this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
729 points (94.7% liked)
Atheist Memes
5568 readers
23 users here now
About
A community for the most based memes from atheists, agnostics, antitheists, and skeptics.
Rules
-
No Pro-Religious or Anti-Atheist Content.
-
No Unrelated Content. All posts must be memes related to the topic of atheism and/or religion.
-
No bigotry.
-
Attack ideas not people.
-
Spammers and trolls will be instantly banned no exceptions.
-
No False Reporting
-
NSFW posts must be marked as such.
Resources
International Suicide Hotlines
Non Religious Organizations
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Ex-theist Communities
Other Similar Communities
!religiouscringe@midwest.social
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Absolutely, people who achieve enlightenment interpret the experience through the lens of their own culture. Buddhism is that truth seen through the lens of Buddha's Hinduism, Christianity (minus anything Paul wrote) is that truth seen through the lens of Jesus's Jew upbringing.
There's even people who have achieved it nowadays that interpret life as a sort of video game.
You seem pretty certain that this "single truth" is achievable and that people have done so.
What if their reported experiences are just delusions?
If people across time and space who have sought the answer to the question "What is the nature of the universe and what is the meaning of life" all came to the same delusion, then fuck it, let's all be delusional together because it's apparently inherent to human nature.
My point is that we have no idea they all had the same delusion. What each refer to as Enlightenment may be very different.
Even so, they may have all watched the same film, ingested the same chemical compounds or suffered the same childhood injury.
Your hypothesis would be comforting if true (particularly as we are not discussing supernature) but I remain skeptical.
You have no idea that they did, and you have no idea they didn't.
That's why I said before that if you can see how religions rhyme, you can find a core message in all of them. And that, I think, is the truth.
Given we haven't even defined Enlightenment between ourselves it's unlikely everyone else who claims to have achieved it will agree have the same definition/experience.
You are correct I have no idea, but my prior expectation is that these experiences are independently located within each person's brain, without any external connection.