Please present good reasons for philosophical naturalism

[Smellyoldgit]

Ichinen sanzen doesn't have a Wiki entry, so that's me fucked!

[Riddler]

Kinich Ahau wrote

Nicely put! I didn't understand that first paragraph though.

T'ien T'ai did offer a caveat that it's a real bastard to fathom — but I guess that's theories of everythingness for you. Still, supernaturalism apologists never seem to have a problem with 'no one understands it therefore it must be true'. So at least we're on a level playing field here.

Smelly wrote

Ichinen sanzen doesn't have a Wiki entry, so that's me fucked!

Hey, you're right, it doesn't. That's my work cut out for this weekend then.

[Smellyoldgit]

Riddler wrote

Hey, you're right, it doesn't. That's my work cut out for this weekend then.

If the tedious bullshit of Alan Billups' page is anything to go by, I think you should patent a cure for insomnia.

[Riddler]

Smellyoldgit wrote

...tedious bullshit of Alan Billups' page...

Don't get me started.

[Smellyoldgit]

Being a great fan of brevity, trawling through tomes of obvious horseshit has never been high on my agenda, so I did well to get part way through this steaming heap, till I lost the will to shit when he started rabbiting on about spiritual wankosity with such gay abandon.

Still, Billups comes nowhere near the masters of muck-spreading and I doubt he’ll ever match the cannibalistic crap these prize jerks spewed on turning crackers & plonk into weapons grade bullshit.

[Riddler]

That's actually one of Billup's more lucid essays -- pulled, as it is, and regurgitated in half-digested form, from other people's work, then tagged with his own name. As you might gather from the domain name, he uses this blog to promote himself as some kind of Buddhist Malcolm X. No doubt there's another long, turgid, essay in there where he outlines how the oneness of all phenomena can best be propagated by digging gulfs between people of different skin colours.

Curiously, it was an account of ichinen sanzen -- albeit a much more lay-accessible one than this -- that initially persuaded me Buddhism could be done with minimal spiritual wankosity, and to check out if the mantra meditation did what it said on the tin. At its heart, there's a strong philosophical base for naturalism, which covers all the objections that supernaturalists could throw at it.

[edit: Oh look! 333 posts. The mark of half a beast. That'll go nicely in my freezer.]