Topic: Why do Atheists Hate Religion? - page 394. (Read 901520 times)

I'm not religious.

And yes, you first reference Western tantra which, like Western yoga, really misses the point of what tantra and yoga are really meant to achieve.  They're bastardized versions.

Your second reference just reinforces the point in my last reply to you. 

A meditative state, as previously explained, occurs at the instant one's perception of "self" disappears entirely.

It is a universal phenomenon that arises similarly for everyone who attains it.  There is no variance.  Accordingly, it's not about personal preference, opinion, or subjectivity.  If you achieve a meditative state, it will be the same as any other.

Religious sex is not better than regular sex, get over it.

"tantric sex, is the modern, western variation of tantra often associated with new religious movements. This includes both New Age and modern Western interpretations of traditional Hindu and Buddhist tantra. Some of its proponents refer to ancient and traditional texts and principles"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neotantra

Sexual rites

Although equated with Tantra in the West, sexual rites were historically practiced by a minority of sects. For practicing groups, maithuna progressed into psychological symbolism.[54] According to White, the sexual rites of Vamamarga may have emerged from early Hindu Tantra as a means of catalyzing biochemical transformations in the body to facilitate heightened states of awareness.[54] These constitute an offering to Tantric deities. Later developments in the rite emphasize the primacy of bliss and divine union, which replace the bodily connotations of earlier forms.[54] This is clearly seen in Japanese tantra in Shingonshu of Tachikawa-ryu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantra

Words well-rooted in compassion; worth meditating on.

Ultimate nirvana depends on people. Different people will have different ultimates. You should not try to make yours the ultimate for all. After all, sex can not always be ultimate nirvana as long as rape is alive.

Sex =\= sex + meditation

If sex + meditation > sex, then sex is not the 'ultimate,' is it?  That is, something can be added to it to make it greater.

So, we then look at just meditation (specifically, a meditative state) to see if this in itself is greater than sex.  Here, I re-refer you to my edits two posts ago.

Tantric sex is not sex, that's your argument?

"Crossfit is not cardio!"

"Drag racing is not racing!"


All kinds [subsets] of sex are part of the greater set Sex.

Stop pulling a pigeon, it's obnoxious and if you continue you will forfeit the privilege of conversing with me.

Incorrect.  Tantric sex is sex performed with ritualistic, meditative focus.  If sex (in general) is the ultimate nirvana, then there should be no accompanying method by which it could be made 'more ultimate.'

Please see edits in previous post.

Edit:  If technology can facilitate such meditative states, I'm all for it.

Tantric sex is [a subset of] sex, ergo this question is fallacious.

Your fetishization of meditation is going to seem quaint in a few short decades when anyone will be able to use technology to reach a meditative state achievable today only by a handful of Zen Masters.

I don't have to assume anything when you have stated all the information necessary to reach such a conclusion, unless you are a liar.

If sex is the ultimate nirvana, then why is tantric sex (axiomatically) more blissful?

Edit: Yes, meditation can simply be calming, even significantly so.  But this calming feeling is infinitely different from a meditative state.  There is absolutely no mistaking a meditative state.  The primary difference is that one achieves a meditative state at the instant the perception of one's "self" disappears entirely.  I'm particular with my language, and to say a meditative state is "infinitely" more blissful is a poignantly chosen phrase, and in no way euphemistic.  There are no boundaries invoked by a self in which the bliss can be contained, and accordingly the bliss is "non-finite" or infinite.

Edit 2: I would possibly concede to a semantic distinction between "pleasurable" and "blissful" whereupon sex could be described as more pleasurable, but certainly not more blissful or 'heavenly.'

That's surprising, considering I have hundreds of hours of yoga and I'm a daily practitioner of Ericksonian meditation for over seven years.

Maybe I've been doing it wrong this whole time? Or perhaps you shouldn't go around making assumptions about internet strangers.

Then it is self-apparent you have never achieved a meditative state, which is infinitely more blissful by definition.

Nothing against meditation, but sex is the ultimate nirvana. Like mathematics, this is a self-evident truth, and no myths(lies) you write will ever change that.

Also like mathematics, nearly everyone is born with everything required to experience this truth for themselves.

