evidence and cosmogony form a poor marriage ... you could talk about what is reasonable according to a world view however ... which of course is an issue of faith
Then what is your point? It's not funny. Unless you think you are absolutely safe from taking birth in a female body. ? Do you not believe in the particular cosmogony you believe in precisely because you have evidence of said cosmogony being true?
Buy and read this book. Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife [Paperback] Eben Alexander M.D. (Author)
The problem with the golden rule is that the way some people want to be treated, other people don't want to be treated. Ie. some people's ideas of "good treatment" are actually "bad treatment" in the estimation of some others. The golden rule is not a useful guideline for behavior, especially not in a modern, versatile society. Why not just inquire about what people want, instead of assuming one already knows?
teh fact that you have to indicate a particular era for a particular type of person obviously indicates it is all about the body If you can contemplate not taking birth as a female you prove my point Not sure how that relates to spideys world view since he is getting all excited about empirical science while simultaneously stepping outside its authority in the same paragraph
The golden rule has a point, which isn't about treating people EXACTLY as you wish to be treated, it is about treating them with the same respect with which you wish to be treated. A soldier may wish to be treated with whatever roughness makes them feel comfortable while an artist may wish to be treated like a daisy. It is not about getting them both to treat each other as they wish to be treated, but about a higher principle.
The thing is that, as far as I know your stance, you associate with the particularities of the body things that are not the kind of given the way birth, aging, illness and death are a given, but are instead culturally specific. To be clear: Can you give some examples of each kind of Dharma, so we can compare? It relates to your worldview.
a general rule of thumb is understood to be imperfect and yet totally valid. If you are suggesting we need ADDITIONAL rules to cover circumstances beyond the norms, that is true, but that doesn't negate the usefulness of the golden rule. Some would use the specious argument that muslims want to die in suicide attacks, as some sort of "proof" that we don't think alike, but in reality, in the general population, that idea is clearly untrue. If you are going to say, "x doesn't work because people don't agree", then we can throw EVERYTHING out and only talk in objectives, which is clearly impossible.
Sure. One thing I often notice is that when people advocate a principle, they often want that others would follow that principle, while they themselves should be free not to do so. That's what, essentially irks me about rules such as the golden rule - when people refer to it to blackmail others with it. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there seems to be something about general rules of thumb that makes them so easy to be abused, this is why I am wary of them.
you do not to tell me, you are simply afraid of death, to die and to prove it is a valid methodology to support your stand.
I think the problem is that the idea of something being "common sense" is applied to way too many things. So it isn't that actual rules of thumb are bad, but rather that they are far more rare than is assumed, and most of them are not actual rules of thumb, but rather rules of dumb. I would like to say there are at least 1 and must be fewer than 5 things we can actually say are universally valuable. Maybe the golden rule, and the idea of basic human subjectivity being a reality are two of them. I am thinking that those two things go together but i am not sure how yet. I have an idea that accurate consciousness requires leaving other people's basic rights for food, air, water alone, otherwise you are must assert a non-reality, such as an OBJECTIVE knowledge of God for example, in order to justify your breaking of the golden rule... or something like that - this idea has arisen in response to your (constant, haha) mention that perhaps being compassionate may not be the advantageous path. I haven't formulated it beyond that though.
Nonsense, if he's dead he cannot tell you whether there is one. If there isn't one, he cannot tell you whether there is not one. You would hear nothing back and assume there is one.
Call it a bet, if you like. There is no "After-life." There is no reason to believe that there is nor is there any grounds to think we can think or be conscious after the brain is destroyed.
what do you make of incidents of people recalling events and information well above and beyond their capacity to know (past lives)?
You make an unsupported claim here. I've heard many tales of people recounting a "Past life" where they were a famous person. Or maybe, the rare one, where they were an unknown. Either way, they made claims that were unverified or unverifiable- so you nor I have any way of knowing if they actually knew something that they could not have known.
