philosophy study, anyone?

Gabler said:
I think we're probably more or less on the same page there.

By my comment, I meant to highlight the fact that a transcendent, impersonal God is often easier for intellectual types to accept than a man in the sky, but speaking symbolically, the image of a man in the sky makes a more nuanced and complex statement than the image of some kind of nebulous essence underlying the material world. By definition, God is beyond human comprehension, and using intelligible symbols may counterintuitively be a better way to approximate the essence of God than nebulous abstractions.
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(A bit of time on my hands while waiting on a call-back...) so I began to review how we got here: This Post #13 jumped out at me. I think the counterintuitive direction works against any possibility of belief for me, and it's hard to say if that's because of my strict religious upbringing or if it's because I tend to over-intellectualize everything.

Also, I may be an atheist, but I think my reading of Kierkegaard makes me a better Christian than most Christians I've met!
 
PerryB said:
Then when I stir in a bit of Heidegger's Dasein (literally Being-in-the-world) as an living being with both consciousness and agency, I can see a way of existing in the world as a curious human: curious about other humans, trees, dogs, technology, etc.
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If you enjoyed Dasein, I would recommend finding a good translation of the Bhagavad Gita. I really enjoy Swami Nikhilananda's translation, but there are other ones worth reading (just...avoid the one you might be handed on the street, The Bhagavad Gita as It Is)

PerryB said:
Taoism seems to best tie into our current understandings of particle physics AND cosmology, and it allows that there might be many paths to understanding. Compared to my fundamentalist roots, that's a joyous direction!
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This is the thing that most fascinates me about contemporary philosophy. We're reaching a point where science is starting to address some of the oldest and deepest questions that humanity has been asking for our entire existence. What new questions will philosophy turn up? How long will they remain outside of the purview of science?
 
Cajunrider said:
But the thousands and thousands of Buddhists I know say it is :)
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some people--usually westerners--have a lot of trouble recognizing that religions can be atheistic. it gets even harder to grok that for some (many?) there is no distinction between religion and philosophy.
 
PerryB said:
, Taoism 's embrace of the void, of nothingness as a model for meditation ties in very strongly with my studies of Existentialism
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Watch it ... it's more like through a donut hole with gravity that will whip you around in a current of nihilism, then understanding, then back
PerryB said:
Taoism seems to best tie into our current understandings of particle physics AND cosmology
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flux happening right there in the thought processes of the brain
 
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