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Edit: You know what, we've been over this topic. Just gonna kill this in favor of not harshing other's groove.
Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 01:18
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White Coke posted:That remind me of something I've seen brought up about the afterlife, which is what happens to our personalities. Are they frozen in place at death or will we be able to change as we experience eternal life?
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Oct 19, 2021 01:26
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zonohedron posted:My understanding is that if a baptized non-Catholic is in danger of death and is unable to locate a minister of their own tradition, they may receive Communion as Viaticum (the last food) and I think they can receive the Anointing of the Sick as well, under the same circumstances. The third sacrament involved in "Last Rites" is Confession, and I'm not sure whether non-Catholics can receive that. If someone on their deathbed wants to make confession and receive unction, no priest is gonna say no. Remember, it's all about what's in your heart.
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Oct 19, 2021 01:36
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zonohedron posted:Is... is there a way to be sure that you, the patient, are ministered to by a minister of your own denomination? Like, when my daughter died, the chaplain on duty came to visit with us, and she was very kind, and also arranged for the priest to visit when he next came to visit the hospital, which was all I needed at that point, since I wasn't dying, but when I am dying (may that day be many years from now) I'd certainly prefer to be absolved by a priest whom I know can absolve me and from whom I can receive the Apostolic Pardon, rather than just be prayed for by whoever happened to be on duty that hour. I don’t know. I just know it’s a not uncommon occurrence. You’d probably want to set that up before hand with your local priest/ minister.
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Oct 19, 2021 01:46
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Nessus posted:In my view, I imagine most of your memories are not moving on to the next rebirth, although I suppose that small aspects of reflexive conditioning and so on might explain arbitrary preferences and recurrent interests in various people. I gather that many beings can recall their past lives to some extent... might be more common up in the nicer realms. I was thinking more of what happens in a Christian context, like in heaven or after the Resurrection could someone’s personality change.
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Oct 19, 2021 01:50
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My assumption is that even if you're in a different state and passing from glory to glory, your personality is still in continuity with who you were when alive. If nothing else, I've never gotten the idea that St Basil or St Nicholas or the Mother of God are all that different in heaven from how they were on Earth. If anything, they may even be more like themselves. EDIT: "passing," not "losing." I hate phone posting. Keromaru5 fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 02:18
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Bar Ran Dun posted:At seminary the students all do this a lot in hospitals for end of life ministry. It is incredibly common for cross denomination and even cross religion death rituals to be done. Its a one is the only person there sort of thing as it was explained to me. Oh WOW did this drum up a memory for me. I'm coming back to write it up but I really need to finish the chore I'm in the middle of doing
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Oct 19, 2021 02:37
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zonohedron posted:Is... is there a way to be sure that you, the patient, are ministered to by a minister of your own denomination? Like, when my daughter died, the chaplain on duty came to visit with us, and she was very kind, and also arranged for the priest to visit when he next came to visit the hospital, which was all I needed at that point, since I wasn't dying, but when I am dying (may that day be many years from now) I'd certainly prefer to be absolved by a priest whom I know can absolve me and from whom I can receive the Apostolic Pardon, rather than just be prayed for by whoever happened to be on duty that hour. Pick a Catholic hospital system who'll always have a priest on standby, and hope you don't get hit by a bus somewhere else?
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Oct 19, 2021 02:55
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Fritz the Horse posted:The core thread rule has always been "don't be a jerk." I've been vacationing all weekend and have read this far into the discussion while catching up but I simply can't let this pass unchallenged, thread rule #2 is don't be a jerk, thread rule #1 is 
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Oct 19, 2021 03:02
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also mr. buns is fully embracing spoopy season
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Oct 19, 2021 03:12
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On the one hand, lighting candles for the dead suggests that people can continue to change and develop themselves in the presence of God. On the other hand, praying to Saints for intercession gets real complicated if those particular individuals are changing. To me, that suggests that there is ultimately an authentic expression of the amalgam that, for lack of a better word, we are going to call "you" that was predetermined in the way that an acorn is "predetermined" to become an oak tree. Plenty of acorns become food for squirrels or fungi but that is a deviation from what they are "meant" to be. So Saints assumed into Heaven and Bodhisattvas opting for perpetual reincarnation can be expected to change somewhere along the line of "very little" to "not at all" but folks like me (and presumably most people in this thread) can expect to change a lot. Then again, the obvious counter-examples to this is Guanyin, so IDK.
