bsit, bsit@sopuli.xyz

Regrettably many people think that all religions are just picking some deity (or deities) to worship, because they route their understanding via Christianity. Plus you get the additional problem of people really not grasping how you can’t just translate concepts 1=1. “God” in Christianity is VERY different than “God” in Buddhism. One of my favorite pet peeves is when people take something like the idea of Reincarnation and say it doesn’t make sense because they only look at it through the lens of their own (Western, usually) cultural and philosophical conditioning. It’s like taking a power plug from Europe and then call it poorly designed when it doesn’t fit into a socket in the USA.

Many religions have plenty of very very sophisticated philosophy behind them, and often the belief systems were functional, as far as they went, for people’s every day lives. Interesting thing is that some of the philosophical frameworks actually are on an equal footing with scientific materialism, namely the ones in the sphere of nonduality. They’re equally unprovable and disprovable as matter-first philosophy, yet materialism has posited itself as first in the minds of most people. Meaning, many people think that all other worldviews must adhere to materialist sensibilities, including ones that challenge the idea that matter comes first - which is actually logically fallacious but people don’t like it when that’s pointed out.

Keep on studying!

Practice. I’ve learned it by meditation (specifically paying attention to the whole of your experience), and so have many other people I know.

It entails exactly what you see in the world. Humans trying to come up with some universal good and evil and then fighting each other because they believe their definition is better.

“Morality” in itself is a human concept, like every word in general.

This realization often entails a kind of nihilism too, unfortunately, as a sort of rebellious backlash against any ideas of harmony with others.

Vast majority of people don’t want to directly cause suffering to others. Then there’s a lot of opinions on how much you “should” (a thinly veiled callback to universal good and evil again) endeavour to reduce the indirect suffering you cause, and also how to define suffering.

Ultimately it’s always just people’s personal values clashing and best you can do is figure out what your values are, and find people who share them. You can’t really force people to value anything they don’t - you can only teach it if they are willing to learn. Or you can force compliant behavior despite their differing values - if your value system allows forcing. If your values allow for forcing compliant behavior on others, then you must of course accept that others will try to use force as well. If you don’t allow forcing, then you pretty much need to be prepared to die for the ability to live according to your values.

Very much this. Just going for walks is great. Meditation is great.

And people need to stop consuming political content in social media. Read/watch the news, sure. Especially LOCAL news - find opportunities to actually DO something. Do it intentionally, not passively

Letting oneself be constantly exposed to outrage and doomerism is just going to be more incapacitating than activating.

When they no longer feel a desire to argue with reality that they have faced fully (no lying to oneself) and have accepted that everything is temporary.

And they understand that the above is not a call for nihilism and resignation, but inner peace.

Yes, but “people” must include oneself as well. Else it just becomes another people-pleaser mantra.

Not quite. We have the appearance of (what we call) individuals within one single consciousness. It appears to reflect upon itself from what we take to be individual vantage points (people). That is an imperfect characterization though, try as I might. I’m pointing to consciousness before any thoughts - before you think there’s a you, separate from anyone or anything. Pure experience, before thinking ABOUT it.

You’re actually right on the money. Reincarnation based on certain systems is exactly that, when look at it from it’s proper philosophical framework. But you can just pull it out from it’s framework, cram it to a completely different framework (like one that believes in individual souls) and then claim it doesn’t work.

From the perspective of nonduality, everyone is a reincarnation of everyone, always. It’s internally coherent. Also a great reason to practice compassion. Of course people don’t super love the idea of being the reincarnation on people they don’t like, dead or alive. But that’s one of the many reasons nonduality isn’t for the faint of heart.

Ritual suicide is very much a thing in certain systems that believe in reincarnation. At some points it seen as a perfectly rational and pragmatic choice, but yes, you need to do it with specific practices and intentions. Not just “well, life sucks, I’ll just reroll”.

Not saying if you should or should not be jaded but I would ask you: please, please don’t give into the jadedness.

