Quote: Nonoxynol9 said: Actually, to a Buddhist, Nothingness is Everything, and Everything is Nothing. So, in a roundabout way, when a Buddhist dies and his consciousness dissolves back into the Void... they are in fact joining with something, the cosmos, the re-birth phase... Ever read the Tibetan Book of the Dead? Talk about some seriously frightening imagry (of course, it is repeated like a mantra that the visions seen after death -- such as five-headed flesh-eating monsters with a hundred titties holding skulls filled with blood and fire -- are merely projections of our own psychic image. If we can ignore them, they will leave, and we can be re-born.)
I have not read that book, but Buddhism(as well as eastern philosophy in general) has always interested me, if only because it seems so different from most western religions.
Quote: But to me, and this is merely my opinion, all of man's best efforts to explain God's existence, or explain away his existence, via philosophy and logic, will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS fail, because, in the end, it's frail, mortal man tring to explain or rationalize the Great Unknowable Unknown.
In the end, it all comes down to this: nobody knows what's really going to happen 'till they're dead. We can't prove God exists empirically with our five senses, because that would bring God down to our level. God, to me, represents Infinity, Eternity... and how can man's finite mind EVER truly conceive Infinity?
I agree on all counts. Man will never know for sure, at least, not in life.
On a personal note, I don't really think knowing whether or not there is a God would make any difference to me, other than giving me another person to blame for how fucked up the world is at times. It wouldn't affect my everyday life, and it certainly wouldn't alter my moral outlook. I try to be a good person becauase I think it's right, not because I'm worry about what God may or may not think.
Quote: Pariah said: This would be true if it weren't for so many atheists were only calling themselves agnostic and taking away all credibility from the term.
You really like telling people what they are and are not, don't you?
If it's not telling whomod he's not Christian it's telling me I'm not agnostic.