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Oct 19, 2021 03:37
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Nth Doctor posted:Oh WOW did this drum up a memory for me. So I had forgotten about this until this evening. I don't think I'm 100% comfortable about what happened, but I know that this moment is 100% not about my comfort. The last church which I attended regularly was a Church of Christ (Disciples of Christ) church. While there, I served as a deacon, an elder, as the council vice president and the council president. I spent a good six years in active lay-leadership. One of the central practices of the denomination was communion that was open to all. Our church would go once a month to a local nursing home to lead a worship service and offer communion to the attendees. One time, on my way out after we had finished up, a woman approached me and asked if we were here giving communion to residents. "Are you a priest?" "Well, no. We're protestant. I'm Nth, an elder though." "Hmm... okay. My mom is here and has memory issues. Can I introduce you as Father Nth and you can give her communion?" I went along with it with a few justifications: Disciples of Christ elders are the ones who recite the words of institution and pray over the elements, I had been clear with the daughter and she was in a better position than me to know her mother's faith, that if the mother drew meaning from taking communion then who was I to interrupt her feeling closer to God by saying I wasn't specifically what I was being presented as. I'm still more convinced I did the right thing than that I did the wrong thing, but I also think that isn't a universal opinion.
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Oct 19, 2021 04:08
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White Coke posted:That remind me of something I've seen brought up about the afterlife, which is what happens to our personalities. Are they frozen in place at death or will we be able to change as we experience eternal life? Asking that question is a little like the philosophical question, am I the same person today that I was yesterday? There's a discontinuity of consciousness and any number of things can be different in my body than the night before. What about people with dementia, or even after e.g. a stroke or some other brain damage? I don't think the death of the physical body is tying a pretty little bow on me and zipping me up to heaven as I am, to remain on the shelf. Far from it! The first thing I'd expect and most deeply hope for is the eucatastrophe of meeting Jesus face to face, and who knows how that alone will change me. But even Jesus said the afterlife isn't what we're probably expecting (when posed the question of which of multiple wives would one be married to there), and also didn't go into any detail about it. I don't think anyone this side of death really has a solidly accurate idea of what happens after, truly.
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Oct 19, 2021 04:17
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OnlyBans posted:On the one hand, lighting candles for the dead suggests that people can continue to change and develop themselves in the presence of God. On the other hand, praying to Saints for intercession gets real complicated if those particular individuals are changing. But change doesn't mean that the core element of you gets wiped away. Like, who is the core Gator here? What makes me myself? Is it my good humor? My fondness for cats? My willingness to help out my friends anyway I can? My obsession with "Feels So Good?" Even as I change, doesn't some part of me remain the same? It's my duty to make it the things that really matter and are good, and to not let those get washed away.
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Oct 19, 2021 04:19
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Nth Doctor posted:I'm still more convinced I did the right thing than that I did the wrong thing, but I also think that isn't a universal opinion. You brought comfort and compassion to a needy person. You done good. I'm sure God can transcode your actions to the appropriate Catholic ones.
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Oct 19, 2021 04:20
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Cemetry Gator posted:But change doesn't mean that the core element of you gets wiped away. Like, who is the core Gator here? What makes me myself? Is it my good humor? My fondness for cats? My willingness to help out my friends anyway I can? My obsession with "Feels So Good?" No.