I do understand the impulse and I used to be that way myself. But it’s something that eats at you more than it helps you. Online you can always step away from the strife and in the offline world you can find truly good and caring people who do listen to reason. I realize it might be easy for me to say but I really don’t want to see any more people turn to hopelessness and cynicism. It only helps people who would add more misery to the world.

I’m not the best person to say this and it’ll sound weird on this platform but I do mean it with all my heart. I hope you can find enough good in your life to protect it without despair.

There’s a world of difference between disagreeing with someone and mocking them. Especially if the mockery is based on a complete misrepresentation of what is being said.

Hehe, the funny thing is that on me, your assumption would actually more correct than the fundie Christian assumption.

Very specific yoga philosophy, and “healing” crystals in the sense that I’m fine with people saying that looking at pretty rocks makes them feel better. Wouldn’t generalize that into a cancer cure though.

Thanks for proving my point I guess.

Discussion about anything spiritual. Mention the word and people automatically assume that you’re an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian ready to host a sermon about how much God hates homosexuals.

What’s mainly depressing is that so many people think that every religion is exactly like Christianity, but with a different object of worship and a slightly different flavor of supernatural belief. They don’t know anything about philosophy, they haven’t examined their own beliefs, they just parrot whatever pop science they’ve heard last and think that somehow gives answers to metaphysical questions.

Read some philosophy, people. Examine your own beliefs a bit. I’ve just recently seen a bunch of Lemmings who I’m sure consider themselves very rational and scientific freak out at the idea of not having free will, and by extension, there not being absolute good and evil. They can’t even argue about it, they just immediately fall into ad hominem attacks and strawmanning. Bring in the fact that whatever virtue one thinks they have is just the result of genetic lottery, and suddenly the idea of some kind of an untarnished soul becomes awfully tempting. Dare to suggest that nobody is inherently evil and boy do people get mad because their favorite pasttime of judging others has been called into question. Yet these same people often consider themselves above religious folk because they actually think that their worldview is purely science based and not at all colored by what they just want to be true.

Oh, not to even mention questioning if matter is the fundamental aspect of reality (as opposed to consciousness). Many people with 0 understanding of philosophy will start arguing about this and then get mad because they can’t prove that there’s matter outside consciousness. They’ll do the science equivalent of saying “God is real because the Bible says so, and the Bible is the word of God so it must be true”. Matter is fundamental because my scientific framework that is built on the idea that matter is fundamental says so (it actually doesn’t, because again, so embarrassingly many people don’t even realize that science has never answered a single metaphysical question).

Unless you have spent several years with philosophy and actually scrutinized your own beliefs honestly, you are likely living in just as much fantasy as most religious people. In some cases, more so.

And because I’ve hit my quota for entertaining poor arguments for now: if you want to argue, unless you can provide scientific proof for the existence of free will, absolute good and evil or matter being fundamental, I may not reply.

Not at all to imply that this is your case, but there’s a difference between having an intellectual understanding of idealism and actually having the lived experience of it.

And most people need to do some kind of practices to get there, which are typically found in spiritual contexts (meditation etc.). But there definitely are people who just kinda drop into it.

Though… yes. It’s a philosophical stance but it kinda gets tossed under the umbrella of spirituality. Maybe that’s actually a problem come to think of it. Since spirituality is easier to dismiss as “woo” (as in, everything that goes against the almighty scientism is woo…)

Though you do say:

subjective perception

What do you mean? Because as an idealist, I was specifically taught to see the difference between a subjective perception and general consciousness. It’s very possible this is just semantics of course.

Burden‑of‑proof reversal - >support your positive claim that consciousness is fundamental.

Begging the question / Circular reasoning - Presenting that claim as a settled fact without argument assumes the very point under dispute.

I did offer support, several times. Just because you keep skipping over it doesn’t mean I didn’t. My support is: to say anything about the world, you have to be conscious first. Feel free to refute the fact. Once you do, I’ll respond.

