kamishinkan said:
AHH! I see your point. One thought to keep in mind, logic would determine that there is only ONE TRUE GOD. Then that same reasoning would determine that the other takes on GOD must be false.
Perhaps, but to quote American philosopher Ken Wilber:
"Prior to Kant, the philosophers were not only trying to
deduce scientific facts --- which we saw was impossible --- they were also trying to
deduce contemplative or spiritual truths, which is just as impossible but twice as dangerous. Both secular and religious philosophers were making all sorts of rational statements which they claimed were about ultimate realities and ultimate truths. Thus, Thomas Aquinas had put forth rational 'proofs' for the existence of God; so had Descartes --- and Aristotle and Anselm and others. Their common mistake lay in trying to prove with the eye of reason that which can only be seen with the eye of contemplation. And somebody, sooner or later, was bound to find it out.
This was Kant's brilliance. He himself did indeed believe in God, in a Transcendent Ultimate, in noumenon. And he correctly believed that it was transempirical, transsensory. But he demonstrated that anytime we attempt to
reason about this transempirical reality, we find that
we can create arguments for either of two completely contradictory views with equal plausibility --- and that plainly shows that such reasoning is futile (or, at any rate, does not carry near the weight it had so generously given itself under the title of 'metaphysics'). But here were all these philosophers and theologians cranking out rational statements about God (or Buddha or Tao) and about ultimate reality as if they were speaking directly and actually of the Real itself, whereas in fact, as Kant demonstrated, they were speaking nonsense. Pure reason is simply incapable of grasping transcendent realities, and when it tries, it finds that its contradictory can be put with equal plausibility. (This insight was by no means confined to the West. Almost fifteen hundred years before Kant, the Buddhist genius Nagarjuna --- founder of Madhyamika Buddhism --- arrived at virtually the same conclusion, a conclusion echoed and amplified in succeeding generations by every major school of Eastern philosophy and psychology: Reason cannot grasp the essence of absolute reality, and when it tries, it generates only dualistic incompatibilities.)
One of the reasons for this --- if I may speak poetically --- is that, as disclosed by contemplation, the Ultimate is a 'coincidence of opposites' (Nicolas de Cusa) or as Hinduism and Buddhism put it,
advaita or
advaya, which means 'nondual' or 'not-two,' a fact that
cannot be pictured in logic. You cannot, for instance, picture a thing being itself
and not being itself
at the same time. You
cannot see it raining and not raining at the same time in the same spot. You cannot picture nor reason accurately about nonduality, about ultimate reality. If you attempt to translate nondual Reality into dualistic reason, then you will create two opposites where there are in fact none, and therefore each of these opposites can be rationally argued with absolutely equal plausibility --- and that, to return to Kant, shows why reason only generates paradox when it tries to grasp God or the Absolute. To indulge in metaphysical speculation (solely with the eye of pure reason) is thus to indulge in nonsense. To say 'Reality is absolute subject' is not false, it is nonsensical, it is meaningless, it is neither true nor false but empty, because its opposite can be put with equal force: 'Reality is absolute object.' In the East, the same nonsense would exist ('Reality is Atman' verus 'Reality is Anatman') until totally dismantled by Nagarjuna in precisely the same way followed by Kant.
What Kant demonstrated was that --- as Wittgenstein would later put it --- most metaphysicsl problems are not false, they are nonsensical. Not that the answer is bad, but that the question is silly.... It is supported by a category error: The eye of pure reason is trying to see into Heaven. Now I don't mean to imply that Kant was enlightened (i.e., that his eye of contemplation was fully opened). Clearly, he was not. An excellent way to grasp Kant's position is by studying the aforementioned Buddhist genius, Nagarjuna, because Nagarjuna applies the same critical philosophy to reason, but he does so not just to show the limitations of reason but to push further and help open the eye of contemplation (
prajna), which knows the Ultimate directly, nonconceptually, and immediately. Kant doesn't really know about
prajna or contemplation, but since he
does know that God is hidden to sense and reason, the thinks God is therefore forever hidden to direct awareness. Soon Schopenhauer would point out just that shortcoming in Kant."
(
Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm, pp. 16-18)
kamishinkan said:
The thread started with the similar teachings of the Messiah and the "other" religions. It goes without saying that some spiritual and moral teachings of the other known religions out there are going to be the same, the differences are the ones that can get you into eternal trouble!
See above. Also, another Wilber quote from my signature:
"They are indeed still trapped in hell, as were their predecessors, but postmythic men and women have at least, and finally, thrown off their childish images of deity as a protective parent sniveling over their every move, listening to their every wish-fulfillment, catering to their every immortality project, dancing to their every prayer of magic. Postmythic men and women did not get thrown out of Eden; they grew up and walked out, and, in now assuming rational and personal responsibility for a measure of their own lives, stand preparatory for the next great transformation: the God within, not the Father without."
(A Sociable God: Toward a New Understanding of Religion, p. 118)
Laterz.
