Leo, please call in to The Atheist Experience!

[EternalForest]

Back in June, you gave your thoughts on a deep debate between Jordan Peterson and Matt Dillahunty here: 

https://www.actualized.org/insights/the-god-debate

Besides your channel, I'm an avid viewer of a show Dillahunty frequently hosts called The Atheist Experience, and enjoy listening to Matt Dillahunty's discussions with theists. He's one hell of a debater, and ever since that blog post I've always thought it would be amazing to hear a discussion between the two of you. You made some arguments in that post that he's never heard on the show or in any debate he's had, and while I agree that in 99% of debates the truth rarely comes to light, this could be a great way for you to expose him and the audience of the show to some mindblowing ideas. As you said in your What Is Spirituality? video, you create your content with the intention of communicating to scientific, atheistic and rationally minded people, so you could be one of the first theists to come on the show and really shake up their atheist worldview. Debating him in person would be even better, but for now I think just waiting until a Sunday afternoon when Matt Dillahunty is hosting, and having a short debate on air would be just amazing (other forum members, please also reply to the thread and share if this is something you'd like to see!)

Call the show on Sundays 4:00-6:00pm CDT: 1-512-686-0279

Here's their Youtube channel, so after you call in, go there and you should find the live stream!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCprs0DXUS-refN1i8FkQkdg

Thanks again for all the great insights over the years and I hope to see you on the show one day

[Leo Gura]

@EternalForest God is not something to be debated with those kinds of people. Therein lies the whole trick of God. You cannot communicate it. Absolute Truth is outside the realm of proof, reason, thought, or speech. So talking about it is pointless. The problem is that someone like Matt Dillahunty does not understand why Truth must be incommunicable. Absolute Truth is non-symbolic.

Atheism is like a religion. You cannot reason with it because its premises are not grounded in reason but in faith. Of course the irony is that all atheists will vehemently deny it. Which is why they cannot be reasoned with.

The only way Matt will realize he is wrong is by going through the radical existential crisis called enlightenment. But of course his whole game is to avoid enlightenment. Which is why he's an atheist to begin with.

See how sneaky the mind is?

The Truth cannot penetrate a recalcitrant mind.

[Haumea2018]

Well, it's more interesting to look at Sam Harris who is apparently responsible for "spiritual atheism" as a mini-movement.

Non-spiritual, "everything is woo" type atheists are (as Leo correctly pointed out) someone to leave alone; there's nothing there to engage with.

Sam Harris, however, is illustrative of the problems of clinging to an atheist identity and mindset while attempting to seek.

Imagine a racehorse at the starting gates that gets whacked in the leg right before the race begins.

The entire process serves the ego and its avoidance strategy: rejection of all icky fictitious deities or avatars precludes any sort of bhakti or devotional path helpful to heavy thinkers.  This ensures that the only "rational" path is the atheistic Buddhism and its meditation techniques.

Which is great and all: you can meditate for 30 years and have cool satori experiences...and still not stabilize in no-self. 

Because you're unwilling to die.  And you've decided you're unwilling to die the second you chose this path 30 years ago and stuck to it.  Because it's your freakin' comfort zone.  You can wax rhapsodic about all the benefits of meditation and be smug in your correctness...and still miss the elephant in the room: if being rational hasn't worked in 30 years, maybe trying the irrational might help?

[Leo Gura]

@Haumea2018 Celebrity & success are like ego crack.

Sam Harris is too famous to really seek deeply. Same with JP.

If Sam Harris ever came back from a retreat and told his cult-like rationalist followers that God is actually real, they would turn on him like a pack of hyenas.

Sam's whole market base is stage Orange atheists who want validation of their atheism and rationalism.

[Finland3286]

@Leo Gura Why do you say that atheism is a religion? I'm pretty sure atheism is the absence in the belief of god. It is about not believing in something because of lack of evidence provided by someone claiming something. How can a disbelief in something because of lack of evidence mean that is a formation of religion?

Usually when people use the word "God" it is generally associated with religion. I think the people in the show don't believe in god and even supernatural phenomena because there is no evidence to support this claim. Because people are trying to use logic to justify these claims and logic is being shot back at them to shoot them down so to speak.

I really don't like to use the word "God" because of it's association with religion. Although, I can understand people using this word in different contexts. I just think that people who call into this show don't even understand god in the context you are using it as well as the atheists. It seems like the atheists are just calling BS on things that are not logical when theists try to use logic to justify something like the bible.

[Leo Gura]

@Finland3286 Technically it is an ideology or belief.

