or Australia or Indonesia, and so far as the message of the scripture is concerned the location is irrelevant. And, as to our tract author's exemplar objection, wherever it is that Jesus may have appeared, it is an absurd stretch to suppose that men would find archeological evidence of the transitory appearance of one such as Jesus in this settlement, where there is no more determinative archeological evidence of Jesus' presence in the Middle East, where it is claimed he was born, traveled, and was buried.
But thus far, we have been presented with rational requirements of a religious truth; it is only the examples presented which have been in error. So the truly shocking error, the one which even runs against and overcomes the first two points (which, at the least, identify true elements of a logical examination) is
This is a lie. A clumsily hidden one, for it begins with the reasonable observation that "the belief system must conform to reality as we know it," which verily simply repeats the "empirical adequacy" standard enunciated above it, and has naught to do with "relevancy." But as for the rest, it presents the wishful thinking fallacy in its most naked and adulterous form, and so it vitiates the whole of the lengthy and tedious argument to follow. Our Universe and all of its contents may be logically and empirically explained by a theological model which makes no "meaningful difference in the life of the adherent." To contend otherwise reveals a rather vain self-serving bias (unsurprisingly the most well-reported--and hardest to shake--of the cognitive biases, as it feeds directly into the very defensive human ego). Any further contentions based on such a deeply flawed supposition must be rationally disqualified, for this proposition contends, in sum, that a God is not allowed to exist unless it exists for our sake, to get on its knees and service our spiritual desires.
Now, as with the other examples, the author fails to understand Deism, or simply lies about it as well for reasons so fundamental that it would take another essay of this length to explain just how wrong it is. But as a beginning, Deism proposes that our Universe was set forth by mechanisms capable of bringing about all we now observe without need for intervention beyond the moment of Creation. It is true that classical Deism has been criticized for not encompassing an explanation of why such a Creator would create, but this critique is answered by variations such as Pandeism and Panendeism, which account for this by incorporating concepts from Pantheism, discerning a Creator who becomes our Universe to experience existence through the lives of the beings which come to inhabit it. But though this understanding and its implications indeed is attested to provide a meaningful difference in the life of Pandeists, this is the pure meaningfulness of a truth perceived absent the need for the deity to serve human interests. Nevertheless, whatever sense of satisfaction may be derived from a deistic or pandeistic model, these factors have no bearing on whether a theological model is rational.
Unlike the objectivity inherent in logical consistency and empirical evidence, "meaningfulness" is a bucket of mush, utterly subjective, immeasurable and unquantifiable. If meaningfulness must be universal, then it disqualifies all visions of God, for there is no vision for which some portion of persons will find that that enunciation is simply not meaningful to them. Naturally, it is conceivable that some person adhering to some faith (or knowing of none, even) might find that no theological model makes a "meaningful difference" for them unless it justifies abhorrent behavior--in which event, this proposition essentially forces the God it envisions to be the justifier of such.
And it is for this reason that the assertion of this element as a necessary, or even as a reasonable part of the enquiry is, in no uncertain terms, a lie. As for the religion which the unknown author of this deceitful propaganda piece purports to to boil out of its nest of lies and fallacies--well, I will spare it the shameful association with a hit piece like this, though some faiths are, obviously, absolved of suspicion by the very fact of the attacks slung against them in the essay. But, I will comment that any faith whose followers so naturally fall into reliance upon fallacies to sell itself ought not to be given much serious standing in the quest for truth.
So the piece begins by setting forth that a "true" faith must evince
1. Logical consistency—the claims of a belief system must logically cohere to each other and not contradict in any way. As an example, the end goal of Buddhism is to rid oneself of all desires. Yet, one must have a desire to rid oneself of all desires, which is a contradictory and illogical principle.
Now it is surely true that that which is determinable to be true must be logically consistent, for that is itself one of the chief ways we are able to test truth -- all else ultimately falls to gibberish, belief for the sake of believing something no matter how irrationally held. How sad then that this author misunderstands or chooses to misrepresent Buddhism in so doing, for any person knowledgeable enough to speak competently on the subject would know that the goal of Buddhism is to rid oneself of only those desires which stand in the way of enlightenment!! Naturally, it is not to rid oneself of the desire for enlightenment itself, though in the end the enlightened soul, having achieved this final thing, is indeed shed of all desires.
Let us consider a comparable misrepresentation which could be made against the deity popularly presented by the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism). That deity is claimed to command its adherents to rid themselves of sin. But disobedience to this deity is a sin, and since it is claimed to be an all-knowing Creator which knew all of the outcomes each of us would come to even before we were born -- including all expressions of the sinfulness with which we were made -- then attempting to change the outcome which such Creator has foreseen for us is a form of disobedience, and so we sin by seeking to rid ourselves of sin. Whether ignorant or deceitful, precisely such an error made as to Buddhism bodes ill for any wisdom coming from this source. But we continue.
