God? Don't talk to me about God.

mythology

Originally posted by vistesd
The Buddha experienced his “awakening” after he quit all that silly starvation stuff.

Ok, I may need to brush up on my buddhism a little. But isn't it part of
their belief, that their leader (Dalai Lama?) is always reincarnated after
death?

Can he remember his past lives or not?

If he claims to remember, I say bull s h i t that is. Brainwaves can't
really travel through air by natural causes (despite what some lunitics
may believe), not to mention get preserved in the underdeveloped brain
of an infant. I mean, think about that for a second.

But if he doesn't remember those past lives? Well, then he's not
the former Dalai Lama, is he?

I stand by what I said. Everything changes. Our bodies die. They
"transform" into manure with a little help of bacteria, worms and bugs,
later to feed flowers and trees and so on. How can I believe that our
conscience which is so connected to our physical selves actually somehow
transpire the bodyless state?

There's no evidence for that, and frankly, I don't see the need for it
either. So what if we eventually die and become the very dirt we may
have urinated on a few weeks earlier? Pee, poo and Doctor Who. We're
all part of the same thing. We're all part of this planet. Dying is really
not such a horrible thing. It's great! Great I tell you! I WANT TO BE PEE!!!

Sortof.

Uh, back to buddhism. I think it's interesting in parts (good thoughts
and actions and all that). Now, if they could only drop that whole
reincarnation business they might be on to something socially useful. Of
course, reincarnation is one of the very pillars of buddhism, isn't it?

Hm, as I write that, I seem to remember someone mentioning to me
once, something about "one of the most common misconceptions of
buddhism in the western world is the understanding of what reincarnation
means to a buddhist". I have no idea what that meant, but I can't be
bothered to look it up either. Hu!

Clever has left the building.

Originally posted by C Hess
Ok, I may need to brush up on my buddhism a little. But isn't it part of
their belief, that their leader (Dalai Lama?) is always reincarnated after
death?

Can he remember his past lives or not?

If he claims to remember, I say bull s h i t that is. Brainwaves can't
really travel through air by natural causes (despite what some lunitics
may believ ...[text shortened]... I can't be
bothered to look it up either. Hu!

Clever has left the building.

Well, there are all kinds of Buddhists, and many do engage in the kind of supernatural metaphysics you’re talking about. I’m basically Zen (I don’t call myself a Zen “Buddhist” ), so I don’t bother—except for “play.” 🙂 I’m pretty convinced that when I die, I just—die. And whatever configuration of elements/energy that makes up this existence just disperses whence it came, like droplets of water falling back into the ocean. I agree with you that it is the transience of this existence—mine and others—that makes it precious.

Originally posted by Nicksten
Hey, you, listen, this is the real world. Since the beginning there has been a spiritual battle going on. Maybe if you read more than you did, you will find more truth about things than the load of CRAP you wrote here. Some people have faith (clearly you dont). How can you lecture something you dont know anything about?

Do you then have enough evidence ...[text shortened]... , its pathetic actually, because I can see God in almost everything!

Can you proof me wrong?

alas the onus is on you to prove existence. for example, please prove the FSM (Flying Spaghetti Monster) doesn't exist. you may really believe it doesn't exist but because many people (pastafarians) do believe it you should prove it doesn't. nonsense you say? just like an atheist does when asked to disprove your mythical god...

Originally posted by C Hess
Ok, I may need to brush up on my buddhism a little. But isn't it part of
their belief, that their leader (Dalai Lama?) is always reincarnated after
death?

Can he remember his past lives or not?

If he claims to remember, I say bull s h i t that is. Brainwaves can't
really travel through air by natural causes (despite what some lunitics
may believ ...[text shortened]... I can't be
bothered to look it up either. Hu!

Clever has left the building.

Here is my take on reincarnation: I think, hypothesize anyway, that our genetic structure is a computer, a very sophisticated one, although not very fast. It is already proven DNA stores information and in humans there is junk DNA that has no known function. It is also shown that DNA can change in response to various forms of stress. Putting that all together, I come up with this idea, bits and pieces of memory from the brain gets installed in our DNA which carries on from generation to generation. I would assume that over long stretches of time, information about the past would be lost but some could be retained. For instance, suppose we go back far enough in time where early humans existed side by side with some kind of bigfoot kind of primate, Gigantapithicus or some such. So I think the memory of encounters with such beings, obviously an encounter with a ten foot high primate would be highly emotional, and those are the kind of memories that in our daily lives are the best remembered. So what if some of those encounters were recorded in a crude fashion in our DNA and passed on, and generations later have some kind of mass memory of the event, but of course the big apes are gone now, say 50,000 years later but the DNA fragment is still intact and our brains can decode them into a kind of memory, making the myths of Golems, Trolls, and such have a basis in reality. So people when they die pass on DNA that has bits and scraps of information about some past life and under the right circumstances, such as mesmerizing or dreamlike states, these lives may be recalled. That at one swell foop can explain all sorts of myths and reincarnation. You heard it first here folks. Of course I may be full of reincarnated feces also but thats my personal explanation for these phenomena.