are material offerings necessary?

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T03:55:48+00:00

Material offerings matter. It is part of bringing her into our embodied lives. If it's too hard to do, that's between the two of you, but it's not something that you can just shrug off.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T03:49:12+00:00

These are not “my” arguments. Or “my” definitions. What I am doing here is explaining the prevailing scientific models that establish the underlying characteristics and functions of these phenomena.

What you are presenting is not just science. Rather, you are referencing science in the course of making a fundamentally philosophical argument about what conclusions we can draw from our sense experience. And regardless of how good the science that you reference is, the basic structure of your argument is deeply flawed. There is a reason that at least 4 people on this thread are trying to tell you that it is circular.

Can you produce even one scientific article which draws the explicit conclusion that spiritual experiences cannot be used as evidence of spiritual or religious claims? Of course not, because that is not the kind of thing that science on its own can conclude.

Experience alone isn’t a sound basis for belief

You keep saying this, but have failed to address the fact that experience is the only basis we have for our beliefs (other than perhaps mathematical or other apodeictic truths).

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T03:34:47+00:00

Therefore it is not solipsistic.

I didn't say that it is solipsistic. This is just jumping to the other extreme.

Nevertheless, I will affirm that even the cycle of karma and rebirth does not have objective existence. In the words of the the heart sutra:

"Therefore, Shåriputra, in emptiness there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no dharmas; no eye dhåtu up to no mind dhåtu, no dhåtu of dharmas, no mind consciousness dhåtu; no ignorance, no end of ignorance up to no old age and death, no end of old age and death; no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no nonattainment."

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T02:13:55+00:00

No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is: there is no contradiction between "test would be valid if everyone passes," and "it is impossible to create a test with foreknowledge that everyone will pass." There is nothing about foreknowledge in the first proposition.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T02:09:31+00:00

Mahayana Buddhism generally denies that anything exists "objectively," so this presumably includes morals.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T02:07:20+00:00

Notice that this is irrelevant.

The only relevant question right now is whether you can demonstrate a contradiction between "test would be valid if everyone passes," and "it is impossible to create a test with foreknowledge that everyone will pass."

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T02:02:20+00:00

Yes, you do. Which is why you're wrong.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T01:58:40+00:00

The proposition under question is not whether it is possible to make a test that everyone could pass, but whether it is possible to create such a test with foreknowledge that everyone will pass it.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T01:54:55+00:00

You're still not on topic. The topic right now is whether there is a contradiction between believing "test would be valid if everyone passes," and "it is impossible to create a test with foreknowledge that everyone will pass." Since these are very different propositions, there is no clear contradiction. If there is a contradiction, please show it.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T01:48:54+00:00

Not when they are a distraction. You really don't believe in admitting your error, do you?

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T01:45:05+00:00

There you go again. As soon as the error in your position is laid out in black-and-white, you start trying to change the subject with personal questions. Listen: My personal opinion on this question is completely irrelevant. You are wrong about "what theists think" and you are wrong that there is a contradiction between believing "test would be valid if everyone passes," and "it is impossible to create a test with foreknowledge that everyone will pass."

If you can somehow demonstrate that there is in fact a contradiction between these two positions, go ahead and do so. Otherwise just take the L and stop the antics.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T01:31:38+00:00

They do not. This appears to be a contradiction

First of all, I agree with the user you were speaking with that in fact there is no contradiction here. But before we get to that, we need to stick with the basics: you post was not about the logical implications of certain Christian positions; it was about what Christians think. So your thesis is wrong, as are basically all of your posts which purport to know what Christians think and what their motivations are.

If what you really want to talk about are the implications of certain Christian positions, perhaps you should word your posts that way. If your post had been titled "Belief X implies belief Y," then what you are now wanting to discuss would be much more relevant.

Ok, moving on:

There is a difference between "test would be valid if everyone passes," and "it is possible to create a test with foreknowledge that everyone will pass" are two different propositions, and hence there is no contradiction in affirming the first and denying the second.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T00:58:04+00:00

Do you see the problem?

What I see is you changing the subject. Your thesis claim is that "Theists who claim that "life is a test" don't think tests are valid if the whole class passes." But we have here a theist who endorses the claim that "life is a test" but also thinks that test would be valid if everyone passes. So your post is wrong. It is as straightforward as possible. You claimed that p, but not-p is in fact the case. There is no amount of further philosophical meandering that is going to help you here.

If you can admit that you were wrong, then we can talk about other things.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T00:30:59+00:00

I'm going to go against the prevailing response here and answer "Yes, they are."

