Posts by fulltimestudent

Just back from China. Had a great time as usual. This time, instead of trying to see something related to my studies, I just relaxed and visited friends. My translating friend who has often accompanied me on my visits, was really tired. So I gave up my own plans and just went where he could relax.

Also, I noted during my 2014 visit that the internet seems to have become an integral part of Chinese life. The number of Chinese netizens is approaching 700,000,000, and more and more business is conducted over the web. The success of Jack Ma's company Alibaba is evidence of that. I also noted then that many hotels were using booking services, like ctrip.com, elong.com, Agoda.com, Trivago.com, some of which are western and some Chinese. Since we like to travel F.I.T. (Free and Independent Travelers) which means we can change our plans if we want to, my friend decided to use that service and bought a laptop to take and use. (internet cafes are still around, but hard to use as the base language is Chinese)

We were able to use such booking services effectively and got better rates when we did so.

(Next time I'll also use a prepaid debit card - which will ensure a room is available, even if we arrive late and night ).

But that's not the point of this post.

During a few days stay in Hangzhou ( a city which Marco Polo called the most beautiful city in the world) we decided to visit the Lingyin Buddhist temple. There are tours to this temple of course, but being a cheapskate traveler, I went by a local bus (No.7 if you want to go) A 45 minute journey for about A$0.50, the only downside is the buses (about one every 5 minutes) are really crowded.

The main part of the temple, a sort of square with building on all sides is quite impressive, with a powerful (spiritual?) presence. - I'll post some piks later. There are quite a few ancient rock carvings that are interesting. Huge crowds of people visiting.

So if, there is any religious revival in China, I'd imagine that it is Buddhist, and not Christian. However, while it is difficult to pick out trends and even the number of adherents to any religion in China (partly because of the huge population and partly because of the cross linking of some religions and partly because Chinese may find it difficult to say anyone one religion is the truth) it may be that a majority ( in the range 50 top 60% ) may be agnostic/atheist.

The Wikipedia entry below sums up the results of some of the surveys on Chinese religiosity. Y

The Chinese Family Panel Studies' findings for 2012 show that Buddhists tend to be younger and better educated, while Christians are older and more likely to be illiterate.[85] Furthermore, Buddhists are generally wealthy, while Christians most often belong to the poorest parts of the population.[86] Henan has been found to be host to the largest percentage of Christians of any province of China, about 6%.[80]
According to Zhe Ji, Chan (Zen) Buddhism and individual, non-institutional forms of folk religiosity are particularly successful among the contemporary Chinese youth.[87]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China

So maybe its not surprising that the new President of the Buddhist Association of China is also using the internet to spread Buddhist thought.

Chinese monk tweets enlightenment
Updated: 2015-05-20 09:00
(English.news.cn)
At Longquan Monastery, a 1,000-year-old courtyard building at the foot of the mountains in Beijing's western suburbs, Venerable Master Xuecheng meets with friends and talks about Buddhism.
Wearing his traditional robe and cloth shoes, Xuecheng looks like the other monks in the monastery. However, the newly elected president of the Buddhist Association of China has a modern approach to developing and spreading Buddhism.
Xuecheng said at his election conference in April that Buddhist religious doctrine should positively and actively respond to modern technology and society.
In 2006, he became the first Buddhist monk to have a blog on the Chinese mainland. It has received more than 10 million visits.
In 2008, he used the Longquan Monastery website to promote Buddhist teachings.
And in 2011, Xuecheng launched microblogs in Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Thai and Tibetan across multiple social media platforms, including Sina Weibo, Tencent and Twitter. The Weibo account has more than 300,000 followers.
"All the translation is done for free by about 300 domestic and foreign volunteers," he says.
He expects his microblogs to act as bridges between different countries, nationalities and cultures.

Three forums focusing on new media applications for Buddhism will be held at the fourth World Buddhist Forum in October in east China's Jiangsu Province, according to Xuecheng.