I’m presenting an axiom. Every “proof” you offer for matter is itself an experience appearing within consciousness. I’m not assuming the conclusion; I’m highlighting the only medium through which “evidence” is even possible.

False analogy / Irrelevant comparison

Materialism and Idealism are equally “unfalsifiable” at the foundational level. Science measures the behavior of things (phenomena), but it cannot prove the nature of the “thing-in-itself” (noumena) exists without a witness.

Tu quoque / Defensive turn

It is not a fallacy to point out that you’re guilty of the very “unfounded belief” you accuse me of. It is a valid critique of Scientism (the mistaken belief that the scientific method can solve metaphysical questions)

Equivocation

I’m not “blurring” terms; I’m defining them more precisely. For an Idealist, “to exist” is synonymous with “to be experienced”. You are assuming a secondary, unobservable definition of “existence” outside of experience.

Appeal to ignorance / Appeal to unfalsifiability

Materialism relies on indirect inference. Every “fact” about matter is an appearance within consciousness. Not only that, it’s a thing filtered through language. Idealism relies on direct evidence: the immediate, undeniable fact of experience itself (before labels, words, concepts, map-to-the-territory) There is zero evidence for matter existing independently of an observer. To claim that matter exists when no one is experiencing it is an unfalsifiable leap of faith, not a scientific “fact”.

Rhetorical trap / Straw‑man implication - Labeling the opponent’s method a “trap” without showing how their specific move misapplies logic risks mischaracterizing their argument rather than refuting it.

I did explain, but well… you don’t read. You just want to prove yourself right.

Special pleading - Claiming your position is exempt from the usual requirement to provide independent support while insisting others must disprove theirs functions like special pleading.

I’m pointing at the Hard Problem of Consciousness. It is actually “special pleading” to claim matter is the only thing that doesn’t need a witness to be “real”.

Consciousness isn’t just the starting line, it’s the entire field. Without it, there’s no game, no players, no ‘matter.’ You’re arguing about the rules of a game while standing on the field and pretending the field doesn’t exist. Matter is the “Guess": You only assume physical things (like rocks or brains) exist “out there” because your awareness shows them to you as images, sounds, or feelings. In short: You don’t have to prove you are aware, but you do have to prove that the “outside world” exists when you aren’t looking at it

Just in case there’s someone else reading this at this point and is actually interested, go read these (because the person I’m responding to won’t and there’s little point in continuing to argue with someone like that):

https://philarchive.org/rec/KASAIA-3 Analytic Idealism: A consciousness-only ontology, Bernardo Kastrup

This is a recent philosophical look into Idealism

Some useful wikipedia links:

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation

You accuse me of fallacies, but let’s be clear:

Burden-of-proof reversal: You demand I prove consciousness is fundamental while assuming matter is - without proving matter exists outside consciousness. That’s the very circularity I’m highlighting.

Begging the question: Claiming ‘rocks existed before brains’ assumes a materialist timeline, which is the premise in dispute. Your “evidence” is just experience within consciousness.

False analogy: You dismiss idealism as “unfalsifiable woo,” but your own materialist assumptions are equally unfalsifiable.

I’m not reversing the burden; I’m exposing the symmetry: neither of us can prove our starting point without circularity. But I can point to the fact that to say anything about the world, you need consciousness first.

I’m not begging the question; I’m asking you to justify your assumption that matter is independent of observation.

My analogy isn’t false, it’s precise: You’re demanding I disprove your framework using your framework. That’s not logic; it’s a trap.

Feel free to explain how it’s not circular to insist that a challenge to materialism must be proven within materialism.

“Rationality”

You’re the one who is resorting to just calling everything that doesn’t align with your beliefs “nonsense” and “woo-woo”. That’s about as far as rationality as you can get. You don’t have to like philosophy but then don’t start arguing about it, especially if you don’t know how to recognize logical fallacies in your own arguments.

There is no evidence for that and worse, it’s unfalsifiable, so just a personal belief.

“Please prove to me that God isn’t real by using the Bible”