just an observation

[yosi]

I don't know if it's only me
but sometimes I have this feeling that there are some poeple here ,who tend to blame others for being here in this "forbidden" site that cater some "forbidden" poeple ( they like transexuals , don't tell anyone ).

is it just my imagination?

I refer to the males here , in case of doubt 8)

ps
sorry for my bad english

[raybbaby]

can you sight an example of this "blaming" you speak of? I think it is your imagination, perhaps even a bit of projection on your part. Who in fact decided any of this was "forbidden"? Hrrmm?

[MacShreach]

can you sight an example

LOL at least Yosi apologised.....

[MacShreach]

I don't know if it's only me
but sometimes I have this feeling that there are some poeple here ,who tend to blame others for being here in this "forbidden" site that cater some "forbidden" poeple ( they like transexuals , don't tell anyone ).

is it just my imagination?

I refer to the males here , in case of doubt 8)

ps
sorry for my bad english

I'm not really sure I get what you mean, Yosi. Maybe there are some men here who put down others for being on a site that caters for what some might regard as a "forbidden" subject, but I've not really been aware of it myself. Do you have any examples of what you mean?--no need to name names if you don't want to.

[yosi]

can you sight an example of this "blaming" you speak of? I think it is your imagination, perhaps even a bit of projection on your part. Who in fact decided any of this was "forbidden"? Hrrmm?


there are some aspects in our life which defines what is forbidden , like religion for example .

"transexuals" is a forbbiden subject in religion ,because "it's not what god intended it to be" .
this opinion prefers to "forget" the simple fact that transexuals are also god made , what other option exists?

back to our subject , some poeple come to a forum called "hung angels" , just because it's a "forbidden" , "stolen water taste sweeter" as some poeple say , and than you read sentences like "I will fuck a transexual but never date her" or "if you like transexuals you must be gay"

all of us see these sentences ...........

I think I answered MacShreach question as well :wink:

[JeniferTS]

actually adam was a female to male ts and eve was a male to female ts so nothing is "forbidden" about this site :)

[archineer]

You know religion isn't real right?

[BLKGSXR]

You know religion isn't real right?you know that your opinion right?

[archineer]

You know religion isn't real right?you know that your opinion right?

No. I know it flies in the face of basic scientific facts.

[BLKGSXR]

You know religion isn't real right?you know that your opinion right?

No. I know it flies in the face of basic scientific facts.thats like saying the theory of Evolution is wrong false, and Impossible.....Again dude Its your opinion some grow up with no religion others have and believe in something or someone....

[MacShreach]

actually adam was a female to male ts and eve was a male to female ts so nothing is "forbidden" about this site :)

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Sharp, girl, sharp...

[deee757]

actually adam was a female to male ts and eve was a male to female ts so nothing is "forbidden" about this site :)


Not true, is just someones interpretation. This is the stuff that stunts validity of religion.

[MacShreach]

You know religion isn't real right?you know that your opinion right?

No. I know it flies in the face of basic scientific facts.thats like saying the theory of Evolution is wrong false, and Impossible.....Again dude Its your opinion some grow up with no religion others have and believe in something or someone....

No, this is not a matter of opinion. Scientific knowledge and religious belief are two totally different things. The Theory of Evolution can be proved in many ways, for example through its ability to predict observable phenomena; this cannot be said of any religious belief. One is fact, the other is faith.

People are quite entitled to the hold non-scientific beliefs as long as they impinge on no-one else; however that is not the same as accepting that these beliefs have the same value as scientific knowledge. And furthermore, I have yet to come across a religion that did not impinge on others, and for some it appears to be a core principle.

[MacShreach]

actually adam was a female to male ts and eve was a male to female ts so nothing is "forbidden" about this site :)


Not true, is just someones interpretation. This is the stuff that stunts validity of religion.

What validity?

Oh, Irony. I get it. :lol: :lol:

[deee757]

[quote=BLKGSXR][quote=archineer]You know religion isn't real right?you know that your opinion right?

No, this is not a matter of opinion. Scientific knowledge and religious belief are two totally different things. The Theory of Evolution can be proved in many ways, for example through its ability to predict observable phenomena; this cannot be said of any religious belief. One is fact, the other is faith.

People are quite entitled to the hold non-scientific beliefs as long as they impinge on no-one else; however that is not the same as accepting that these beliefs have the same value as scientific knowledge. And furthermore, I have yet to come across a religion that did not impinge on others, and for some it appears to be a core principle.

What if the big bang theory was the method god chose to create the world? Than science and religion could co exist. yeaaaaaaaaaaa

[MacShreach]

What if the big bang theory was the method god chose to create the world? Than science and religion could co exist. yeaaaaaaaaaaa

Noooooooooo........

[BLKGSXR]

Maybeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....Send this thread to Politic&Religion....

[deee757]

Maybeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....Send this thread to Politic&Religion....

Is in general discussion....................i digress

But macshreach, for you to definitely say "no" is just like the Christians defiantly saying "yes". And is why this debate will continue long after we are dead. Or unless Jesus jumps out the sky.

[yosi]

Maybeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....Send this thread to Politic&Religion....

trying to change this thread subject? :lol:

[BLKGSXR]

Maybeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....Send this thread to Politic&Religion....

trying to change this thread subject? :lol:were you dropped as a child? that makes no sense.

[Olivia Love]

oh well transsexuals r still a taboo nowday in the society and we are considered the Forbidden fruits by some .... lmaoooooo!

[DC]

there was no big band and religion is false too, the true history of this planet is still unknown.. more then likely our ancestors came from the stars and other planets..

[MacShreach]

Maybeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....Send this thread to Politic&Religion....

Is in general discussion....................i digress

But macshreach, for you to definitely say "no" is just like the Christians defiantly saying "yes". .

No, it's not, actually. A scientific view proceeds from basic observation of simple phenomena that can be confirmed by simple experimental proofs to more complex observed phenomena; religious belief depends on the scribblings of a few Bronze-Age and Iron Age priests who considered that the Earth was flat.

There is no comparison at all. One is fact, the other is fiction. That simple. I mean, believe anything you like, and I'll stand up for your right to do it, just don't expect to be taken seriously.

[MacShreach]

there was no big band and religion is false too, the true history of this planet is still unknown.. more then likely our ancestors came from the stars and other planets..

You mean Duke Ellington was a myth? I'm gutted.

[MacShreach]

more then likely our ancestors came from the stars and other planets..

Yup, that's it. Your brain is about as acute as your grasp of orthography.

[DC]

you have all the answers don't you Mac, typical scottish fuck head

[giovanni_hotel]

MacShreach, intellectual arrogance is the first sign of one possessing a flawed overall analytical approach to the world.

Atheism is as much a 'faith based' system as is a belief in spirituality, the presence of the supernatural, and the existence of a Higher Power.

Any truly honest scientist, PhD, or academic in any given field of inquiry will admit there is more we DON'T know about the world than the limited empirical evidence we presently have that passes for 'knowledge'.

I don't like the term 'intelligent design', mainly because it's a phrase that's been co-opted by right-wing fundamentalists and evangelicals, however the concept does have merit.

Atheists would have us believe that the sum total of life as we know it, from the precise calibration of Earth's orbit around the sun, (a few degrees difference in either direction and Earth would be inhabitable to humans), the biological basis for consciousness, the cellular mechanism that allows a skin cell to become a nerve cell, the counterintuitive nature of quantum physics, etc., is one big illogical cosmic 'accident'.

Meaning, atheists don't know why IT happened, just that IT did, randomly, and the presence of life on Earth falls within scientific probability.

When truthfully, the mere existence of life on Earth and the countless species that coexist on it is beyond improbability, chance, or biological serendipity.

Spirituality, or faith, is outside the parameters of empirical science; as difficult as it would be to measure the temperature of fire with a wooden ruler.

Alternately, most of the theories of quantum, particle, and astrophysics are based in many instances more on 'faith' in the principles of classical physics and pure theoretical speculation that actual empirical evidence.

At which point physics begins to look more like mysticism than science.

Digression...

Back to the original OP.

Yes, yosi, there are guys on HA who have a difficult time reconciling their attraction to women with cocks, and will attempt to specify how their attraction is different from other members and not the same, impying this somehow preserves their 'hetero' status.

On the opposite end, there are women on this site who have a hard time accepting the fact there are men attracted to them in part because they DO have a cock, and therefore are quick to call these members 'fags' are 'cock whores' if they gravitate too close towards their genitalia.

Look, I'm attracted to both TG and GGs, but just because that's what you are physically, it doesn't mean I'll be attracted to YOU, because on a forum like HA it's difficult to 'know' people beyond the superficial.

I joined HA for the friendly banter, to look at all the pretty pictures, and belong to a forum where as a 'straight' man, my intense lust for TGs wasn't considered abnormal.

Get in where you fit in, Yosi.

Screw all the haterz and trick biotches!! :)

[MacShreach]

MacShreach, intellectual arrogance is the first sign of one possessing a flawed overall analytical approach to the world.

Atheism is as much a 'faith based' system as is a belief in spirituality, the presence of the supernatural, and the existence of a Higher Power.

Any truly honest scientist, PhD, or academic in any given field of inquiry will admit there is more we DON'T know about the world than the limited empirical evidence we presently have that passes for 'knowledge'.

I don't like the term 'intelligent design', mainly because it's a phrase that's been co-opted by right-wing fundamentalists and evangelicals, however the concept does have merit.

Atheists would have us believe that the sum total of life as we know it, from the precise calibration of Earth's orbit around the sun, (a few degrees difference in either direction and Earth would be inhabitable to humans), the biological basis for consciousness, the cellular mechanism that allows a skin cell to become a nerve cell, the counterintuitive nature of quantum physics, etc., is one big illogical cosmic 'accident'.

Meaning, atheists don't know why IT happened, just that IT did, randomly, and the presence of life on Earth falls within scientific probability.

When truthfully, the mere existence of life on Earth and the countless species that coexist on it is beyond improbability, chance, or biological serendipity.

Spirituality, or faith, is outside the parameters of empirical science; as difficult as it would be to measure the temperature of fire with a wooden ruler.

Alternately, most of the theories of quantum, particle, and astrophysics are based in many instances more on 'faith' in the principles of classical physics and pure theoretical speculation that actual empirical evidence.

At which point physics begins to look more like mysticism than science.



Ah, how very disappointing; I had thought more highly of you. There is no arrogance in understanding the difference between fact and fiction, between that which can be proved and that which can only be believed in.

There is certainly a very great deal that we do not know about the world, and for that matter the universe, that we live in, but the answers, when they come, will come from science, not the milk-sop of religion.

There is nothing random about our being here, and nothing improbable either; in fact the series of events that led to us being here could hardly have had any other outcome.

Even your statement that faith is outside the scope of science is untrue, and I have no doubt at all that there is a good evolutionary reason why people feel the need to invent the things they do to believe in.

But as I said, you can believe in God, "intelligent design" crop circles, chemtrails, leprechauns, fairies at the bottom of the garden, the booglie-wooglie man under the bed and anything else that takes your fancy, and as long as your beliefs don't impinge on my freedoms, I'll defend your right to do that; but don't expect to be taken seriously.

BTW I strongly suggest you read Richard Dawkin's book "The God Delusion." Or for that matter Darwin's "Origin of Species."

[MacShreach]

you have all the answers don't you Mac, typical scottish fuck head

Gosh, are we English?

[giovanni_hotel]

MacShreach, you are using spirituality, faith, and religion interchangeably, when in fact they express separate and distinct modes of thought about the nature of human 'beingness'.

I have no problem with someone questioning the origins or validity of religion as a whole, but your absolute belief in the infallibility of the scientific method to explain the known and unknown world is equally disturbing, in that you appear to hold an unshakable belief in a methodology that is at best limited.

The scientific, empirical model is the most reliable investigative approach available to us, in most instances, but it still can't provide all the answers to everything.

When someone uses the term 'faith', it does not mean necessarily they believe in " crop circles, chemtrails, leprechauns, fairies at the bottom of the garden, the booglie-wooglie man under the bed and anything else that takes your fancy."

It means they believe there is an existence beyond the limitations of human consciousness, however that may be expressed.

I have yet to read or heard someone give a plausible explanation of the Big Bang; the process by which existence comes out of total nothingness.

I also suggest you read two authors MacShreach; neurosurgeon Allan Hamilton's book "The Scalpel and the Soul", and Søren Kierkegaard's " Fear and Trembling", "Philosophical Fragments", and "Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments".

Atheism is a faith-based, belief system, MacShreach; an absolute world view based less on science and more on the presuppostion that all is 'knowable", and that which is unknown has yet to be discovered, or doesn't exist.

There is no room for doubt at all in this belief system, much like the Christian or Muslim fundamentalist. :)


Fundamentalists of any stripe make very poor researchers, MacShreach!!

[MacShreach]

MacShreach, you are using spirituality, faith, and religion interchangeably, when in fact they express separate and distinct modes of thought about the nature of human 'beingness'.



No, I have not made that confusion; you may be reading it where it is not. Faith and spirituality are not the same thing at all; faith is the belief in that which cannot be proved, and spirituality is an inner feeling of, if you like, wonder. Like many atheists I have many spiritual moments, inspired by music art, or, perhaps most especially, the incredible wonder of the perfect harmony of Variation, Natural Selection and Evolution, which allows a bunch of carbon molecules to do what I am doing right now.





I have no problem with someone questioning the origins or validity of religion as a whole, but your absolute belief in the infallibility of the scientific method to explain the known and unknown world is equally disturbing, in that you appear to hold an unshakable belief in a methodology that is at best limited.




Well, you may believe that; but it is just a part of your faith.




When someone uses the term 'faith', it does not mean necessarily they believe in " crop circles, chemtrails, leprechauns, fairies at the bottom of the garden, the booglie-wooglie man under the bed and anything else that takes your fancy."



It doesn't matter; they believe in that which they can't prove, and there is no difference in this regard between gods and booglie-wooglie men. Scientifically prove the existence of any one, and I will accept that proof; until you do, they are just amusing fantasies or beasties to scare children with, whichever you prefer.




I have yet to read or heard someone give a plausible explanation of the Big Bang; the process by which existence comes out of total nothingness.



That is irrelevant. We have already agreed that there is much that science does not yet know. Not much more than 50 years ago no-one realised the universe was even expanding. Expecting all the answers to be there on a plate is part of a faith-based mindset, not a scientific one.




I also suggest you read two authors MacShreach; neurosurgeon Allan Hamilton's book "The Scalpel and the Soul", and Søren Kierkegaard's " Fear and Trembling", "Philosophical Fragments", and "Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments".



I read Kierkegaard when I was at school, at which point he had been dead well over a hundred years. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I suspect he may have felt differently if he had lived in today's world. In any case, I found his preoccupation with faith disappointing and have no desire to revisit it.




Atheism is a faith-based, belief system, MacShreach; an absolute world view based less on science and more on the presuppostion that all is 'knowable", and that which is unknown has yet to be discovered, or doesn't exist.



No, it is not, or at least it is not in my case. Scientific scepticism cannot be reduced to a faith-based model. It is a refusal to accept explanations which cannot be proved, and this applies whatever we are talking about. If you are suggesting that an acceptance of what can be empirically and scientifically proved is a "belief system" comparable to a faith based mindset, then you have got yourself very seriously mixed up somewhere. Produce a proof of the existence of gods (or booglie-wooglie men) that will stand scientific rigour, and I'll accept it.

I do not think everything can be understood; I think that as we proceed with our understanding, more and more mysteries will be revealed, which will in turn be solved, in time, but will reveal yet more. From molecule to atom to quark and beyond.




There is no room for doubt at all in this belief system, much like the Christian or Muslim fundamentalist. :)



(sigh.) You were doing quite well until you dropped this clanger, you known. No. A science based viewpoint is based on doubt, or to give it another name, scepticism. It is a primary difference between faith and science; the first accepts whatever it is told because it is part of the faith, the other demands proof.





Fundamentalists of any stripe make very poor researchers, MacShreach!!

Fundamentalism, in the sense that you appear to mean it, is a function of the faith-based mindset. If you are confusing that with scepticism, a desire for actual knowledge rather than glib answers and a demand for proof that can be explained to anyone and does not require suspension of disbelief, you are either a fool or disingenuous. And sceptics make very good researchers.

By the way, why do you keep repeating my name? Are you preaching?

[giovanni_hotel]

We've hijacked this thread enough, Mac.

Atheism is NOT the same as skepticism; I would call an agnostic a person who practices skepticism, which historically was conceived in response to theism and gnosticism.

An atheist may reach their particular world view through scientific rigor, but one that level is achieved, there is no more doubt or skepticism. Atheism becomes a belief system unto itself that requires no more proofs.


As you must know, there a fields of study within theoretical physics that resemble science fiction more than pure science, especially when it comes to explaining the behavior of the cosmos.

Science IS a belief system, underpinned by logic.

If the conclusion reached through empirical enquiry does not seem logical or 'rational', in many cases based on the preconceived conclusion one expects to reach, the results are discarded.

Do you believe in the possibility of intelligent life on other planets? A true atheist and faithful Christian would not.

The atheist would not because there is no scientific proof, and the Christian would not because it is never mentioned by God in the Bible.

If you believe there are truths regarding the material world that are unknown yet so far cannot be proven, but may be some day,( a faith-based presmise!) technically this would not classify you as a pure atheist.

Atheism has always been defined to me as a belief system because there is no doubt or skepticism.

Maybe you're an atheist with agnostic tendencies..

It tickles me when 'atheists' confronted with some of the great mysteries of human existence never admit there are simply unknowns in the universe, and always will be, instead argue that there are merely subsets of knowledge that we humans have yet to acquire.

Lastly, atheism is more than a non-belief in the supernatural, or a Higher Power.

It is also defined as a lack of belief in anything that cannot be proven without physical evidence.

[MrsKellyPierce]

I say sex is sex and sex is fun how you get off isn't important as long as you are getting off and you are clean and not hurting anyone!

[giovanni_hotel]

I say sex is sex and sex is fun how you get off isn't important as long as you are getting off and you are clean and not hurting anyone!

Amen :D

[yosi]

Back to the original OP.

Yes, yosi, there are guys on HA who have a difficult time reconciling their attraction to women with cocks, and will attempt to specify how their attraction is different from other members and not the same, impying this somehow preserves their 'hetero' status.

On the opposite end, there are women on this site who have a hard time accepting the fact there are men attracted to them in part because they DO have a cock, and therefore are quick to call these members 'fags' are 'cock whores' if they gravitate too close towards their genitalia.

Look, I'm attracted to both TG and GGs, but just because that's what you are physically, it doesn't mean I'll be attracted to YOU, because on a forum like HA it's difficult to 'know' people beyond the superficial.

I joined HA for the friendly banter, to look at all the pretty pictures, and belong to a forum where as a 'straight' man, my intense lust for TGs wasn't considered abnormal.

Get in where you fit in, Yosi.

Screw all the haterz and trick biotches!! :)

thanx , good to see some poeple here who think with the right head :wink:

[yosi]

I always like to read 2 inteligent poeple , one always has to keep an open mind because there is so much to learn even in a lifetime.


MacShreach:
"I do not think everything can be understood; I think that as we proceed with our understanding, more and more mysteries will be revealed"

giovanni_hotel:
"Science IS a belief system, underpinned by logic"

it is true that science is in a way ,a belief system , underpinned by logic and facts , but the history of science is also full of cases of scientific theories that were turned completely upsidedown , by new facts.

examples? the most famous is the scientific concept which claimed that this green/blue ball we all live on is flat, we all know what happened to that person who dared to doubt them.

this green/blue ball had more surprises under his sleeve:
about 60 years ago , all the scientific facts showed that we are heading to a new ice age , winters were getting colder and colder , it was claimed that all the air polution we produce is blocking the atmosphere , not allowing the sunrays go through' blocking them , therefore we are heading a new ice age.

1 new fact ,1 new twist in our story, and we are all heading toward a global warming.
try claiming today that this green/blue ball might have more surprises under its sleeve ................. :wink:

on the other hand, faith based belief , don't let new facts change their concept , makes life look much easier that way..............quite boring to others 8)

[giovanni_hotel]

I guess ultimately that's the point, Yosi.

The goal, I think, is to pass through one's life with a healthy dose of skepticism and doubt regarding all things, and to always keep the mind open.

[MacShreach]

We've hijacked this thread enough, Mac.

Atheism is NOT the same as skepticism; I would call an agnostic a person who practices skepticism, which historically was conceived in response to theism and gnosticism.



No, scepticism is an essential part of scientific rigour. This is an inappropriate place to discuss the differences between atheism and agnosticism, but essentially, an atheist says "there are no gods" while an agnostic says "we cannot know god." Inherent in the agnostic position, however, is an acceptance that god actually does exist, we just can neither prove it nor have any meaningful knowledge of such a thing. It is this a priori acceptance of an unproven belief that renders agnosticism a part of the faith-based mindset.




