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All of King_of_GAR_Johan's Comments + Replies

[SEQ RERUN] Two Cult Koans
King_of_GAR_Johan00

Could you clarify the mindset behind the question? I am not sure I have a meaningful opinion of it as I am not sure what is meant by the language in the second part of the koan.

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0TheOtherDave
Sure. You were commenting on a post that was riffing on a particular style of Zen koan, and I didn't quite understand, as you put it, the mindset of the comment. So I figured one step towards clarifying it was figuring out whether you were reacting to the general koan-nature of it, or to something specific about this post within that context. One way to get at that was to get your opinion about other things that share the koan-nature. Ganto's Axe is among my favorite Zen koans, and also seems to share certain thematic elements with the post you were commenting on, so I picked that one..
[SEQ RERUN] Two Cult Koans
King_of_GAR_Johan10

I don't think either of the two koans are as instructive as desired.

  1. As previously pointed out, a cult can still teach useful information; noticing that you have learned useful information is not sufficient to differentiate a cult from a non-cult.

  2. It seems there are two different interpretations to the ending of the second koan: that the student understood that clothing doesn't matter, or that he didn't. It depends on whether the clown suit merely represents Robes 2.0 or whether it is counter-cultish behavior.

--- Robes 2.0: What is the point of the ro... (read more)

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0[anonymous]
Could you clarify the mindset behind the question? I am not sure I have a meaningful opinion of it as I am not sure what is meant by the language in the second part of the koan.
0TheOtherDave
What is your opinion about the traditional Ganto's Axe koan?
But There's Still A Chance, Right?
King_of_GAR_Johan00

Actually, what exactly are the arguments/evidence that distinguish these two hypotheses?

  • Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.
  • God tweaked the ape (or common ancestor) blueprint to create the human blueprint.

I'm pretty new at evolutionary biology so I don't really know... anyone want to point me in the right direction?

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1tlhonmey
And that's kind of the problem with assigning importance to the argument.  If our universe is not, in fact, the top-level reality and has some kind of master controlling its every detail we necessarily only get to his influence to the extent that he wishes us to... Natural selection molding creatures to match the universe?  We can see that happening pretty well.   The universe itself being molded to produce a particular type of creature?  How exactly would we even be able to notice that?   The only thing I can personally think of is that, in such a scenario, a universe where the inhabitants somehow developed the ability to more correctly divine the will of their creator from subtle clues and/or racial memory would be less likely to get mushed up and tossed in the wastepaper basket... Or religion could be just a random side-effect of evolution that merely doesn't hurt us badly enough to offset the power of our brains... Perhaps if we someday discover other, unrelated sapient life and it also has religion...  Still wouldn't be proof, but likely to be the most conclusive evidence we could get without either a time machine to go back and see where the old religions really started or some way to look at our universe from outside.