Karl

So that is honest to the point of deception. Let me say that another way. No one is good- except the greens genie in the corner. But there is no green genie.

Go, go, go because this is what I welcome and not a closed discussion. There is no concern of offence, go straight in, I'm bored by this formality. Let's have at it and sod the consequences. I will joust and will give up what is fairly won. So it is for you must prove the existence of God. You have said that much. I am not about changing anyone's mind, here we discuss and get to the heart of the matter, putting aside our shields. Otherwise what is the point of it ? If you have made up your mind and I have made up mine then we discover nothing new. I know you aren't that type of person, I can see you are genuine and that is sufficient, as indeed it is for Jeff. Let's get to the truth, to reality in one go.

Mortal man is just that. If you subscribe to the idea that we all have the same potential then this is fine. Man is fallible Jesus was a man Jesus was fallible I don't go beyond that syllogism. It is logically accurate and valid unless you believe Jesus was not a man. In which case it is necessary to provide that proof.

I don't think. I know. That's the difference.

In economic terms very much a 'yes'. I don't know about his political sensibilities. He is pretty much reviled by the entire free maker economists.

Everything can be made to work in a fashion. Have you access to the book 'economics in one lesson' by Henry Hazlitt, or the works of Bastiat 'the law' ?

Sort of, almost there. I don't like to disparage Friedman but he really was a total statist. The privatisation that thatcher adopted was Neo Nazi and not free market. Friedman has never been a freemarketeer and his theories are pretty much detested by thin libertarians

I respect you opinion, but let's see you to try and prove it. Im no longer going somewhere I already am. There is no more than I see. If you think you can show me something else I'm open to trial. :-) I know your a good sort without malice and devoid of negative ego so let's go ahead and debate it. You search for the truth and I have the truth. This is not mind games it's the way the world really is, but if you wish to contradict I'm completely and utterly open to that.

The gut has its own autonomous nervous system if I remember correctly. It's an ancient piece of tech now integrated into the whole. I don't think it's particularly smart though. I wouldn't trust it to drive my car for instance. Pretty good at determining when to eat.

Jesus was just a man if he existed at all. The Bible is cobbled together out of millennia of different religions, cultures, stories and myths. That said there is a lot of common sense within its pages. God-as in a creator or supreme being has no factual, or logical basis for existence. Heaven-if that means the stars and planets we see, that exists-a nirvana type place invented by rulers to get obedience has no factual/logical basis for existence ( Jihadists are still at it- blowing themselves up to enter nirvana/ heaven ). Kingdom derivation of Kings Domain/dominance. What did the parables mean ? Impossible to know in most cases. Even the simplest can easily be misinterpreted by our changing context. Looking for the Kingdom of heaven is equivalent to looking for the treasure at the end of the rainbow, or the tooth fairy.

Like Bud I think that's excellent method and well described. It's pretty much what I have being doing for several years. It can be brutal to accept 'I feel this' 'this is a real thought' directly, so your route is far more gentle than my hatchet job.

If it does prey on your mind then there is little point in denying it. We cannot choose our thoughts, they come and go, we cannot stop the mind we can only come to know we perceive directly without illusion. If we deny it then there is conflict and suffering. If we are walking a peaceful path then we do that and then we are fighting and we do that, or we are frightened and that we must also do. All in the light of awareness.

I think you may have lost the subtle distinction. 'Only the self knows the self' is incorrect. There is only self. The self does not know its self the self is only. Just as the eye cannot perceive itself then neither can self (conscious awareness) perceive itself. It is perception and perception cannot perceive perception. 'Who is enlightened ? Find that one'. That is the start of inquiry, but it is not the answer. Doing inquiry might be the mechanism, it is hard to say it provides the answer because there is no answer required. That's what's crazy about doing all this meditation and inquiry, it's all for nothing, it achieves nothing except to learn how to do it. It is merely a distraction, an adjunct. The mental ruminations are real and defined, there is no doubt of that. They cannot be said to be false or mistaken, they exist, not in the sense of concretion of course, but they are still reality. If you deny them there will be conflict. Every time reality is denied there is conflict and suffering. I also know it can be frustrating and annoying to be told what you already know. That is real too. If it is reality for you then don't deny it. See the truth in the thought or feeling it creates. The discrepancy is when you think you should not think a particular thing when you are thinking a particular thing.