An atheist may reach their particular world view through scientific rigor, but one that level is achieved, there is no more doubt or skepticism.

This is complete nonsense, of course, at least as far as I am concerned, since in the first place, scepticism is an essential part of a scientific view, and in the second, as I have repeatedly said, prove scientifically that there are gods or booglie wooglie men, and I'll accept it.

There may well be atheists who arrive at their viewpoint from a quasi-religious, faith-based mindset such as you appear to be defining, but I am not one of them.





As you must know, there a fields of study within theoretical physics that resemble science fiction more than pure science, especially when it comes to explaining the behavior of the cosmos.



Well, in your opinion, maybe. I'm sure the theoretical physicists don't regard them as fiction.




Science IS a belief system, underpinned by logic.



Wrong again; science is the development of knowledge through the establishment of experimental and empirical proofs. There is a fundamental difference between believing something and having proof for it, which appears to elude you.





If the conclusion reached through empirical enquiry does not seem logical or 'rational', in many cases based on the preconceived conclusion one expects to reach, the results are discarded.




This is complete, utter nonsense. No reputable scientist would ever discard the result of an experiment because it showed something he did not expect. He or she would examine the methodology and if the experiment were properly conducted, conclude that a phenomenon he had hitherto been unaware of was at work, and then proceed to investigate that, or publish for others to. The discovery of penicillin would be a good example of this.





Do you believe in the possibility of intelligent life on other planets?



Yes of course I accept the possibility that intelligent life may exist on other planets; however we have no proof that it does.




A true atheist and faithful Christian would not. The atheist would not because there is no scientific proof, and the Christian would not because it is never mentioned by God in the Bible.



Boy you're really off in the long stuff now aren't you? The absence of a scientific proof does not preclude the possibility of something being the case; if this were not so, no scientist would ever investigate anything, since he or she would conclude that in the absence of proof, it was illusory anyway!

However the faith-based mindset actually rejects proof of anything that conflicts with the given wisdom of the faith.





If you believe there are truths regarding the material world that are unknown yet so far cannot be proven, but may be some day,( a faith-based presmise!) technically this would not classify you as a pure atheist.



You repeatedly project your own impressions on me. Do you do this to other people too? The absence of a proof does not preclude the possibility that a thing may be so; but to believe it is so in the knowledge that there is no proof, and even to deny that such proof is possible, is the faith delusion.




Atheism has always been defined to me as a belief system because there is no doubt or skepticism.



By whom? The parish priest? Perhaps there are atheists of the type you describe. But scepticism lies at the heart of science, as I keep telling you.




Maybe you're an atheist with agnostic tendencies..

[

This is bullshit. You are attempting, again, to project frankly meaningless definitions, which appear to be based on a pretty elementary understanding of philosophy, on me. I don't care a hoot how you define atheism; save it for people who do. And if by "agnostic tendencies" you mean I have an underlying desire to accept a priori beliefs as truth without proof, err, sorry, wrong again. Open-mindedness and scepticism are essential, and complementary, parts of a scientific viewpoint.




It tickles me when 'atheists' confronted with some of the great mysteries of human existence never admit there are simply unknowns in the universe, and always will be, instead argue that there are merely subsets of knowledge that we humans have yet to acquire.




Oh, I think you're really showing your colours here. Let me put that another way; your belief in "unknowns" which by definition cannot be explained, is just a manifestation of a faith-based mindset. There will always be things we do not know; but to say we cannot know them, is just faith.







Lastly, atheism is more than a non-belief in the supernatural, or a Higher Power.

It is also defined as a lack of belief in anything that cannot be proven without physical evidence.

Well, I don't know where you're getting these "definitions" from but they sound very much like the usual BS we hear from believers, designed as a put down for something they cannot otherwise deal with. You possibly ought to stop believing them. But perhaps the crutch of belief is something you can't do without.

As I said, you can believe it, and I'll defend your right to do so, up to the point you impinge on me; but don't expect me to take it seriously.

[trish]

Suppose I claim there’s a dildo in my dresser drawer. How can one confirm that? One strategy is exhaustive search. Check each item and see whether it’s a dildo or not. If you don’t find it by exhaustive search you can be an atheist about the dildo in my drawer. Suppose I claim there’s a Blessed Dildo somewhere in the universe: a dildo that would give any user of it eternal life in the throes of eternal ecstatic bliss. Exhaustive search just won’t do the trick here. The universe is just too big. Are we condemned to be agnostic about the presence of the Blessed Dildo? I think not. Don’t get me wrong. I’m totally open to the possibility that there might be dildos in the universe with fantastic functionality invented by sexual beings far superior to us. But I think we can draw the line at the Blessed Dildo that guarantees an Eternal Life of Ecstatic Bliss. You don’t need a scientific proof to be an atheist about the Blessed Dildo because you know it’s origins. You saw me invent the tale. Likewise, we don’t need a scientific proof to be atheistic about the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god. We have a historical record of his tale. We can see it being invented by different peoples in different places giving contradictory accounts, adding do-dads and forgetting others. It was quite clearly a living work of fiction. It doesn’t require faith not to believe in the Blessed Dildo and it doesn’t require faith not to believe in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god. It just requires a little common sense and some attention the story. What about the Hindu gods and the other religions? Well here we can apply exhaustive search. We can see that each and every religious tradition that has evolved on Earth evolved as a work of fiction. It doesn't require faith to be atheistic about any of the religions or gods that have so far appeared in the history of human beings on Earth.

Later, yosi, I'll try to get back and respond to your original question. Sorry for being drawn in by the side question.

[MacShreach]

Suppose I claim there’s a dildo in my dresser drawer. How can one confirm that? One strategy is exhaustive search. Check each item and see whether it’s a dildo or not. If you don’t find it by exhaustive search you can be an atheist about the dildo in my drawer. Suppose I claim there’s a Blessed Dildo somewhere in the universe: a dildo that would give any user of it eternal life in the throes of eternal ecstatic bliss. Exhaustive search just won’t do the trick here. The universe is just too big. Are we condemned to be agnostic about the presence of the Blessed Dildo? I think not. Don’t get me wrong. I’m totally open to the possibility that there might be dildos in the universe with fantastic functionality invented by sexual beings far superior to us. But I think we can draw the line at the Blessed Dildo that guarantees an Eternal Life of Ecstatic Bliss. You don’t need a scientific proof to be an atheist about the Blessed Dildo because you know it’s origins. You saw me invent the tale. Likewise, we don’t need a scientific proof to be atheistic about the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god. We have a historical record of his tale. We can see it being invented by different peoples in different places giving contradictory accounts, adding do-dads and forgetting others. It was quite clearly a living work of fiction. It doesn’t require faith not to believe in the Blessed Dildo and it doesn’t require faith not to believe in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god. It just requires a little common sense and some attention the story. What about the Hindu gods and the other religions? Well here we can apply exhaustive search. We can see that each and every religious tradition that has evolved on Earth evolved as a work of fiction. It doesn't require faith to be atheistic about any of the religions or gods that have so far appeared in the history of human beings on Earth.

Later, yosi, I'll try to get back and respond to your original question. Sorry for being drawn in by the side question.

That was nicely done, Trish. You are right; in the particular case of human religion, we can establish that it is fiction by using its history. For example, we could, in the case of Christianity, cite the example of the Synod of Ephesus, where much of the existing pagan religions was adopted into the new State religion of the Roman Empire because, put simply, the Celts in Gaul, (and others, but the economic importance of Gaul was strategic to Rome,) simply refused to adopt a religion that did not have a female deity at the very top or to give up their local gods. Which is how Mary got her promotion and half the villages in France are called Saint Something or other. We know this because the Romans kept notes of what happened at the Synod........

[transmaven]

actually adam was a female to male ts and eve was a male to female ts so nothing is "forbidden" about this site


Yeah but *the fruit* is the still the cause of much controversy. :P

[JHANIAH L0VE]

too funny

[transmaven]

you wanna fight? :P

[transmaven]

i'll lick your ass in a fight

don't forget that!!

[JHANIAH L0VE]

oh cool

[giovanni_hotel]

Trish, religion is not the same as spirituality. Too many people get this concept twisted.

Believing in an 'otherness' to human existence, an existence/reality that exists beyond the known, natural world - the supernatural - is not the same as believing in the existence of Blessed dildos, booglie wooglie men, etc.


And why is it that atheists are the same as fundamentalists in their take on holy scripture as a literal translation of the Word of God?

To learn anything meaningful from the Bible, Koran, or Torah, these books must be read metaphorically, like a Buddhist koan, and from meditation on the underlying meaning of these scriptures, 'spiritual' enlightenment can be attained.

MacShreach, to me it appears you're being loose with your defintions to avoid being pigeon-holed.

You're right, HA is not the place for this discussion, and I'm not trying to convert anyone.

But your counterpoints in many cases are dependent on how you define your terms.

Most agnostics come from a religious tradition, and by the very nature of their deciding they are agnostic, they have come to doubt the concept of 'a prior' knowledge; knowledge that is knowable independent of experience - i.e., belief in God.

You keep implying that one can be both a 'good' atheist and a skeptic. I don't see how this is possible, since atheists generally have no skepticism about the existence God, or their belief that there is no God.

Maybe the mistake I made was injecting the term science into this discussion,
That way, 'scientific thought and rigour' and 'atheism' would not overlap.

One can still be an honest scientist, and be either an atheist or someone who believes in a Higher Power.

Lastly, theoretical physics, (worm holes, stacked alternate universes, time travel, string theory), on its furthest fringes, is pure Star Trek.

[JHANIAH L0VE]

oh my!

[trish]

Please do not misunderstand the profundity of the Blessed Dildo. The Blessed Dildo has an "otherness" that even the most spiritual cannot fully comprehend. It stands as metaphor for our most physical yearnings and at the same time of the tragic sacrifice of the generations of ones loins for the eternal life of the loins themselves. It points toward the religion of sex and death, yet it points beyond religion. All this. And beyond all this. Yet its very history as a story tells us the Blessed Dildo does not exist.

[giovanni_hotel]

Oh ye unholy blasphemer!!!

Beware all false prophets, and dildo cultists!!

[MacShreach]

MacShreach, to me it appears you're being loose with your defintions to avoid being pigeon-holed.



No, I'm just not about to let you traduce me and get away with it. The fact that I do not fit into your neat, faith-based formulae is not my problem, but yours. I am not being loose with my definitions at all; the only problem is that they are not what you would like them to be. Tough.



.



Most agnostics come from a religious tradition, and by the very nature of their deciding they are agnostic, they have come to doubt the concept of 'a prior' knowledge; knowledge that is knowable independent of experience - i.e., belief in God.



I can't think why you imagine this is relevant; are you an agnostic? I'm certainly not.



You keep implying that one can be both a 'good' atheist and a skeptic.



No I do not. I have not once used the term "good atheist" nor have I implied it. If you are reading that into what I have written, then you need to reread. I have no difficulty whatsoever being sceptical, open-minded and atheist, and I am certainly not alone. It's not even slightly unusual.




[ I don't see how this is possible, since atheists generally have no skepticism about of the existence God, or their belief that there is no God.



Well, I don't know who these "general" atheists you are referring to are; I don't know any. I suspect you are either making this up or reciting verbatim something someone told you. Scepticism is an essential part (for the nth time) of a scientific mindset, as is open-mindedness. However, open-mindedness does not extend to a blind, unquestioning, a priori belief in unproven concepts.

The problem that the proponents of a faith-based viewpoint have is that while it is extremely difficult to prove a negative, the overwhelming weight of evidence from all around us, on every hand, means that we can effectively discount the existence of a higher power, or booglie-wooglie men.


We are constrained at the same time to allow that, if a suitably robust scientific proof of the existence of such things were to be found we would, after suitably testing the proposition and the proof, have to accept it, whether we liked it or not. This has nothing to do with agnosticism, however, which accepts the premise without proof or rigour whatsoever; it is simply the application of the science-based view.




Maybe the mistake I made was injecting the term science into this discussion,
That way, 'scientific thought and rigour' and 'atheism' would not overlap.

One can still be an honest scientist, and be either an atheist or someone who believes in a Higher Power.

No, you can't. If you have an a priori belief in an unproven higher power, you are no longer thinking from a scientific point of view, but a faith-based one. In the absence of any conclusive proof of the existence of something, an honest scientist looks at the body of evidence and asks whether there is supporting evidence that a phenomenon does occur, and if such evidence exists, proceeds to try to understand the phenomenon and prove or disprove its existence scientifically. However, when there is no proof whatsoever that a phenomenon occurs, and the vast, overwhelming weight of evidence strongly suggests that it does not occur, then we can reasonably conclude that there are better things to do than wasting our time in the contemplation of the absurd. I think Voltaire had something to say about that.




Lastly, theoretical physics, (worm holes, stacked alternate universes, time travel, string theory), on its furthest fringes, is pure Star Trek.

So what? 120 years ago, manned flight was science fiction, as was travel to the moon. None of this has any bearing whatsoever on the existence or otherwise of a "higher being," which is actually, in any case, a manifestation of a human psychological tendency, rather than an independent phenomenon. The same tendency leads weak-minded people tp believe in conspiracy theories, chemtrails, UFOs, and barrowloads of similar twaddle, all totally spurious and with no foundation in fact. Which is, I believe, where I came in.

If god exists at all, he only exists in the minds of those who believe in him. Or her.

[archineer]

I did stop posting on this thread to try not to hijack it.....

[MacShreach]

I did stop posting on this thread to try not to hijack it.....


Pfft! Can't buck tradition. :lol:

[giovanni_hotel]

Well, you and I thoroughly killed this thread, Mac.

I'm done with it, because I sense you have a tendency to argue an alternate point of view without considering the point the other person was attempting to make.

There are scientists who are atheists, there are religious people who are scientists.

Same situation exists with mathematics, engineering, computer tech reserch, etc.

Faith in God has nothing do with physics, chemistry, or biology because the issue of faith is separate from research and/or study in those respective fields.

Faith based individuals aren't (or shouldn't be) threatened by science because it has neither the ability to confirm or deny faith.
That was my point in stating you can be of any faith and still hold true to the scientific method in a given field.
Science is about the study of the known world, not the unknown.

And whenever you venture into the realm of using mathematical proofs, ( see theoretical physics) instead of actual physical empirical evidence, you have ventured into the realm of science fiction and pure theory, not fact.

Do you mean to suggest that worm holes, MULTIPLE stacked universes, time travel, and string theory, are mainstream theories in the physics community??

But since your one of those people who believes faith equates to a weakness or flaw in one's psychological profile, there's no point in riding this train any longer.

[trish]

Beware all false prophets, and dildo cultists!!


To learn anything meaningful from the Bible, Koran, or Torah, these books must be read metaphorically, like a Buddhist koan, and from meditation on the underlying meaning of these scriptures, 'spiritual' enlightenment can be attained.

In the metaphor I posed above, the Blessed Dildo is God and the story of the Blessed Dildo is the collection of sacred writings by His holy men. If belief in the metaphor of the Blessed Dildo and its story is blasphemy, then belief in the metaphorical content of all the sacred writings is also blasphemy. I invite you to seek the deeper meaning of the Blessed Dildo, the miracle that is miraculous because it doesn’t exist.


Science is about the study of the known world, not the unknown.

Why is it so important for you to constrain the domain of scientific interests? Science studies the known world, yes, in excruciating detail. Sometimes the unknown is uncovered during these investigations. But science also deliberately explores the unknown world.

You bring up the example of worm-holes; standard science fiction fare. It is not known whether worm-holes, are present in the universe. But unlike “otherness,” worm-holes are well defined. They are not metaphors. They are so well defined that mathematicians can demonstrate that the existence of worm-holes is consistent with the theory of general relativity (which in turn is one of the most successfully tested theories of modern science). That worm-holes are consistent with the theory of general relativity is a fact, not a fiction and not science fiction. It is a consequence drawn from an empirical theory. Unfortunately consistency does not imply existence. The presence of worm-holes in the universe is a question of geography, like “is there a traversable north-west passage?” There are avenues one may pursue to advance this question toward an answer. The answer is as yet unknown, but not outside the domain of science.

Unlike “otherness” the geographical question about the presence of worm-holes in the universe is a question about the universe. “Otherness,” on the other hand, can’t exist here in the universe. “Otherness” is beyond the natural world. “Otherness exists in the supernatural world. The supernatural is not the known. The supernatural is not the unknown. It is not even the unknowable. It is the place where metaphors live. Poetry is fine, until you take it literally. Then you have to invent a place where metaphors can be taken literally: the supernatural, the astral plane, the mind of God. Why can’t we just let metaphors be metaphors?

[giovanni_hotel]

For a religion to have juice, trish, there must be acolytes, followers, sacred scriptures. It takes more than sarcasm to denigrate all of theology.

Besides you, who seeks divine wisdom from a 'blessed dildo'?

The 'church of one' doesn't pass the smell test.

If 'otherness' can't exist in the known world, trish, what is your stance on multiple universes, a generally held proposition in theoretical physics?

When people start talking about 'multiple universes' with asynchronous alternate realities, where an infinite number of 'trish's' may reside, is it really that much different than a discussion on heaven, hell, purgatory, life after death??

There are mathematical proofs that confirm the legitimacy of multiple universes within theoretical physics also.

And if quantum physics at its highest levels isn't a journey into the 'otherness' of atomic structures, then what is it??

(If you ever feel like rupturing a blood vessel, do a wiki search of 'quark' on google!)

In fact, I ( would bet) one could conform almost any theory within mathematical parameters that fits into one of several theoretical physics models.

Look, all I'm saying is that science has its failings and limitations, just as faith in the supernatural lacks the easy answers to life that so many seek.

When someone holds up the 'infallibility' of science against the 'superstition' of religion or 'weak-mindedness' of spirituality, neither one IMO is absolute or inviolable in its attempt to define what is truth.

[MacShreach]

More of the same BS

In every response I have given to you, I have taken your points one by one and countered them. In each of your responses to me you have failed to do me this courtesy, and have instead posted traduction, innuendo, misrepresentation and filibuster. You have repeatedly, and falsely, ascribed your views on the subject to me, and NOT ONE of my points have you actually addressed.

You're done with it? Son, you never even started. You go on believing any old claptrap you want, and I'll just stop giving you the oxygen of the attention you clearly crave.

There are better things to do in life than waste time arguing with people who will, whatever the evidence says, continue to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

[yosi]

I don't think that this thread that originaly talked about "transexuals" as a forbbiden subject in religion ,because "it's not what god intended it to be" turned to atheism by mistake.

"hidden are the ways of god" this is the answer you get when you try to find logic in some unexplained events , so you go to the experts , those who claim they represent god on this green/blue ball that we live on.

so you ask yourself : if god's way is so hidden , as the experts say, how can they know that transexuals is not what god intended it to be?

if transexuals are here , it's because that's what god intended it to be,you are the living scientific proof, as simple as that 8)

you can meet some great poeple here :wink:

[Rogers]

If god exists at all, he only exists in the minds of those who believe in him. Or her.

First and only post on this thread. :lol: It may be possible that our reality is just an incredibly realistic simulation running on a computer created by an advanced civilization. Just as "The Simpsons" have creators, we could have them too.

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?
BY PROFESSOR NICK BOSTROM
Department of Philosophy, Oxford University
"The Simulation Argument is perhaps the first interesting argument for the existence of a Creator in 2000 years."
David Pearce (exaggerated compliment)
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Skepticism is a nice concept, but like all human constructs it's flawed. Just because we don't know about something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. For scientists, having a healthy degree of skepticism AND an open mind is always the best.
http://platosallegory.com/

[NYBURBS]

Since this thread has already been thoroughly hijacked I might as well weigh in.

Agnosticism is the viewpoint that certain metaphysical or spiritual beliefs can neither be proved nor disproved. Atheism is a belief that there is no after-life or God since no evidence can be provided for such.

I consider myself agnostic because I realize that our ignorance of the greater universe(s) is such that I can not adequately say with certainty whether there is or is not some higher level of reality, nor whether or not we continue to exist in some form after this life.

However, reason dictates that we follow what we can observe and reasonably explain through study and experimentation. One can not be asked to prove a negative, and so we must carry on based upon what we can "prove" within some reasonable degree of certainty.

Giovanni makes some great points, and they are mirrored to some degree by an opinion piece I once read in the NYT. I will post the link below, but essentially the author takes the stance that much of what we hold as true in science is premised upon faith to a certain degree. Here is the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

[MacShreach]

For scientists, having a healthy degree of skepticism AND an open mind is always the best.


I remember saying that twice already, at least. Oh well. :shrug

Unfortunately, most of the definitions, indeed the word "atheist" itself, come from within a theistic debate in the 19th century. It was originally a pejorative term of abuse, coined by believers to describe the (then) minority of those who did not believe, and had the same inflection as, say, "amoral" would.

