contemplans wrote:tiltbillings wrote:contemplans wrote:
The acorn has within itself teh potential to be an oak tree. It is actually an acorn
Not really. An acorn is not a singular thing; rather, it is always composite thing. Each bit of the acorn would have to be actual actualities following your logic.
It is a singular entity in the sense that it is more than its parts.
And you can say that about each of the parts.
It has a unified form.
Due to causes and conditions, but there is no need to posit and unverifiable and illogical prime cause.
We and the acorn have similar composition, we are made of the same molecules etc., but we are not the same. I don't have the (direct) potentiality to become an oak tree.
You have an indirect potential to become an oak tree?
tiltbillings wrote:Kamma, on the other hand, refers to the ethical conditioning based upon choice, which is something that is, in fact, workable empirically.
Kamma is more than this. How's the empirical way for the numerous lifetimes you are reaping karma for right now?
Ungrammatical sentence. I am not sure what you are asking.
How about acting and intending without reaping karma?
One does not reap kamma.
How about Nibbana, which if you've attained it, no one else can measure nor see your attainment?
Which makes it like any number of human experiences. The point is that it is a possible human experience, but an omniscience, omnipotent god is not open to direct human experience.
If you say, well we see these things through effects in the empirical world, then I would say that is the same answer I would give in respect to what I am saying.
Damdifino what you mean here.
tiltbillings wrote:Just is what? The problem with this anemic philosophy is that is really does not account for the fact that each bit of the process must be a complete actuality, otherwise how could it exist?
It exists in one respect, while being potential in another. My body does not have pure existence, because it has within it the potential to die. not only that, though, it is constantly undergoing this change. The actuality we have is true, but it isn't steady or constant. There is within it a possibility of change. JUST IS, refers to something that does not have these possibilities.
In other words “JUST IS” is naught more than a figment of your imagination, having no empirical basis.
tiltbillings wrote:
No nibbana is not. Nibbana is not a thing, as has been carefully pointed out to you using the suttas. Nibbana has not a thing to do with what you are talking about.
I am not saying it is a thing. It is a state or dimension. It is related, though. It is constant, steady, no possibility of change or dying, outside of samsara. There is a relation there.
Not that you have shown. It certainly is not a “dimension,” but it is certainty the “state” of the mind being free of greed, hatred, and delusion.
tiltbillings wrote:
This is something you do a lot, which is conflate, without justification the Buddha’s teaching with your Christian stuff, but there is no justification for it. Actually, nibbana is not a goal outside the sense sphere.
Final nibbana is outside of the sense sphere.
You cannot meaningfully say that.
When one attains Nibbana, that break through moment, the senses are not involved at all. The senses come back, but they are related to in a whole different way.
Wrong, as usual.
tiltbillings wrote:
Only if one uses certain base assumptions.
Here are the asssumptions: 1) Things that exist undergoing change. 2) Their existence needs an explanation.
Do they? Do we assume that their explanation is some sort of unverifiable first cause?
contemplans wrote: Will is not a thing, but a process. As I said to retro, you have to prove the jump from all powerful to all doing.
So, you are saying, the supposed god did not create processes.
But a process with justification can be said to be a
thing that happens.
Freser:
"At least where the sheer existence of things is concerned, He and He alone is directly causing them at every instant."
There is nothing here that says a process can not be considered a thing. Will exists, action exist. Certainly our language allows us to speak of action and processes as things happening. You obviously see the incoherence in Freser's excellent statement and are trying your best to get way from it. Even physical things can be seen, with complete justification, as processes. Your attempt to dodge the incoherence of Freser's statement, by trying to make a dichotomy between things and processes, fails.