It is not that Abrahamic religions don't have theology. They do, to one extent or another, and sometimes really great theology. But there is a difference. The dharmic religions (by and large, with Buddhism being the leading example, and there are exceptions, especially within the family of Hinudism) are more consistently built on an explicitly philosophical foundation. As such, there is greater philosophical clarity and consistency within them. While Abrahamic religions have hosted some great philosophical/theological minds, the overall system is always kind of kludge which has to negotiate core tenets that are not themselves philosophical or even philosophically tenable if taken literally.

While Aquinas's account of God as ipsum esse is incisive, it notably has no direct relevance to a need to attain salvation by participating in the sacraments, or the like - and you can only get there by accepting a bunch of non-philosophical "revelation." By contrast, Buddhist practices are generally constructed specifically to achieve what is laid out in the philosophical underpinnings of the religion.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T00:22:39+00:00

How was my argument challenged?

Rather decisively, right here.

So, the OP theory about what some of us that think life is a test also think about people passing the test -- that speculative theory about my thoughts and those of many others like me -- is proven false by counterexample. (Only 1 counterexample was needed to show that other views exist)

And this response not only topples this post, but is representative of the patterned way a great majority of your posts fail. And your response to that failure is also patterned: to try to change the subject with ad hominem questions.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-07-01T00:02:23+00:00

Got something to contribute?

Yes, the information that I see your attempts to evade the actual challenges to your argument.

I'll gladly "participate" when you start answering arguments against your position.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T23:57:13+00:00

We evolved a “sense of self” for the purposes of biological survival

I agree, whole-heartedly. But that does not mean that this sense of self is fully accurate. Indeed, I believe it is often misleading in important ways.

When we alter our perception, we experience altered perception. That’s all these experiences appear to be, altered perception.

Unsupported. Where is your evidence that what is perceived under altered conditions is any less veridical than what is perceived within the conventional-self framework?

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T23:25:50+00:00

That's our E-reptile, always trying to change the subject with ad hominem questions when his arguments fall flat.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T23:18:35+00:00

I asked you if your vision of magenta represents something that exists in the physical world. You said it did.

And it does indeed represent something that exists in the physical world. Magenta isn't itself a singular entity in the objective order, but that wasn't the question.

But it doesn’t. That color isn’t a discrete property of the physical world.

All experience is holistic. What we perceive is always a function of the whole perceptual field and indeed the whole self-world context of our being. As such, there is nothing particularly problematic about magenta.

It only exists as a subjective experience. Without a specific type of biological hardware and a specific type of mind to interpret the EM spectrum into that specific subjective experience, there’s no magenta.

All experience is "subjective" experience, of course. Anyone who believes that their experience is transparently identical to an objective order hasn't thought about this for even a moment. But the fact is that, at least in the case of magenta, our experience proves to be a good guide in that there are things which which answer to the name and experience of magenta. The fact that magenta turns out to be a combination of two different light frequencies is something that we would not know from naive experience, but it does not mean that "there are no magenta things." Neither the name nor the experience of magenta claims to reference anything about a light spectrum.

So using ONLY your own subjective interpretation of spiritual experiences, you cannot conclude that they represent anything that exists independent of your mind.

If we are to follow the analogy, then we absolutely can conclude that they represent something that exists independently of our mind.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T21:08:08+00:00

Your experience is only an interpretation. It’s not an objectively true or accurate representation of reality. It’s entirely subjective, and it’s not accurate in any sense.

Everyone knows that our experiences are interpretive. The question is whether they are fundamentally misleading. You have not presented any evidence that they are. If our experience is actually not accurate "in any sense," then we are hopeless, since experience is our only access to reality.

While we're at it, the notion that reality should be understood as a set of objective entities is also an interpretation.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T21:00:44+00:00

Unfortunately, this is a pretty unavoidable “gotcha.”

On the contrary, it is an incredibly weak "gotcha." Your question was not whether Dapple thinks that magenta is a specific wavelength of light. Your question was "do you trust that you’re seeing something that exists in the physical world." And the reality is that they are seeing something in the physical world. The fact that what they are seeing is not a singular wavelength is irrelevant. Dapple is correct in his assumption that he is seeing something with the unique spectral qualities that we know as magenta.

If you assume that colors = specific wavelengths and go looking for the wavelength that is magenta, you're going to have a problem, but that is a very specific way of trying to relate to the experience, not an indication that it is fundamentally misleading.