It therefore carries baggage that is irrelevant now, and Giovanni has obviously been taken in by this, as his apparent inability to reconcile the fact that a scientific viewpoint is AT THE SAME time, sceptical and open-minded, shows.

In the modern world, we may have as many unknowns as our forebears, indeed we probably have more; but they are much further removed. We know how we got here. We don't need to invent a god for this. We know what makes us get sick and how we can be cured. We know that penicillin works and prayer does not. We understand now, that morality is a function of human social interaction and has an evolutionary basis; it is not a set of rules laid down by priests, as some people believed up until the mid-twentieth century. (Some people probably still believe it, but, well...)

In a way, certainly in the sense that it originally had, the term "atheist" is now redundant; understanding that there was never a sky-god and that he did not create the world in 6 days, 4,700 or so years ago, is a part of the understanding that most children have of the world. I'm not "atheist" in the sense that I am one side of a philosophical debate, because there simply is no debate. I just have a normal, mainstream, Western European viewpoint.

Gods and demons are conceptually redundant, which is why, of course, some theists keep pushing god further and further away, to being, far from an intimate observer and recorder of our daily lives, to a distant originator or an anonymous Grand Designer whom we can never know. Their hope is that they can push the focus of their belief out into the Outer Darkness, where science can never reach it and tear it apart. History is not on their side in this. The ones who have now to defend their ground are not the "atheists;" it is the theists who represent the minority viewpoint. For most people, including me, not believing in god is not even worth calling a name, since it is so normal.

To give this some ballast, in statistics collected in 2003 in the UK, only 18% of adults regarded themselves as practising members of a faith (any faith) and in a sample of teenagers, only 22% had any belief at all in god. And while some faiths are reporting an increase in membership, this is largely at the expense of other faiths, and is in any case coming from a very low base level indeed. These figures are reflected all across Western Europe.

[NYBURBS]

I'm not "atheist" in the sense that I am one side of a philosophical debate, because there simply is no debate. I just have a normal, mainstream, Western European viewpoint.


See there goes your arrogance again. I can't say that you're not intelligent or that you don't present your arguments well, but time and again you fall into a position that reveals a closed mind. I would agree that most man made religions are a farce, as they were created to 1) explain the unknown and 2) to exercise social control over groups of people. However, that doesn't mean that there is no debate or that my position is unchallengeable.

Neither you nor I can explain how the universe came to be. OK there was a big bang (we think), but what brought about the something from nothing in order to allow for that. Time and space are merely constructs we use to bring order to what we observe. The absence of evidence to prove something does not inherently disprove it either. It's just that it is sound policy to follow along a line of reasoning based upon what we can observe and explain at any given time.

One need not believe that every or any choice they make in life is helped along by some divine will; however, a reasonable person can still admit to the possibility that there is a level of consciousness that transcends what we can presently realize.

[MacShreach]

See there goes your arrogance again

...and the usual schoolboy twaddle we have come to expect from this lightweight

I have told you before, you really do need to pay more attention to your reading and comprehension skills. Let me remind you:





We are constrained at the same time to allow that, if a suitably robust scientific proof of the existence of such things were to be found we would, after suitably testing the proposition and the proof, have to accept it, whether we liked it or not. This has nothing to do with agnosticism, however, which accepts the premise without proof or rigour whatsoever; it is simply the application of the science-based view.



Which by DEFINITION allows the possibility of a god or booglie-wooglie men existing. However, it is for the believers to prove it scientifically, not for me to accept it just because....well, I have no idea why people believe in these comfort-blankets. It is a potentially interesting question, however.

Furthermore, I was not addressing myself to you; I was responding to Rogers, who is worthy of conversation. So, before you start the squealing we have some to associate with you, take note; you are now in my killfile, and I will not see any further posts from you. Wonderful thing, Greasemonkey,

Now off you toddle.

[archineer]

For scientists, having a healthy degree of skepticism AND an open mind is always the best.


I remember saying that twice already, at least. Oh well. :shrug

Unfortunately, most of the definitions, indeed the word "atheist" itself, come from within a theistic debate in the 19th century. It was originally a pejorative term of abuse, coined by believers to describe the (then) minority of those who did not believe, and had the same inflection as, say, "amoral" would.

It therefore carries baggage that is irrelevant now, and Giovanni has obviously been taken in by this, as his apparent inability to reconcile the fact that a scientific viewpoint is AT THE SAME time, sceptical and open-minded, shows.

In the modern world, we may have as many unknowns as our forebears, indeed we probably have more; but they are much further removed. We know how we got here. We don't need to invent a god for this. We know what makes us get sick and how we can be cured. We know that penicillin works and prayer does not. We understand now, that morality is a function of human social interaction and has an evolutionary basis; it is not a set of rules laid down by priests, as some people believed up until the mid-twentieth century. (Some people probably still believe it, but, well...)

In a way, certainly in the sense that it originally had, the term "atheist" is now redundant; understanding that there was never a sky-god and that he did not create the world in 6 days, 4,700 or so years ago, is a part of the understanding that most children have of the world. I'm not "atheist" in the sense that I am one side of a philosophical debate, because there simply is no debate. I just have a normal, mainstream, Western European viewpoint.

Gods and demons are conceptually redundant, which is why, of course, some theists keep pushing god further and further away, to being, far from an intimate observer and recorder of our daily lives, to a distant originator or an anonymous Grand Designer whom we can never know. Their hope is that they can push the focus of their belief out into the Outer Darkness, where science can never reach it and tear it apart. History is not on their side in this. The ones who have now to defend their ground are not the "atheists;" it is the theists who represent the minority viewpoint. For most people, including me, not believing in god is not even worth calling a name, since it is so normal.

To give this some ballast, in statistics collected in 2003 in the UK, only 18% of adults regarded themselves as practising members of a faith (any faith) and in a sample of teenagers, only 22% had any belief at all in god. And while some faiths are reporting an increase in membership, this is largely at the expense of other faiths, and is in any case coming from a very low base level indeed. These figures are reflected all across Western Europe.

How come is the U.S. the only first world country with any significant degree of religious belief? I've yet to read any convincing arguments as to why this is.

[NYBURBS]

First of all I'm not worried about your opinion of me; I'm quite confident in my abilities and intelligence. Further, if I am in your "killfile" that's great, but it won't stop me from refuting for others the bullshit you just tried to pass over on anyone reading this thread. So here it goes:



This has nothing to do with agnosticism, however, which accepts the premise without proof or rigour whatsoever; it is simply the application of the science-based view.



Apparently my reading comprehension skills are just fine. It's your comprehension and analytical skills that I must now call into question. The definition of agnostic is not a person who accepts a premise without proof. It is simply someone that allows for the possibility of something that can not be formally disproved. That doesn't mean they actually hold it to be true; they just acknowledge that it is within the realm of possibilities. Of course from previous discussions we all know your tendencies to fudge definitions to fit your narrow minded view points.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agnostic
ag⋅nos⋅tic [ag-nos-tik]
–noun
1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
–adjective
3. of or pertaining to agnostics or agnosticism.
4. asserting the uncertainty of all claims to knowledge.

http://www.reference.com/browse/columbia/agnostic
agnosticism, form of skepticism that holds that the existence of God cannot be logically proved or disproved. Among prominent agnostics have been Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and T. H. Huxley (who coined the word agnostic in 1869). Immanuel Kant was an agnostic who argued that belief in divinity can rest only on faith. Agnosticism is not to be confused with atheism, which asserts that there is no God.

MacShreach ignorance is a disease, and I hope you find yourself a cure for it.

[MacShreach]

snip

How come is the U.S. the only first world country with any significant degree of religious belief? I've yet to read any convincing arguments as to why this is.

That, my friend, is a genuinely interesting question. Not only is the US the only first world country with a significant degree of religious belief, it would appear, from what I've seen, to be becoming (or at least have become in the decades up to 2000) somewhat more so, while the rest move steadily in the opposite direction.

Whether this trend has peaked or not would be another interesting thing to know--Is America on its way to becoming a theocracy? (j/k, j/k, folks... :lol: )

[giovanni_hotel]

More of the same BS

In every response I have given to you, I have taken your points one by one and countered them. In each of your responses to me you have failed to do me this courtesy, and have instead posted traduction, innuendo, misrepresentation and filibuster.

You're done with it? Son, you never even started. You go on believing any old claptrap you want, and I'll just stop giving you the oxygen of the attention you clearly crave.

There are better things to do in life than waste time arguing with people who will, whatever the evidence says, continue to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

No, you didn't refute EVERY single one of my points, Mac. You selectively picked those that were easiest to counter. Your approach was to take the stance that all my arguments were flawed, therefore if you posed an argument againt one point, in your mind, you had refuted my entire premise. :?

The problem is that we are working with different definitions of atheism, which you define quite broadly, while I do not.
An atheist is not a skeptic, from my understanding, he is an absolute true believer in a specific world view.

Instead you have defined being an atheist as one who is an empiricist, that is, someone who is merely skeptical about the existence of God because to date science has yet to provide sufficient evidence for holding that particular point of view.

Additionally, there's a tone of ridicule and condescension whenever I or anyone else exchanges more than a couple of words with you, which is in part what sucked me into this never-ending debate.

DO you recall saying, " I had such high hopes for you", or something to that effect?
WOW.
You had such high hopes that I didn't believe in "faeries, booglie woogle men", and every manner of magical creature that has nothing to do with spiritual faith?? :roll:

Lastly, I would sincerely hope that you pick up Harvard educated neurosurgeon Allan Hamilton's book, "The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope".

Throughout much of his career, he was the consummate doctor scientist,( there's very little room for flawed ideologies when you're cutting into someone's brain!), until personal events he experienced while working in hospitals and operating rooms changed what he considered to be objective truth regarding human existence.

It's not a book that will change your mind, but it may open it up just a bit to the strong possibility, ( I would say probability), that there's more to life than our destiny to become worm food.

[MacShreach]

it may open it up just a bit to the strong possibility, ( I would say probability), that there's more to life than our destiny to become worm food.



I'm sorry I refuse to accept the narrow definition of an atheist which you adopt; that definition is out-of-date and belongs to a 19th C debate, as I said to Rogers. It was used to put down atheists.

Well, I'm proud to be an atheist, and I'm not about to deny my atheism because its nature does not suit your definitions; however, I am open-minded to the possibility of gods or booglie-wooglie men; all you have to do is to prove it.

So, instead of playing semantics and avoiding the core issue, please prove that a god--or whatever you wish to call this higher power--exists. Just prove one little, simple fact that finally, incontrovertibly, proves beyond doubt that a god exists. A scientific proof, mind you, not some philosophical or theological nonsense. Because until you do you're just shooting the bull; assuming that because you are here, somebody else must have put you here, and ignoring the hilarious irony of the very question.

I'll be waiting. But I will tell you this; in my opinion, you will, like so many others, be wasting your time, and you would do better to go to the beach and look in a rock-pool and see the wonder of the life there....life that is an astonishing result of the interaction of chemicals and their environment. And then you might for a moment, perhaps, stop listening to all the anthropocentric nonsense in your head and just be open to the peaceful realisation of the truth; that you are a collection of molecules, nothing more and nothing less, and this short time that the consciousness you call yourself will have on earth is the only time it will ever have.

Joni Mitchell wrote:

"We are stardust, we are golden,"
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

And that is all we are, stardust, quite literally, glowing in our moment of self-awareness. The garden, my boy, is within you. The keys are not with some holy roller in the sky, so don't waste your life looking for him.

[DC]

MacShreach is a tosser

[MacShreach]

MacShreach is a tosser

Coming from a moron like you, I can handle it.

[trish]

Giovanni, it seems you’ve totally misunderstood my posts and consequently your attempts to respond have missed their marks. Where do I begin?
If 'otherness' can't exist in the known world, trish, what is your stance on multiple universes, a generally held proposition in theoretical physics?Did I say ‘otherness’ can’t exist in the known world? No. You said that
Believing in an 'otherness' to human existence, an existence/reality that exists beyond the known, natural world - the supernatural…(You also seem to not to appreciate that much of the natural world is unknown.) According to you the spiritual works of god and man must be understood metaphorically.
To learn anything meaningful from the Bible, Koran, or Torah, these books must be read metaphorically, like a Buddhist koan, and from meditation on the underlying meaning of these scriptures, 'spiritual' enlightenment can be attained.But when you insist that at least one god exists you apparently don’t wish to be taken metaphorically. You need a place where metaphors can exist. A place where they are protected from the logic of empirical discovery (the natural world won’t do) but a place where their presence is more solid than that of a mere metaphor, the supernatural world.

For a person who appreciates metaphors I’m sorry you get the Blessed Dildo. Did I say it was a religion?

For a religion to have juice, trish, there must be acolytes, followers, sacred scriptures. It takes more than sarcasm to denigrate all of theology.

Besides you, who seeks divine wisdom from a 'blessed dildo'?

The 'church of one' doesn't pass the smell test. I said it points to religion. I said it was a metaphor for religion. Like the gods of Earth, it does not exist in the natural world. Does it exist in the land of metaphors? Apparently only if the number of believers reaches a critical mass. I urge you all to believe. Please everybody, clap. Clap so that the Blessed Dildo might spring to life in the supernatural world.

On the side, NYBURBS defines atheism as
Atheism is a belief that there is no after-life or God since no evidence can be provided for such. I just want to reiterate my atheism is not so general. As is clear in my original post on the Blessed Dildo (near the bottom of page 4) I’m atheistic about the religious traditions that have evolved here on Earth. The basic reason is that one can look at each one and observe that it is an evolving work of fiction. It’s clear upon reading that each story was written by different people with different understanding of the moral and the plot. There are holes, multiple conflicting plotlines, add-ons and deletions. Genesis, for an example, is just as obviously an invention as are the gods of Ovid. It’s fine to read Ovid. You can learn a lot about life from the Greek and Roman gods. But I draw the line at worshipping Ovid, taking his Metamorphosis as history, or assuming his characters exist in a supernatural netherworld.

[trish]

I thought, gionvani, I would reply separately to your questions about science.

Let’s start with


When people start talking about 'multiple universes' with asynchronous alternate realities, where an infinite number of 'trish's' may reside, is it really that much different than a discussion on heaven, hell, purgatory, life after death??

There are mathematical proofs that confirm the legitimacy of multiple universes within theoretical physics also.

There are no proofs of legitimacy in science or in mathematics. In mathematics one can only show one proposition is a logical consequence of others. In science one can only show the evidence so far supports a given hypothesis or it does not. Before mathematics or science can say anything about multiple universes, one must have a clear and precise idea of what one is talking about. If you don’t have a quantitative model of heaven, hell, purgatory or life after death, then neither mathematics nor science will have anything to say about it. In this sense those subjects are not at all similar to Linde’s speculation that exponentially expanding bubbles beyond our event horizon were likely to have formed during the inflationary period of our history. These bubbles are sometimes thought of as separate universes. Because they have a clear mathematical description, unlike purgatory for example, Dr. Linde was able to prove their existence was consistent with general relativity and inflationary theory. He was able to estimate the density and rate of their production. But proof of consistency is not confirmation, not confirmation of legitimacy, nor is it proof of existence. His hope is that his theory will have some testable consequences. If it doesn’t, speculations on multiple universes will continue to be published in magazines for philosophers and layman, but they will no longer occupy the pages of reputable journals. Cosmologists will drop the idea for more promising areas of research. But the theory is relatively young, and that day is not yet here. Perhaps Dr. Linde will be able to show that the formation of a nearby bubble left a signature in our universe, perhaps an anomaly in the power spectrum of the cosmic background radiation.

Speculations on heaven, hell, purgatory and life after death have been around [for] millennia. They are much older than Dr. Linde’s bubble universes. Are there any mathematical models of heaven? If the concept fails to bare the fruit of testable consequences will theologians eventually drop the idea to take up more promising areas of theological research? What are the promising areas of theological research?

[edits in square brackets]

[MacShreach]

Atheism is a belief that there is no after-life or God since no evidence can be provided for such.

Thank you. Unfortunately, theists (not a literal) frequently use another definition entirely, which attempts to suggest that, far from being open-minded and pragmatic, atheists must be rigid and unwavering in their denial of gods. However this is because they operate from a faith-based mindset, where absolute, unwavering belief is so much regarded as a virtue that they cannot really conceive that anyone would not have it, or want it; they, as has been well evidenced by the debate here, presume that the science-based view is similar to theirs, that it is based on firmly held, inviolable convictions; but it's not, it's only based on evidence.

There is a parallel in the case of Morals; for centuries--millennia, a debate raged as to what it was that set and defined morals; was it the Ten Commandments, or was it secular Law? And now we know, from the science of anthropology, that what we call morals is actually just the genetically programmed social behaviour of a group-dwelling primate. All the theorising and philosophising of churchmen and philosophers was irrelevant, the hysterical ravings of theists like Golding an unpleasant aside, since people would behave, essentially, as they do, without any of it. So it is with this; theists can rant and rave and call anybody anything they like, but it matters not a jot, because you know what? They can't prove a word of it.

I have nothing against gods or Blessed Dildoes, other than that no-one can prove they exist. I do not even oppose them, since in order to oppose something I would have to accept that it existed, and since gods and Blessed Dildoes have never been proved to exist, to oppose either would mean an a priori acceptance of an unproven proposition. All I can say is that, having examined the history and nature of the proposition, there is a large body of evidence that strongly suggests such things do not exist, and then hand the matter over to those who believe they do, and tell them to come up with a satisfactory proof. This seems quite reasonable.

I do not seek to replace faith in gods or Blessed Dildoes with some other belief system. I have no conviction in this matter at all; it is not a matter of faith or conviction, only that which can be proved. if ever a proper proof comes up, I'll accept it. This is the real difference between a science-based viewpoint and a faith-based one; in the former, anything is possible, and anything can be accepted, as long as it can be proved; in the latter, only that which is within the dogma can be accepted, whether the dogma concern gods or Blessed Dildoes, and everything, and everyone, else, must be discredited.

But, of course, what is most irritating to theists about this approach is that they know fine well they can't prove the existence of gods or Blessed Dildoes, or they would have done it a long time ago, and put an end to the debate for once and for all.

Meantime, it is a beautiful afternoon, and I am going to contemplate the fish in the river at the bottom of my garden (which I can empirically prove exists,) and be amazed, again, by the wonder of the natural world.

[MacShreach]

Here's one of them. Enjoy.

[fred41]

Gardens are gay !























....I'm J/K Mac..really :)

[MacShreach]

Gardens are gay !























....I'm J/K Mac..really :)

LOL You're just jealous--I'm about to have a nice cold beer in mine now......

[trish]

A cold beer sounds really good right now. But I thought Scotsmen drank warm beer. Am I doing something terribly wrong like confusing them with Englishmen or perhaps with Germans?

[yosi]

This is the real difference between a science-based viewpoint and a faith-based one; in the former, anything is possible, and anything can be accepted, as long as it can be proved.

the short history of science shows that , it's quite a revolutionary sience , all it takes is a new fact that never happened before , a new revolution happens , anything can happen , just like a faith based way of thinking.

it can happen because of a new evidence , just to remind you , anout 60 years ago science was completely sure we are heading a new ice age, or because of a new accidental idea , like that someone who took a rest under a tree , an apple falled on his head and he said "eurika" .........ever heard of him? seems like a funny guy :wink:


the good thing about science is that science knows how to adapt to new ideas .................. one cannot tell that about religions.

[MacShreach]

A cold beer sounds really good right now. But I thought Scotsmen drank warm beer. Am I doing something terribly wrong like confusing them with Englishmen or perhaps with Germans?

Not at all; I'm just a bit cosmopolitan. The English drink beer warm too, BTW. Anyway, it depends on the beer--ales and stouts, brown beers if you like, are better just a little cooler than room temp (not actually warm); lagers etc are better chilled. Some you can drink either way. This here is a Peroni, Italian, best chilled so that dew forms. And very nice too.

I would love to have shared it with you; as it is I'll have to settle for a metaphoric clink of glasses. Chin-chin. :D

[trish]

"clink" :wink:

[MacShreach]

This is the real difference between a science-based viewpoint and a faith-based one; in the former, anything is possible, and anything can be accepted, as long as it can be proved.

the short history of science shows that , it's quite a revolutionary sience , all it takes is a new fact that never happened before , a new revolution happens , anything can happen , just like a faith based way of thinking.

it can happen because of a new evidence , just to remind you , anout 60 years ago science was completely sure we are heading a new ice age, or because of a new accidental idea , like that someone who took a rest under a tree , an apple falled on his head and he said "eurika" .........ever heard of him? seems like a funny guy :wink:


the good thing about science is that science knows how to adapt to new ideas .................. one cannot tell that about religions.