Both are misguided beliefs. Both are closedminded beyond help in most cases. Both are egotistical.

Atheism NOT a lack of belief. It is just a negative belief. The belief is obviously there if the atheist just bothers to introspect self-honestly.

Atheists believe that God is absurd, irrational, impossible, imaginary, and unscientific. An opiate of the masses.

[Finland3286]

@Leo Gura When I think about God I don't think I have a negative belief, I just think that there is not good evidence to support that claim. You probably have a video I can watch about self introspection so I will be sure to check that out. 

You hit it pretty much on the nose when you said that "Atheists believe that God is absurd, irrational, impossible, imaginary, and unscientific. An opiate of the masses". Although, I would say it is "possible" but to a very small degree as again I have not come across sufficient evidence to believe. But even though it may be possible if I don't have evidence i'm not going to believe in it because many things "could" be possible but it seems at that point you're sorta manufacturing a conspiracy theory.

Also maybe I am close minded about it but I used to believe in God and go to church but I really started asking questions and I looked for answers. The answers were flimsy and there was a lot of contradiction and things that seemed like complete BS. 

[Aethereus]

@Finland3286 what Leo is trying to say is that atheism itself is a dogma (a set of undeniable beliefs), which is what religion is too. It might seem that it's about being open-minded, realistic and believing only evidence, but actually most atheists are way too certain about God not existing and also way too certain about science being the ultimate tool for understanding all of reality

[Leo Gura]

@Finland3286 God is not a belief or a probability. Truth is not a matter of probability.

Nor is the issue of evidence relevant because God is prior to the epistemic possibility of evidence or even human perception.

I understand your skepticism. It feels justified and "scientific", but when it comes to consciousness of the ultimate origin of existence, it just won't cut it. Skepticism is a fear-based reaction of the ego-mind.

The irony is that atheists hold the belief that atheism is not a belief. But if you introspect, you can become conscious that it is a belief.

[Forestluv]

Back when I was passing through Orange-ville, I watched the Atheist Experience with delight. I loved how the hosts used logic and reason to expose the irrationality of blue callers.

To be honest, I don't think I could debate well against Matt. If it was a UFC cage fight, he would continually want to take me down and grind it out on the mat. I would use a lot of relative and absolute thinking and he would keep re-framing things in terms of logic and reason. He is very skilled at that and has some high level reasoning abilities. As well, I value direct experience which he would largely dismiss as irrational feelings.

These days, I use the term God similarly as consciousness, being, presence. I don't think in terms of an anthropomorphic god. So, some people would consider me an atheist. Yet, I would be very far away from an atheist regarding the nature of intelligence, creation, reality and self.

[EternalForest]

Sorry if I'm bumping the thread after being inactive for a couple days, but @Leo Gura even though I understand that he would probably be closed minded to the idea that you can perceive truths using more than just the 5 senses, I think it would be worthwhile to simply expose him to the idea. Because if Matt is the true skeptic that he claims to be, if he simply took his skepticism "all the way" as you put it, then I'm sure it would make him re-evaluate things. I'm not even sure if he's aware that spirituality exists outside of religion exclusively. You could simply present it to him as an experiment: be open minded to seeking enlightenment, seek where it leads you, follow where the evidence leads honestly. That's something Matt often talks about, follow where the evidence leads you instead of leading the evidence to the conclusion you want it to. So once again, even though it may be a fruitless pursuit, I still think it's one that's worth the try, but it's up to you. I know that once I have more spiritual experience and confidence in the subject I may even call the show myself and attempt to explain these things.

@Serotoninluv Yes, he is very skilled at re framing an argument, and totally rejects personal experiences. Hosts on that show often assert that if something isn't demonstrable to someone else then it can't count as evidence, and on the surface that's a hard thing to argue with. But I think this is just a side effect of rationalists not acknowledging the non physical as a viable source of truth. A spiritual truth is more personal, and even though it may not be as demonstrable to others, there is a trade off in that it is 10x more convincing to the person who had the experience. And I'm not saying that spiritual truths  can't be deceiving, but that logic can be deceiving as well, (and not in the sense of a logical fallacy, but in the sense of being physically biased.)

Edited September 12, 2018 by EternalForest

[luckieluuke]

I would love to see Leo interact with people more!

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, EternalForest said:

Hosts on that show often assert that if something isn't demonstrable to someone else then it can't count as evidence, and on the surface that's a hard thing to argue with.

Lol

Existence is not demonstrable to anyone.