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Oct 19, 2021 04:24
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can you be more specific I haven't seen the soul of theseus argument in the wild before
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Oct 19, 2021 04:47
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Nth Doctor posted:I'm still more convinced I did the right thing than that I did the wrong thing, but I also think that isn't a universal opinion. Valiantman posted:The point you are missing, frankly, is that even if homosexual acts were wrong, they would rank so low on the scale of things wrong in this world that hurting another person by talking about it is worse. Your post made me think of something like the inverse of Valiantman's point. But any harm in misrepresenting yourself would surely be overshadowed by the peace you brought to a person who needed it. God knows your intent and hers. Like you said its not about your comfort and she probably got a lot of that.
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Oct 19, 2021 04:52
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OnlyBans posted:On the one hand, lighting candles for the dead suggests that people can continue to change and develop themselves in the presence of God. On the other hand, praying to Saints for intercession gets real complicated if those particular individuals are changing. ???? could you explain what you meant by this more because it sounds like you're 1. saying change is bad and lack of change is good like ancient greek philosphers did 2 because bodhisattvas are good you're then ascribing to them that lack of change which is the opposite of what's going on with them. bodhisattva is a mahayana concept which has the foundation of its beliefs the idea of emptiness and its universality. emptiness is usually misunderstood as nothingness by non-buddhists but it means anything which 1. does not have its own nature (a platonic ideal form or a true self or a "thing its meant to be" as you put it), 2. arrives at its current form by conditions and cause-and-effect (you look the way you do because of the genes of your particular parents whose genes are the result of their particular parents who were in the right place at the right time due to a chance meeting at the movies which they could only due because thomas edison invented them who could only have invented them because) 3. is impermanent and constantly changing which in mahayana thought describes everything the most famous mahayana scripture is the heart sutra which i posted earlier in this thread which can be nutshelled down into: quote:Everything is empty. the bodhisattvas also exist in a state of emptiness so they are constantly changing, buddha-nature is emptiness itself so they've actually fully embraced change completely instead of finding a place of minimal change. their peace comes from the achievement of nirvana within samsara itself.
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Oct 19, 2021 05:26
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NikkolasKing posted:This is a bit random but do you know of Law of Jante? This is just a random thing brought up on a stream I'm watching to contrast with us Americans and our inability stop masturbating all over ourselves and our success. Certainly! It's taught to everyone in school (that is, as a cultural artifact in Danish class, not as doctrine). I think it's pretty problematic for a number of reasons: It was written by a fictitious immigrant in (Norwegian) writer Aksel Sandemoses novel En Flygtning Krydser Sit Spor. He grew up in a Danish city himself, and while he named it, it is thought to be a law of Danish society, something probably more reinforced by the fact that we keep repeating that it is, rather than growing up in any Scandinavian rural town in the 1920s just kind of produces a small town mentality - that's my take anyway. I don't think it's related to christianity as such, Sandemose himself gets in a dig that it is 'produced by our free society, where no one is better than anyone else'. Today, like many places, we worship stupid celebrities who proclaim that Jantelaw is dead, which is funny considering they have to do it every 10 years when a new one pops up  E: I think a quote from the book provides a teachable framework for what Sandemose actually thought the Jante Law was, this is the 'eleventh commandment' : " 'Perhaps you think I don't know anything about you'? This one sentence, that forms the Jante penal code, was thus very rich in content. It was a charge for any and all, and it became that, because absolutely nothing was allowed. It also formed a complete writ of accusation, with all sorts of unspecified sentences in view. Furthermore it was, depending on tone of voice, usaful for blackmail and coercing crimes, and it could also be the best means of defense." Cythereal posted:As for myself on this subject, I'm deeply uncertain of my gender identity. Never have been, really, it was remarked about me by parents and friends thereof even when I was a child. For me, though, confusion and questions along those lines of feeling innately wrong are also deeply tied up in the fact that I strongly suspect I have Asperger's or otherwise fall on that spectrum of my mind and brain not working like many peoples' even though I've never been professionally diagnosed. Too much has added up over too many years of feeling like there's something genuinely off inside me, compared to most people, for me to keep brushing it aside as me being just a bit different. Consider getting it checked out. As someone with doc-diagnosed Asperger's (though it's not called that anymore, now I'm 'Autism Spectrum Disorder'ed :p ) knowing what is was and how to treat the symptoms get rid of a lot of dysphoria and most of the anxiety and depression symptoms. If you need any help with the system, I'm here for you, just message. Tias fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 05:37
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:bodhisattva is a mahayana concept which has the foundation of its beliefs the idea of emptiness and its universality. emptiness is usually misunderstood as nothingness by non-buddhists but it means anything which Does something have to possess all three of those qualities to be empty? Because lots of things, say a pair of scissors or some other tool, can be said to have an ideal form but only have arrived at their current form due to cause-and-effect.