Hey, yosi, you know I'm sorry your thread got the hell hijacked out of it. I hope you enjoyed it anyway. We could get back to the original premise tomorrow maybe.....But who knows......

And you're right on the above. :D

[trish]

Hey there yosi. :) I'm sorry too about the hijacking. But I got drawn into the conversation. Thanks for being a good sport.

[MacShreach]

Mmm, better get a few more beers up....

[NYBURBS]

Atheism is a belief that there is no after-life or God since no evidence can be provided for such.

Thank you. Unfortunately, theists (not a literal) frequently use another definition entirely, which attempts to suggest that, far from being open-minded and pragmatic, atheists must be rigid and unwavering in their denial of gods.

ROFL this guy is priceless. He attempts to insult me, and then he thanks someone else for what is in their post, but it was simply a quote of what I wrote. Epic just epic.

To Trish: I understand what you are getting at, but holding that man-made religion is false is not really atheism. You are not condemning any possible belief in something greater, but rather just the practices and myths that have arisen thus far. Put differently to think that someone is full of shit when they claim that they have spoken to God is different then saying definitively that there is not a higher level of awareness in the universe.

It also, as I already posted, relates to certain sets of logic. An atheist says (correctly) that you can not prove the positive (there is God), and so for them that makes it true that there isn't one until you can do so. Where the other argument is that I can neither prove nor disprove it, so I will be skeptical, but also realize that there is much I don't understand.

[JHANIAH L0VE]

interesting.

[yosi]

Hey there yosi. :) I'm sorry too about the hijacking. But I got drawn into the conversation. Thanks for being a good sport.

thread hijacking? what are you talking about? :wink:

turned out to be a great thread , interesting thread 8)

[trish]

NYBURBS contribute the following:
I understand what you are getting at, but holding that man-made religion is false is not really atheism. You are not condemning any possible belief in something greater, but rather just the practices and myths that have arisen thus far.

I think here we just have a minor squabble on the definition of atheism.

The nice thing about the traditional gods is you know who and what they are supposed to be. They are defined by their respective traditions. The traditions are easy to dispute because we know them so well. To the man in the street whose god is one of the traditional gods, I'm quite clearly an atheist.

Many other notions of god are more difficult to judge simply because they are ambiguous or empty. For example, the somewhat pantheistic concept that simply defines God as everything that is. I certainly don’t dispute that everything that is is. But what is to be gained by naming everything god? If one simply names each thing god, then of course I believe god exists. So am I a believer? Well in regards to this particular pantheistic god, I’m neither a believer, an agnostic nor an atheist. I just refuse to play the semantic game pantheism proposes we play.

The point is there is no one abstract notion, or one concrete notion of god. For this reason one cannot prove anything about god that applies to all the possible conflicting definitions and conceptions of him. I take them one at a time. Like Nietzsche, I touch each one as one touches a tuning fork with a hammer. It seems to me this is the only way to proceed. I never found one yet rang true. I do not believe there are any stars in the milky-way that are spheres of lemonade. I’m an atheist in that regard. I’ve looked at quite few spectrographs of stars; but not all of them.

(To be fair to MacShreach, I fumbled the quotes when I first reposted your definition of atheism. He may have gotten the misattribution before I managed to correct myself)

[yosi]

holding that man-made religion is false is not really atheism.



can you name one religion that is not man-made?

all religions are man-made , including the religion called Science.
Science is a religion that believes in one thing , knowledge.
knowledge that is so much bigger than what we actualy know , at the moment..........but we try.

you can call this religion a new religion if you like , but it is shared by poeple of all the older religions , all colors and all races.

the only requirment is to remember this organ between our ears and to use it from time to time .

[trish]

I see what you’re saying yosi, but as a scientist living in the U.S. I cringe at the implications of categorizing science among the religions. It plays exactly into the hands of the intelligent design/creationists. Science differs importantly from religion in that it offers no salvation. It has no creed. It prescribes no particular lifestyle. It prescribes no particular morality other than that when practicing, science should be done with openness and integrity. It is not an overarching edifice to which you are asked to dedicate your life.

Science is simply a profession for some, and an avocation for others.

[NYBURBS]

holding that man-made religion is false is not really atheism.



can you name one religion that is not man-made?

all religions are man-made , including the religion called Science.
Science is a religion that believes in one thing , knowledge.
knowledge that is so much bigger than what we actualy know , at the moment..........but we try.

you can call this religion a new religion if you like , but it is shared by poeple of all the older religions , all colors and all races.

the only requirment is to remember this organ between our ears and to use it from time to time .

All religion is man made, so I should have been more clear. However, not everything that religion examines is man made. Essentially I was pointing to the particular myths and legends that men have created throughout history, and there is a distinction to be made between that and the possibility of other levels of consciousness.

[JeniferTS]

OHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO HIJACKED AGAIN????????????????????????????? LMFAO

[trish]

Jenifer squeals:
OHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO HIJACKED AGAIN????????????????????????????? LMFAO
We all took ours shoes off before posting. We put our phones and coins into plastic bowls. We shoved our carry-ons onto the conveyor belt. We all stepped through the electronic arches. Still the thread was hijacked! What is homeland security to do??

[MacShreach]

(To be fair to MacShreach, I fumbled the quotes when I first reposted your definition of atheism. He may have gotten the misattribution before I managed to correct myself)

Eh? Sorry...I don't see his posts. Did I pick you up wrongly? I doubt if it makes a lot of difference, I think you and I share much more than we differ on, in this matter anyway.

[MacShreach]

OHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO HIJACKED AGAIN????????????????????????????? LMFAO

Okay, Jen's here, we can get the party started :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

(where have you been anyway?)

[MacShreach]

can you name one religion that is not man-made?

all religions are man-made , including the religion called Science.
Science is a religion that believes in one thing , knowledge.
knowledge that is so much bigger than what we actualy know , at the moment..........but we try.

you can call this religion a new religion if you like , but it is shared by poeple of all the older religions , all colors and all races.

the only requirment is to remember this organ between our ears and to use it from time to time .

yosi, I'll happily defer to Trish's comment regarding your statement that science is a religion, but I would certainly want to point out that it is not merely organised religions per se that I mean when I refer to god, or whatever, but the whole notion of the higher power that cannot be explained by science. I think this is what you are getting at too in the first part of your statement.

It doesn't really matter whether you dress it up as an old man on a cloud who takes an immediate interest in all our lives, an unknowable and remote Grand Designer, the Bermuda Triangle, Chariots of the Gods, or chemtrails; the point is that they are all manifestations of a human projection, not independent phenomena at all. They simply have no quantifiable existence outside the minds of those who believe in them.

I think a far more interesting question than the familiar debate about whether or not such beings or powers or phenomena exist, would be why intelligent and educated humans feel the need to invent such concepts.

That is definitely worthy of research.

[giovanni_hotel]

Joni Mitchell wrote:

"We are stardust, we are golden,"
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

And that is all we are, stardust, quite literally, glowing in our moment of self-awareness. The garden, my boy, is within you.

Did Joni Mitchell tell you that's what she meant in that lyric??

From what I've read and heard about Ms. Mitchell, she is a very spiritual person, and the phrase, ' we are stardust', may more accurately reflect her belief there is a cosmic, eternal quality to humanity that exists beyond consciousness, beyond decomposition of flesh and bone. Not that we are like fireflies, who burn brightly for a short time, then extinguish forever.

And I very seriously doubt 'we have to get ourselves back to the garden' was an introspective stance on attaining self-awareness.
You're the only person that I know who heard Ms. Mitchell and CSNY sing "Woodstock", and thinks she meant 'a garden within us'.
Garden is a simple allusion in poetry, and 'the garden' is most likely a reference to the Garden of Eden.
However, I don't believe she meant we need to go back to the literal place, but rather meant all humanity would be better off if we existed in a world without vice, greed, hatred, fear, bigotry, anger, deceit, cruelty, or shame.
Granted, this would start with an individual change from within, but her yearning was to achieve an improved world for all of humanity, the way it was in 'the garden', before the first sin of self-awareness and shame.

(Why am I wasting my time even explaining this to you, MacShreach!!?? Using a Joni Mitchell reference is just terrible for someone of your world view. Joni Mitchell is so far from being an atheist it's not even debatable.
The first two lines from 'Woodstock': "I came upon a child of God/
He was walking along the road ~!!!
And here is the last refrain from 'Woodstock':

We are stardust -
Billion-year-old carbon -
We are golden
Caught up in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden )


I see what you’re saying yosi, but as a scientist living in the U.S. I cringe at the implications of categorizing science among the religions.

Science is simply a profession for some, and an avocation for others.

I agree with you on this point, trish. However I will say that science can at times resemble a religion in it's dogma over theories, principles, and generally held preconceptions about what is true and what isn't.

Scientists can be very passionate about their beliefs, and also in the swiftness at which heretical points of view are attacked and discredited with due diligence and investigation.




There is a parallel in the case of Morals; for centuries--millennia, a debate raged as to what it was that set and defined morals; was it the Ten Commandments, or was it secular Law? And now we know, from the science of anthropology, that what we call morals is actually just the genetically programmed social behaviour of a group-dwelling primate. All the theorising and philosophising of churchmen and philosophers was irrelevant, the hysterical ravings of theists like Golding an unpleasant aside, since people would behave, essentially, as they do, without any of it. So it is with this; theists can rant and rave and call anybody anything they like, but it matters not a jot, because you know what? They can't prove a word of it.


What other group dwelling primates, other than humans, practices what most people consider to be moral behavior?

Yes, I agree that one can live a fulfilled, moral life without faith or religion, however, no society I know of ever formed without some kind of animist/religious tradition, which subsequently handed down what were considered rules for ethical behavior.

It's very difficult to separate the impact of religious teachings on community standards and social mores.

The 'God impulse' is so strong in humans, ( the need to explain and understand the supernatural), that it would be virtually impossible to find any tribal people who did not express a belief in something beyond the boundaries of science.

[Rogers]

Our personalities, moralities, beliefs, sexualities, gender identities, and even our political views apparently, are all massively influenced by the brains we get. It also biases our perceptions of what we think is reality. This is part of what Plato's allegory of the cave is all about. We are all chained by things that are not in our control. For example, no one chooses to be gay or transgendered.

Searching for God in the Brain
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=searching-for-god-in-the-brain

Belief and the brain's 'God spot'
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
"Scientists say they have located the parts of the brain that control religious faith. And the research proves, they contend, that belief in a higher power is an evolutionary asset that helps human survival."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/belief-and-the-brains-god-spot-1641022.html

[yosi]

Joni Mitchell wrote:

"We are stardust, we are golden,"
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

And that is all we are, stardust, quite literally, glowing in our moment of self-awareness. The garden, my boy, is within you.




You're the only person that I know who heard Ms. Mitchell and CSNY sing "Woodstock", and thinks she meant 'a garden within us'.

Garden is a simple allusion in poetry, and 'the garden' is most likely a reference to the Garden of Eden.


now you know another person who thinks the same way about this song, that that garden is the garden within us.

to be even more accurate , that garden within us is the garden that we live in and on, a very REAL garden.

this garden in a shape of a green/blue ball, a mysterious garden with many wonderful things on it , is the only garden we have , the only garden that provides us everything we need and that we have, this garden even provided us - ourselves.....

the idea of having another Garden of Eden in some other unknown place gives us a great excuse to destroy our present garden , isn't it?
and actualy this is what we do, destroying it 8)

[MacShreach]

And here is the last refrain from 'Woodstock':

We are stardust -
Billion-year-old carbon -
We are golden
Caught up in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden )



Hoist by your own petard or what? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Exactly. Stardust. Billion-year-old carbon.

Just FYI I rarely quote song lyrics, so when I do, you ought to take care.

And also, before you start traducing others, which you have shown yourself an enthusiast for here, I would point out that no observer I know has ever claimed Joni Mitchell as a christian, and her views are at best agnostic, which appear to me to come from a Gaianist, holy-earth point of origin.

Her line "I came across a child of god" cannot be read to confirm the writer's christianity; more likely it suggests her meeting one of the young evangelical radicals who were common at the time, many of whom attended Woodstock. Call them christian hippies if you like.





I see what you’re saying yosi, but as a scientist living in the U.S. I cringe at the implications of categorizing science among the religions.

Science is simply a profession for some, and an avocation for others.

I agree with you on this point, trish. However I will say that science can at times resemble a religion in it's dogma over theories, principles, and generally held preconceptions about what is true and what isn't.



It might appear that way to you, but that may be a function of your prior mindset, which you have demonstrated is predisposed towards faith.








There is a parallel in the case of Morals; for centuries--millennia, a debate raged as to what it was that set and defined morals; was it the Ten Commandments, or was it secular Law? And now we know, from the science of anthropology, that what we call morals is actually just the genetically programmed social behaviour of a group-dwelling primate. All the theorising and philosophising of churchmen and philosophers was irrelevant, the hysterical ravings of theists like Golding an unpleasant aside, since people would behave, essentially, as they do, without any of it. So it is with this; theists can rant and rave and call anybody anything they like, but it matters not a jot, because you know what? They can't prove a word of it.


What other group dwelling primates, other than humans, practices what most people consider to be moral behavior?



Woops! Slipped again, there, kiddo. Chimpanzees and gorillas both exhibit elements of what might be considered moral behaviour, including looking after orphan children, apparently mourning the dead assisting each other in daily life and collaborating for the benefit of the group. Since as far as I know, they do not suffer from a faith delusion, this behaviour must be genetic. Chimpanzees are very closely related to us. QED.




Yes, I agree that one can live a fulfilled, moral life without faith or religion, however, no society I know of ever formed without some kind of animist/religious tradition, which subsequently handed down what were considered rules for ethical behavior.



Sorry, you have that the wrong way round; no society I know ever formed without attempting to codify the innate code of standards, by which humans inter-relate, and which are a part of our genetic make-up, formed by our evolutionary development. The behaviour comes first; the words come after.

You're still listening to the anthropocentric nonsense in your head; you're an animal like any other, and not very unique at all.




It's very difficult to separate the impact of religious teachings on community standards and social mores.

It could hardly be otherwise, since religious "teachings" are just the codification of existing patterns of behaviour and social impulses.




The 'God impulse' is so strong in humans, ( the need to explain and understand the supernatural), that it would be virtually impossible to find any tribal people who did not express a belief in something beyond the boundaries of science.


You're amazing.:lol: :lol: :lol: YES! EXACTLY! The "god impulse" is strong in humans--because god (and our old friends the booglie wooglie men and the Blessed Dildo) are just projections of what is INSIDE us! And since this impulse is a part of the evolutionary development that has led all humans here, it would be frankly amazing if any tribe anywhere DID NOT exhibit it!


:lol: :lol: :lol:

[NYBURBS]

And also, before you start traducing others, which you have shown yourself an enthusiast for here

Actually he's one of the more civilized posters on here, and even if he was running around defaming others you calling him out on it would be like the pot calling the kettle black. :roll:

[GinX]

MacShreach, you are using spirituality, faith, and religion interchangeably, when in fact they express separate and distinct modes of thought about the nature of human 'beingness'.

I have no problem with someone questioning the origins or validity of religion as a whole, but your absolute belief in the infallibility of the scientific method to explain the known and unknown world is equally disturbing, in that you appear to hold an unshakable belief in a methodology that is at best limited.

The scientific, empirical model is the most reliable investigative approach available to us, in most instances, but it still can't provide all the answers to everything.

When someone uses the term 'faith', it does not mean necessarily they believe in " crop circles, chemtrails, leprechauns, fairies at the bottom of the garden, the booglie-wooglie man under the bed and anything else that takes your fancy."

It means they believe there is an existence beyond the limitations of human consciousness, however that may be expressed.

I have yet to read or heard someone give a plausible explanation of the Big Bang; the process by which existence comes out of total nothingness.

I also suggest you read two authors MacShreach; neurosurgeon Allan Hamilton's book "The Scalpel and the Soul", and Søren Kierkegaard's " Fear and Trembling", "Philosophical Fragments", and "Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments".

Atheism is a faith-based, belief system, MacShreach; an absolute world view based less on science and more on the presuppostion that all is 'knowable", and that which is unknown has yet to be discovered, or doesn't exist.

There is no room for doubt at all in this belief system, much like the Christian or Muslim fundamentalist. :)


Fundamentalists of any stripe make very poor researchers, MacShreach!!

Look, here's the deal: atheism and theism are both born of the same process; namely, how one interprets the reality surrounding them based upon one's collected experiences, events, data and witnessed phenomenon.

For the theist, there was, at some point an event, experience, collected data or witnessed phenomenon that the individual interpreted as only being possible due to the existence of some god, deity or divine process. Of course, sometimes this changes because the individual may learn differently later. However, most of the time, these incidents transcend sensory data and are far more sublime. This is why devoted theists believe what they believe.

Atheists are born of the same process. The matter is simply reversed. The atheist has simply never interpreted any event, experience, data or phenomenon as being dependent upon any god, deity or divine process. Indeed, atheists ascertain other explanations which, by the standard protocols of logic and science, are far more rational and reasonable. Those things cannot be explained offer no determent because simply because we can't explain it today doesn't mean we can't explain it tomorrow.

I would like to address the fact that some have called religion 'fiction'; however, it cannot inherently be called fiction, although I think it is safe to say that there are elements in almost all religions that are fictitious. However, because certain elements might be untrue does not mean the entirety of the religion itself is untrue; rather, it is more truthful to call it unquantified. We can't say all of, say, Taoism is untrue....at least not yet.

Both the atheist and theist need to remember that absolute statements and absolute claims require absolute knowledge...and no one has that.

[MacShreach]

Joni Mitchell wrote:

"We are stardust, we are golden,"
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

And that is all we are, stardust, quite literally, glowing in our moment of self-awareness. The garden, my boy, is within you.




You're the only person that I know who heard Ms. Mitchell and CSNY sing "Woodstock", and thinks she meant 'a garden within us'.

Garden is a simple allusion in poetry, and 'the garden' is most likely a reference to the Garden of Eden.


now you know another person who thinks the same way about this song, that that garden is the garden within us.

to be even more accurate , that garden within us is the garden that we live in and on, a very REAL garden.

this garden in a shape of a green/blue ball, a mysterious garden with many wonderful things on it , is the only garden we have , the only garden that provides us everything we need and that we have, this garden even provided us - ourselves.....

the idea of having another Garden of Eden in some other unknown place gives us a great excuse to destroy our present garden , isn't it?
and actualy this is what we do, destroying it 8)

Thank you, yosi.

FWIW, the Earth, the planet we live on, seems to me a far far better thing to direct feelings of mysticism towards, rather than an illusory sky-god patriarch. The earth, while not a deity or supernatural, does at least exist, is immeasurably beautiful, and is capable of greatly inspiring the soul. (That's the metaphoric soul, you understand, not some imaginary immortal one. :D )

[yosi]

Both the atheist and theist need to remember that absolute statements and absolute claims require absolute knowledge...and no one has that.

and the more we know ,the more we learn.
the more we learn , the more we are aware to the things which we don't know..........

there is always a choice between finding and learning about new things we never knew before of their existence ( does it mean they didn't exist before we found out about them? gravity certainly existed before a certain apple landed on ceartain someone's head ) or finding "magic" solutions to make our life look easier.

I prefer the first choice 8)

[MacShreach]

and the more we know ,the more we learn.
the more we learn , the more we are aware to the things which we don't know..........

there is always a choice between finding and learning about new things we never knew before of their existence ( does it mean they didn't exist before we found out about them? gravity certainly existed before a certain apple landed on ceartain someone's head ) or finding "magic" solutions to make our life look easier.

I prefer the first choice 8)

Well said.

[Cubpocalypse]

Brain hurts. Hulk smash! Need more pictures!!

[trish]

GinX writes:
I would like to address the fact that some have called religion 'fiction'; however, it cannot inherently be called fiction, although I think it is safe to say that there are elements in almost all religions that are fictitious. However, because certain elements might be untrue does not mean the entirety of the religion itself is untrue; rather, it is more truthful to call it unquantified.

It’s more truthful to say it’s mostly false, often empty and at its best ambiguous. But of course it depends on what you mean by the “religion itself.” I’ll grant Pontius Pilate was a historical figure; someone referred to in a Biblical story who actually existed. But historical tidbits aside, the stories of the crucifixion and the resurrection are contradictory, confused amalgams of fancy written by true believers long after the supposed miraculous events occurred. Perhaps the Jesus these accounts refer to actually existed. I’m inclined to think so, but I don’t know why given there are no independent accounts of such a person. Given all the holes and contradictions there is certainly no reason to take any of the miracles as fact. The “evidence” of the New Testament is simply not credible. Lawyers would make mince meat of it in a modern court of law.

Another example from the Old Testament is Genesis which has two conflicting accounts of creation and human characters with life spans that stretch to almost a millennium. Okay, I’ll grant, there have been floods and Genesis may refer to a historical flood. But a flood that knocked off every animal in the world except those that Noah saved! Where’d did all that water go?

