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Duplicate post *NM* Dan Send a noteboard - 11/03/2012 03:28:58 PM
They may be "atheolatrial", so to speak, but the existence of deities is not explicitly denied beyond the sense that the permanence and independent reality of anything within samsara is refuted. The "ultimate reality" may be impersonal, but that, if anything, fits with the concept of the divine that many in the present day have when they say the word "God". Few, if any, people these days picture God as a hoary, bearded old man sitting on a cloud and frowning (or smiling, take your pick) down at Creation.

The figure of Christ is actually strikingly similar to the figure of the Buddha. Both offer a way to salvation/enlightenment that involves a renunciation of material attachments, just acts and behavior and a reinterpretation of spiritual reality that makes the old temple cults obsolete and worthless. Both are universalist creeds that grew out of narrow ethno-religious traditions, and both influenced those narrow traditions and forced them to evolve to remain marginally relevant in modern society (though both are essentially relics of a bygone era).

I think that any reading you do on Akhenaten will disappoint you. His "monotheism" was really closer to the "national deity" concept that was present in the Near East in the Iron Age, where a polytheistic world was assumed but one god assumed primacy and was worshipped almost exclusively. The concept is similar to, but not exactly, henotheism. The development was what we would today call "political", though obviously in ancient Egypt the ideas of separate "religious" and "political" spheres would be an alien concept. The temples had grown powerful, and Akhenaten sought to wreck their power and consolidate the state cult around himself as the living expression of his prime deity, the Aten (probably actually a-t:'n based on Amarna transcriptions in Akkadian, the whole name almost certainly pronounced i:x-na-a-ti:'n, though in correspondence he is referred to by his Horus name, spelled "mery-aten" but in Amarna letters mai-ati:'n). It was sort of like the destruction of the monasteries in Reformation England combined with the Stalinist cult of personality, and very, very light on the philosophy from the extant records.


This message last edited by Dan on 11/03/2012 at 03:31:51 PM
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Atheism: The Iconoclasm of the West? - 10/03/2012 05:42:56 AM 1291 Views
I think about as highly of athiesm as I do of christianity. *NM* - 10/03/2012 05:54:20 AM 355 Views
I would chide you on that basis for having a love/hate relationship with God, but who does not? - 10/03/2012 06:05:11 AM 521 Views
If the divine made men... - 10/03/2012 06:27:42 AM 516 Views
True, but by the same token, in denying our nature we deny the divine. - 10/03/2012 06:57:40 AM 531 Views
I was actually just saying in Skype this is the first post you've made in a long time I've enjoyed. - 10/03/2012 07:02:56 AM 550 Views
Thanks? It is all Dans fault, really. - 10/03/2012 07:21:19 AM 819 Views
But you do comparable things all the time! - 10/03/2012 08:35:31 AM 744 Views
You've made this analogy before and it's still a bad one, those aren't comparable - 10/03/2012 03:43:08 PM 629 Views
You said what I was thinking far more respectfully than I probably would have. - 11/03/2012 12:14:55 AM 597 Views
... and apparently it was a waste of time - 11/03/2012 03:27:04 AM 537 Views
Perhaps he just missed it in all my spam? - 11/03/2012 04:59:31 AM 608 Views
Basically what Isaac said. *NM* - 10/03/2012 07:22:07 PM 306 Views
who? *NM* - 11/03/2012 12:00:13 AM 287 Views
Me - 11/03/2012 03:31:51 AM 564 Views
You're right and wrong. - 10/03/2012 05:09:32 PM 941 Views
Re: You're right and wrong. - 11/03/2012 12:28:25 AM 848 Views
Nope, Buddhists are explicitly atheist and also explicitly Ontologically engaged - 11/03/2012 01:39:20 AM 849 Views
Actually, Buddhists are not explicitly atheist in the conventional sense of the world. - 11/03/2012 02:42:36 AM 648 Views
Yeah, that's very true. - 11/03/2012 03:27:09 PM 742 Views
My Buddhist readings are definitely Tibet-focused. - 11/03/2012 04:00:17 PM 794 Views
Duplicate post *NM* - 11/03/2012 03:28:58 PM 374 Views
What exactly do you mean by "The irreparable damage it inflicted in the Great Schism"? - 10/03/2012 07:57:59 PM 721 Views
That Byzantiums iconoclasm was one of the many wedges between it and Rome that led to the Schism. - 11/03/2012 12:27:05 AM 642 Views
Bull. Shit. - 11/03/2012 01:54:07 AM 712 Views
I did not say it was decisive, but that it did irreparable damage to the relationship. - 11/03/2012 04:23:43 AM 730 Views
Bull. Shit. - 11/03/2012 04:30:08 AM 593 Views
It is not like I just pulled it out of my rear, any more than my HS history text or Wikipedia did. - 11/03/2012 04:57:31 AM 671 Views
Bull. Shit. - 11/03/2012 05:14:01 AM 746 Views
Irreparable damage is damage that cannot be repaired, not necessarily serious or fatal. - 11/03/2012 10:34:57 AM 816 Views
ο κοπρος. του ταυρου. - 11/03/2012 02:19:11 PM 777 Views
Very edifying; can you do Mandarin or Swahili next? - 12/03/2012 05:47:23 PM 683 Views
No. Even English seems to be beyond your grasp. - 12/03/2012 06:29:50 PM 592 Views
Citing scripture does not justify telling me to kill myself. - 13/03/2012 12:08:02 AM 726 Views
I'm not telling you to; God is. - 13/03/2012 12:35:45 AM 509 Views
Or can only you use that sort of specious logic? *NM* - 13/03/2012 03:50:20 PM 261 Views
And re: particular bullshit - 11/03/2012 02:33:15 PM 701 Views
Re: And re: particular bullshit - 13/03/2012 12:07:42 AM 608 Views
Give it up already. You are wrong. - 12/03/2012 12:53:37 AM 896 Views

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