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Oct 19, 2021 06:54
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White Coke posted:Does something have to possess all three of those qualities to be empty? Because lots of things, say a pair of scissors or some other tool, can be said to have an ideal form but only have arrived at their current form due to cause-and-effect. Similarly, an object may change very slowly relative to other objects, but this is all relative. There are no exceptions. e: to riff on the hammer analogy a little further, consider if the intelligent species on Earth right now weren't humans but were instead a sort of small elephant with a single powerful trunk instead of two hands. They would doubtless need to bang things into other things, but a hammer as we know it would be ill suited to their needs. Nessus fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 07:37
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White Coke posted:Does something have to possess all three of those qualities to be empty? Because lots of things, say a pair of scissors or some other tool, can be said to have an ideal form but only have arrived at their current form due to cause-and-effect. yes. you are confusing "ideal form" in terms of blueprints or design with platonic-style "ideal form" in terms of essence. a platonic-style "ideal form" would be a magical perfect pair of scissors completely free of defects of any kind and best suited to cutting paper equally useful in the hands of the right and left handed that our imperfect earthly scissors are derived from. a better way of stating it would probably have been "unchanging essence" BIG FLUFFY DOG fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 13:25
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shame on an IGA posted:also mr. buns is fully embracing spoopy season I should post mine sometime, all 5 of them.  Happier note, Casting Crowns in 3 days! I'm hella excited, even if it means a 2 1/2 hour drive, eating in the car, and thumbing my rear end for two hours before showtime so that we can get decent parking for my thrown back and my wife's POTS. 
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Oct 19, 2021 13:39
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Tias posted:Consider getting it checked out. As someone with doc-diagnosed Asperger's (though it's not called that anymore, now I'm 'Autism Spectrum Disorder'ed :p ) knowing what is was and how to treat the symptoms get rid of a lot of dysphoria and most of the anxiety and depression symptoms. If you need any help with the system, I'm here for you, just message. I have been to a therapist before. I found the experience unhelpful. Perhaps I need to try another one, perhaps not. It did nothing to help me get a handle on the feelings I've had since I was a child that I was made wrong, and I'm not sure to this day how much of that feeling of dysphoria is the fact that I seem to think and process information differently from many people and how much might be discomfort with my own body. I simply don't have a satisfactory answer to where the line is between just being weird and non-conventional and there being something genuinely term-worthy wrong or concerning. In the end, I press on. The world just kind of sucks in my book, and I won't be sad to leave it behind when the time comes. I trust that God made me the way that I am for a reason, and has a purpose in His grand design for me and my life. gently caress if I know why, or what, or how, but I'm not paid enough to answer those questions. https://i.imgur.com/hSIochO.mp4 Cythereal fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 15:14
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Winifred Madgers posted:But even Jesus said the afterlife isn't what we're probably expecting (when posed the question of which of multiple wives would one be married to there), and also didn't go into any detail about it. I don't think anyone this side of death really has a solidly accurate idea of what happens after, truly. That reminds me of the story of Oran of Iona, who apocryphally was buried alive under the foundation of a chapel in Iona and a while later raised his head from the ground and remarked "There is no Hell as you suppose, nor Heaven that people talk about," at which point he was rapidly re-buried so that nobody would hear him spouting heresy. It's interesting, I've always had a hard time seeing that as an honest mystery of faith and instead something more like a campfire ghost story. But the point that Jesus said something similar is a really interesting one. Edited: it was Oran of Iona, not St Oran. Notahippie fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 15:19
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Cythereal posted:I have been to a therapist before. I found the experience unhelpful. Perhaps I need to try another one, perhaps not. I have had both helpful and unhelpful experiences with therapy and a big part of it is finding someone who fits with you. It can be worth it to try again, though I also know it's difficult to do so after an unhelpful experience; the times I've found someone who fit have really helped but it can be a difficult process.