These are all clearly Paul Bunyan tales. All the crap about miracles and the supernatural, heaven and hell is just nonsense. But does that make the entire Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition untrue? No. I confess not. What’s left are the life lessons one can learn by reading almost any story written by caring human beings. Like the story of the snake that beguiles Eve into tasting the forbidden fruit and then seducing Adam to taste of it too. Or the story of how she was created from Adam’s rib. We learn that woman is to be second to man in all things. We learn she not only owes her existence to God but to man as well. We learn that woman is weak willed and a temptress. We learn that she is not to be trusted. Lessons that have been well learned for centuries and still permeate our cultures.

Well okay, perhaps that’s not a good example of a lesson that’s “true”. But how about the one where Lot’s wife is turn into a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom as God makes ruin of it, murdering every man, woman and child in the place? We learn that if are trying to pull away from a vice or an addiction, it is best not to look back. So I will grant there are some true things to be learned from religious traditions. They are lessons on human psychology and morality, and they must be taken with a pillar of salt. They are not lessons on how to gain access to eternal life or supernatural places.

[GinX]

GinX writes:
I would like to address the fact that some have called religion 'fiction'; however, it cannot inherently be called fiction, although I think it is safe to say that there are elements in almost all religions that are fictitious. However, because certain elements might be untrue does not mean the entirety of the religion itself is untrue; rather, it is more truthful to call it unquantified.

It’s more truthful to say it’s mostly false, often empty and at its best ambiguous. But of course it depends on what you mean by the “religion itself.” I’ll grant Pontius Pilate was a historical figure; someone referred to in a Biblical story who actually existed. But historical tidbits aside, the stories of the crucifixion and the resurrection are contradictory, confused amalgams of fancy written by true believers long after the supposed miraculous events occurred. Perhaps the Jesus these accounts refer to actually existed. I’m inclined to think so, but I don’t know why given there are no independent accounts of such a person. Given all the holes and contradictions there is certainly no reason to take any of the miracles as fact. The “evidence” of the New Testament is simply not credible. Lawyers would make mince meat of it in a modern court of law.

Another example from the Old Testament is Genesis which has two conflicting accounts of creation and human characters with life spans that stretch to almost a millennium. Okay, I’ll grant, there have been floods and Genesis may refer to a historical flood. But a flood that knocked off every animal in the world except those that Noah saved! Where’d did all that water go?

These are all clearly Paul Bunyan tales. All the crap about miracles and the supernatural, heaven and hell is just nonsense. But does that make the entire Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition untrue? No. I confess not. What’s left are the life lessons one can learn by reading almost any story written by caring human beings. Like the story of the snake that beguiles Eve into tasting the forbidden fruit and then seducing Adam to taste of it too. Or the story of how she was created from Adam’s rib. We learn that woman is to be second to man in all things. We learn she not only owes her existence to God but to man as well. We learn that woman is weak willed and a temptress. We learn that she is not to be trusted. Lessons that have been well learned for centuries and still permeate our cultures.

Well okay, perhaps that’s not a good example of a lesson that’s “true”. But how about the one where Lot’s wife is turn into a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom as God makes ruin of it, murdering every man, woman and child in the place? We learn that if are trying to pull away from a vice or an addiction, it is best not to look back. So I will grant there are some true things to be learned from religious traditions. They are lessons on human psychology and morality, and they must be taken with a pillar of salt. They are not lessons on how to gain access to eternal life or supernatural places.

And for the most part, I agree. I also don't buy the Biblical accounts of divine punishment, people turning into salt and talking snakes. In fact, I don't buy any such instances from any religion. These are, at best, literary devices used to impart a particular moral lesson.

However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that concepts like "heaven" and "hell" are nonsense. We are entirely unknowing when it comes to such articles because we don't have anything to quantify. Certainly, one can disagree that anything like the Christian-or any other religion's-heaven and hell exist, but as to whether or not such states of existence are real is something that I don't believe anyone can absolutely state as false or true

Of course, such things as "heaven" and "hell" are subjective...an existence you might perceive as heavenly might be perceived as hellish by another.

[MacShreach]

GinX writes:
I would like to address the fact that some have called religion 'fiction'; however, it cannot inherently be called fiction, although I think it is safe to say that there are elements in almost all religions that are fictitious. However, because certain elements might be untrue does not mean the entirety of the religion itself is untrue; rather, it is more truthful to call it unquantified.

It’s more truthful to say it’s mostly false, often empty and at its best ambiguous. But of course it depends on what you mean by the “religion itself.” I’ll grant Pontius Pilate was a historical figure; someone referred to in a Biblical story who actually existed. But historical tidbits aside, the stories of the crucifixion and the resurrection are contradictory, confused amalgams of fancy written by true believers long after the supposed miraculous events occurred. Perhaps the Jesus these accounts refer to actually existed. I’m inclined to think so, but I don’t know why given there are no independent accounts of such a person. Given all the holes and contradictions there is certainly no reason to take any of the miracles as fact. The “evidence” of the New Testament is simply not credible. Lawyers would make mince meat of it in a modern court of law.

Another example from the Old Testament is Genesis which has two conflicting accounts of creation and human characters with life spans that stretch to almost a millennium. Okay, I’ll grant, there have been floods and Genesis may refer to a historical flood. But a flood that knocked off every animal in the world except those that Noah saved! Where’d did all that water go?

These are all clearly Paul Bunyan tales. All the crap about miracles and the supernatural, heaven and hell is just nonsense. But does that make the entire Judeo-Christian-Muslim untrue? No. I confess not. What’s left are the life lessons one can learn by reading almost any story written by caring human beings. Like the story of the snake that beguiles Eve into tasting the forbidden fruit and then seducing Adam to taste of it too. Or the story of how she was created from Adam’s rib. We learn that woman is to be second to man in all things. We learn she not only owes her existence to God but to man as well. We learn that woman is weak willed and a temptress. We learn that she is not to be trusted. Lessons that have been well learned for centuries and still permeate our cultures.

Well okay, perhaps that’s not a good example of a lesson that’s “true”. But how about the one where Lot’s wife is turn into a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom as God makes ruin of it? We learn that if are trying to pull away from a vice or an addiction, it is best not to look back. So I will grant there are some true things to be learned from religious traditions. They are lessons on human psychology and morality, and they must be taken with a pillar of salt. They are not lessons on how to gain access to eternal life or supernatural places.

Ummmm...

You're absolutely right that many of what are called the "parables" are metaphors that reflect an attempt to codify an understanding of the human relations that allow society to exist. It is also correct to say that these are not really "fiction."

Most religions have a creation myth, and we can't really overly criticise the people who wrote them for their obvious inaccuracies; these are not really fiction either, more a sort of stab in the dark. They are not true, but they were not written in that knowledge.

The Romans were not a deeply religious people; but they were imperialists. They did not persecute the early Christians because they rejected the Roman gods (which were actually Greek anyway,) but because they politically challenged the Roman State. The Zoroastrians and those who followed the cult of Sol Invicta were allowed the freedom to worship at exactly the same time, which tends to back this.

The first Roman Emperor to convert, Constantine the Great, may have been deeply affected by the spiritual call of Christianity, but it is also highly likely that he saw in it a way to forge a uniquely Roman religion. The Emperors were all themselves deities in the Roman pantheon, and perhaps Constantine saw that this was untenable in an Empire increasingly keen to find religious and spiritual leadership. Adopting Christianity and rewriting it as the official Church of Rome, with the Emperor as the temporal head, may have been an act of faith; it was certainly a very astute political move.

As you are obviously aware, the texts of the early Christians were edited and altered to fit this new vision, and one issue that the Romans encountered was that the Gauls were devout Mother-Earth worshippers. Since one role of the new religion was to bind the Empire, the possibility of outright rejection and perhaps revolt by the Celts of Gaul had to be avoided; it is true that the Gauls had been defeated by Caesar some three hundred years before, but until then they had been the bane of Rome, famously razing the city and demanding ransom in gold. The Celts were not to be annoyed lightly, and anyway Gaul was responsible for much of the economic wealth of the Empire.

For this reason, Mary was promoted. In the early texts, she was a walk-on, and off, in the Bethlehem scene; after the Synod of Ephesus, convened to settle the matter of the Gaulish reservations about the new religion, she became central to Roman Catholicism. Mary becomes emphasised, and she develops multiple aspects-- Mary the mother, Mary Magdalene the whore. Why else is she present at both Jesus' births-- the one from the flesh and blood womb of the Mother Mary, the second from the dark womb of the Earth Mother herself, as the famous stone is rolled back and Jesus is reborn, revealed in his supernatural powers? This is consistent with everything we know of Celtic deities and religion, who were always multiple (usually triple) aspect. Even the Christian God himself is triple-aspect-- the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The god of the Old Testament has not this refinement.

Huge numbers of Catholics, all over the world, to this day address their prayers to a female deity, Mary, and all over France, you will find Mary standing tall and looking down on her people. I suggest anyone who doubts her stature should look at any Medieval painting of Mary and Jesus; Jesus is ALWAYS lower down or smaller in stature than Mary. In the Medieval era and beyond, painting had an understood language, and the fact that Mary stood above Jesus is a reflection of their relative importances. There are many, many other examples of iconography, particularly from the medieval cathedrals of France, (nearly all of which were built on the sites of pagan temples BTW) that confirm this. Far from weak and powerless, woman, in this view, scarcely changed at all from the pagan roots that it is derived from, is the fount of all life, the universal Mother, the Healer, the provider; she is the bountiful goddess of an agrarian people, at once beautiful, gracious, and magnificent.

(Trish, if you want, I can give you some examples that will astonish you.)

This contrasts with the God of the Old Testament, who is a man; at the time it was written, the Hebrews were surrounded by hostile tribes, most of whom were worshippers of female deities. Making their god a man and making woman subservient, was a deliberate act of distance, declaring the uniqueness of the Hebrews. There were clearly other reasons why the Hebrews were so harshly condemnatory of women; we know that the worship of female deities within matriarchal societies was replaced, in the Middle East, by patriarchal societies with male gods; this did not happen without a struggle. It is likely that male-warrior cults replaced more peaceful agrarian cults by violence.

When the Reformation happened, Protestant thinkers rejected many of the teachings of the earlier Roman Church, for the very reasons I have just laid out, and instead adopted more closely the Old Testament, with its deeply misogynist underlying message. It is interesting that the messages that you identify-- the rib story and the pillar of salt, as well as many others, come from the Old Testament. They confirm the deep misogyny inherent in the earlier text. This is again, not really fiction, but a kind of propaganda.

[yosi]

trish

the Old Testament is actualy a bunch of stories that were told from generation to generation until someone decided to write them so the stories won't be forgotten.

with each generation few details were added , other details were dorgotten, that's the way it goes with stories , they probably sat in the evening by the fire , and told stories , usualy blended and mixed with some imagination to make them sound more interesting.

is there a core of truth in these stories? I don't know, there are some great researches in National Geography channel worth watching about these biblical stories.

in India , the Ganges river is a holy river ,according to their mythology that river used to be in heaven before their gods sent the river for the poor thisty poeple of India.
if you look at the Geological history of India , you can see that the river Ganges, never existed in India before the indian sub-continent "clashed" into Asia ( as part of the continents movements ) created the Himalaya mountains and that's how the Ganges river was created , a river that flows from the Himalaya mountains .

so here you have a Mythological story with a certain core of truth.

[MacShreach]

trish

the Old Testament is actualy a bunch of stories that were told from generation to generation until someone decided to write them so the stories won't be forgotten.

with each generation few details were added , other details were dorgotten, that's the way it goes with stories , they probably sat in the evening by the fire , and told stories , usualy blended and mixed with some imagination to make them sound more interesting.

is there a core of truth in these stories? I don't know, there are some great researches in National Geography channel worth watching about these biblical stories.

in India , the Ganges river is a holy river ,according to their mythology that river used to be in heaven before their gods sent the river for the poor thisty poeple of India.
if you look at the Geological history of India , you can see that the river Ganges, never existed in India before the indian sub-continent "clashed" into Asia ( as part of the continents movements ) created the Himalaya mountains and that's how the Ganges river was created , a river that flows from the Himalaya mountains .

so here you have a Mythological story with a certain core of truth.

Another good example would be the Flood. This appears in the Old Testament but also appears in other traditions, in slightly different forms, the Atlantis legend being one. Some historians have suggested that these stories do tell of an actual event, and some suggest that the vast volcanic explosion that blew the Greek island of Thera into dust and left only a caldera, which must have caused a tsunami of truly devastating proportions, obliterating settlements all round the eastern Mediterranean, was that event.

I certainly agree that we can't simply write off all these stories as just fiction, even though we can be confident they are not literally true; some are the writing down of an existing oral tradition, although others are a form of socio-political propaganda, for example, defining the status of women in an aggressively patriarchal society, as Trish identified. The fact that they have been bent to fit a particular religion is just something that we have to strip away.

[yosi]

trish

the Old Testament is actualy a bunch of stories that were told from generation to generation until someone decided to write them so the stories won't be forgotten.

with each generation few details were added , other details were dorgotten, that's the way it goes with stories , they probably sat in the evening by the fire , and told stories , usualy blended and mixed with some imagination to make them sound more interesting.

is there a core of truth in these stories? I don't know, there are some great researches in National Geography channel worth watching about these biblical stories.

in India , the Ganges river is a holy river ,according to their mythology that river used to be in heaven before their gods sent the river for the poor thisty poeple of India.
if you look at the Geological history of India , you can see that the river Ganges, never existed in India before the indian sub-continent "clashed" into Asia ( as part of the continents movements ) created the Himalaya mountains and that's how the Ganges river was created , a river that flows from the Himalaya mountains .

so here you have a Mythological story with a certain core of truth.

Another good example would be the Flood. This appears in the Old Testament but also appears in other traditions, in slightly different forms, the Atlantis legend being one. Some historians have suggested that these stories do tell of an actual event, and some suggest that the vast volcanic explosion that blew the Greek island of Thera into dust and left only a caldera, which must have caused a tsunami of truly devastating proportions, obliterating settlements all round the eastern Mediterranean, was that event.

I certainly agree that we can't simply write off all these stories as just fiction, even though we can be confident they are not literally true; some are the writing down of an existing oral tradition, although others are a form of socio-political propaganda, for example, defining the status of women in an aggressively patriarchal society, as Trish identified. The fact that they have been bent to fit a particular religion is just something that we have to strip away.

remember that they lived in a completely different reality back than, when you asked someone "where do you live?" he answered "a week from here" , and he meant : "a week from here by walking"............

adapting to new changes , like science does and religions don't , is also important for understanding things as they are , in simple words like my bad english :wink:

[MacShreach]

trish

the Old Testament is actualy a bunch of stories that were told from generation to generation until someone decided to write them so the stories won't be forgotten.

with each generation few details were added , other details were dorgotten, that's the way it goes with stories , they probably sat in the evening by the fire , and told stories , usualy blended and mixed with some imagination to make them sound more interesting.

is there a core of truth in these stories? I don't know, there are some great researches in National Geography channel worth watching about these biblical stories.

in India , the Ganges river is a holy river ,according to their mythology that river used to be in heaven before their gods sent the river for the poor thisty poeple of India.
if you look at the Geological history of India , you can see that the river Ganges, never existed in India before the indian sub-continent "clashed" into Asia ( as part of the continents movements ) created the Himalaya mountains and that's how the Ganges river was created , a river that flows from the Himalaya mountains .

so here you have a Mythological story with a certain core of truth.

Another good example would be the Flood. This appears in the Old Testament but also appears in other traditions, in slightly different forms, the Atlantis legend being one. Some historians have suggested that these stories do tell of an actual event, and some suggest that the vast volcanic explosion that blew the Greek island of Thera into dust and left only a caldera, which must have caused a tsunami of truly devastating proportions, obliterating settlements all round the eastern Mediterranean, was that event.

I certainly agree that we can't simply write off all these stories as just fiction, even though we can be confident they are not literally true; some are the writing down of an existing oral tradition, although others are a form of socio-political propaganda, for example, defining the status of women in an aggressively patriarchal society, as Trish identified. The fact that they have been bent to fit a particular religion is just something that we have to strip away.

remember that they lived in a completely different reality back than, when you asked someone "where do you live?" he answered "a week from here" , and he meant : "a week from here by walking"............

adapting to new changes , like science does and religions don't , is also important for understanding things as they are , in simple words like my bad english :wink:

You're making good sense, don't worry about it! :lol: :lol:

[trish]

hi everyone.

GinX suggests:
However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that concepts like "heaven" and "hell" are nonsense. We are entirely unknowing when it comes to such articles because we don't have anything to quantify.Neither do we have any reason whatsoever to suspect such places exist. Do you believe there is a supernatural place called Tschvinkessa that is inhabited by all the souls of dead crickets? Until now you didn’t. You had no reason to. You were, after all, entirely unknowing of Tschvinkessa. In fact you are now entirely unknowing of Tschvinkessa. That’s because I just made it up. Ah…now you know something about Tschvinkessa. Seemingly the only reference ever made to it comes from an irreputable source that itself claims Tschvinkessa is a fiction. Of course Tschvinkessa doesn’t exist. If only there was some independent evidence, perhaps your faith in Tschvinkessa could be revived. Perhaps the hypothesis of its existence would explain the perturbations in the orbit of Pluto. But alas, there is no independent evidence and you probably just can’t muster up enough faith to believe in poor Tschvinkessa.

This is also the case with ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’. The original source material claims to document impossible floods, virgins who give birth to gods, people who rise from the dead, dead fishes that multiply their numbers, canes that transform into snakes, snakes that speak, angels that announce coming events, demons that rebel against God and all manner of ancient bric-a-brac (no wonder people like this book). The original source is not credible. All other sources are secondary. Indeed most of the writers of the secondary source worship the original source, declaring it to be the holy word of God!!! There is no suggestion from any independent source that such places as ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ should exist. There is no more reason to think that they do, than there is a reason to believe there’s a place where all the souls of crickets go when they die.

Knowing the source of a claim is not the same as being entirely unknowing. And having absolutely no credible reason to believe a miraculous thing is good reason not to believe it. By the way, a miniature alien space craft is going to materialize inside your head if you don’t move right NOW! Did you move? Did you have a reason not to?

[GinX]

hi everyone.

GinX suggests:
However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that concepts like "heaven" and "hell" are nonsense. We are entirely unknowing when it comes to such articles because we don't have anything to quantify.Neither do we have any reason whatsoever to suspect such places exist. Do you believe there is a supernatural place called Tschvinkessa that is inhabited by all the souls of dead crickets? Until now you didn’t. You had no reason to. You were, after all, entirely unknowing of Tschvinkessa. In fact you are now entirely unknowing of Tschvinkessa. That’s because I just made it up. Ah…now you know something about Tschvinkessa. Seemingly the only reference ever made to it comes from an irreputable source that itself claims Tschvinkessa is a fiction. Of course Tschvinkessa doesn’t exist. If only there was some independent evidence, perhaps your faith in Tschvinkessa could be revived. Perhaps the hypothesis of its existence would explain the perturbations in the orbit of Pluto. But alas, there is no independent evidence and you probably just can’t muster up enough faith to believe in poor Tschvinkessa.

This is also the case with ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’. The original source material claims to document impossible floods, virgins who give birth to gods, people who rise from the dead, dead fishes that multiply their numbers, canes that transform into snakes, snakes that speak, angels that announce coming events, demons the rebel against God and all manner of ancient bric-a-brac. The original source is not credible. All other sources are secondary. Indeed most of the writers of the secondary source worship the original source, declaring it to be the holy word of God!!! There is no suggestion from any independent source that such places as ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ should exist. There is no more reason to think that they do, than there is a reason to believe there’s a place where all the souls of crickets go when they die.

Knowing the source of a claim is not the same as being entirely unknowing. And having absolutely no credible reason to believe a miraculous thing is good reason not to believe it. By the way, a miniature alien space craft is going to materialize inside your head if you don’t move right NOW! Did you move? Did you have a reason not to?

Well, how about this...you seem to be focusing solely on Christianity specifically. My comments have all been broad-based and not limited to a single faith.

The point I'm trying to make is that those who are of any particular faith and have the belief in anything like an afterlife, heaven, hell...whatever name you choose to give it...DO have a reason to consider the existence of such states of existence. More often than not, the reasoning behind this is usually tied to some series of personal epiphanies and spiritual experiences.

Now, if that person comes to me and says those experiences reveal what is true, then the burden of proof is on them. I can't take those experiences into account because I cannot observe, witness or quantify them. That being the case, I cannot say they were false either because they exist outside the realm of what I can establish. If I state with absoluteness that these experiences and what they define are completely false, then I have made a logical error because they only way I could do so is to have absolute knowledge. As I've said before, no one has that.