In a nutshell. This is all I have been saying all along. There are realities that underpin everything and they are what we should strive for. They are the truth within ourselves and completely known to us, but we have chosen to construct our own realities. This is clear if I take an example I have used previously. The taste of sweetness is not in the fruit. Yet the fruit is real. The chemicals which connect with our senses are real Our senses are real. The thought ' this fruit is sweet' is also real-but it is a created reality despite being reality. It's a really subtle thing, it hovers on the edge of understanding because it is difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins. Our are created realities manifesting yet another created reality. How then shall we know what it truly real from that we have created as real ? This is the rope and the snake analogy that many gurus talk about. The aim is to define actual reality from created reality. From the position of self this is easy, but far harder to explain-like being thrown into a foreign country and being unable to speak the language. However, unlike you, I don't believe this is just going to happen. I think we are in grave danger of having allowed our false realities to be mistaken for reality itself and that knot cannot be undone without individual effort. It means that everyone must wake up to this on their own and have the desire to do so. No one can make it happen for anyone else other than themselves. There is no authority, government or system that can do it and until ALL are awake then effectively none are awake. As long as but one remains it is incomplete. I think we can wipe ourselves off the face of the planet, become extinct. I do not grieve for that, but it seems a wasted opportunity.

Absolutely and on that positive note I'm off to bed.

More ad argumentum verecudiam and more ad hominem attacks. I don't think you have any idea what a critical discussion is. I will bid you goodnight I'm tired of this game.

Really ? Wow that's insightful. So, you mean everything stands still because mind created concepts are not reality ? What a ludicrous statement. Your words on the page are proof that you are transferring concepts into reality. Man acts- how does man act ? What makes man act ? If man could not imagine and create concepts we would still be swinging from tree branches. So my idea of 'pure capitalism' is not only possible, but probable.

So did Stalin. Your point is moot. I'm afraid every text does not agree and even if it did, this would not make me wrong or right. All you are doing is an appeal to authority, you are unable to reason without reference to others thoughts on the subject. As many pieces of written history certainly do contain a degree of personal opinion I can only disagree with your premise. I wouldn't assume anything and I told you before I am entirely self taught-fortunately by the looks of things.

Except we don't have free market capitalism, that's the myth. We have a mixed model of which fascistic economics dominates. We have big corporations tied to governments which can be seen by the revolving doors of corporate to political and back. The biggest players being banks/wall street, pharma, Agri, auto/aircraft manufacturing and weapons production. The free market-such that it is-is effectively managed by the financial and political systems in order to try and extract maximum production and political income. It is a centrally managed economy with a limited degree of freedom, but it certainly isn't free market in any sense. The bailouts from the Tarp programme, the ex-Im bank Boeing subsidies, the tariffs imposed on imports, IP protectionism particularly in relation to agri and pharma. The common denominator in all this is the existence of the state and its government. The government doles out privileges in order to get support. There appears to be no way of limiting it. No matter how carefully the system is planned to limit power, eventually it breaks out. It's for this reason I say a firm no to government. I can't see anyway of limiting its growth and the spread of corporatism as a result of this growth. I see no alternative but to say no. Its simply a logical decision based on the available information. The inevitable ' but what would replace it' is no longer something I care to determine.

Well I'm happy to be your dawg. I can be whatever you want me to be.

You mean why don't they agree with yours ? LOL National SOCIALIST party - big clue can you see it. Where do you think he got his ideas ? Oh let me think-from a socialist of some kind called Marx where socialist ideologies came from. He interpreted Marx differently that's all.

Mainly error and certainly a trial.

Well what can I say, he would definitely know about these things, I bow to his superiority in such matters and go off and read a comic-well look at the pretty pictures at least.

We can choose that's all. Humans are animals with the capacity to reason. There are many extremely intelligent people with extremely poor reasoning skills. One does not automatically mean the other. I think the accepted name for those of high intelligence is genius. If you are intelligent or not intelligent it's all the same to me. I don't judge, there are loads of people more intelligent than I am-which is a very good thing as long as they are using that intelligence wisely. Inferiority complex ?

Because he believed his was the right form of communism. Nazi as opposed to Bolshevic communism. You also need to understand it in context of the consistent feud between Germany and Russia. Hitlers intention was always to expand East into Russia. Right and Left are for all intents and purposes the same collectivist, brutal, totalitarian regimes. The real sliding scale is more government less government. What I find particularly difficult to understand is that those who consider themselves a socialist left stand with libertarians on freedom, tolerance to race and increased attacks on privacy by the state.