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Oct 19, 2021 15:21
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Notahippie posted:That reminds me of the story of Oran of Iona, who apocryphally was buried alive under the foundation of a chapel in Iona and a while later raised his head from the ground and remarked "There is no Hell as you suppose, nor Heaven that people talk about," at which point he was rapidly re-buried so that nobody would hear him spouting heresy. I don't know if that's what I would take away from it. The question posed to Jesus was what if a woman is a widow several times over, so which husband would be married to in heaven? And Jesus says more or less, you don't know what you're talking about with that kind of question, there is no marriage there as such. That seems to be a much narrower denial, it's more saying it's a lack of both imagination and understanding of the scriptures, to think that heaven is just an improved continuation of earthly life. He forthrightly taught on the resurrection of the body after death, and heaven and hell, just without an abundance of detail.
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Oct 19, 2021 16:37
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:yes. you are confusing "ideal form" in terms of blueprints or design with platonic-style "ideal form" in terms of essence. a platonic-style "ideal form" would be a magical perfect pair of scissors completely free of defects of any kind and best suited to cutting paper equally useful in the hands of the right and left handed that our imperfect earthly scissors are derived from. Do numbers have an unchanging essence? And we don’t know whether there is or isn’t some higher dimension where the perfect forms reside. I doubt we’ll ever know one way or the other.
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Oct 19, 2021 17:29
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White Coke posted:Do numbers have an unchanging essence? And we don’t know whether there is or isn’t some higher dimension where the perfect forms reside. I doubt we’ll ever know one way or the other. I don't know all the teachings well enough to cite them, but I suspect there is no "perfect form" or similar at all, unless you wanted to extend this in the sense of "the laws of gravity and electromagnetism means that certain patterns will tend to happen in certain conditions."
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Oct 19, 2021 17:43
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White Coke posted:Do numbers have an unchanging essence? And we don’t know whether there is or isn’t some higher dimension where the perfect forms reside. I doubt we’ll ever know one way or the other. Nessus posted:I don't know all the teachings well enough to cite them, but I suspect there is no "perfect form" or similar at all, unless you wanted to extend this in the sense of "the laws of gravity and electromagnetism means that certain patterns will tend to happen in certain conditions." This question is also very much tied up with the question what is Jesus. One answer, the one I believe, is that Jesus is the unchanging essence, the form, of what it is to be human. So how do we see and understand the unchanging forms? God’s revelation. The Logos spoken to us that was flesh Jesus. I think we see it now through God’s presence in us, the Holy Spirit when we experience grace.
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Oct 19, 2021 18:07
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Cythereal posted:I have been to a therapist before. I found the experience unhelpful. Perhaps I need to try another one, perhaps not. It did nothing to help me get a handle on the feelings I've had since I was a child that I was made wrong, and I'm not sure to this day how much of that feeling of dysphoria is the fact that I seem to think and process information differently from many people and how much might be discomfort with my own body. I simply don't have a satisfactory answer to where the line is between just being weird and non-conventional and there being something genuinely term-worthy wrong or concerning. Having a therapist you actually have a rapport with is critical to actually getting anything out of therapy. Otherwise you are wasting your time. This is, by far, the most frustrating part about therapy.