Born in 1966, Xuecheng was raised by his Buddhist mother who always took him to religious events. Inspired by Xuanzang (602-664), a noted Buddhist monk of the Tang dynasty who traveled to India and stayed there for years studying Buddhism, Xuecheng became a monk at 16.
He earned a post-graduate degree from the Buddhist Academy of China in 1991 and went on to become dean of the Buddhist Academy of Fujian.
Now he is abbot of three influential temples: Famen in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Guanghua in southeast China's Fujian Province, and Longquan Monastery.
"Buddhism has never been out of date," he says. "What I have been doing is to ease misunderstanding and prejudice toward Buddhism."
At Longquan Monastery, the monks excel not only in Buddhist doctrine, but also boast advanced tech skills and education levels. Roughly 60 percent to 70 percent of the tens of thousands of monks, laypeople and volunteers serving at Longquan have education above the undergraduate level.
His illustrated book, titled "All Troubles are Self-Inflicted," took the "Golden Monkey King" Award at the 11th China International Cartoon and Animation Festival last month in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. All pictures in the book were drawn by his disciples.
Spreading Buddhism through new media requires talented monks and volunteers with higher education, he says.
"Buddhism should not seclude itself from the outside world, but the temple has to sustain the embodiment of Buddha, dharma and sangha," he says.
"Furthermore, it has to be a base for developing charity and a center for spreading Chinese culture."
As a senior monk, he frequently meets and works with Chinese government officials.
"They care about how Buddhism shoulders social responsibility," he says. "Mutual communication helps us find common views and work together to advance social harmony."
In addition to handling daily affairs, Xuecheng also spends time studying Buddhist teachings and learning about current events. His disciple Xianzeng says the master's open and inclusive attitude enables him to study the positive aspects of all living things.
Buddhism entered China during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) and evolved along with Chinese civilization.
Buddhism has been an important part of and transmitter of traditional Chinese culture, according to the master.
"The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation requires the revitalization of its culture," Xuecheng says. "I believe Chinese Buddhism will contribute its wisdom and strength in pushing forward social harmony."

This is just a glimpse into Chinese life today. The complete picture is almost impossible to grasp, as different regions can be quite different.

10

The perpetual End of the World

by Half banana in

one thing common to human culture is a belief that god will punish a dissolute world.

the earliest reference i have encountered is from a cuneiform tablet 4800 years old:.

an assyrian clay tablet dating to approximately 2800 bc was unearthed bearing the words "our earth is degenerate in these latter days.

fulltimestudent

The perpetual End of the World!

Great title for your thread, Half banana!

But of course, its not just the jws that play with this silliness. We can recall that back in the 1990s, half-baked Christian evangelists from many Christian brands played the same advertisement.

And, if we take the time to read Christian history, we find that over and over, Christians having been predicting a end time that never arrives.

A perpetual end, indeed!

38

Was it worth it?

by John Aquila in

for those of you who left family and friends and had to start over from scratch just to get out of the organization, was it worth it?.

.

fulltimestudent

Warm smiles at all the above!

It is not easy to leave, and the personal cost to me (loss of family) was great. But on the plus side, I finally achieved the (my own) New System.

In any case, once I'd arrived at my personal conclusions about Christianity, there was no alternative to leaving, even though I dithered. In the end I was ex-communicated and the decision made for me

12

If you masturbate, your hand will get pregnant! Religious ratbaggery is universal

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the jw org.

used to claim (and probably still does) that masturbation would turn you into a homosexual.

they, of course, failed to explain the process by which that happened and since masturbation is likely a near universal practice, the claim fails the test of logic, as homosexuality is not the majority form of sexuality.. but over in the islamic world, an equally illogical claim is made.. mucahid cihad han, a turkish televangelist .

fulltimestudent

The JW org. used to claim (and probably still does) that masturbation would turn you into a homosexual. They, of course, failed to explain the process by which that happened and since masturbation is likely a near universal practice, the claim fails the test of logic, as homosexuality is not the majority form of sexuality.

But over in the Islamic world, an equally illogical claim is made.

Mücahid Cihad Han, a Turkish televangelist

was answering viewers' questions on 2000 TV on 24 May when one asked him about masturbation.

The viewer said he 'kept masturbating, although he was married, and even during the Umrah', the piligrimage to Mecca performed by Muslims.

In the bizarre response, Han insisted Islam strictly bans masturbation.

'One hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over its rights,' he said, referring to what he claimed to be a saying of Prophet Muhammad.

'If our viewer was single, I could recommend he marry, but what can I say now?' the televangelist added, advising the viewer to 'resist Satan’s temptations'.

The claim has been widely criticized on Turkish and other media. He has also received criticism in the past for calling homosexuality 'evil' and 'the worst of all sins'.

Many have commented how only a very limited number of Islamic interpretations forbid masturbation, with many just consdering it something to be frowned upon. Many mainstream Islamic interpretations even allow it, such as using it to avoiding cheating on your spouse.

'Are there any hand-gynaecologists in the afterlife? Is abortion allowed there?' one Twitter user asked.

- See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/men-who-masturbate-will-find-their-hands-pregnant-afterlife-anti-gay-televangelist-warns2605#sthash.nXxdJJj7.2asOZrlY.dpuf

21

Was Jesus a real person?

by Coded Logic in

why didn't jesus ever write anything?

why are there no letters to jesus?

no painting of jesus from that time?

fulltimestudent

FusionTheism9 hours ago
The issue is, if we have no Roman documents in existence at all today that are dated to 29 to 33 AD, you cannot claim that Romans IGNORED Jesus since we have no knowledge about ANY documents during those years.