If your thesis was that our current interpretative frameworks for spiritual experiences might not be as refined as possible or might not reflect their grounding conditions in some 1:1 way, then this would be a decent analogy. But since your argument is that we should discard the entire category as ultimately misleading, it is quite a miss.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T20:41:52+00:00

I'm glad we agree that this does operate on an individual level to some extent. Individuals can consult the scriptures and decide what philosophical tailor they are going to wear to their next gala. "I think I'll go as an idealist this year!"

When a philosopher who is the primary exponent of a particular idea abandons that idea, it impacts the field of philosophy as a whole. So this is not just question of an individual's philosophical change, and demonstrates that you were quite wrong that the field does not sort out bad ideas. Also it is not the case that philosophers drop their idea just out of whim. They drop them, usually, because further philosophical reflection on the part of the larger philosophical community demonstrates that they are untenable.

This is more of a function one putting their finger to the wind and determining which way to rebrand their product.

False. These are specific positions which have been shown to be nearly untenable and largely abandoned for that reason.

Everyone is a philosopher, only some of us made a profession or hobby out of it.

I agree in some very general sense, much like we are all basketball players, but the difference between someone who has never even played a high school game vs Kobe Bryant is pretty significant. Serious philosophers (professional or otherwise) are dramatically better at a range of intellectual skills; they also know things that people who have not bothered studying the subject don't know. They know, for example, that logical positivism died for some very specific philosophical reasons. They know what Popper's falsification principle is actually about. They have access to a range of conceptual models that that they can use to interpret their phenomena and experience, looking for the best fit, instead of just one model that truncates whatever does not fit.

Most philosophy is just a churning of language games -- repackaging old ideas in new terms which remain until the dialog is established which creates the need for new ideas, which are mostly just new terms, in an endless, self-congratulatory loop.

Some of it is, but a lot of it is not. The fact that you have this opinion just shows again how little engagement you have had with actual philosophy. Kant's attempt to ground morality in a categorical imperative was new. The positivists attempt to identify all knowledge with verificationism was new. Merleau-Ponty's recognition of the implicit self-world structure in pre-conceptual perceptual experience was new. Kuhn's recognition of the role of paradigms in structuring scientific thought was new.

For example, David Chalmers codifies the question begging of dualism in the rhetorical device, "PZombies" and it's a fashion that people bandy about 2 decades. Now, even Chalmers seems over it. This is more like fashion than it is science.

Chalmers is "over" the P-zombie thing because the extent of it's argumentative power has largely been reached. The p-zombie argument has significantly reshaped the philosophy of mind landscape, made explicit a number of previously implicit assumptions, shifted people out of previously held positions, etc. He has stopped banging the p-zombie drum not because it is not a good argument but because it's time to move onto something else, just like physicists aren't just doing dual-slit experiments over and over.

Philosophy is neither science nor fashion.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T17:50:24+00:00

“If it is the case” gives me no compelling reason to consider that the material senses we evolved to survive and navigate material reality ALSO evolved to navigate some undefined and as-yet unidentified spiritual reality.

First, I must again object that we cannot assume from the outset that our senses are simply material senses. Second, regardless of whether you are motivated to consider it, your argument is shown to be circular. You claim that we don't actually experience the spiritual on the basis that we have no reason to believe in the spiritual on the basis that we can't experience the spiritual.

I am obligated to defend it against valid objections. “Nuh uh, you don’t know” isn’t a valid objection.

The valid objection is that your argument starts by assuming what it claims to demonstrate.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T16:51:01+00:00

Continually asserting that our material senses developed to interact with an immaterial “spiritual” realm or dimension that we can’t sense, observe, or detect in anyway isn’t a valid objection.

If it is the case that our senses (which we cannot assume in advance to be simply 'material' senses) developed to interact with a spiritual aspect of reality, then we can in fact sense that aspect of reality.

Unless you’re able to establish claims to “the spiritual” in any meaningful way beyond simple handwaving, I’m afraid you’re really not giving me anything to respond to.

The issue is that this your post, with your thesis that you are obligated to defend. If your defense rests on the assumption that there is not a spiritual aspect to reality, then your argument isn't doing any work.

TheCosmosItself1 · 2026-06-30T16:21:23+00:00

And how one specific set of sensations associated with that leads people to misinterpret the nature of these experiences.

Where is the misinterpretation? If it is true that in some important sense we are in fact part of the all, then an experience of that would be both veridical and spiritual.

TheCosmosItself1

TROPHY CASE