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Oct 19, 2021 18:17
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Winifred Madgers posted:I don't know if that's what I would take away from it. The question posed to Jesus was what if a woman is a widow several times over, so which husband would be married to in heaven? And Jesus says more or less, you don't know what you're talking about with that kind of question, there is no marriage there as such. That seems to be a much narrower denial, it's more saying it's a lack of both imagination and understanding of the scriptures, to think that heaven is just an improved continuation of earthly life. He forthrightly taught on the resurrection of the body after death, and heaven and hell, just without an abundance of detail. My thinking is that it's easy to see the (apocryphal) story of Oran as a rejection of the doctrine of heaven and hell, which then puts it directly in opposition of the scriptures. But the example you gave is one where Jesus specifically pointed out that the petitioner was applying a limited view of the afterlife, based on his experiences of life on earth, and that such things were an inappropriate model for the infinite. The doctrine of resurrection of the body strongly implies a continuity of personal experience in a way that makes it easy to carry forward our lived experience as the basis of what the afterlife must be like, but Jesus is warning against taking that too far. With that view, Oran's reported words could be read less as a rejection of the concepts of heaven and hell and more a rejection of people's expectations for what either is like. I like that idea, because I struggle with this question around the continuity of personality - even looking at the best parts of myself and imagining a version of me pure of the things I don't like or see as failings, it still seems deeply limited if that's all there is to eternity. I feel like so much of contemplative prayer (across different religions, even) emphasizes getting the personal ego out of the way that an afterlife that emphasizes too much a continuity of ego (in the sense of a stable and self-reflective story of "me", not the sense of ego as self-importance) is a little at odds with that. So I like the idea that the story of Oran isn't just a spooky Irish legend but instead a reminder that our preconceived notions are based on our limited experiences and that we're all just seeing through a glass darkly when we think about the afterlife.
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Oct 19, 2021 18:29
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Notahippie posted:My thinking is that it's easy to see the (apocryphal) story of Oran as a rejection of the doctrine of heaven and hell, which then puts it directly in opposition of the scriptures. But the example you gave is one where Jesus specifically pointed out that the petitioner was applying a limited view of the afterlife, based on his experiences of life on earth, and that such things were an inappropriate model for the infinite. The doctrine of resurrection of the body strongly implies a continuity of personal experience in a way that makes it easy to carry forward our lived experience as the basis of what the afterlife must be like, but Jesus is warning against taking that too far. With that view, Oran's reported words could be read less as a rejection of the concepts of heaven and hell and more a rejection of people's expectations for what either is like. My take on it is that our personalities are constrained by being stuck in a body. The chemical imbalances in our brains limit how much our true selves can be expressed in this life. Dying liberates our personalities from those constraints and allows us to be and experience our true selves. Thus I think we will be recognizable to each other - fundamentally like how we are now, but wonderfully changed. Sort of like how if you see someone's baby picture, there is a sudden flash where you recognize them as the adult you know now. Similarly, in Heaven we will know each other based on the baby pictures of each other that we encountered in life.
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Oct 19, 2021 19:23
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White Coke posted:Do numbers have an unchanging essence? And we don’t know whether there is or isn’t some higher dimension where the perfect forms reside. I doubt we’ll ever know one way or the other. A number possess no essence. Numbers are a concept created by sentient beings for the purposes of counting. Without sentient beings to think of them they could not exist. They therefore come about through cause-and-effect and are interdependent, they will cease to exist should sentient beings cease to think about them and are therefore impermanent, the numbers themselves possess their meaning not by themselves but in relation to the other numbers as well as whatever it is we needed to count, they therefore have as their source all portions of existence which are not the number in question, they therefore have no essence.