Sorry, FT - that's a nonsense claim. Its doubtful that any undated (i.e. a document without an actual date, or referenced by a verifiable event) document from that era could be accurately dated to within a few years. Many documents do not have any information that enable clear dating and they have to be studied by paleographical techniques to give any indication of the period in which they were written.
However there are many documents that are likely written in the first half of the first century CE.
Some of these documents (as an example) likely belong to the first half of the first century. http://www.livescience.com/49489-oldest-known-gospel-mummy-mask.html
Writing materials were not necessarily easy to obtain and re-use of previous documents were common (as that reference indicates)

See also this publication: New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri published in 1979, by G.H.R. Horsley, and published by the Ancient History Documentary Research Centre of Macquarie University, Sydney. (1987).
The likely reason for a lack of written mentions of Jesus, is that Jesus was only one of at least a few charismatic preachers in the rural areas of Galilee, and and up to the circumstances surrounding the the end of his life, there may have been no reason for any authority figure to write anything about him. There was really no reason for the Roman authorities to take any notice of Jesus.*
As far as writings by Jesus are concerned, we have no evidence that he wrote anything. Does that mean he was illiterate? Possibly, though I suspect his trade as a carpenter likely called for at least a basic literacy. But again his preaching activity consisted of charismatic preaching, and while his parables reveal that he may have had social contacts with a wide range of social levels he was not a writer sending out tracts etc. That's one important difference between his organisation of his followers and the organisation of the the Dead Sea Sect, who were highly organised and dependent on written information concerning rules and beliefs.
.--------------------------------------

* There are three basic mentions of Jesus in early non-Christian sources. The Wikipedia entry on the Historicity of Jesus seems to cover them. However, both of the sources in which the mentions are made are 70 to 90 years later.

There are three mentions of Jesus in non-Christian sources which have been used in historical analyses of the existence of Jesus.[19] Jesus is mentioned twice in the works of 1st-century Roman historian Josephus and once in the works of the 2nd-century Roman historian Tacitus.[19][20]
Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus Christ in Books 18 and 20. The general scholarly view is that while the longer passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus, which was then subject to Christian interpolation or forgery.[21][22] Of the other mention in Josephus, Josephus scholar Louis H. Feldman has stated that "few have doubted the genuineness" of Josephus' reference to Jesus in Antiquities 20, 9, 1 and it is only disputed by a small number of scholars.[23][24][25][26]
Roman historian Tacitus referred to 'Christus' and his execution by Pontius Pilate in his Annals(written ca. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44.[27] The very negative tone of Tacitus' comments on Christians make the passage extremely unlikely to have been forged by a Christian scribe.[28] The Tacitus reference is now widely accepted as an independent confirmation of Christ's crucifixion,[29]although some scholars question the authenticity of the passage on various different grounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

I do not have a problem with recognising a historical Jesus, but I do not see any evidence of or for his supernatural activity. The historical Jesus is like so many other humans claiming some special power, for example the Sakyamuni Buddha. Both have become "special" and "magical" in the eyes of their followers, but the powers of neither stand up to an independent assessment. Both were delusional, as we were when we became followers of Jesus in the WTB&TS.

2

How a robot can learn without being programed

by fulltimestudent in

in tomorrow's world, when robots replace humans in many activities, how will robots learn?.

self-learning may be the answer:.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/robots-master-skills-with-deep-learning-technique?utm_source=kurzweilai+daily+newsletter&utm_campaign=99386eaabc-ua-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-99386eaabc-282125545.

fulltimestudent

Watch this robot 'learning.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeVppkoloXs

2

How a robot can learn without being programed

by fulltimestudent in

in tomorrow's world, when robots replace humans in many activities, how will robots learn?.

self-learning may be the answer:.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/robots-master-skills-with-deep-learning-technique?utm_source=kurzweilai+daily+newsletter&utm_campaign=99386eaabc-ua-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-99386eaabc-282125545.

fulltimestudent

In tomorrow's world, when robots replace humans in many activities, how will robots learn?

Self-learning may be the answer:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/robots-master-skills-with-deep-learning-technique?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=99386eaabc-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-99386eaabc-282125545

A brief extract:

Robots master skills with ‘deep learning’ technique
UC Berkeley researchers' new algorithms enable robots to learn motor tasks by trial and error
May 22, 2015

Robot learns to use hammer. What could go wrong? (credit: UC Berkeley)
UC Berkeley researchers have developed new algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks by trial and error, using a process that more closely approximates the way humans learn.
They demonstrated their technique, a type of reinforcement learning, by having a robot complete various tasks — putting a clothes hanger on a rack, assembling a toy plane, screwing a cap on a water bottle, and more — without pre-programmed details about its surroundings.

