Remember Thomas Jefferson's Bible, in which all the parts mentioning the supernatural had been literally cut out? So apparently Jefferson thought that Christianity could stand on its own without the core belief that God intervened in history in the particular way that most Christians still hold on to. Jefferson did believe in God as the creator and presence, however vaguely, in the world, but this doesn't contradict science. Buddhists, I think, don't deny God, they just don't find the idea necessary to living and acting in accordance with reason and compassion.

Buddhism, of course, offers a structured method of "right living," whereas Christianity doesn't so much. Islam is much more detailed than either C. or Buddhism in how one needs to live, which is another reason why people fear its influence. Following the Koran closely means having Sharia law.

DB Roy wrote: And don't tell me you know exactly what I'm talking about but you can reach that stage without drugs but with meditation or whatever. No, you don't. Some guy kept insisting that he did. No, sorry, you have to take psychotropics to reach it. If you could experience that without them, you're probably mentally ill or the greatest guru that ever lived.

I don't know exactly what you're talking about, as I've never experienced anything like that, but just based on my reading of people who have done extensive meditation, they also have experiences well beyond the ordinary. No doubt drugs can be a shortcut.

DB Roy wrote: The reason why there is music is because that is how we communicate with her and she with us. It doesn't have to be sacred music, which is a redundancy. Just music. That music that makes you smile or cry or close your eyes and remember--that's her. All you need is prajna.

So if someone is saying let's do away with this mystical mumbo-jumbo and go with science, I don't know if he knows what he's talking about. He needs to take a trip first and then come back and talk to us. Otherwise, it is the blind leading the blind. At least I got to peek through one eye a little bit.

You are claiming that this goddess you saw actually exists? Isn't it far more likely that you hallucinated?

Dexter wrote: I don't know exactly what you're talking about

That's the essence of the problem. You have to go there. No amount of explaining can capture it.

Dexter wrote:No doubt drugs can be a shortcut.

I think the drugs were how we got there in the first place because I think when you trace religion back, it's all shamanism which was heavily drug-influenced and I know why.

https://richarddawkins.net/2013/12/reli ... -atlantic/

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... se/282484/

Maybe that was the Tree of Life in Genesis. When you eat of its fruit, your eyes are opened and you become as one of the gods. But with typical guilt-ridden Judaism (said guilt being inherited lock, stock and barrel by Catholicism and who knows who the Jews inherited it from), it became something bad, something we weren't meant to have. Maybe priests saw it as a threat to their authority or control and outlawed it. Who knows?

Dexter wrote: You are claiming that this goddess you saw actually exists? Isn't it far more likely that you hallucinated?

What do we mean by "actually exists"? If you took that trip, you'd understand why that's a meaningless phrase. It lies beyond what our minds can process in the everyday world. Yes, she exists but, no, she does not exist. That's the best I can do. But when you're there, your mind, your consciousness, works in a totally different way. Limitations, contradictions--those are for this world. There's none of that there--no need for it.

DB Roy wrote:
That's the essence of the problem. You have to go there. No amount of explaining can capture it.

You think scientists have never studied hallucinations before? Just because it was really trippy doesn't mean it's beyond science.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/books ... .html?_r=0

There are plenty of scientists who have themselves tripped and came back the same way as me--not at all sure that it could be a hallucination (which I've experienced many times, btw). One I can think is Albert Hofmann, the inventor LSD. Wiki states:

Hofmann, interviewed shortly before his hundredth birthday, called LSD "medicine for the soul" and was frustrated by the worldwide prohibition of it. "It was used very successfully for ten years in psychoanalysis," he said, adding that the drug was misused by the Counterculture of the 1960s, and then criticized unfairly by the political establishment of the day. He conceded that it could be dangerous if misused, because a relatively high dose of 500 micrograms will have an extremely powerful psychoactive effect, especially if administered to a first-time user without adequate supervision.[14]

I've taken some seriously bad trips. I was a layman and had to experiment by trial-and-error. Those were hallucinations. This felt entirely different. In fact, the dosage wasn't even that high. In fact, my experience by that time told me I wouldn't experience anything too outre.

Francis Crick who discovered the DNA molecule was an avid user of LSD and even admitted using it while exploring the DNA molecule. According to Dick Kemp, Crick's close friend, LSD was commonly used by scientists as Cambridge as "a thinking tool."

Steve Jobs was another great believer in the efficacy of LSD and called his use of it one o the most important things he had ever done in his life. he was, in fact, critical of Bill Gates because he didn't drop acid although Gates told Playboy magazine that he actually did.

Neuroscientist John c. Lilly used LSD while mapping the pleasure and pain areas of the brain, communicating with dolphins and whales and building the first sensory deprivation chamber. Lilly then got his friend, physicist Richard Feynman, to drop acid in his sensory deprivation chamber.

The man who figured out how to turn a single strand of DNA into hundreds of identical copies was Kary Mullis--a process known as PCR. He attributed his discovery to his use of LSD which he regarded as more important than any courses he ever took. In one interview he even stated that he does not believe he would have discovered PCR without the use of LSD.

While not a psychotropic drug, Carl Sagan was a regular user of marijuana. My own experimentation was always done with psychotropics combined with marijuana which produced excellent results. Marijuana goes very well with acid, mescaline, shrooms and cactus.

I wrote beautiful music on acid that I never could have thought of otherwise, I mastered difficult musical passages of Bach more easily while on acid (my fingers just knew where to go), you just think better, concentrate better.

It's about as close to enlightenment as I've gotten.

So you are going with Buddhism as being a valid spiritual system? That there is no God's, but we become one upon death and life, life and death, death and life and so on?

How does something become anything from NOTHING?

boy, you guys have lots of faith.

I know very little about buddhism. But I know it's about achieving enlightenment. If naturalistic buddhism involves stripping away anything not provable by science (which includes the concept of enlightenment) then it is no longer buddhism. It is turning science into a religion. Science is subject to change and revision. Buddha supposedly said that atoms resembled a lump of foam. Suppose later Buddhists dropped that because science said atoms are hard corpuscles only to later learn that quantum mechanics then turned atoms back into foam again. That's just not going to work.

DB ROY"Science is about change and revision"

When is science ever about change and revision? Science is about the repeated result from observance and testing.

When does a tree make snow? Now that is change and revision.
When does a gasoline fire make oxygen? Now that is change and revision.

Now trees can make charcoal when burnt - that is a scientific fact.
Gasoline on fire makes carbon dioxide - that is a scientific fact.

I hope you misspoke. If not, this is a hogwash concept.

Brother Bob, he didn't say science is "about change and revision."

He said, "Science is subject to change and revision."

He's 100% correct.

Scientific Knowledge Is Open to Revision in Light of New Evidence

Science is not about change and revision - science maybe wrong, but it is not about change and revision. Maybe your body doesn't need oxygen, blood, food or sleep. NOW science has claimed that the universe was getting smaller, dying, or now it is a bubble bath full of bubbles with each bubble being a universe. So Science must observe a property and observe its workings, i.e. the tide - it comes in and out every day by the power of the moon. It has never changed. Not sure what science you guys are talking about.

Here's the dictionary definition =
1.the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment:
"the world of science and technology"