What sane person, having achieved a meditative state, would believe an orgasm is a heavenly state?

That's standard religion protocol. If critical reasoning is not sufficiently impaired, the religion doesn't stick, it melts away in the face of everyday observation.

What sane person, having experienced five or six orgasms in a day, would believe there's any need for a heaven after death, when heaven is so obviously a place here on Earth?

With all due respect -- and I say that because I know from your posts you do value intellectual honesty -- you have no basis to say there is no "need" for God or an Intelligent Designer.  In the absence of a comprehensive scientific explanation for reality, and given that certain mathematical explanations such as ex-nihilo creation or otherwise fall short of such comprehension, your current perspective must acknowledge a horizon of knowledge exists whose threshold you have yet to surpass.

I strongly encourage you to consider the problem that none of these current explanations provide an explanation for theories themselves, which are the basis for all of our conceptual understanding.  For example, you can't comprehensively explain theories in terms of the brain because what we know of the brain is a theory of it (and that means we put the cart before the horse).

To have a comprehensive theory of what reality is all about, the theory we have about reality requires that it can account for itself. 

That's because the so-called new ideas are not really new ideas. The ideas against God and proper religion have been around almost since the Beginning, the time of the creation. Many of them came into being shortly after the fall of mankind into sin.

These ideas have been found to be false throughout the years. Their adherents are the people of the nations who have lived a short time and then died without hope.

Come over to the only salvation that can save you from death... before it is too late. Turn and accept the salvation that God provides through Jesus. The new ideas - which are really old ideas being expressed again - cannot save you from destruction.

Exactly. This is got to be one of the worst attitudes towards life that one can have. Life has taught me many things, and one of those is to ignore such people.
How could one discuss a certain subject (especially tough ones such as religion) with a person who thinks that what they think is the ultimate truth? That would only be a waste of time.
Such people are like robots (not AI). They do not accept new information and this is what makes them vulnerable.

"Close-minded people would march off a cliff if doing so matched one of their preconceived notions."

That's terrible. The church has sealed your eyes, ears and mind tightly shut.
I don't see any good will become of that.

I'm always interested in considering that I may be wrong. It is reassuring when one's continued questioning and study of new data and reasoning continues to lead one back to supporting the proposition that there is no evidence, no need, for a 'god' in this Universe and that those who believe such are provably employing intellectually dishonest reasoning to support their false argument.

If, however, things were to change and there was a whole new set of data I could incorporate into my understanding, such that I needed to modify my position substantially, I would always be open to doing so.

You are not. You have decided that your own subjective wishing and active confirmation bias is enough and all the myriad of contradictions and conflicts can just be swept under the carpet . . . because god. No thanks, I prefer not to have to make my subconscious mind continually wrestle with cognitive dissonance, it isn't healthy.


I think you'll find that atheists are actually considerably more qualified in the balance of consideration for your claims for god than you. Your assertions are simply, "He does because . . .[insert logical fallacy here]". We're not afraid of the answers to the questions we ask. You are, that's why you have no intellectual integrity and your world is constructed from 'woo'. Careful, it's not a particularly reliable building material, it is prone to crumbling when analysed by objective reasoning.

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See, that's the thing, the moment I stopped looking for 'The Supernatural' I stopped seeing it, everywhere.

You, unfortunately, will dishonestly take that to mean I closed my eyes to the 'wonder of woo' when, the fact of the matter is, I simply stopped projecting my faulty assumptions and preconceived perceptions onto ordinary situations. When I began to practice intellectual honesty in order to more reliable understand Life, The Universe and Everything, I found that there were understandable answers for everything and none of it required invoking 'woo' and, in fact, 'woo' was clearly found to be one of the root causes of cognitive dissonance and confusion as, much like the Bible is chock-full of contradictions and conflicts, what with it being not one story but a collection of stories selected for inclusion by a group of men many centuries after the myths concerned were written, the introduction of 'woo' to try and explain anything simply becomes an infantile conflicting game of, "Because I say so!", rather than a route towards actual knowledge of The Universe.


My goodness, I take it you haven't actually read the damn thing, then? Do you even know the origins of that absurd publication?

Just so I know where you stand, do I turn the other cheek or is it 'an eye for an eye'?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ_BtZ-5O60