Remember, reasoning is often personal. While you may disdain any consideration for something like an afterlife, others do not. You may dismiss it as being something that you don't feel deserves your consideration, and further subjectively label it nonsense, but I would oppose the concept of it being objectively labeled nonsense.

[trish]

How does one know an experience is spiritual? Do we learn this ostensively? According to your account that cannot be the case because one person cannot point to the spiritual experiences of another. Is there as set of criteria that one can apply to test whether a given experience is spiritual or not? If there are no such criteria and there is no ostensive characterization, then one is simply free to use the label whenever you feel it’s appropriate. Now that’s okay, but there’s a danger of circularity. A person can label an experience as spiritual and then later use the experience to argue that spirituality exists, forgetting that they already assumed the category had viability when they used it to label the experience. Another person experiencing the same thing may categorize it not as spiritual but as euphoric or trance-like. An experience cannot count as evidence of spirituality simply because someone says it was spiritual, because that person has no way of knowing whether it was spiritual or not. They have no way of knowing because the very concept is ill-defined, ambiguous and empty.

[yosi]

hi everyone.

GinX suggests:
However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that concepts like "heaven" and "hell" are nonsense. We are entirely unknowing when it comes to such articles because we don't have anything to quantify.Neither do we have any reason whatsoever to suspect such places exist. Do you believe there is a supernatural place called Tschvinkessa that is inhabited by all the souls of dead crickets? Until now you didn’t. You had no reason to. You were, after all, entirely unknowing of Tschvinkessa. In fact you are now entirely unknowing of Tschvinkessa. That’s because I just made it up. Ah…now you know something about Tschvinkessa. Seemingly the only reference ever made to it comes from an irreputable source that itself claims Tschvinkessa is a fiction. Of course Tschvinkessa doesn’t exist. If only there was some independent evidence, perhaps your faith in Tschvinkessa could be revived. Perhaps the hypothesis of its existence would explain the perturbations in the orbit of Pluto. But alas, there is no independent evidence and you probably just can’t muster up enough faith to believe in poor Tschvinkessa.

This is also the case with ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’. The original source material claims to document impossible floods, virgins who give birth to gods, people who rise from the dead, dead fishes that multiply their numbers, canes that transform into snakes, snakes that speak, angels that announce coming events, demons the rebel against God and all manner of ancient bric-a-brac. The original source is not credible. All other sources are secondary. Indeed most of the writers of the secondary source worship the original source, declaring it to be the holy word of God!!! There is no suggestion from any independent source that such places as ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ should exist. There is no more reason to think that they do, than there is a reason to believe there’s a place where all the souls of crickets go when they die.

Knowing the source of a claim is not the same as being entirely unknowing. And having absolutely no credible reason to believe a miraculous thing is good reason not to believe it. By the way, a miniature alien space craft is going to materialize inside your head if you don’t move right NOW! Did you move? Did you have a reason not to?

Well, how about this...you seem to be focusing solely on Christianity specifically. My comments have all been broad-based and not limited to a single faith.

The point I'm trying to make is that those who are of any particular faith and have the belief in anything like an afterlife, heaven, hell...whatever name you choose to give it...DO have a reason to consider the existence of such states of existence. More often than not, the reasoning behind this is usually tied to some series of personal epiphanies and spiritual experiences.

Now, if that person comes to me and says those experiences reveal what is true, then the burden of proof is on them. I can't take those experiences into account because I cannot observe, witness or quantify them. That being the case, I cannot say they were false either because they exist outside the realm of what I can establish. If I state with absoluteness that these experiences and what they define are completely false, then I have made a logical error because they only way I could do so is to have absolute knowledge. As I've said before, no one has that.

Remember, reasoning is often personal. While you may disdain any consideration for something like an afterlife, others do not. You may dismiss it as being something that you don't feel deserves your consideration, and further subjectively label it nonsense, but I would oppose the concept of it being objectively labeled nonsense.

just few comments:

1. all religions have their own set of "miracles".
2. heaven cannot exist without hell and vice versa , they define each other , you cannot prove that they exist , is it possible that it's because they don't exist?
3. "after life" is a completely different matter , does it exist? I don't know .
what I do know is that what defines "after life" is something very real.
there are still many things we don't know.

[GinX]

How does one know an experience is spiritual? Do we learn this ostensively? According to your account that cannot be the case because one person cannot point to the spiritual experiences of another. Is there as set of criteria that one can apply to test whether a given experience is spiritual or not? If there are no such criteria and there is no ostensive characterization, then one is simply free to use the label whenever you feel it’s appropriate. Now that’s okay, but there’s a danger of circularity. A person can label an experience as spiritual and then later use the experience to argue that spirituality exists, forgetting that they already assumed the category had viability when they used it to label the experience. Another person experiencing the same thing may categorize it not as spiritual but as euphoric or trance-like. An experience cannot count as evidence of spirituality simply because someone says it was spiritual, because that person has no way of knowing whether it was spiritual or not. They have no way of knowing because the very concept is ill-defined, ambiguous and empty.

By the same token, I cannot, in any truthful way say he didn't have a spiritual experience. I can only accept that he believes the experience to have been such. It is beyond mine-or anyone else's power-to confirm or deny.

[GinX]

hi everyone.

GinX suggests:
However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that concepts like "heaven" and "hell" are nonsense. We are entirely unknowing when it comes to such articles because we don't have anything to quantify.Neither do we have any reason whatsoever to suspect such places exist. Do you believe there is a supernatural place called Tschvinkessa that is inhabited by all the souls of dead crickets? Until now you didn’t. You had no reason to. You were, after all, entirely unknowing of Tschvinkessa. In fact you are now entirely unknowing of Tschvinkessa. That’s because I just made it up. Ah…now you know something about Tschvinkessa. Seemingly the only reference ever made to it comes from an irreputable source that itself claims Tschvinkessa is a fiction. Of course Tschvinkessa doesn’t exist. If only there was some independent evidence, perhaps your faith in Tschvinkessa could be revived. Perhaps the hypothesis of its existence would explain the perturbations in the orbit of Pluto. But alas, there is no independent evidence and you probably just can’t muster up enough faith to believe in poor Tschvinkessa.

This is also the case with ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’. The original source material claims to document impossible floods, virgins who give birth to gods, people who rise from the dead, dead fishes that multiply their numbers, canes that transform into snakes, snakes that speak, angels that announce coming events, demons the rebel against God and all manner of ancient bric-a-brac. The original source is not credible. All other sources are secondary. Indeed most of the writers of the secondary source worship the original source, declaring it to be the holy word of God!!! There is no suggestion from any independent source that such places as ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ should exist. There is no more reason to think that they do, than there is a reason to believe there’s a place where all the souls of crickets go when they die.

Knowing the source of a claim is not the same as being entirely unknowing. And having absolutely no credible reason to believe a miraculous thing is good reason not to believe it. By the way, a miniature alien space craft is going to materialize inside your head if you don’t move right NOW! Did you move? Did you have a reason not to?

Well, how about this...you seem to be focusing solely on Christianity specifically. My comments have all been broad-based and not limited to a single faith.

The point I'm trying to make is that those who are of any particular faith and have the belief in anything like an afterlife, heaven, hell...whatever name you choose to give it...DO have a reason to consider the existence of such states of existence. More often than not, the reasoning behind this is usually tied to some series of personal epiphanies and spiritual experiences.

Now, if that person comes to me and says those experiences reveal what is true, then the burden of proof is on them. I can't take those experiences into account because I cannot observe, witness or quantify them. That being the case, I cannot say they were false either because they exist outside the realm of what I can establish. If I state with absoluteness that these experiences and what they define are completely false, then I have made a logical error because they only way I could do so is to have absolute knowledge. As I've said before, no one has that.

Remember, reasoning is often personal. While you may disdain any consideration for something like an afterlife, others do not. You may dismiss it as being something that you don't feel deserves your consideration, and further subjectively label it nonsense, but I would oppose the concept of it being objectively labeled nonsense.

just few comments:

1. all religions have their own set of "miracles".
2. heaven cannot exist without hell and vice versa , they define each other , you cannot prove that they exist , is it possible that it's because they don't exist?
3. "after life" is a completely different matter , does it exist? I don't know .
what I do know is that what defines "after life" is something very real.
there are still many things we don't know.

1. Agreed.
2. That depends on the religion in question. Not every one of them has a 'heaven' and a 'hell'. It's possible they don't exist..it's possible they do exist. There's not enough to go on to say for sure one way or the other.
3. I don't know, either...I just work here, man :D

[trish]

By the same token, I cannot, in any truthful way say he didn't have a spiritual experience.

But you can ask, what's a spiritual experience? If he can't tell you in a coherent fashion what one is, then you can surmise the category of spiritual experience is meaningless, at least for the person who in this case is claiming to have had one. This person is just making up words to describe his or her experience, whatever that experience was.

A person may have experienced something they never felt before, and can’t fully describe it. But how do they know the adjective ‘spiritual’ applies? They don’t. They could not have learned the term ostenively, as you have surmised, and there is no set of criteria on which everyone agrees which can be applied to determine whether a given experience is spiritual or not. People use the term meaninglessly.

[GinX]

By the same token, I cannot, in any truthful way say he didn't have a spiritual experience.

But you can ask, what's a spiritual experience? If he can't tell you in a coherent fashion what one is, then you can surmise the category of spiritual experience is meaningless, at least for the person who in this case is claiming to have had one. This person is just making up words to describe his or her experience, whatever that experience was.

A person may have experienced something they never felt before, and can’t fully describe it. But how do they know the adjective ‘spiritual’ applies? They don’t. They could not have learned the term ostenively, as you have surmised, and there is no set of criteria on which everyone agrees which can be applied to determine whether a given experience is spiritual or not. People use the term meaninglessly.

This depends on what you define as coherent. If the person can give you coherent explanation, does that then validate the experience as being genuine? The term is not meaningless to the one who applies it. All of this boils down to two things:
1. What does the person who had the experience think it is?
2. Can I confirm or deny it?
Further, I can surmise that based on there own life collective experiences, that if they deem an experience 'spiritual', then so be it. Since, as you point out, there is no standardized criteria, I cannot logically say that the person in question did or did not have a 'spiritual' experience. All I can do is exclude that as evidence OF the spiritual because I cannot examine, observe or quantify this experience.

[trish]

No one could've transfered the meaning of spiritual to this person because it has no criteria and no ostensive definition. So the term is meaningless to him. It's as meaningless to him as it is to all of us. He might as well just make up a word to label his experience. This is quite akin to Wittgenstein's private language argument.

[giovanni_hotel]

Trish, substitute ," I had a spiritual experience," to someone saying instead, " I just fell in love."

You could apply the same arguments about why this experientially was not a legitimate, coherent, definable, emotional state, especially not one experienced by the listener.

But would you argue that the experience of 'falling in love' was any less real??

[trish]

hello giovanni.
Your beef is with GinX who voluntarily conceded spirituality has no ostensive characterization:


I can't take those experiences into account because I cannot observe, witness or quantify them.

Love is a word with a lot of ambiguity. There are so many different complexes of emotion that go by the name, one might quite easily contend that there’s no unifying notion; that there are several different and independent experiential complexes that go by the same name. There are even some meaningless uses of the word. Nevertheless, many of the different sorts of love can be defined ostensively. A mother shows her child love and the child learns that she is loved. And the child is induced by love to love back. In that sense you can point to love. You can point to the love a child has for her pet. We all show various kinds of love to each other all the time. We learn love the same way we learn ‘heat’. We are shown heat. We feel it. Told it’s heat. And sometimes we burn ourselves and we’re scolded, “I told you that was hot!” Yet you can be fooled into thinking a cold pipe is burning hot to the touch. Likewise people sometimes discover that they were mistaken about a particular experience which they took to be love. But at least various types of love are meaningful in so far as they can be communicated and shared. This is not the case with spirituality which is supposedly more than an experience; it's an experience of the supernatural. You cannot repeatedly show a child the supernatural and confirm with each experience, “that feeling you have now is spirituality.”

[GinX]

No one could've transfered the meaning of spiritual to this person because it has no criteria and no ostensive definition. So the term is meaningless to him. It's as meaningless to him as it is to all of us. He might as well just make up a word to label his experience. This is quite akin to Wittgenstein's private language argument.

If that's the case, any word you use to describe an experience because there is no definitive criteria for any experience. If you define an experience you had as pleasant, that is meaningless to me because there is no way I can know whether or not you actually had a pleasant experience. I can only abide by what you claim. Trying to prove it is likewise useless unless I agree that the experience you describe is pleasant and even then there are problems: agreeing that the experience is pleasant doesn't mean you actually found the experience pleasant...I can never be absolutely sure. If I disagree and say the experience you describe is unpleasant, who is right and who is wrong?

The words we attach to experiences have meaning to those who choose to use those words. 'Spiritual' experiences are meaningless to you simply because you don't believe they exist.

[GinX]

hello giovanni.
Your beef is with GinX who voluntarily conceded spirituality has no ostensive characterization:


I can't take those experiences into account because I cannot observe, witness or quantify them.

Love is a word with a lot of ambiguity. There are so many different complexes of emotion that go by the name, one might quite easily contend that there’s no unifying notion; that there are several different and independent experiential complexes that go by the same name. There are even some meaningless uses of the word. Nevertheless, many of the different sorts of love can be defined ostensively. A mother shows her child love and the child learns that she is loved. And the child is induced by love to love back. In that sense you can point to love. You can point to the love a child has for her pet. We all show various kinds of love to each other all the time. We learn love the same way we learn ‘heat’. We are shown heat. We feel it. Told it’s heat. And sometimes we burn ourselves and we’re scolded, “I told you that was hot!” Yet you can be fooled into thinking a cold pipe is burning hot to the touch. Likewise people sometimes discover that they were mistaken about a particular experience which they took to be love. But at least various types of love are meaningful in so far as they can be communicated and shared. This is not the case with spirituality which is supposedly more than an experience; it's an experience of the supernatural. You cannot repeatedly show a child the supernatural and confirm with each experience, “that feeling you have now is spirituality.”

The point is moot because what experiences can be ostensively-that is to say plainly demonstrative-of what qualifies it to be what one claims it to be? From the time we are infants, we are continuously influenced by our environment and the individuals in our environment-our society and culture-to adapt the perception that "this is this, this is not". What really is funny? What really is happiness? How many people would agree? Disagree?

There is no one experience we can examine and qualify to always be <insert adjective here>. Given the multitudes of perceptions in the world, trying to quantify, say, what constitutes a 'happy experience' is little more than an exercise in futility. It's for that reason that the multitude of faiths and religions in the world have never attempted to quantify what is and is not a 'spiritual experience'...there are far too many perceptions to accurately that one experience is and one experience isn't.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the extremely zealous and fanatically religious from trying to do so....but that's whole other story.

Now, if you really want to go deeper, you can read up on the works of William James and Norman Habel, who have worked at quantifying the supposed 'spiritual experience'. They've found generalized patterns in spiritual experiences; however, I'm not entirely convinced that these are indicative of true spiritual experiences. We're really only beginning to understand how the mind works and there might be other things at work here. Despite that, one could argue that spiritual experiences DO have an ostensive framework. I've avoided doing so because I'm not convinced entirely that they do...just as I feel about any experience we've claimed to have had.

By the way, I never conceded that spiritual experiences have no ostensive characterization....what I said was that I couldn't accept someone's spiritual experience as proof OF the spiritual because there is no way for me to replicate the experience so as to examine it.

[trish]

If that's the case, any word you use to describe an experience because there is no definitive criteria for any experience.
Not so. You forget that besides criteria, we also use and indeed more often use ostension to communicate the meaning of terms. I have just given an example of ostension in the above post: love and heat are taught usually via ostension. A mother loves her child, induces love within the child and the child learns love by being shown love.

As you seem to agree, there are no criteria for determining whether an experience is an experience of the supernatural. Neither is ostension available. You cannot show the supernatural to child in order to teach them what its like to experience the supernatural.

I do recommend Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, especially the private language argument.

[GinX]

If that's the case, any word you use to describe an experience because there is no definitive criteria for any experience.
Not so. You forget that besides criteria, we also use and indeed more often use ostension to communicate the meaning of terms. I have just given an example of ostension in the above post: love and heat are taught usually via ostension. A mother loves her child, induces love within the child and the child learns love by being shown love.

As you seem to agree, there are no criteria for determining whether an experience is an experience of the supernatural. Neither is ostension available. You cannot show the supernatural to child in order to teach them the what its like to experience the supernatural.

But is the mother actually doing something to show she loves her child...or is she just convinced the act she performs shows love her child? In any case, through the repetition of the action, the child will believe she's being loved because she's being told that she's being loved.

Further, it depends on how you intend to show the supernatural to a child. Christians attempt to show their children through prayer. Buddhists attempt to show their children through meditative practices. If a child claims to have had a spiritual experience based upon the acts and instruction of the parent, why is that any less different from a child to having experienced love based on the acts and instruction of the parent?

[trish]

But is the mother actually doing something to show she loves her child... Of course. That's the point of ostension...showing.

Can you really reliably access the supernatural through prayer? I thought you already agreed the miracles, demons, gods, talking snakes and all that were likely not true? So now you're telling me that the miracle of prayer is a miracle that works. Just pray, add the right amount of fervor, and viola you're experiencing the supernatural.

Here's the difficulty. Teaching love by ostension works. People, more often than not, learn to love and experience love in their lives. Teaching people to experience the supernatual through prayer has a remarkably poor rate of success. Perhaps because the method doesn't grant access to the supernatural with sufficient reliability. So there's a lot of people who are being told they're experiencing the supernatural when all they're doing is talking to themselves in their heads.

[yodajazz]

...... But at least various types of love are meaningful in so far as they can be communicated and shared. This is not the case with spirituality which is supposedly more than an experience; it's an experience of the supernatural. You cannot repeatedly show a child the supernatural and confirm with each experience, “that feeling you have now is spirituality.”


Spirituality can be shared. It is shared by billions of people around the world, through religious groups of all kind. Now of course these same groups do other things. But spiritual experience is at the core of the meaning for the vast majority of people practicing religion. And it is more than through the experience of the “supernatural”. In fact some of us argue that all real love is a spiritual experience. So the argument that you made stating that love exists also apply to spirituality.

The major issue is that so many people get confused with physical attraction and love. The reality is that physical attraction towards a person does open us up to find the greater love experience with that person. So physical attraction is like a tool or a path which helps us get to the goal experience of love. It is likewise, with the ‘supernatural doctrine’ of many religions. It is just a tool to help that person get to feel a connection with others and even the universe, which is beyond words. Here’s and example: there is a phrase in the Bible that says, “The Peace that passes all understanding”.

It is very true that many religious people confuse, the tools or doctrine with the goals. But that is not the fault of the religion, as much is it is the limitation of the people practicing. An analogy is school. If people do not graduate, it is not the fault of the school, it is the human variables, which include the student, the teachers the study materials, etc.

I should have mentioned that 'spirituality' goes way beyond the experience with religous groups. Especially if one defines all true love, in all of its forms as spiritual. It is just that religion is a tool specifically for the purpose of having that experience. The same is the purpose of school for learning.

[GinX]

But is the mother actually doing something to show she loves her child... Of course. That's the point of ostension...showing.

Can you really reliably access the supernatural through prayer? I thought you already agreed the miracles, demons, gods, talking snakes and all that were likely not true? So now you're telling me that the miracle of prayer is a miracle that works. Just pray, add the right amount of fervor, and viola you're experiencing the supernatural.

Here's the difficulty. Teaching love by ostension works. People, more often than not, learn to love and experience love in their lives. Teaching people to experience the supernatual through prayer has a remarkably poor rate of success. Perhaps because the method doesn't grant access to the supernatural with sufficient reliability. So there's a lot of people who are being told they're experiencing the supernatural when all they're doing is talking to themselves in their heads.


You are not following through with my whole argument. You claim your mother example is an ostensive example of love. My claim is simply :is it? Just because the mother says and believes she's performing a loving act, does that mean she in fact is? What happens if someone disagrees? Then she isn't?

Think about this: may parents refused to lay a hand on their children. They did not believe that striking a child could, in any way, be interpreted as a loving act, despite whatever behavior you are trying to teach the child However, there are parents who firmly believe that you can strike a child as a loving act. So who's right and who's wrong? Is striking ostensively an act of love? or is not striking?

Prayer and meditation have a remarkably poor rate of success? Says who? What statistics validate that? I never said anything about prayer being automatically successful. All I've said is that if a child claims to have had a spiritual experience based on what he has learned from the acts and instruction of the parent, why is that any different from a child who claims to have experienced love?

You claim there is a lot of people who think they are experiencing something spiritual when in actuality all they are doing is talking to themselves in their heads. I contend that there may very well be many people who think they are performing loving acts simply because they have been told all their lives that the act is a loving one and are simply doing it by rote.