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Oct 19, 2021 19:28
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Deteriorata posted:My take on it is that our personalities are constrained by being stuck in a body. The chemical imbalances in our brains limit how much our true selves can be expressed in this life. Dying liberates our personalities from those constraints and allows us to be and experience our true selves. Yeah - "But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." The question, of course, is how much of our current experience is meaningful for understanding what comes after. But ultimately, to quote a very non-Biblical take on that, "Well, I kept thinking about what the weatherman said And if the voices of the living can be heard by the dead Well, the day is gonna come when we find out And in some kind of way I take a little comfort from that"
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Oct 19, 2021 20:21
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:A number possess no essence. Numbers are a concept created by sentient beings for the purposes of counting. Without sentient beings to think of them they could not exist. They therefore come about through cause-and-effect and are interdependent, they will cease to exist should sentient beings cease to think about them and are therefore impermanent, the numbers themselves possess their meaning not by themselves but in relation to the other numbers as well as whatever it is we needed to count, they therefore have as their source all portions of existence which are not the number in question, they therefore have no essence. What has an essence, changeable or otherwise? And if numbers don’t exist without humans to “create” them then what does? Three of something is one more than two. Scientific laws describe natural phenomena to the best of our understanding but the underlying functions and relationships would continue without any humans to describe them, likewise with numbers. I’ve brought it up previously, but if Buddhist teachings are empty then some, or all, of them could be outdated because the underlying principles observed and expounded upon have changed. Perhaps now the path to enlightenment involves engaging in all sorts of horrifying conduct too monstrous to contemplate.
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Oct 19, 2021 20:28
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Notahippie posted:That reminds me of the story of Oran of Iona, who apocryphally was buried alive under the foundation of a chapel in Iona and a while later raised his head from the ground and remarked "There is no Hell as you suppose, nor Heaven that people talk about," at which point he was rapidly re-buried so that nobody would hear him spouting heresy. Totally aside from anything else, but I do feel a degree of discomfort at this story as it implies that human sacrifice was demanded by God in order to build a chapel. Put that way it feels far beyond apocryphal but instead heretical.
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Oct 19, 2021 20:34
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White Coke posted:What has an essence, changeable or otherwise? And if numbers don’t exist without humans to “create” them then what does? Three of something is one more than two. Scientific laws describe natural phenomena to the best of our understanding but the underlying functions and relationships would continue without any humans to describe them, likewise with numbers. I’ve brought it up previously, but if Buddhist teachings are empty then some, or all, of them could be outdated because the underlying principles observed and expounded upon have changed. Perhaps now the path to enlightenment involves engaging in all sorts of horrifying conduct too monstrous to contemplate. One thing to consider is that sentient beings also includes animals (for certain) and could probably be extended to other complex life forms, although it is not usually extended to plants in the totality comparable to that of Jainist vegetarian practice. We do know that there are animals who seem to have some concept of counting, and in higher mammals and birds they seem to be able to naturally count to about seven or eight before losing track, from what I have read... and that is before considering that there are surely sentient beings comparable to humans in other areas of the universe. I don't understand what you mean with the horrifying conduct. It can be disputed whether or not we can achieve enlightenment in the world as it stands, but the Pure Land schools basically say "It's impossible, so you should call on Amida to take you to the pure land for your next rebirth, and in that pure land you will be able to achieve liberation." But in terms of ethical requirements I think most schools of Buddhism are pretty consistent on: "try to follow the eightfold path; consider becoming a vegetarian or meditating or supporting a temple; keep at it, you'll get there." This does not seem monstrous to me, at least.
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Oct 19, 2021 20:42
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Nth Doctor posted:Totally aside from anything else, but I do feel a degree of discomfort at this story as it implies that human sacrifice was demanded by God in order to build a chapel. Put that way it feels far beyond apocryphal but instead heretical. It really seems like a pre-Christian story that was Christianized or otherwise a call back to pre-Christian beliefs because of that angle. But I think the Christian version leans into the idea that Satan or evil spirits were working against the church, and it was Oran's self-sacrifice for his faith that vanquished them. So less a question of a demand by God and more a martyrdom to conquer evil. Having said that, I don't think that Oran's story is seen as a mainstream or accepted story in the Irish church, I think it's more a local legend or side story attached to the story of St. Columba. My comment above was more a reflection on the idea that there is something of potential spiritual value in the story after all, when I had always seen it just as a ghost story with a church attached to it.
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Oct 19, 2021 20:52
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