Neither is identity, rationality, or science. All of these are dependent on subjective experience.

There is in fact no such thing as objectivity.

[How to be wise]

@Leo Gura What LOC would you characterise yourself in for your baseline conciousness? I mean, you’ve been meditating and self-inquiring for close to five years. If you haven’t reached 600s yet, then what does that say about those techniques?

[Haloman]

31 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is in fact no such thing as objectivity.

Sounds quite solipsistic.

[Rilles]

@Haloman Reality is solipsistic in a sense but that doesnt have to make it negative. Have you ever experienced objective reality? You see how dumb that sounds? It falls apart before you can answer it.

[Leo Gura]

9 hours ago, How to be wise said:

@Leo Gura What LOC would you characterise yourself in for your baseline conciousness? I mean, you’ve been meditating and self-inquiring for close to five years. If you haven’t reached 600s yet, then what does that say about those techniques?

I dunno, hard to say. Ramaji rated my LOC level somewhere in the no-self zone (600-700), but I disagreed with his assessment. I thought it was too high. Once he learned I use psychedelics he sort of said his LOC rating might not be accurate for me.

Because I have a very creative mind, I am not that good at meditation. Other people find mediation much easier. I've had to go through a lot of techniques to finally settle on Kriya yoga. In a sense, I've wasted a lot those 5 years doing poor meditation. I wish I'd known about Kriya 5 years ago.

But also, I've become conscious of LOC 1000 and beyond. I'm just not stabilized in it yet.

What you have to understand is that 5-MeO does not fit anyone's models or LOCs. 5-MeO can get you beyond LOC 1000 in 15 minutes. Virtually no spiritual master or teacher understands or accounts for 5-MeO in their models. In a sense, I found a way to hack the entire spiritual path. But few people believe me. They think I'm nuts. But that's just because they haven't tried a big strong dose of 5-MeO.

9 hours ago, Haloman said:

Sounds quite solipsistic.

Truth is Truth. Doesn't matter how it sounds to the ego.

[Joseph Maynor]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I dunno, hard to say. Ramaji rated my LOC level somewhere in the no-self zone (600-700), but I disagreed with his assessment. I thought it was too high. Once he learned I use psychedelics he sort of said his LOC rating might not be accurate for me.

Because I have a very creative mind, I am not that good at meditation. Other people find mediation much easier. I've had to go through a lot of techniques to finally settle on Kriya yoga. In a sense, I've wasted a lot those 5 years doing poor meditation. I wish I'd known about Kriya 5 years ago.

But also, I've become conscious of LOC 1000 and beyond. I'm just not stabilized in it yet.

What you have to understand is that 5-MeO does not fit anyone's models or LOCs. 5-MeO can get you beyond LOC 1000 in 15 minutes. Virtually no spiritual master or teacher understands or accounts for 5-MeO in their models. In a sense, I found a way to hack the entire spiritual path. But few people believe me. They think I'm nuts. But that's just because they haven't tried a big strong dose of 5-MeO.

Truth is Truth. Doesn't matter how it sounds to the ego.

All the number stuff is total B.S.  All there is is you.  You’re talking to yourself assigning yourself numbers.  The LOC numbering system is uber self-deceptive.  I’m surprised you even buy into that frankly.  All there is is you and you’re all alone talking to yourself.  What number is that?  See.  That number stuff is an Egoic distraction.  When Thought and Experience become dead to you, what number do we give that?  See.  It’s ridiculous.

Edited September 13, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Forestluv]

5 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

All the number stuff is total B.S.  All there is is you.  You’re talking to yourself assigning yourself numbers.  The LOC numbering system is uber self-deceptive.  I’m surprised you even buy into that frankly.  All there is is you and you’re all alone talking to yourself.  

All stuff is B.S. Yet, stuff is fun. Stuff is interesting. Stuff is cool. And yes, if we look closely enough it's all B.S.

It's not whether it's true, it's whether we are attached to believing anything is true.

[Joseph Maynor]

8 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

All stuff is B.S. Yet, stuff is fun. Stuff is interesting. Stuff is cool. And yes, if we look closely enough it's all B.S.

It's not whether it's true, it's whether we are attached to believing anything is true.

Yeah but quantifying Enlightenment is particularly deceptive.  I think Leo is kinda taking it seriously not just in jest.  So, I thought it was helpful to put a pin through that balloon right away even if I’m seen as a less fun guy in so doing.  Enlightenment requires that Truth be valued higher than all else, even desire for fun. 

Edited September 13, 2018 by Joseph Maynor