[yodajazz]

But is the mother actually doing something to show she loves her child... Of course. That's the point of ostension...showing.

Can you really reliably access the supernatural through prayer? I thought you already agreed the miracles, demons, gods, talking snakes and all that were likely not true? So now you're telling me that the miracle of prayer is a miracle that works. Just pray, add the right amount of fervor, and viola you're experiencing the supernatural.

Here's the difficulty. Teaching love by ostension works. People, more often than not, learn to love and experience love in their lives. Teaching people to experience the supernatual through prayer has a remarkably poor rate of success. Perhaps because the method doesn't grant access to the supernatural with sufficient reliability. So there's a lot of people who are being told they're experiencing the supernatural when all they're doing is talking to themselves in their heads.

Trish, you know God, you just do not give the official recognition of what you already know. In the simplest of definitions, God is only two things. God is Law, and God is Love. You as an educated person recognize that the universe is controlled by law. Even though we as human realize, that we do not know all the laws which govern the universe, we do instinctively understand that laws exist. I also know that you understand that Love exists. If you know that both things exists, you know God, period. No doctrine or believe in the supernatural is required. Those doctrines are just tools to assist people to have a greater understanding of what they you and I, already know. But the premise of religion is that ‘knowing or understanding’ God better, will improve your operation on this and other (theoretical) planes of existence.

So Trish, you know God. Now I have studied the concept and operation of God in mankind and the universe for many years, through a philosophy called “Religious Science”. But because I have done this, it does not mean that I know God any better than you. It only means that I “know God” better than I did in the past. God bless you Trish!(lol). I'll explain why this works, later.

P.S. Thanks GinX for making the mother-child argument. I skipped that part in my post. I agree with most everything you have said, that I have read, so far.

[yosi]

Spirituality can be shared. It is shared by billions of people around the world, through religious groups of all kind.



the best way to check a wonderful idea is to give it a reality test.

giving a reality test to this "Spirituality that is shared by billions of poeple around the world" idea, shows that we are giving our best shot in destroying this little green/blue ball that all of us happen to live on.

living in your books and super duper fantastic ideas , you forget that this green/blue ball that is out there was given to us as a great FREE present from someone...........

have a happy global warming , a great part of it is our fault 8)

[yodajazz]

Spirituality can be shared. It is shared by billions of people around the world, through religious groups of all kind.



the best way to check a wonderful idea is to give it a reality test.

giving a reality test to this "Spirituality that is shared by billions of poeple around the world" idea, shows that we are giving our best shot in destroying this little green/blue ball that all of us happen to live on.

living in your books and super duper fantastic ideas , you forget that this green/blue ball that is out there was given to us as a great FREE present from someone...........

have a happy global warming , a great part of it is our fault 8)

The reality test is that we are all here, we are all part of this thing we call life. I have not forgotten about my favorite planet. As I see it, life is pretty much a self correcting system. If something goes out of balance, for example over population, a new disease may crop up and take out enough to re-balance the system. Lifeforms adapt to system changes. An example of this is living in an urban area I have seen species which are associated with forests on my street and in my yard. These are skunks, raccoons, possum, and I even saw a couple of deer running down the sidewalk recently.

As for the planet, if mankind does not correct it’s direction then ‘natural forces’ will. Those that define a “God” as the ‘system administrator’ see ‘him’ (she, it) as the natural force, behind the natural force, or some might say God is the natural force itself, or the Law in the laws of nature.

Each of us is part of reality, but reality tests have a slightly different answer according to each reality.

[MacShreach]

This is also the case with ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’. The original source material claims to document impossible floods, virgins who give birth to gods, people who rise from the dead, dead fishes that multiply their numbers, canes that transform into snakes, snakes that speak, angels that announce coming events, demons that rebel against God and all manner of ancient bric-a-brac (no wonder people like this book). The original source is not credible. All other sources are secondary. Indeed most of the writers of the secondary source worship the original source, declaring it to be the holy word of God!!! There is no suggestion from any independent source that such places as ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ should exist. There is no more reason to think that they do, than there is a reason to believe there’s a place where all the souls of crickets go when they die.



You're absolutely right in your assessment of the validity of the concepts of "heaven" and particularly "hell." However, I think we have to be careful with writing off all mythology as simple nonsense. There is good evidence to back the suggestion that there actually was a tsunami that might have occurred in a timeframe which would have been appropriate, which would have caused massive destruction in the Eastern Med, and MAY have given rise to the legends of the Flood and Atlantis. Similarly it has been frequently suggested that the Minotaur legend has its roots in "bull-dancing" or "bull-leaping" which is still practised in Spain today, and the paintings we have of the Minotaur give some weight to this.. A surprising number of mythological tales can be shown to have potential (it can never be proved) origins in actual events. The fact that these stories have become so changed is just the "Chinese Whispers" effect.

Others, like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection are much more complex; the Resurrection I believe to be the adoption of Celtic mythology into christian-- which is why Christ's rebirth happens at Easter (eostre) which is a Celtic festival celebrating the rebirth of fertility with the coming of Spring. (In fact all the christian festivals are pagan ones, a point which clearly escapes many christian fundamentalists.) Now that of course does not make these stories any more true; what is interesting about them is in terms of their revelation of cultural history that might otherwise be hidden--in this case because the Celts did not write anything down.

Clearly, however, there is a problem with identifying which stories fall into which category-- those that may have had an origin in a real event, and those that are a metaphor for a deeper cultural or religious belief.

None of it, of course, makes the existence of gods, BDs, booglie-wooglie men or heaven or hell any more likely; the interest here is in terms of human culture.

[MacShreach]

...... But at least various types of love are meaningful in so far as they can be communicated and shared. This is not the case with spirituality which is supposedly more than an experience; it's an experience of the supernatural. You cannot repeatedly show a child the supernatural and confirm with each experience, “that feeling you have now is spirituality.”


Spirituality can be shared. It is shared by billions of people around the world, through religious groups of all kind. Now of course these same groups do other things. But spiritual experience is at the core of the meaning for the vast majority of people practicing religion. And it is more than through the experience of the “supernatural”. In fact some of us argue that all real love is a spiritual experience. So the argument that you made stating that love exists also apply to spirituality.

The major issue is that so many people get confused with physical attraction and love. The reality is that physical attraction towards a person does open us up to find the greater love experience with that person. So physical attraction is like a tool or a path which helps us get to the goal experience of love. It is likewise, with the ‘supernatural doctrine’ of many religions. It is just a tool to help that person get to feel a connection with others and even the universe, which is beyond words. Here’s and example: there is a phrase in the Bible that says, “The Peace that passes all understanding”.

It is very true that many religious people confuse, the tools or doctrine with the goals. But that is not the fault of the religion, as much is it is the limitation of the people practicing. An analogy is school. If people do not graduate, it is not the fault of the school, it is the human variables, which include the student, the teachers the study materials, etc.

I should have mentioned that 'spirituality' goes way beyond the experience with religous groups. Especially if one defines all true love, in all of its forms as spiritual. It is just that religion is a tool specifically for the purpose of having that experience. The same is the purpose of school for learning.

Spirituality can be shared, indeed, and is, and it would be most surprising if it were not, because it is an emotion intrinsic to humans. Some pages back Rogers posted a link to research that pointed to a particular locus in the brain which was active in this.

However no matter how powerfully people feel emotions like love and spirituality, these are things which exist within themselves; they do not depend on an external power or system of belief.

I have stood in front of a Rothko and allowed myself to be subsumed; I have walked into the Great Cathedral of Autun and felt an almost palpable blow of sheer awe, just as the designers intended; I have lost myself in music; I have sat alone on the ocean, with nothing to see but horizon and felt at once very small and very comfortable; I have been rendered speechless by the beauty of the aurora borealis, and I have felt tears on my cheeks as I cradled a child. All of these things are "spiritual" experiences, and it would I think, be a much poorer life without them. They are a part of the Human Condition, a wonderful part.

The difference, I think, is that unlike many people of faith, at least in my experience, I do not ascribe these to some higher power, nor do I consider that they can only be experienced as part of a wider faith in something unprovable; I know these feelings are a part of me, and that they are simply wonders of life.

The garden is not just within Giovanni, or me, it's within everyone, and it has nothing to do with the supernatural; it comes as standard equipment. Recognising that it is a part of each and every one of us and is not dependent on imaginary gods, heavens or hells, Blessed Dildoes or old books, is step one to opening the gate. As I keep saying, you have to lose all the anthropocentric BS that clutters the mind and see reality clearly; we are just a part of an infinite dance of atoms.

You could if you like, say "The Buddha is within you;" it comes to the same thing, and there is good reason why Buddhism is sometimes called an "atheist religion."

[yodajazz]

This is also the case with ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’. The original source material claims to document impossible floods, virgins who give birth to gods, people who rise from the dead, dead fishes that multiply their numbers, canes that transform into snakes, snakes that speak, angels that announce coming events, demons that rebel against God and all manner of ancient bric-a-brac (no wonder people like this book). The original source is not credible. All other sources are secondary. Indeed most of the writers of the secondary source worship the original source, declaring it to be the holy word of God!!! There is no suggestion from any independent source that such places as ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ should exist. There is no more reason to think that they do, than there is a reason to believe there’s a place where all the souls of crickets go when they die.



You're absolutely right in your assessment of the validity of the concepts of "heaven" and particularly "hell." However, I think we have to be careful with writing off all mythology as simple nonsense. There is good evidence to back the suggestion that there actually was a tsunami that might have occurred in a timeframe which would have been appropriate, which would have caused massive destruction in the Eastern Med, and MAY have given rise to the legends of the Flood and Atlantis. Similarly it has been frequently suggested that the Minotaur legend has its roots in "bull-dancing" or "bull-leaping" which is still practised in Spain today, and the paintings we have of the Minotaur give some weight to this.. A surprising number of mythological tales can be shown to have potential (it can never be proved) origins in actual events. The fact that these stories have become so changed is just the "Chinese Whispers" effect.

Others, like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection are much more complex; the Resurrection I believe to be the adoption of Celtic mythology into christian-- which is why Christ's rebirth happens at Easter (eostre) which is a Celtic festival celebrating the rebirth of fertility with the coming of Spring. (In fact all the christian festivals are pagan ones, a point which clearly escapes many christian fundamentalists.) Now that of course does not make these stories any more true; what is interesting about them is in terms of their revelation of cultural history that might otherwise be hidden--in this case because the Celts did not write anything down.

Clearly, however, there is a problem with identifying which stories fall into which category-- those that may have had an origin in a real event, and those that are a metaphor for a deeper cultural or religious belief.

None of it, of course, makes the existence of gods, BDs, booglie-wooglie men or heaven or hell any more likely; the interest here is in terms of human culture.

I agree with much of your content, but I will add a couple of things. Jesus, once described, heaven as a mental state, as he said “the kingdom of heaven is within”. However the same Bible reports him as referring to an afterlife. The “neardeath” phenomenon points to a possible existence beyond our body forms. It may not be exact proof, it's just evidence. The possibility exists of “heaven and hell” being mental states in our current human form, as well as other theorectical planes of existence. Other religious philosophies also argue in favor of the "mental state" view.

The thing I would add about religious practices, is some of the timing is political, as well. Those that believe that Jesus actually existed, then believe that he was born as a human birth. The fact was that the celebration of his birth was moved to coincide with a Roman festival which celebrates the “birth of the sun” as the new year. The fact that Jesus’s birth date was moved for political reasons, does not prove or disprove that he was born. And it does not make a difference to those that believe so. But the date of Christ's birth being set into civil law can be traced to a decree by a specific Emperor of Rome. Also other beliefs were decreed by specific councils to weed out sects whose ideas conflicted with others. The purpose of this was to strengthen the religion as a whole, politically. One has to agree that it probably did help strengthen the group as a whole, however the opposite effect was to stifle creativity, and it also help to divert the focus of true spirituality.

[MacShreach]

Jesus, once described, heaven as a mental state, as he said “the kingdom of heaven is within”. However the same Bible reports him as referring to an afterlife. The “neardeath” phenomenon points to a possible existence beyond our body forms.

There are two points here: the first is that we do not know what Jesus actually said, since everything in the New Testament was written long after his death; and the second is that the "neardeath" phenomenon does not really point to a possible existence beyond our bodily forms; all that can be said is that it indicates a change of our perception in the face of an extreme condition. This is backed up by other types of experience. The personal histories of soldiers describing action frequently reveals fascinating insights into how the human mind reacts to extreme events, and many people, including me, have had very odd experiences when a close loved one dies. However, these are not paranormal or supernatural at all, but come from within ourselves.

[yosi]

Spirituality can be shared. It is shared by billions of people around the world, through religious groups of all kind.



the best way to check a wonderful idea is to give it a reality test.

giving a reality test to this "Spirituality that is shared by billions of poeple around the world" idea, shows that we are giving our best shot in destroying this little green/blue ball that all of us happen to live on.

living in your books and super duper fantastic ideas , you forget that this green/blue ball that is out there was given to us as a great FREE present from someone...........

have a happy global warming , a great part of it is our fault 8)

The reality test is that we are all here, we are all part of this thing we call life. I have not forgotten about my favorite planet. As I see it, life is pretty much a self correcting system. If something goes out of balance, for example over population, a new disease may crop up and take out enough to re-balance the system. Lifeforms adapt to system changes. An example of this is living in an urban area I have seen species which are associated with forests on my street and in my yard. These are skunks, raccoons, possum, and I even saw a couple of deer running down the sidewalk recently.

As for the planet, if mankind does not correct it’s direction then ‘natural forces’ will. Those that define a “God” as the ‘system administrator’ see ‘him’ (she, it) as the natural force, behind the natural force, or some might say God is the natural force itself, or the Law in the laws of nature.

Each of us is part of reality, but reality tests have a slightly different answer according to each reality.

if I take this "miracles, demons, gods, talking snakes etc." idea , and see that it also leads to a wonderful new miracle : "if you are a suicide bomber , there are 72 young virgins waiting for you in heaven ", check for details on 9/11 , I tend to think there is something very wrong in this "miracle" system .

it also makes this sentence you wrote : " Spirituality can be shared. It is shared by billions of people around the world, through religious groups of all kind." look a bit like a propaganda , isn't it?

both of us agree about the existence of "laws of nature" , we differ in our perspective .

[giovanni_hotel]

GinX and Yodajazz, +1!!

I was really gassed out on this subject, ( mostly when MacShreach suggested Joni Mitchell instead meant 'christian hippies' when she wrote the lyric, 'child of god'!!) but you two restored my faith(!) on the original hijack discussion of this thread.

[trish]

It seems, GinX, that you’re claiming that your mother can’t show you love but she can show you the supernatural! Or perhaps you’re proposing love is supernatural, not belonging to the natural world, but to one beyond it. I think you’re just ignoring the empirical fact that people do show love and we recognize it. We agree on its aspects and that is can be demonstrated in many ways. Some people will strike the child they love and some people will never strike the child. But each child, by and large, comes to recognize a complex of behaviors as manifestations of her parent’s love. Sometimes we’re mistaken in about love. Sometime we discover that we took infatuation to be love, just as an example. Just because we’re mistaken sometimes doesn’t mean nobody can ever show another their love. We make mistakes in measuring sometimes and the pie doesn’t come out so well. But that doesn’t mean the notion of a cup cannot be transmitted and shared. Our experience with the supernatural is quite different. Unlike love, your experience of the supernatural is not directed to another person. They cannot be induced by your experience to have it too. It’s not like heat either, which is not a directed experience, but still you can use hot objects to induce the sensation of heat in another, while exclaiming, “Hot”.

Among the many contributors to this thread (and I want to thank everybody for their most interesting contributions) there seems to be emerging different understandings of what ‘spiritual’ is supposed to mean. One which I have been pursuing is the idea that spiritual experience is experience of the supernatural. My claim has been and is that this notion of spiritual is ultimately empty. But another take on the meaning of ‘spiritual’ strikes me as more psychological. In this perspective, a spiritual experience is simply one in which you succeed in achieving a profound appreciation and a profound sense of wonder at your state of relationship to the world. This notion of spirituality, like heat and love, can readily be transmitted. Not only ostensively, but one can almost give a criteria for distinguishing the experience from others. Though perhaps ambiguous, it is not an empty notion. I’ve no problem with this psychological notion of spiritual experience, as long as it’s not confused with walking through a mental doorway into a supernatural place.

MacShreach warns me not to get carried away with condemning all miracles in that some may have an explanation in fact. I agree. Indeed, when I criticized the flood of Genesis, I did take care to observe that Genesis may in fact be referring to a historical flood, just not one that came anywhere close to drowning every human and animal on Earth save those on Noah’s boat.

[MacShreach]

My claim has been and is that this notion of spiritual is ultimately empty. But another take on the meaning of ‘spiritual’ strikes me as more psychological. In this perspective, a spiritual experience is simply one in which you succeed in achieving a profound appreciation and a profound sense of wonder at your state of relationship to the world. .

Trish, I like you so much.

[MacShreach]

MacShreach warns me not to get carried away with condemning all miracles in that some may have an explanation in fact. I agree. Indeed, when I criticized the flood of Genesis, I did take care to observe that Genesis may in fact be referring to a historical flood, just not one that came anywhere close to drowning every human and animal on Earth save those on Noah’s boat.

If you are familiar (I'm sure you are) with the concept of "memes" as originally expressed by Dawkins, I think you will recognise in the Flood legend one of them. Memes are fascinating things that can, as this one (I believe) does, reach through millennia, through oral and written traditions, and touch us with the human experience of actually having been there.

[GinX]

It seems, GinX, that you’re claiming that your mother can’t show you love but she can show you the supernatural! Or perhaps you’re proposing love is supernatural, not belonging to the natural world, but to one beyond it. I think you’re just ignoring the empirical fact that people do show love and we recognize it. We agree on its aspects and that is can be demonstrated in many ways. Some people will strike the child they love and some people will never strike the child. But each child, by and large, comes to recognize a complex of behaviors as manifestations of her parent’s love. Sometimes we’re mistaken in about love. Sometime we discover that we took infatuation to be love, just as an example. Just because we’re mistaken sometimes doesn’t mean nobody can ever show another their love. We make mistakes in measuring sometimes and the pie doesn’t come out so well. But that doesn’t mean the notion of a cup cannot be transmitted and shared. Our experience with the supernatural is quite different. Unlike love, your experience of the supernatural is not directed to another person. They cannot be induced by your experience to have it too. It’s not like heat either, which is not a directed experience, but still you can use hot objects to induce the sensation of heat in another, while exclaiming, “Hot”.

Among the many contributors to this thread (and I want to thank everybody for their most interesting contributions) there seems to be emerging different understandings of what ‘spiritual’ is supposed to mean. One which I have been pursuing is the idea that spiritual experience is experience of the supernatural. My claim has been and is that this notion of spiritual is ultimately empty. But another take on the meaning of ‘spiritual’ strikes me as more psychological. In this perspective, a spiritual experience is simply one in which you succeed in achieving a profound appreciation and a profound sense of wonder at your state of relationship to the world. This notion of spirituality, like heat and love, can readily be transmitted. Not only ostensively, but one can almost give a criteria for distinguishing the experience from others. Though perhaps ambiguous, it is not an empty notion. I’ve no problem with this psychological notion of spiritual experience, as long as it’s not confused with walking through a mental doorway into a supernatural place.

MacShreach warns me not to get carried away with condemning all miracles in that some may have an explanation in fact. I agree. Indeed, when I criticized the flood of Genesis, I did take care to observe that Genesis may in fact be referring to a historical flood, just not one that came anywhere close to drowning every human and animal on Earth save those on Noah’s boat.

I never claimed a mother can't show love...I claimed that if she claims that the acts she shows are love...does that mean they are? What if someone disagrees, does that mean they aren't?

A spiritual experience need not be directed towards another person for it to be valid; after all, I can have a happy experience without that happiness being directed towards another person.

Perhaps the notion of 'spiritual' is ultimately empty to you because you have no belief in the spiritual. I'm not claiming that as a fact...it's simply an idea.

You may very well be right that something 'spiritual' is simply a profound psychological experience. In fact, I could see that as making perfect sense considering how the notion of the 'spiritual' has been around with humanity almost since it was humanity.

[trish]

hello GinX. You asked,

I never claimed a mother can't show love...I claimed that if she claims that the acts she shows are love...does that mean they are?

Not necessarily. What I said about mistakes above goes for deceptions as well. As long as you agree that people can show love, then you must agree that love can be learned by ostension, provided our teachers are not mistaken too often or worse, endeavor to deceive us.


A spiritual experience need not be directed towards another person for it to be valid;

I’m sorry if you got this impression from my post. Here’s what I was driving at. Because children are biologically disposed to reciprocate their mother’s love, a mother can show her child not only her love, but she can induce love within the child as well. This makes it possible to show what love is and teach it by ostension. Heat is not a directed relationship between people, but still people can be shown heat and thereby taught its meaning by ostension. You have already agreed that love can be shown. And surely you know it's often reliably demonstrated.