A new AI approach
“What we’re reporting on here is a new approach to empowering a robot to learn,” said Professor Pieter Abbeel of UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. “The key is that when a robot is faced with something new, we won’t have to reprogram it. The exact same software, which encodes how the robot can learn, was used to allow the robot to learn all the different tasks we gave it.”
The work is part of a new People and Robots Initiative at UC’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). The new multi-campus, multidisciplinary research initiative seeks to keep the advances in artificial intelligence, robotics and automation aligned to human needs.
“Most robotic applications are in controlled environments where objects are in predictable positions,” said UC Berkeley faculty member Trevor Darrell, director of the Berkeley Vision and Learning Center. “The challenge of putting robots into real-life settings, like homes or offices, is that those environments are constantly changing. The robot must be able to perceive and adapt to its surroundings.”

53

Spirituality

by Jonathan Drake in

if you are a current practitioner of some religious faith i would appreciate it if you abstained from this thread entirely.

im curious if anyone has had what could be discribed as a spiritual experience.

i'm currently reading sam harris book waking up and it's very good so far.

fulltimestudent

Xanthippe: Well there was an awakening if you want to call it that about 500 BC when the writings of Greek philosophers such as Plato and also ConfucIus and the teachings of Bhudda reflect that people were discussing treating strangers well and being just in dealing with slaves and people from other nations. See the 'Golden Rule' and particularly notice how Confucius used it 500 years before Jesus.

Perhaps, such issues were being discussed, but no written record has survived to our day.

Why across the world people decided to suddenly start using ethics in dealing with their fellow man we don't know.

One probable explanation is that these ideas were spread across the Asian continent (even the Pre-Socratic Greek thinkers were located in Asia Minor) by the huge trading network that's generally know as the "Silk Road." For example, in Richard Folz's, "Religions of the Silk Road," he describes how many religions 'borrowed' ideas from other religions and that the very first great missionary campaign was initiated by Siddartha Gautama (better known as the Buddha Shakyamuni ), he organised his community of followers (the sangha) so that the laity provided financial support to the monastic class and tied the spread of his teachings to the trading network that was spreading over the Euro-Asian continent.

It seems contradictory, that this organisational system, based on the accumulation of wealth by the laity, was used to spread a religion that promoted self-denial (at least, to the point of choosing the middle way), but that it was so organised seems clear from this quotation from the Buddha's dialogues:

Whoso is virtuous and intelligent,

Shines like fire that blazes.

To him amassing wealth, like a roving bee

Its honey gathering,

Riches mount up as an ant-heap growing high.

When the good layman wealth has so amasssed

Able is he to benefit his clan.

In portions four let him divide that wealth.

So binds he to himself, life's friendly things.

One portion let him spend and taste the fruit.

His business to conduct let him take two.

And portion four let him reserve and hoard;

So there'll be wherewithal in times of need.

Dialogues of the Buddha. Trans: T.W. and C.A.F. Rhys-Davis, Oxford University Press

This amassed wealth eventually became the source of finance for the building of the numerous temples/monasteries that dot East and South East Asia.

But more importantly, because of the changes that Buddhism underwent as it moved through different cultures, it provides insight into what happened to Jewish thought as it came into contact with successive empires that dominated the Jews. Traces of Egyptian thought, Greek thought, Iranian thought, Assyrian thought etc, can all be found in Judaism and therefore in Christianity.

It is not, as the J.Ws claim, the one pure religion given by Yahweh.

PS: The greatest Chinese exponent of Universal love (as opposed to the more limited teachings on love with distinctions, by Kongzi, also known in the west as Confucius), was Mozi, who lived between 470 and 391 BCE. Mozi's views on 'love' are really quite modern, and clearly (if you study them) more advanced that then teachings of Jesus.

22

Should I Shun My Dog?

by snugglebunny in

some background:josie the miniature schnauzer is now 12 years old, so she's old enough to know the difference between right and wrong.

however, she insists on peeing in the middle of my beautifully tended lawn, which, as a consequence, is now covered in brown patches.

i've remonstrated with her a number of times and each time she purports to show a diplay of repentance, that is, she slinks away on her belly with her ears flattened down tightly to her head.

fulltimestudent

There are no dogs in the New Jerusalem - so no true Christian should ever own a dog (Revelation 22:14).

So get rid of the bitch now, before she entices you into sin.