And so the tract goes
2. Empirical adequacy—is there evidence to support the belief system (whether the evidence is rational, externally evidential, etc.)? Naturally, it is only right to want proof for important claims being made so the assertions can be verified. For example, Mormons teach that Jesus lived in North America. Yet there is absolutely no proof, archaeological or otherwise, to support such a claim.
Again, the author identifies, in empirical adequacy, a necessary element in at least measuring the probability of a possible truth. But again our author ignorantly or for malicious purpose misstates the teachings of an example faith. Mormons, as it happens, do not teach that Jesus "lived" in North America, but rather that Jesus simply appeared for a time before the people living in the unidentified settlement described by their scripture. While it is true that Mormons traditionally assign such a geographic identity to this settlement, empirically it may as easily have been South America or Australia or Indonesia, and so far as the message of the scripture is concerned the location is irrelevant. And, as to our tract author's exemplar objection, wherever it is that Jesus may have appeared, it is an absurd stretch to suppose that men would find archeological evidence of the transitory appearance of one such as Jesus in this settlement, where there is no more determinative archeological evidence of Jesus' presence in the Middle East, where it is claimed he was born, traveled, and was buried.
But thus far, we have been presented with rational requirements of a religious truth; it is only the examples presented which have been in error. So the truly shocking error, the one which even runs against and overcomes the first two points (which, at the least, identify true elements of a logical examination) is
3. Existential relevancy—the belief system must conform to reality as we know it, and it must make a meaningful difference in the life of the adherent. Deism, for example, claims that God just threw the spinning world into the Universe and does not interact with those who live on it. How does such a belief impact someone in a day-to-day manner? In short, it does not.
This is a lie. A clumsily hidden one, for it begins with the reasonable observation that "the belief system must conform to reality as we know it," which verily simply repeats the "empirical adequacy" standard enunciated above it, and has naught to do with "relevancy." But as for the rest, it presents the wishful thinking fallacy in its most naked and adulterous form, and so it vitiates the whole of the lengthy and tedious argument to follow. Our Universe and all of its contents may be logically and empirically explained by a theological model which makes no "meaningful difference in the life of the adherent." To contend otherwise reveals a rather vain self-serving bias (unsurprisingly the most well-reported--and hardest to shake--of the cognitive biases, as it feeds directly into the very defensive human ego). Any further contentions based on such a deeply flawed supposition must be rationally disqualified, for this proposition contends, in sum, that a God is not allowed to exist unless it exists for our sake, to get on its knees and service our spiritual desires.
Now, as with the other examples, the author fails to understand Deism, or simply lies about it as well for reasons so fundamental that it would take another essay of this length to explain just how wrong it is. But as a beginning, Deism proposes that our Universe was set forth by mechanisms capable of bringing about all we now observe without need for intervention beyond the moment of Creation. It is true that classical Deism has been criticized for not encompassing an explanation of why such a Creator would create, but this critique is answered by variations such as Pandeism and Panendeism, which account for this by incorporating concepts from Pantheism, discerning a Creator who becomes our Universe to experience existence through the lives of the beings which come to inhabit it. But though this understanding and its implications indeed is attested to provide a meaningful difference in the life of Pandeists, this is the pure meaningfulness of a truth perceived absent the need for the deity to serve human interests. Nevertheless, whatever sense of satisfaction may be derived from a deistic or pandeistic model, these factors have no bearing on whether a theological model is rational.
Unlike the objectivity inherent in logical consistency and empirical evidence, "meaningfulness" is a bucket of mush, utterly subjective, immeasurable and unquantifiable. If meaningfulness must be universal, then it disqualifies all visions of God, for there is no vision for which some portion of persons will find that that enunciation is simply not meaningful to them. Naturally, it is conceivable that some person adhering to some faith (or knowing of none, even) might find that no theological model makes a "meaningful difference" for them unless it justifies abhorrent behavior--in which event, this proposition essentially forces the God it envisions to be the justifier of such.
And it is for this reason that the assertion of this element as a necessary, or even as a reasonable part of the enquiry is, in no uncertain terms, a lie. As for the religion which the unknown author of this deceitful propaganda piece purports to to boil out of its nest of lies and fallacies--well, I will spare it the shameful association with a hit piece like this, though some faiths are, obviously, absolved of suspicion by the very fact of the attacks slung against them in the essay. But, I will comment that any faith whose followers so naturally fall into reliance upon fallacies to sell itself ought not to be given much serious standing in the quest for truth.
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