I didn’t say a spiritual experience (and here I mean experience of the supernatural) needs to be directed to be valid, but that one needs to be able to show it to another to teach it by ostension. One must be able to show the supernatural to another person with reliable frequency, so that the notion you’re trying to transmit (the experience of the supernatural) to that person doesn’t get lost in the noise of mistaken experiences.

Let me close with another diptych, love on the first panel, experience of the supernatural on the last.

Love is an adjective we apply to a relationship between people. The relationship is not a metaphysical entity. It’s an ordinary phenomenon of the natural world. We’re all familiar with it. You don’t experience a metaphysical thing called Love. You experience a growing relationship to which the adjective loving applies. Love is an ordinary, everyday (nevertheless wonderful) naturally occurring relationship.

Could it be that experience of the supernatural works the same way? Is ‘supernatural’ just an adjective that we apply to a particular sort of ordinary natural world phenomena? The answer is clearly, “No.” No_because a thing that’s supernatural is not an ordinary thing, it’s not in the natural world and it belongs to the unknown. Knowledge of what it’s like to experience the supernatural is by the supernatural’s very ‘nature’ impossible to teach. The supernatural must remain unknown. As soon as we can readily reproduce entry into the supernatural, map it out, become familiar with it and come to understand it, it becomes the object of ordinary investigation; it becomes a subject for science to study. Once you allow that we can readily enter the domain of the supernatural, the domain of the natural world expands to contain it, and thus the supernatural would be subsumed by the natural. But if we can’t ever readily reproduce the experience of the supernatural for others to experience, then we cannot teach the experience through ostension. If no one can teach it, how did we ourselves come to recognize the supernatural as the supernatural? There’s only one honest answer to this question.

[MacShreach]

hello GinX. You asked,

I never claimed a mother can't show love...I claimed that if she claims that the acts she shows are love...does that mean they are?

Not necessarily. What I said about mistakes above goes for deceptions as well. As long as you agree that people can show love, then you must agree that love can be learned by ostension, provided our teachers are not mistaken too often or worse, endeavor to deceive us.



I suspect we're moving into the "nature-nurture" debate here, but first, let me be sure we're talking about the same thing--when you use the word "ostension" I take it you mean something similar to "demonstration." If I'm wrong please correct me.

I'm not at all convinced that emotions like love are learned, I think they are innate and there is good evidence for this.





A spiritual experience need not be directed towards another person for it to be valid;

I’m sorry if you got this impression from my post. Here’s what I was driving at. Because children are biologically disposed to reciprocate their mother’s love, a mother can show her child not only her love, but she can induce love within the child as well. This makes it possible to show what love is and teach it by ostension. Heat is not a directed relationship between people, but still people can be shown heat and thereby taught its meaning by ostension. You have already agreed that love can be shown. And surely you know it's often reliably demonstrated.



I'm not really persuaded that love needs to be taught; perhaps what can be taught are the social mores and practises by which affection is demonstrated--kissing, cuddling and so on. But I think there is a difference between the giving and receiving of affection and the emotion of love.




I didn’t say a spiritual experience (and here I mean experience of the supernatural) needs to be directed to be valid, but that one needs to be able to show it to another to teach it by ostension.



Which is where I was going. I don't think we need to be shown what a spiritual experience is in order to feel it; I think the capacity to feel what you described so well earlier, as a sense of wonder at our relation to the world, is innate. It is part of the Human Condition and to a greater or lesser extent we all have the capacity for it. I am a firm atheist, and I have no difficulty at all experiencing that which I recognise as the same emotion as people of faith describe as "spirituality." Therefore the faith cannot be causative of the emotion; however, there is plenty of evidence that the emotions are causative of the faiths -- in other words, humans invented religions to explain these feelings.

This is important because one great issue I have with religion and people of faith is that frequently--not always, but frequently-- they insist that such emotions and experiences are only available as a part of a broader religious or faith experience; that one must believe in whatever they believe in, in order to experience that which we share by dint of being human. This hijacking of an apparently universal human emotion to the ends of religion is not isolated to the emotion of spirituality, of course, religions routinely attempt to hijack love, claiming that it can only be valid within a religious context, and indeed the broader sense of morality.

If all these emotions and responses are part of the human experience with or without faith in a higher power or the supernatural, or for that matter an organised religion, then the question has to be asked, "Why would we need any of these things?"






One must be able to show the supernatural to another person with reliable frequency, so that the notion you’re trying to transmit (the experience of the supernatural) to that person doesn’t get lost in the noise of mistaken experiences.

Let me close with another diptych, love on the first panel, experience of the supernatural on the last.

Love is an adjective we apply to a relationship between people. The relationship is not a metaphysical entity. It’s an ordinary phenomenon of the natural world. We’re all familiar with it. You don’t experience a metaphysical thing called Love. You experience a growing relationship to which the adjective loving applies. Love is an ordinary, everyday (nevertheless wonderful) naturally occurring relationship.

Could it be that experience of the supernatural works the same way? Is ‘supernatural’ just an adjective that we apply to a particular sort of ordinary natural world phenomena? The answer is clearly, “No.” No_because a thing that’s supernatural is not an ordinary thing, it’s not in the natural world and it belongs to the unknown. Knowledge of what it’s like to experience the supernatural is by the supernatural’s very ‘nature’ impossible to teach. The supernatural must remain unknown. As soon as we can readily reproduce entry into the supernatural, map it out, become familiar with it and come to understand it, it becomes the object of ordinary investigation; it becomes a subject for science to study. Once you allow that we can readily enter the domain of the supernatural, the domain of the natural world expands to contain it, and thus the supernatural would be subsumed by the natural. But if we can’t ever readily reproduce the experience of the supernatural for others to experience, then we cannot teach the experience through ostension. If no one can teach it, how did we ourselves come to recognize the supernatural as the supernatural? There’s only one honest answer to this question.

You cannot experience the supernatural because it doesn't exist. Therefore you cannot share an experience of the supernatural. As you say, if we could get a handle on it, measure it, quantify it, test it or make accurate predictions about its nature, then it would become a part of the natural world, and subject to scientific investigation. You can experience emotional states, you may be able to share them, and you may be able to explain them; but none of that means that the emotions you are feeling are a proof of the existence of something outside yourself. Because a person attributes an emotional response to a supernatural cause, does not mean that it is the cause.


However, you and I are looking at this from a particular perspective, the early 21st century. We are used to testing propositions for ourselves. Were we to go back a thousand years, things would appear very differently indeed. There was no science, no evidence-based thinking, and even the works of the Greek philosophers were hidden and irrelevant to most people.

People did not seek to test propositions for themselves; they took the word of those they trusted, and those they trusted were the priests. The priests told them the supernatural existed, and that it, whatever it was, answered all the questions they had to ask about how they got here, and all the emotions they had, that sense of wonder, but also love, grief, fear. It provided an explanation for that which was otherwise unexplainable. The priests-- or shamans, druids, whatever they were called locally-- claimed, crucially, to be in touch with the supernatural in a real and physical sense, and the supernatural entrusted them with the answers.

Furthermore, in the particular case of the Roman Catholic Church, not only were priests spiritual guides, the church itself was the single most important political unit in Europe, and for hundreds of years, the whole world. It gave sanction to kingship and--crucially--to royal marriages, carefully guiding the process of European politics by binding nations together. (We may recall Henry Vlll of England had a dispute about this.) Even now, over a thousand years after the Fall of Rome, it is no exaggeration at all to say that the Roman Empire is alive and well and living all over the world. I am sure Constantine would have been deeply satisfied.

As such, faith, and religion, played an enormously important role in society, and a fascinating one. Now, however, it is simply redundant. We know that we would have all the feelings without it, we have knowledge of how we came to be here, we are able to test propositions ourselves, and we are used to being sceptical. We can see that religion, faith and the supernatural are a consequence of being human, that we gave birth to them, not the other way around.

[yosi]

in other words, humans invented religions to explain these feelings.



poeple invented religions becuase some poeple like being told what to do , "you shall not kill" has to be written for them, and besides , it feels great to belong to the right majority, isn't it? :wink:

one can say that "we are right , all others are wrong" is the root of all racism.

on the other hand , if religious poeple feel that religion fills and fulfills their life , I will be the last person to tell them otherwise.

they just have to accept the fact that some poeple have other opinions as well , that you cannot judge with the key of right and wrong , it's just different.

this is what this site is all about , isn't it ? :wink:

[MacShreach]

in other words, humans invented religions to explain these feelings.



poeple invented religions becuase some poeple like being told what to do , "you shall not kill" has to be written for them, and besides , it feels great to belong to the right majority, isn't it? :wink:

one can say that "we are right , all others are wrong" is the root of all racism.

on the other hand , if religious poeple feel that religion fills and fulfills their life , I will be the last person to tell them otherwise.

they just have to accept the fact that some poeple have other opinions as well , that you cannot judge with the key of right and wrong , it's just different.

this is what this site is all about , isn't it ? :wink:

You and me both, yosi. I am passionate about the right of people to believe in whatever religion, cult or creed they like, as long as they do not impinge on my right to my views and my freedom to live my life disregarding their ideas.

[MacShreach]

I'm just throwing this is for Trish and the other girls...and I thought it was funny. :lol: :lol: :lol:


Eve's side of the story:

After three weeks in the Garden of Eden, God came to visit Eve. "So, how is everything going?" inquired God.

"It is all so beautiful, God," she replied. "The sunrises and sunsets are breathtaking, the smells, the sights, everything is wonderful, but I have just one problem. It's these breasts you have given me. The middle one pushes the other two out and I am constantly knocking them with my arms, catching them on branches and snagging them on bushes. They're a real pain."

And Eve went on to tell God that since many other parts of her body came in pairs, such as her limbs, eyes, ears, etc., she felt that having only two breasts might leave her body more "symmetrically balanced".

"That's a fair point," replied God, "But it was my first shot at this, you know. I gave the animals six breasts, so I figured that you needed only half of those, but I see that you're right. I'll fix it up right away." And God reached down, removed the middle breast and tossed it into the bushes.

Three weeks passed and God once again visited Eve in the Garden of Eden. "Well, Eve, how's my favorite creation?"

"Just fantastic," she replied, "But for one oversight. You see, all the animals are paired off. The ewe has a ram and the cow has her bull. All the animals have a mate except me. I feel so alone."

God thought for a moment and said, "You know, Eve, you're right. How could I have overlooked this? You do need a mate and I will immediately create a man from a part of you. Let's see....where did I put that useless boob?"

Now doesn't THAT make more sense than that ridiculous rib story?

[trish]

Hello MacSchreach and yosi. I'm answering from my iTouch so I need to be brief. I just want to clarify that I'm using 'ostension' the way linguists and language philosophers use it. I'm addressing how we attach a meaning to the term 'love' and not how we learn love itself. Whether love itself is learned or innate one still needs to attach the word to it. 'ostension' does that trick because one can 'point' to love and say' "There, love." when there is no way even in principle to attach the word "supernatural' to the supernatural itself, the term is shown to be meaningless. I'll get back to the rest of your discussion later.

[MacShreach]

Hello MacSchreach and yosi. I'm answering from my iTouch so I need to be brief. I just want to clarify that I'm using 'ostension' the way linguists and language philosophers use it. I'm addressing how we attach a meaning to the term 'love' and not how we learn love itself. Whether love itself is learned or innate one still needs to attach the word to it. 'ostension' does that trick because one can 'point' to love and say' "There, love." when there is no way even in principle to attach the word "supernatural' to the supernatural itself, the term is shown to be meaningless. I'll get back to the rest of your discussion later.

Thanks. You'll be aware that's not the only way the word can be used; you are I think using it to mean definition by demonstration, if I read the example you just gave correctly.

[yodajazz]

if I take this "miracles, demons, gods, talking snakes etc." idea , and see that it also leads to a wonderful new miracle : "if you are a suicide bomber , there are 72 young virgins waiting for you in heaven ", check for details on 9/11 , I tend to think there is something very wrong in this "miracle" system .

it also makes this sentence you wrote : " Spirituality can be shared. It is shared by billions of people around the world, through religious groups of all kind." look a bit like a propaganda , isn't it?

both of us agree about the existence of "laws of nature" , we differ in our perspective .

I think that you are the victim of the propaganda, by letting news media shape your opinion of religious groups, and the nature of man. News is news because it is the exception to the rule. Yes there have been hundred of suicide bombers, but there are 1 billion Muslims. Yes parts of the Koran can be used to justify violence, but practically any philosophy can be use to justify violence for those that want to have violence. Looking at history, some the ethnic groups which are fighting over in Iraq, were fighting each other, before Islam was introduced in the 7th century. It’s not the religion, it’s the philosophy of people. And the majority of the time, it is about political power that is the root of the violence.

An easy example, would be that campus killer in Virginia. Was it the educational system that made him a killer, or video games? In his case it was his individual psychology and of so called ‘terrorist groups, it’s group psychological manipulation. People have been fighting and killing one another way before these big religions such as Christianity and Islam came along. I say the opposite of what you imply. You imply that religion was the cause of today’s conflicts, and say that major religions have help people be more peaceful. There would be lots more people out here taking revenge for numerous things, but they have come to believe that a God or the universe will punish the wrong doer without much action on their part.

It may sound like propaganda to you, but there are untold millions of people that could tell you how religious principles and spirituality, have made them better persons. I’m one of those. That a ‘God’ created the earth in seven days, is a taught doctrine. In fact it makes no difference in anyone’s life today. Who could really say what a day is to God. But if someone speaks to a sister that they haven’t spoken to in years after hearing a sermon on forgiveness, that has a real positive impact on people’s lives. Mental health professional are touting the benefits of behaviors that were advised thousands of years ago. A major example of this, is that many professionals talk about the negative impact of stress, on health. But Jesus, said two thousand years ago; not to worry about tomorrow. And even if some here doubt that Jesus actually said it, it works, and has been true for thousands of years. You want to talk about “laws of nature”.

And lastly, believing in miracles, is just admitting that things happen that are beyond our understanding. I’ve been blessed to witness couple in my lifetime. Maybe I’ll tell you about them one day. But the most important part of believing in miracles, is just to be open to possibilities. I know there is something greater than I, but I am connected to it. And so are you.

[MacShreach]

And lastly, believing in miracles, is just admitting that things happen that are beyond our understanding.

I would not wish to get drawn into a discussion about the rights and wrongs of one religion versus another (if ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black...) but accepting that there are things beyond my understanding is NOT the same thing as "believing in miracles." It is accepting that my knowledge is not complete, which is something any intelligent person does every day. Some of those things we may be in a position to research and define, some we may not; that does not make them undefinable.

Belief in miracles per se, however, is a part of a faith-based mindset that posits that not merely are some things beyond our knowledge, they are by definition forever incomprehensible to us, because they are part of the "supernatural." A miracle is, by definition, an occurrence where a supernatural power reached out and caused something to happen in the natural world that was otherwise completely impossible. The function of the concept of "miracle" in religion is to demonstrate that the supernatural exists; since, however, there is no proof that the supernatural does exist, it is up to those who believe in miracles to prove that they happen, and are not merely an invention of mankind; we cannot use one unprovable proposition (miracles) to prove another (the existence of the supernatural.)

This is just another aspect of the fascinating circular logic of the faith-based mindset: if gods exist, then miracles can happen/if miracles can happen then gods must exist. The problem is that there is no evidence whatsoever for either proposition, so, as I have said before, we can repeat the simple test-- just prove it, in a scientifically sound, repeatable, testable manner.

Otherwise, to distil what I have previously said, it's just your mind playing tricks on you. This is not a denial of spirituality, which is a potentially very intense human emotion we can all share, whether we accept gods and BDs or not; it is just the observation that emotions are a function of the mind, not the external world.

:shrug

[yosi]

It may sound like propaganda to you, but there are untold millions of people that could tell you how religious principles and spirituality, have made them better persons. I’m one of those.


if you feel that religious principles made you a better person , all I can say is that I'm happy for you.

we share the same passion to be better persons , to understand the world around us better , to learn more and more about this wonderful world we live in , the world that gave us the most precious present of all : our life.

we differ in our perspective , we use different tools to understand the world around us better , I like to get answers , but I also like to ask new questions based on these answers , even if I'm mistaken sometimes like anyone of us , mistakes are also great true tools to learn new things , much better tools in my opinion than written words from 2000 years ago, when life was completely different than ours, , a completely different reality than ours .



And lastly, believing in miracles, is just admitting that things happen that are beyond our understanding. I’ve been blessed to witness couple in my lifetime. Maybe I’ll tell you about them one day.


you see miracles because you want to define them as miracles.
if things happen that are beyond our understanding today , you might find a new logical explanation tomorrow ,after you expanded your understanding, this is what learning is all about.
and the more we learn , the more we realise how much we don't know.

quite an interesting and amazing world , isn't it?

[yodajazz]

...
I like to get answers , but I also like to ask new questions based on these answers , even if I'm mistaken sometimes like anyone of us , mistakes are also great true tools to learn new things , much better tools in my opinion than written words from 2000 years ago, when life was completely different than ours, , a completely different reality than ours ....



Thanks for your response. I had a busy few days, so here's my response to this part of your post:

You have it wrong. The main point is that the human behaviors that happened back in Biblical times, are still happening today. Here’s an example: I have watched every transgender video on YouTube and the vast majority talk about haters. This is rightfully so because some jerk is always saying hateful things. But, if you look at the story of Christ’s crucifixion, it was the ultimate ‘haters’ story, or some might say a haters story of Biblical proportions. He was going around healing people and other good things in front of crowds of people. The major people he criticized, were those that though they were better than everyone else. And incidentally, those people were called Pharisees, were like modern day Republicans and Religious Right people. The point was, not only did he have haters, but others who supported him turned on him, after he failed to meet their political expectations. He was executed and no one lifted a finger stop it. In fact he could have escaped crucifixion when he was chosen for a game show of the time, that should have be called “Condemned Idol” but the crowd chose a thief as the winner. (I say Jesus was ‘robbed’, he was clearly the better performer). And Christ story was not the only, ‘haters’ story; the story of Joseph was a classic case which started with his own family being jealous. In both cases the moral was that they both triumphed over the haters.

My point about this is that the ts women who get so upset over haters, could be more at peace when they understand even the most revered person thru the centuries also had them. The bible and other religious texts contain stories about people, and the lessons their lives taught. As you said people learn form their mistakes, but many are making the same mistakes made those two thousand or more years ago. The customs were different but, the behavior was similar. Sex scandals among political leadership, family betrayal and problems, and a nation which lost site of its founding vision, are just some of the human stories.

I say it is the same reality, only different clothes.

[MacShreach]

...
I like to get answers , but I also like to ask new questions based on these answers , even if I'm mistaken sometimes like anyone of us , mistakes are also great true tools to learn new things , much better tools in my opinion than written words from 2000 years ago, when life was completely different than ours, , a completely different reality than ours ....



Thanks for your response. I had a busy few days, so here's my response to this part of your post:

You have it wrong.

With respect, I don't think he does. Yosi is saying, I think, that we have better ways of understanding the world around us now than we did 2000 years ago. We understand evolution; we understand physics; we understand astronomy. These are just a few of the tools we understand now but did not then.

It's hardly yosi's fault, or mine, or anyone else's, if people today refuse to accept that these tools and methods of understanding exist and instead, blindly insist on believing as literal truth, books written by people who did not have them.

There are none so blind as those who will not see, as they say.

[yosi]

you said people learn form their mistakes, but many are making the same mistakes made those two thousand or more years ago. The customs were different but, the behavior was similar. Sex scandals among political leadership, family betrayal and problems, and a nation which lost site of its founding vision, are just some of the human stories.

I say it is the same reality, only different clothes.

you are right that it's the same reality only different clothes , and that many are making the same mistakes that were made two thousand or more years ago.

one of the biggest mistakes we do and always did, is to ignore simple facts around us and rely only on written words , to ignore the so obvious because IT IS so obvious.

one simple fact we choose to ignore is the fact that all around the world we live in , no matter which country , color , race or religion, women and men are born more or less on a 50/50 ratio .

does it prove anything? I think it does , it proves that men and women ARE equal , if that ratio of 50/50 is kept for thousands of years it's not just a coincidence.

I don't have to go into details on how religions treat women..........trish called it a hidden propaganda in religions and she was right.

another thing we choose to ignore because IT IS , so obvious , is that green/blue ball we live on , look for yourself how bad we treat it as if we have another choice ,another option ,another green/blue ball to live on.

maybe the problem is that it's written somewhere that we do when the simple facts show that we don't.

[trish]

To continue the hijacking, I just thought this was interesting and relevant to our discussion

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/07/15/what-questions-can-science-answer/#more-2444